Allegiance Burned: A Jackson Quick Adventure Page 21

  “Where is that coming from?” Bella’s eyes widen. “Do you hear it?”

  “It sounds like it’s in the wall,” Sergei moves toward the liquor shelves. “It is coming from the wall.”

  “Is there a pattern to the bottles that are spun around?” Bella starts picking up bottles. “Maybe the bottles have something to do with the hidden room.”

  I recall my conversation with the man who answered the phone at the store. He was quick to hang up, but he did mention one vodka by name.

  “Honey pepper. The guy on the phone recommended honey pepper vodka.”

  “What brand?” Bella asks. “There are a bunch of honey pepper vodkas. There’s Rada,” she bends over to scan the names on the bottles, “First Guild…”

  “Nemiroff!” I snap my fingers. “The guy said I should try Nemiroff Honey Pepper.” I join Bella, looking for the right bottle. “He said it was hard to find.”

  “Nemiroff not hard to find,” Sergei says. “Very popular. Big seller.”

  “It was a clue,” I said. “I asked him what Dr. Gamow would order.”

  Sergei pouts his lips in doubt. “You are just—”

  “I see it!” Bella points to a shelf a few inches beyond her reach. “That’s it right there, isn’t it?” She’s aiming at an amber-colored rectangular bottle. I overstep a body to reach her and look closer at the bottle, squinting to focus on it.

  Vertically along the left side of the bottle reads Nemiroff in gold letters. Above that, front and center on the bottle’s face are the words Honey Pepper, the second e decorated with a red pepper. I reach up and grab its neck and try to pull the bottle from the shelf. Instead of lifting the bottle up and away, it pulls forward and down like a lever. Surprised, I let go and the bottle springs back into its upright position on the shelf. From behind the blue curtain to our left, we hear what sounds like the creaking of gears spinning. The sound of the ringing phone grows noticeably louder.

  Bella looks at me for an instant before turning and pushing her way through the curtain. “There’s a door!” she yells back to us. “It leads to another room! And…”

  “And what?” I call to her, tangling with the curtain to get into the storeroom.

  “There’s someone inside. And he has a gun.”

  ***

  The man is sitting on the edge of a cot in the corner of the room. He’s aiming his handgun at Bella and me, alternating between the two of us. His hands, gripped tightly around the weapon, are shaking.

  “I spoke with you on the phone,” I say, my hands above my head. “I’m not interested in hurting you. I don’t want you to hurt me.”

  He stands from the cot without lowering his aim. Slowly, the man, who I’m guessing is in his late sixties/early seventies, crosses the warmly lit room. There is a desk against one wall, with a phone, some picture frames, and a desktop computer. Along the back of the room is a kitchenette with a dorm-sized refrigerator, stove, and a half a dozen cabinets. In the middle of the space is a square table with two chairs beneath a chandelier. The light has space for four lightbulbs but two of the sockets are empty. The man stops at the table and motions for us to join him there.

  “We have another person with us,” I tell him before stepping into the room.

  “He stays out there,” the man says. “Just you and the woman.”

  “Sergei,” I call back into the store, “please keep watch out there. We’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Okay,” he calls back. “I do that for free.”

  Bella and I walk to the table, where the man has taken one of the two chairs. I motion for Bella to take the other and stand behind her.

  “I’m uncomfortable with that weapon.” He motions to the Tec-9 strapped to my back.

  “I’m uncomfortable with yours,” I respond. “I guess we’ll just have to deal with it, right?”

  “Deal with it? You mean, we both hold guns?”

  “Whatever you say. Like I told you, I don’t want any of us getting hurt.”

  “You want Dr. Gamow,” he says. “You wanted Dr. Gamow when you called.” His accent is evident, but his English is good. The man’s gray hair is cropped close, almost trimmed flat across the top of his head. The trio of lines burrowed across his forehead are deep and set. His eyes are sunken, framed by dark circles and heavy lids. He’s clean shaven and dressed in brown corduroy pants and a tan, long sleeved turtleneck shirt. His teeth are too big for his mouth. “Am I right about that, Curtis Eugene?”

  “Yes,” I nod. “My partner and I are looking for something that didn’t belong to Dr. Gamow. It belonged to her.” I squeeze Bella’s shoulders.

  His eyes dart between the two of us. “I know what you want. I know why you are here, why they were here,” he waves the gun toward the wall separating his room from the store. “But I don’t have what you look for.”

  “Why are we here then, friend?” I ask. “Why were they here?”

  “I am not friend,” he shakes his head. “I do not know you or this woman.”

  “Fair enough.”

  He coughs, pulling the back of his hand to cover his mouth, and then clears the phlegm from his throat. “Where is Rudolf?” he asks.

  “We don’t know,” says Bella. “We tried to meet with him in Odess —”

  “He didn’t show up,” I interrupt Bella. No need to reveal too much. “Then I called you. When I called, you seemed willing to help. You basically told me about the access to your — what is this place?”

  “I live here,” he says.

  “Why?” Bella asks.

  “I have no money to live somewhere else,” he says. “Wall comes down, home goes away. Only place I can find work is here. Orange revolution comes and goes and still no job. Rudolf likes vodka. He helps me make home in back room. He helps me make it secret. Rudolf is a good man. He knows I live here. He is the only one.”

  “Why did you tip me off on the phone?” I question. “You know, with the Nemiroff reference?”

