Some prologues are worth reading. This is how Nadia begins...
Prologue
The
only thing worth killing for is family.
Her
father’s words to her, the day they’d come for him.
She’d
been fourteen when two men in combat fatigues and balaclavas burst into the
kitchen where she and her father were enjoying breakfast. The armed commandos hadn’t
seen his pistol lying beneath a folded newspaper. While her father struggled
with the men, his eyes flicked between her and the weapon. She could have
darted for it, threatened them, helped him. But she hesitated. The moment
slipped past. They threw a black hood over his head, cuffed him, and dragged
him away . . . to be interrogated, tortured, executed and buried in the woods.
A single thought haunted her ever since.
Had
he known they would come?
Now, four years
later, Nadia picked up his Beretta, its dark metal cool in her hands. She checked
and re-loaded the magazine. She walked to the window, took one last look at the
wild garden where her father had taught her to shoot, and the gravel path
leading through the pine forest to the banks of the Volga. There, she’d learned first to swim, then to
dive. Turning away, she stashed the pistol in her backpack and crept downstairs,
hoping to escape unseen.
But her mother
was waiting for her on the doorstep, arms folded. “You’ll end up a killer just
like him, Nadia. Or a whore, like your sister.”
Nadia
pushed by without replying. She passed through the creaking gate that had so
often announced her father’s return, and breathed easier after the turn of the
road. She waited an hour for the bus, part hoping, mainly dreading that her
mother would come running around the corner begging her to return.
Fifty miles from
Moscow, where her sister Katya lived, everyone had to get off the bus at a
security checkpoint to show papiren. Nadia
left her backpack under the seat. When she reached the front of the line, a
young soldier flicked noisily through her passport, then glanced up, surprise lighting
his smile.
“Happy
birthday,” he said. “Eighteen. A special day.”
Nadia moved into a grotty studio flat in
Old Arbat, where each night she fell asleep exhausted from working in the local
bakery from 4 A.M. until 3 P.M., then at a supermarket until 9. She liked boys well enough, but hated the
unsubtle flirting, the vodka-fuelled race to unconsciousness, the lies. She’d
loved her father, but he’d been one of the worst with women, and she’d seen the
damage it had done to her mother. So she kept her hair cropped, dressed for
comfort, and was often mistaken at first sight for a young man, which was fine
with her.
She didn’t get
enough time with Katya, but on Wednesdays they’d go to the Sevastopol Hotel,
the rock-bottom market. They’d start on the 16th floor and work
their way down, Katya usually buying her little sister Chinese or Afghan
trinkets to brighten her dingy flat, seeing who could negotiate the hardest,
laughing about it afterwards over ice cream. And every Sunday afternoon they’d
head to Gorky Park, taking turns to push each other on the swings just like
when they were younger, and ice skating as winter approached, always hand in
hand. Sometimes they talked about their parents, but only back in the past,
during those good, early years. But when they’d hug, Nadia remembered how they
used to hold each other in bed during their parents’ screaming matches
downstairs.
Katya never invited
Nadia to her place, never spoke about what she did with the rest of her time.
Nadia didn’t want to probe, didn’t want to break the spell. Besides, she wasn’t
sure she wanted to know.
Then the ever-gorgeous
Katya invited her dark-haired kid sister to a party at a luxurious country
dacha owned by a wealthy businessman, Kadinsky. Nadia was never formally introduced,
though Katya clearly knew him very well. Nadia was mesmerised by the women with
perfect skin in glittering, low-cut dresses, the handsome and not-so-handsome
men, their jewellery and fancy cars and easy talk of big deals. Viktor, a man
twice her age, who turned out to be someone in government, seduced her. He
wasn’t bad-looking, took his time in bed, and left cash for her breakfast in
the mornings.
She let things
coast for six months, no demands or promises on either side. She presumed he
was married. She never asked, and he never said. She gave up the early morning
bakery job, and thought about getting a cat.
Then one day
Viktor was on the news, handcuffed, being forced into a police van. She leapt
off the sofa and began packing a bag, but within minutes a loud rapping sounded
on the door. The Beretta was on the table, fully loaded. She hid it under a
loose floorboard, then opened the door.
