Smoke and Mirrors (23 page)

She cried out his name over and over as violent orgasm rocked her. And still he drove into her, holding her there until he joined her and his groan of release grew into a long, fierce shout. The fire of his climax consumed her in that unique ecstasy, and she threw herself forward, clinging around his neck, writhing uncontrollably while her cries grew deeper and more intense, before they faded gradually to panting breaths.

He smiled at her in triumph as he laid her back on the pillow and took his weight on his elbows. Sweat trickled off him and mingled with her own. “Wow. You have all the passion I knew you did. And more.”

She swallowed, thrilled and yet contrite. “Was I awful before?”

“Oh fuck, no,” he said fervently. “One of the most exciting things about you is that I always sensed more; I always wanted more.” He kissed her mouth and her throat and groaned, moving lazily inside her. He didn’t seem to have shrunk much. “And you gave me it. I loved looking for it… That’s the thing, Nell, there’s always something new with you, and I
still
want more. You’re addictive….”

“
You
‘re addictive,” she whispered, biting into his shoulder.
And I never want to give you up
.

After a few moments, as his movements grew more definite, she said uncertainly, “Are you—are we going again? Already?”

“One more before we sleep. Just one more…”

He said the same thing again an hour later. When he did finally fall asleep, it was inside her. And in the morning, he woke her by doing it all yet again with a sweet, slow tenderness that made her weep inside. Because this time, she knew it really was the last one.

****

Somehow, she held on to the dream while they made love in the morning, as if touching him, holding him, branded the images indelibly on her subconscious mind. For her conscious mind was all taken up with him. And yet, as he withdrew from her body, and she sensed him already withdrawing into the world of his plans, the dream came back with a sharp clarity she’d never known before.

She said, “They’re still there. Still distressed but not really ill that I can see. Just trying to wake up as they were last night. It’s weird, but I almost felt I touched minds with her, Liza.”

Rodion paused on his way to the shower, naked and so beautiful that she ached. “Maybe you did. She’s a powerful psychic, or was before the Bear filled her full of drugs. One of my greatest fears was always that he’d somehow discover how strong she was and use her as he’s using me.” He swallowed. “Did you see the attic?”

She nodded. “It goes back a long way. There are blacked-out skylights to the roof but no trapdoors to the flats below, except a small door in the wall at the very far end. I think that might be the entrance you first thought was the electricity meter outside the attic flat.”

“What about the front entrance? The secure entry to the flat that we saw yesterday?”

She frowned. “Someone came through it in the dream, grumbling at the kids to shut up. He had a bottle of water and some bread… Liza spat the water out. I think that’s how he drugs them. He forced her to drink. I’m sorry,” she whispered as his face whitened. “Rodion, you’re getting them out.”

“Oh yes,” he agreed in a voice that sent shivers running down her spine, worse even than when she’d thought him a mere murderer and gangster. “I’m getting them out.”

****

“Miss Black,” came Derryn’s cool, grating voice over the phone. “About time.”

She agreed with him there. She stood in the tiny bathroom off Rodion’s bedroom with the shower running. Rodion himself had gone to the Saturday market, and this was likely to be her only few minutes alone for the rest of the day. And she had to use them, somehow, to keep Derryn away.

“I don’t have much time,” Nell said, low. “He’s found the treasure, and he’s stealing it today.”

“Where is it?”

“Oh Jesus Christ, he doesn’t tell me things like that! But he has to bring them back here. Don’t come before midday, or you’ll ruin everything. He’s already jumpy because the secret police here seem to be on to him—I so hope you didn’t have anything to do with that. And your blundering, murdering idiot who was watching me so obviously is
well
clocked, so keep the fuck away, Derryn.”

She almost felt his distaste for her language, to say nothing of her attitude. But all he said, with exaggerated patience, was, “And where exactly is it you want me to keep the fuck away from?”

She closed her eyes and gave him the address of the brothel.

Chapter Seventeen

Boris, the designated driver of the day, since in his own words he danced like a brick, dropped them in the street leading up to St. Peter’s Square, before the CCTV cameras could pick them up. They wore costumes and masks already, and by the time Boris had driven sedately on, Nell had spotted the hired dancers in a huddle of black jumpsuits in the middle of the square.

