Mission Critical
Looking away, she checked the nightstand there, as well.
She sighed silently in frustration.
Finally she reached under the pillow on the unmade side of the bed, and pulled out a pistol. It was a Czech-made CZ P-01, a compact aluminum-framed semi-auto, and Zoya immediately flipped off the safety and moved it out of the man’s reach.
This done, she climbed slowly into bed next to the form there and inched her way over, and this caused the man to stir. He reached a hand out and it landed on her breast. He started to smile and squeeze, but when Zoya pressed the blade of the knife up against the man’s fleshy throat, hard enough to cut him superficially, his hand let go and his eyes opened in surprise.
He pulled his hand away and began sliding it under the pillow next to him.
In Russian Zoya said, “You make any noise and you die. Then I shoot my way out of here with the gun you had hiding under your pillow.”
The man tried to look at her, but it was clearly too dark for him to make out facial features.
“You are a woman.”
“And you are perceptive. I will kill you just the same if you try anything. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, yes, of course. No noise or you chop off my head. I’ve got it.”
“Very good. Now . . . slowly, I want you to turn on your bedside lamp, Vladi.”
Upon hearing the diminutive of his name, Vladimir Belyakov reached out and grabbed the lamp pull.
When the light flickered on, he blinked hard, as did Zoya, both struggling to becoming accustomed to the light. But after a second he turned to the woman next to him in bed with her knife still pressed against his jowls.
Belyakov was sixty-five years old, short and fat with dyed black hair so thin across the top as to be useless, but still rather thick on the sides. Zoya hadn’t seen him in over ten years, and he’d certainly aged, but she expected he would have no problem recognizing her instantly.
She was wrong.
After several seconds staring at her, he said, “I’m sorry, madam, but I am hopelessly farsighted. Can I put on my glasses?”
“They are in your nightstand. Your hand goes anywhere else, and I sink the blade up under your chin, through your tongue, and into the roof of your mouth. Then I twist.”
He reached for his glasses slowly and put them on. While he did so, Zoya lay down closer to him, keeping the knife where it was but positioning her body where they could both speak in whispers.
The man stared at her for several seconds more. “Is that . . . It can’t be. Zoya?”
“Hello, Uncle Vladi.”
“You’re . . . you’re alive?”
“I think you have your answer. It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?”
Belyakov seemed absolutely poleaxed. “I . . . I should say so. Moscow. Ten years ago, was it? Your graduation from SVR. One of the proudest days of my life, even though I was only a friend of the family.”
“But a close friend, Vladi. You always were. You looked in on me when you were home and my father was away. There were entire years I spent more time with you than I did with Papa.”
Belyakov nodded a little, but not too much, because the knife was still in place. Drops of blood had already made their way down his throat.
“It is wonderful to see you. You do know everyone, everyone, thinks you’re dead,” he said.
“Do I look dead?”
“You . . . you look more beautiful than ever. But why are you in your underwear? Why are you all wet?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she said, “I need to talk to you.”
“My dear, we can talk without you sneaking in here, crawling into my bed, and threatening me. Why on earth have you come to me in the night like this?”
“You were my father’s best friend. You told me you were there, that night, in Dagestan, when he died.”
Belyakov blinked in genuine surprise, as if he’d had no idea why Dagestan would possibly come up. “I was.”
“Killed by rebels, I think you told me.”
“Indeed. Shariat Jamaat, they were called at the time. They are still around, but go by Vilayat Dagestan now. We kicked their asses back then; they still haven’t recovered.”
“A lucky mortar round did him in?”
“Why are you asking all this? Yes, of course, as I told you at the time.” He looked away again, shut his eyes for a moment. “Please, Feo was my best friend, and your papa. Let’s not dredge up such painful memories.”
“They aren’t that painful, Vladi. Papa and I have something in common. Everyone thinks he’s dead, too, but he’s not, is he?”
The short man squinted through his glasses, a dumbfounded look on his face. “Sto?” What? “Don’t be ridiculous, of course he is.”
Zoya just stared him down.
“My darling, what is going on? Why would you think—”
“I’ve seen the pictures purporting to show his body. Classified photos from GRU. But he was alive when the photos were taken. They were staged.”
“I was there, Zoya!”
“I saw you in the photos, so I know you were there. And that means you are lying about what happened, and that is why I am here.”
“Look—”
She interrupted him. “Look at these.” She pulled down her sports bra to reveal the top of her breasts. “They are faint, but they are there. They’re called stress hives. I get them when I’m anxious. I always have gotten them, since I was a kid. Right here.”
This was a lot for Belyakov to process, she could see in his eyes. He stared at her upper chest, right into her cleavage. Zoya did seem to have several very light but unmistakable pink splotches there.
She continued, “In my line of work, of course, anxiety is something I learn to manage, but I’ve never been able to fake out the hives. If it’s a stressful enough situation, they will appear.”
“But what does that have to do with—”
“My father had the exact same condition. Higher on his neck, on the side, but just as noticeable as on me. When he would have a bad day at work my mother would say to my brother and me that if Papa had the red rash on his neck, we should leave him alone and wait for him to come to us.”
Belyakov waved her statement away with his hand. “I was on the scene within moments after the mortar round hit. If you say I was in the photo, then you see. It had just happened. Perhaps the hives stay on the body after death. You haven’t died before, so you don’t know.”