Receiving misappropriated funds. That’s what they told her at the station, though she was never
formally charged, never saw a lawyer. Once inside Lubyanka prison, Nadia was informed
she’d be their guest for twelve years, ten if she behaved. On the anniversary
of her father’s death, she gazed through the prison bars, studied the sad faces
staring back at her from the ugly block opposite. She turned away, took in the
inside of her cell. The double bunk with rancid sheets under which she shivered
each night, curled up in the foetal position. The iron toilet that stank of her
own piss and shit – they wouldn’t give her the bucket of water to flush it
until lunchtime. The cold grey bars, faded whitewashed brick walls, not even
graffiti to lighten her mood. And the lone hook in the ceiling that her former
cell-mate had used to end everything while Nadia had been out in the exercise
yard. The fourth suicide since her arrival.
Ten years? She wouldn’t
make it.
Shouting erupted
down the corridor. Wolf-whistles, tin mugs clanging against cell bars,
lascivious remarks from several lesbian inmates, one of whom already had her
eye on Nadia. And then a gruff man’s voice, more like a growl. Silence. Nadia
stared at the bars. It couldn’t be anyone for her. No one had visited her since
her incarceration. But she listened. A man’s shoes, heavy, impatient, and high
heels clacking behind, almost running to keep up. Nadia smelled her sister’s
perfume, and took a step forward as the footsteps approached. But Katya wasn’t
alone. Nadia took a step back.
Kadinsky.
Since being
locked away, she’d heard on the grapevine that he was a gangster, not a
businessman, and now she saw him close up for the first time, he fit the bill. He
had a gleaming bald head, like he actually polished it every morning, and was
fat without being flabby, as if his weight was there to throw around, to crush
you if necessary. He wore an expensive, baggy beige suit, and gold jewellery
dripped from his wrists and neck. Katya stood behind him in a skimpy red dress
and high heels, tousled hair falling behind her shoulders, her large eyes
hopeful and scared at the same time. There was no guard with them. Kadinsky
held a ring of keys in his hand. He selected one that looked indistinguishable
from the twenty others dangling from the ring, shoved it into the slot, turned
it with a resounding clank, and stepped inside.
Nadia wanted to
hug her sister, but Kadinsky stood between them. He turned his head to the
side, not enough to see Katya, but just enough so she’d know he was talking to
her.
“One word, and I
walk. Turn around. Give the other inmates a treat.”
Katya gave one
last look at her sister, then dutifully turned around, and faced the bars.
There was silence outside. Everyone was listening. Especially Nadia.
Kadinsky glanced
at his gold Rolex, as if bored, somewhere else he’d rather be. Anywhere. He
glanced at Nadia, then folded his chubby arms, stretching the fabric of his
suit.
“I’ll ask you a
single question, girl. You have three chances to give the right answer. If you
do, you come with us. If not, you stay, and see your sister in twelve years.”
He glanced at the toilet bowl, grimaced, pulled out a silk handkerchief, blew
his nose noisily, then stuffed it back into his pocket. “And be quick.”
Nadia tensed,
stood almost to attention, and waited for the question.
“What did you do
wrong?”
Nadia’s reply was
too fast, a prison reflex, what everyone here said when they first met someone
new in the canteen or the yard.
“Nothing,” she
said.
“Wrong answer,”
he said. “Second try.”
Of course it was
the wrong bloody answer. He was a gangster, so in his mind everyone had done
something wrong. She stared at the keys in his hands. The door was open. Soon,
one way or another, it would be locked shut. Think! Maybe just the facts...
“I met Viktor
Romanovich at your dacha. We had an affair. It lasted six months. One day I saw
him on TV, being taken away, arrested on corruption charges. While I was
packing, they came for me, threw me in here.” But what had she done wrong? She’d just enjoyed the ride, a little
life, a little luxury, someone who’d looked after her. She pictured Viktor. A
man twice her age. Old enough to be… She shuddered. “I should have found out
what he was up to, asked where the money came from.”
Kadinsky made
half-fists, turned them palm upwards, and studied the fingernails of one hand,
then the other. He stared at her like she was a waste of skin. “One last try.
What did you do wrong?”
Nadia looked at
her sister’s outline; she was trembling. What had she done wrong? She didn’t
know. Been born, maybe? So, she’d stay here, die here. Could she do that to
Katya? If her father hadn’t got messed up in God-knew-what, if he’d still been
around, things would have been different. What had he done wrong? She never knew. But then she realised what it was
she’d done wrong, both times. She’d not picked up the gun for her father, that
fateful day. And when they’d came for her, his Beretta – the only keepsake she
had from him – had been right there, on the table.
She looked
Kadinsky in the eye. She didn’t know if it was the answer he was looking for.
Whichever side of those bars she ended up on, she had a feeling it would be her
epitaph.