Beside her, Rodion found her hand and squeezed it once. Then he grinned through his hooded mask and began to hum as he swaggered across the square to meet the dancers. A large black cat with devastating gold eyelashes and a pink rosebud mouth just open enough to reveal a flash of white teeth. And a rucksack on his back.

Rodion in mission mode, as she’d first seen him in the police station in Edinburgh. Her throat began to close up, but she banished the ridiculous, dangerous memories and forced herself to concentrate. She had her part to play too.

“Cat’s Eye dancers?” he greeted the agency people—three young women and two youths. He beamed at them, arms outstretched in the first of several exaggerated, theatrical gestures. “Excellent! Okay, Yelena here has the music, and the three of us will be handing out these leaflets to all the thousands of people you attract. What we’re looking for here is
spontaneity
, guys. Enthusiasm. Fun. Yelena, the music!”

The young people exchanged glances, possibly encouraged by Anna’s sniggering in the background. Nell knew what she meant. Rodion had entered the spirit of the thing with a vengeance, adopted a character just over the top enough to be amusing and completely harmless. And suddenly it was ridiculously easy to get caught up in it.

Nell played them the music, and the dancers did their stuff to it, a little hesitantly at first, and then with more gusto as they fitted their pre-learned moves to the music. Rodion marched them up the square in a conga line, then had them stop and do something very similar face-on. Nell, with the blaster hoisted on her shoulder, matched her steps and wiggles to theirs, as did Anna and Ilya.

Within ten minutes, Rodion declared they had just the right balance of spontaneity and performance. By this time, they’d already collected quite a sizable group of amused watchers of all ages and stages in life. Anna and Ilya began to pick on the younger members of the crowd, shouting out, “Free entrance to the Cat’s Eye Club tonight! All you have to do is join us as we dance our way round there, and collect your free tickets, redeemable tonight! Come on, guys, who can resist the most fabulous club in town for
free
!”

Which was, more or less, what Ilya’s leaflets said. With luck, the crowd would continue to gather at the club even after their arrival, and Nell looked forward with curiously light-hearted glee to seeing the baffled faces of the staff as they were presented with this bizarre fait accompli.

And so, with Rodion ostentatiously conducting them, they formed into a line. Nell turned up the music and sashayed up to the front, and off they went. Rodion, she realised, was a gifted and inspiring actor—imbuing the whole, deadly serious operation with a sense of fun that shone through everyone. And yet, having done his part in the training, his role in the performance was deliberately useless. So that no one would have any cause to particularly note his disappearance.

A few game folk joined the conga line before they left the square, and it grew longer and longer as they made their way up one of the main shopping thoroughfares. Other people jogged along behind, and Rodion occasionally dragged a fresh supply of flyers from his rucksack to give the impression they were all he had in there. It wasn’t. Not by a long chalk.

Every so often, the dancers would turn and give their face-on performance, while Nell and the others stood back, cheering or distributing flyers. Rodion kept up a constant supply of chat and banter with the crowd, and since he was naturally funny as well as witty, it was a very jolly as well as noisy crowd that made its musical, festive way along the street to the Cat’s Eye Club.

They raised a cheer at first sight of it, and Nell, remembering Rodion’s advice of the day before, made sure she spotted her escape route, Boris in the grubby red car they’d stolen yesterday before disguising the number plates. In ten minutes or so, he’d move on. She didn’t look at him, didn’t look at Rodion as he conducted the dancers from the building side of the line.

Some people hung out of windows to see what was going on. There were waves and catcalls and a lot of pointing. A big man slouching outside the club straightened and wandered forward to take a look.

“What the fuck’s this?” he asked Nell as she led them on.

“Cat’s Eye dancers, as requested,” she said gaily. “And we’re the best promotion in town. What do you think?” She shoved a flyer into his hand and turned as the dancers formed themselves into their face-on line. Behind them, the front door to the apartments eased partially opened and closed, but Nell never looked at it directly, just grinned through her cat mask and wiggled her hips in time to a very rocking Tom Jones. She even sang along,

“What’s new, pussycat? Woah-oh-oh-oh!”

Rodion was in.

****

Somewhere he was aware of the ache in his shoulder from heaving the heavy rucksack around as if it were paper-light; but it was one of the many things he could block out in order to concentrate on the job ahead. He leapt up the stairs swiftly and silently, a flyer in his hand, ready to give to anyone who stuck their head out of the door. No one did. If any of the overworked night staff were up, they were gawping out of their windows. Just as they should be.

At the top of the stairs, he knelt and off-loaded the rucksack. The lock on the quarter door was easy to pick, but he didn’t let that fool him. The Bear was taking a chance with no obvious security outside this entrance—although it had certainly been enough to mislead Rodion until Nell’s dreams. But on the inside, he knew there would be alarms, cameras, the lot.

He took a deep breath to poise himself and eased open the door.

Fuck.
That he hadn’t expected. Another door with a far more serious set of locks and bolts. Nothing else for it. He gazed at the line of them where they pushed into the wall and fizzed them. A quick trick he’d learned while still a kid. Used very little energy and only melted the bits that had to budge. The Guardian was unlikely to notice it. Loads of people had tiny little surges of power like that. Some of them didn’t even know it.

He pushed at the inner door, and it gave a tiny clunk. The sounds of voices, television voices, drifted in to him. Good, the guards shouldn’t hear his entrance. He eased open the door just enough to glimpse the camera aimed at it. From the red light beneath the device, it doubled as the alarm. He fizzed it too, frying the wires. With any luck, it would just appear like an echo to the Guardian, if it even caught her attention. But it would certainly send all the screens connected to the camera blank. From now on, he was up against the clock.

He slid inside, remembering to pull the outer door closed. It might buy him a precious few seconds. He tore off the cat mask, shoved it into his pocket, and began his soft-footed run down the length of the gloomy attic. The flickering light from the television guided him, showed him the huddle on the floor that had to be his siblings, the two men on hard chairs a few feet away from the television.

One of the men said, “Fucking computer’s gone blank.”

“Screensaver,” the other grunted without taking his eyes from the TV.

Rodion recognised their voices: the bouncers who’d chased him and Nell yesterday. This must be the bastards’ day job.

“The fucking screensaver’s disabled, you moron,” the first said in disgust. He got to his feet.

“Turn it up, Arkady,” ordered the other. “I can’t hear for that bloody racket outside. What’s going on?”

“Who cares?” the first demanded, shaking the laptop which sat open on the television set. “Call Maria.” He whirled around and froze.

Rodion didn’t let himself look at the troubled blur of his siblings on the floor, not after he’d ascertained that was exactly what it was. Instead, he concentrated on the camera pointing at them. It wasn’t active right now—they probably only used it when the children were left alone—but he fizzed it anyway.

The Guardian might just notice now.

“Who the fuck are you?” the first bouncer, Arkady, demanded, and Rodion slowed to a stroll. The bouncer’s eyes widened in unbelieving recognition.

“I’m the big, bad wolf,” said Rodion, pulling Liza’s cuddly toy from the side pocket of his rucksack and dropping it onto her. He couldn’t look at her or at Vadim. Not yet. “But you can call me Kosar,” he added as Arkady took a swing at him. He ducked, springing up between the children and their guards, because even after what they’d been through, they shouldn’t have to see this.

Arkady screamed, burning up from the inside. It was a quick death. Quicker than he deserved. The other guy finally leapt to his feet, shouting out, “You’re
him
! You’re fucking
him
!” They were the last words he said before he too burst into flames.

The Guardian would certainly notice that.

And now, now he could turn to his brother and sister; and nothing in his life had ever been so hard. He’d no idea what he would see, just that it would break his heart.

Vadim was staring at him, his eyes dark and huge from whatever dope they’d filled him with. Liza was gazing at her wolf, clutching it between hands that shook pitiably.