“I let them take
me.”
Kadinsky
grunted. Looked at his watch again. “We’re leaving,” he said.
Katya spun
around and Nadia found herself wrapped in her sister’s arms, felt her sister’s hot
tears on her cheeks. Nadia’s head tilted upwards, and while she succumbed to
the embrace, she stared at the lone hook in the ceiling. Fuck you.
Kadinsky got Nadia out with bribes and promised
favours. Of course, she’d have to work it off.
Once back at
Kadinsky’s country dacha, she stood in the large lounge with its single bay
window overlooking the dry fountain, a chipped statue of Pan in its centre.
Inside, oil paintings of battles, including one above the fireplace featuring a
victorious Napoleon, hung around the white, corniced walls. Kadinsky ordered
Katya not to speak, then walked around Nadia. He looked her up and down, then
shook his head. He dropped into a wide leather armchair. Katya was perched on
an antique wooden dining seat opposite. Nadia stood between them, and
Kadinsky’s two henchmen – one grossly fat, the other slim as a snake and with
pockmarked cheeks – leaned against the far wall.
“You have grey
eyes,” he said, wagging a finger at her. “Like a fucking tombstone. Who’d want
to make love staring into such eyes?” He glanced at Katya. “Are you sure she’s
your sister?”
Katya’s gazed
dropped to the carpet. She nodded, her own eyes a deep blue, like her mother’s.
Nadia had her father’s eyes. Killer’s
eyes, he’d once joked, when she’d been too young to realize it was a
confession.
Kadinsky swirled
the ice in his whiskey tumbler with a pudgy index finger. “What else can you
do, girl?”
Nadia never knew
where her answer came from, possibly revulsion against a life of prostitution,
but she thought of her father, and the words slid out of her mouth. “I can
shoot. I never miss.”
Kadinsky’s
thugs laughed. He didn’t. “I detest exaggeration,” he said. “So American.” His
mouth moved as if he was going to spit.
“Let’s see if
you can really shoot. Give her your pistol,” he said to one of the henchmen,
the one with a pockmarked face – Pox,
she named him – who immediately lost his sense of humour.
She
took the weapon from his outstretched hand, weighed it in her palm. An
old-style Smith and Wesson. God knows why the guy had it. Most blatnye preferred semi-autos, Makarovs
or the older but higher-velocity Tokarevs. She checked that it was loaded, all
six bullets nestling in their chambers. She glanced at Kadinsky, thought about
killing him. But the other henchman, the fat one with slicked black hair –
hence, Slick – had his Glock trained
on her, his lopsided leer daring her.
Kadinsky
waved a hand towards Katya, five metres away. He tilted his head left and
right, then settled back against the soft leather, took a gulp of whiskey, and
smacked his lips. “The red rose in the bowl of flowers behind her left ear.
Shoot it. From where you stand.”
Slick’s
eyes flicked toward Katya, gauging the angles. His leer faded.
Nadia
stared at her sister and the rose. Most of it was behind her head. Only one
leaf of the scarlet blossom was exposed. She swallowed, then lifted the
revolver, and took up a shooting stance like her father had taught her. Right
arm firm, elbow not fully locked, left hand under the fist, prepared for the
recoil. She had to do it before anger built and disrupted her concentration.
She cocked the hammer, lined up the shot, then spoke to Katya’s serene,
trusting face: “Love you,” she said. Then she breathed out slowly, as if
through a straw, and squeezed the trigger.
Masonry
exploded behind Katya. The crack was so loud that three other men burst into
the room, weapons drawn. Kadinsky waved them back as Pox peeled the revolver
from Nadia’s stiff fingers. Petals fluttered to the floor amidst a plume of
white powder from the impact crater in the wall. Katya sat immobile, pale, the
hair on the left side of her head ruffled as if by a gust of wind. A trickle of
blood oozed from her left temple, and ran down her cheek.
Katya, lips
trembling, beamed at Nadia. “Still alive,” she said, her voice hoarse. She
touched the graze with an unsteady forefinger.
Nadia began to
shake. She folded her arms, refusing to give Kadinsky the satisfaction.
Later that night, while she slept in
Katya’s bed, holding close the sister she’d almost killed, Slick and Pox burst
into the room. Katya woke, leapt out of bed and told them to fuck off, for
which she received the butt of a revolver across her mouth.
Nadia
half-planned to try to grab one of the guys’ guns at a crucial moment, but they
knew what they were doing. One held her down, while the other did whatever he
wanted. She retreated into a corner of her mind, a memory, the first time her
father had taught her to hold a gun, his arms around her, helping her aim,
shooting at empty beer bottles. He’d been so proud of her when she’d hit one.
But she couldn’t hang onto the memory. It hurt, what they were doing, it
fucking hurt, and she knew this was a wound that would never heal. She tried to
scream STOP! But Slick clamped his hand over her mouth. Katya leapt onto his
back, aiming to pull him off, but Pox punched her in the stomach, then in the
mouth. Katya went down, didn’t reappear. Nadia continued to struggle, thought
of her father, how he’d be raging in hell if he could see this, knew what he’d
do to these two bastards if he were there. She clung to his rage like a
lifeline…
Eventually
they left, and Katya, her chin smeared with blood, an ugly bruise rising on her
left cheek, came back to the bed and held Nadia tight. Nadia’s body was
strangely still, as if it belonged to someone else. She wished it did. While
her eyes stayed dry, her elder sister cried and whispered apologies, repeating
how it would all be all right, the worst was over, and the important thing was
that they were together. For the first time ever, that night, Nadia held her sister
until she fell asleep, rather than the other way around.
At dawn Nadia
woke to find her sister gone, presumably to Kadinsky’s bed. She considered
their predicament. Katya was locked into Kadinsky’s world, and now she owed him
too, and he wasn’t about to simply let her off. She was trapped. Her mother’s
prediction came back to her: a killer or a whore. Maybe both.
She dressed,
crept downstairs and stole outside, timing it to get past the guard by the main
door when he went to take a piss. Snow crunched under her boots. She got a
couple of miles from the dacha before she collapsed from the biting cold, and
lay down in the crisp silence. “It’s okay,” she heard her mother say inside her
head, with a kindness she’d not heard from her in years. “Better this way.” She
closed her eyes and went to sleep, hoping never to awaken, unless to join her
father.
But she did
wake, and found herself back in the dacha on a sofa, buried in blankets and fur
coats. She shook violently. People were
shouting in the room next door. Katya,
Slick, and Pox, then that low growl that cut off everyone.
Katya
came in. She wiped away tear streaks on her bruised face, and closed the door
behind her. She braved a smile and walked toward Nadia. “They won’t touch you
again,” she said, her voice shaky. “Nobody will.” She sat down next to her.
Kadinsky
entered, a gold-rimmed coffee cup in his hand, a sad-looking golden retriever
trailing him. “Here’s the deal, girl.” He spoke to the bay window rather than
her, and took a swig before continuing. “I could use a female operative who
doesn’t wet herself under pressure. Maybe that could be you. You’ll work for me for five years. Your
training will take three, including eighteen months in Britain. I want your
English impeccable – not like a newsreader, like a local.” He stared at her, his
gaze hard. He stooped to pat the dog ineffectually, as if he didn’t really know
how, then stood tall, downing the last of the coffee. He spoke to the window
again. “Katya stays here. Do ten ops for me, then I’ll let you both go.” He
nodded to himself as if concluding the contract. “Ten ops, five years. Then, svoboda . . . freedom.”
He left, not
waiting for an answer. The dog followed, its head bowed.
Kadinsky’s words
echoed in her mind. Five years. Half
the life she would have lost in prison. If she’d have lasted. Thinking of her
cell helped. Katya had gotten Nadia out of her own personal hell. But would
Kadinsky really let them both go afterward?
Katya hugged her,
and she succumbed to the embrace, because the only person she cared for in this
brutal world was Katya. “It’s going to be all right,” Katya said. “You can
trust him. Pyotr Aleksandrovich is a hard man, but he keeps his bargains.”
She knew what
Katya was trying to do, using Kadinsky’s first name and patronymic, making him
seem like family. But something inside her hardened, as if the tears that
should have come earlier turned to glass. She promised herself she would go and
retrieve her father’s Beretta the very next day, strip it, clean it, begin
practicing again.
Ten ops. Five
years. Then, one way or the other, she and her sister were through with
Kadinsky.
“It will be all
right, Katya,” she said. “Whatever it takes, I promise one day I’ll make it right.”
Available from Amazon here
Happy Xmas everyone, especially to readers of 66 metres. Here's a teaser, the opening of the next book - 37 hours - due out in March. The book takes place in four locations: Moscow, a remote island off the coast of Borneo, Chernobyl, and London. Expect plenty of fast-paced action, gritty scenes, tough choices, a chilling villain, and some twists you won't see coming... 