“It’s Rodya,” Vadim said, hoarse and slurred. “It’s Rodya—” His voice cracked, and Rodion dropped to a crouch, gathering them both to him. “I’m dreaming of Rodya, Liza,” Vadim said more firmly.

“No. It’s really me,” Rodion said grimly. “And we’re going home.”

There was no more time to lose. He’d no idea how much space the party below would buy him. At least the guards hadn’t been able to call anyone before they died, but the Bear was in Zavrek, and he was almost certainly on the way to protect the treasure he’d come to regard as his own.

“Can you stand?” he asked them both briskly. “Follow me.”

As he ran to the skylight he’d earmarked from the roof last night, he keyed Boris on his phone.

“In place,” Boris said briefly.

Rodion broke the connection and dropped the phone back in his pocket. He got the ropes he needed out of his rucksack and slung one over the beam beside the skylight. Liza and Vadim were wobbling and feeling their way after him.

“Liza, I’ll take you first,” he said. “But I won’t be long, Vadim. Hold on there.” He swept Liza’s frail, skinny, little body into his arms, appalled by the smell of dirt and neglect that clung to her. But he couldn’t dwell on that. Not yet. He swung himself up on the rope-pulley system he’d rigged last night and burst open the skylight with his feet. The glass didn’t break. He’d fizzed the catch last night, and it opened easily with a boot in the right place.

For safety, he’d also left a tied rope to cling to as he slid down the slope of the roof to the makeshift sling hidden in the guttering. He slipped Liza’s legs into it. “I’m going to lower you all the way to the ground,” he told her. “There’s a nice man at the bottom with a beard. You take his hand and wait for me, okay?”

He’d no idea if she understood him. It wouldn’t be much fun for Boris if she didn’t and took fright at him instead, but in this particular emergency, Boris would know how to subdue her without damaging her. Although her weight was pitiful for a twelve-year-old girl, he supposed it made it easier on his muscles, even if his arms were shaking by the time Boris took the weight on his massive shoulders and helped her out of the sling.

Rodion heaved the rope up as fast as he could, climbed back up the roof, and slid down the skylight for Vadim. He stood right below it, gazing up at Rodion as if awaiting the second coming. He looked too small and far younger than his years. As if his growth had been stunted by his ordeal. More things he couldn’t think about. Part of the same thing.

“Come on, Vadim. Nearly there now,” he said gently and reached for his brother. Which was when he saw the flames spark back into life from Arkady’s ashes, and the Guardian rushed at him in fury.

****

The woman stared at Nell in horror. “But we don’t
have
any free tickets!”

Nell blinked at her. “You have tickets, don’t you?” Close by, the angry, baffled security man was on his phone. Talking to the Bear?

“Of course I’ve got…” the woman began.

“Well, get them, then! There are too many people here to piss off at this stage!”

“I’ll need to get authorization.”

“You mean no one’s told you?” Nell said, wide-eyed.

“Not a bloody word,” said the woman bitterly. “How am I supposed to run this place with people going over my head all the time?”

“Well, if I were you, I’d use my initiative,” Nell said. “Give out the free tickets, get an absolutely record night of drink sales tonight, followed by full houses at full price every night and gratuities to die for. Everyone’ll love you, from the owner down to the waiting staff.” She smiled winningly. “You must admit it’s a very successful campaign. Brought you a huge amount of publicity. I don’t think the owner would be very pleased if that was wasted. We don’t come cheap, you know.”

The woman turned and went back inside. Nell hoped Rodion was right and that any alarms from the kids’ prison didn’t sound in the club’s general office. She supposed the vast majority of people wouldn’t be very happy to see pictures of imprisoned children…

But the dancers were getting tired, and some of the watching crowd were beginning to drift away. They needed the free ticket distribution to begin, to revive flagging spirits and keep the crowd interested and happy.

Idly, Nell glanced up the street. Too soon, surely, to see any sign of Rodion—
please, God, let that be going well
—but one could look. A large, black car was rolling slowly down the street toward them: a stretch limousine with blacked-out windows.

“Oh fuck, it’s him,” Anna said in her ear.

“Who?” Nell asked automatically. But she already knew.