  “I didn’t tip you,” he explains. “I try to sell Nemiroff to everyone. Big margin. Nice money.”

  “Who are your customers, here in a wasteland?”

  “People who live and work here. Lots of people still research Chernobyl. Lots of people drink,” he says. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because it’s odd to me that you’d have a secret home, tucked behind your store. What are you afraid of? Or what was Dr. Gamow afraid of?”

  He blinks at the suggestion, his eyes almost imperceptibly narrowing for an instant,. “Nothing,” he says. “I was not afraid. I just am poor.”

  “Men break into your business,” I press. “It’s late at night. They start snooping around, making noise, looking for something. You had to hear them…”

  He nods.

  “You don’t do anything to stop them?”

  “It’s many men against me,” he says. “I cannot do anything to stop them.”

  “They knew somehow you had secret room, didn’t they?”

  “They were looking for a way inside,” Bella says. “That’s why the bottles were spun.”

  “Somehow you were warned. You knew we were coming, at least you had to suspect that,” I said. “I was straightforward about it. The guy whose phone I used to call you, he’d called too, right?”

  He blinks. The gun is still shaking in his grip, despite his elbows being planted on the table.

  “He got you to tell him something…”

  He blinks again, more rapidly, like he’s fighting back tears. “Where is Rudolf?” he asked, his voice breaking.

  “They had Dr. Gamow call you, didn’t they?” I step from behind Bella and around the table. “Then I called you and you began to worry. What did Dr. Gamow say to you on the phone?”

  The creases around his mouth deepen, his eyes widen and he begins to sob. He lets go of the gun and buries his face in his arms. Bella’s eyes are welling at the sight of this elderly man suddenly heaving with surprising emotion.

  I walk to his side and
gently place my hand on his back. He flinches at first, then relaxes against the flat of my hand. “I’m so sorry.” I look across the room, noticing the framed photographs on the computer desk and it dawns on me.

  Both of them are of a couple embracing. In one photo, they are toasting glasses of wine. In the second, the men look maybe a decade younger. They are in a hammock on a beach. One of the people is the man grieving in front of me. The other looks exactly like the images I found on the internet of Dr. Rudolf Gamow.

  ***

  The man grips the bottle of Tonus-Oxygen mineral water like it’s the last on the planet, gulping down the last of it and exhaling. I offer to get another bottle from the refrigerator, but he declines. His eyes are red and swollen, his nose glistening on its tip. We don’t have time to coddle him, despite his loss.

  “I believe you have what we’ve come to get.” I glance at Bella. She’s still sitting quietly across from the man, frowning and staring off in the distance. “Tell me what you can. Please?”

  “I told him,” the man sniffs. “I told Rudolf not to keep in touch with that Wolf. I told him the name fit that man. He was greedy.”

  “Dr. Gamow or Dr. Wolf?”

  “Wolf,” the man snaps. “Rudolf was too nice. He was gentle and kind. People took advantage of him. Wolf took advantage of him. I warned him that man was trouble.”

  “How did he take advantage?”

  “They worked together at the Chernobyl decommissioning labs,” he says. “There are many scientists and researchers here doing testing. They look at long term radiation impacts. They study everything.”

  “The labs are here?”

  “Yes,” he says, “they are maybe three kilometers from here. Not far. George met Wolf there several years ago.”

  “How did Wolf take advantage of him?”

  “Wolf was always arrogant,” he says, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “He would come in here and never ask nicely for anything. ‘Give me that!’ he would say. ‘I want that!’ he would command. I never liked him.” He shakes his head. “Rudolf told me Wolf was a brilliant man and misunderstood. He said that Wolf was the first man he’d ever met who was so gifted at nuclear physics and engineering. Rudolf looked up to him.”

  “I hear you saying that bothered you.” I sound like my shrink.

  “It bothered me only because I had a feeling about that man,” he sighs. “He would pick Rudolf’s brain and then use his ideas, you know, manipulate him. Rudolf was flattered.”

  “What happened after Wolf left?”

  “Rudolf told me that Wolf was working in France, some underwater telescope, which makes no sense to me. But I am not a scientist. Rudolf, tried to teach me things.” He exhales and his shoulders drop. He stares into space, breathing quietly, except for the slight whistle from his nose.

  “Dr. Gamow kept in touch?”

  “Wolf kept in touch,” his stare is fixed elsewhere. “He would send cards or emails. Sometimes he would send complicated problems or formulas to Rudolf and he would work on them. Then maybe a couple months ago, Rudolf comes home, uh, comes here with a package. He says that Wolf visited him at his place in Odessa.”

  “Rudolf worked in Odessa and here?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Jobs do not pay much. Rudolf had two. One here at the decommissioning labs and one at a computer company in Odessa. CS Odessa. George is good with computers. He helped with software.”

  “What happened when Wolf visited him?”

  “He gave Rudolf a package,” he says. “He said needed it to be kept safe. He told Rudolf that he trusted him and asked him to keep it.”

  “What was in the package?” Bella asks, suddenly reengaged.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “But I knew it was bad.”

  “Dr. Gamow didn’t tell you what was in the package?” I ask.

  “He didn’t open it. He says Wolf asked him not to open it, to trust him. He said he would be back for it in a few months, he just needed a hiding place.”

  “And you believe that Dr. Gamow didn’t open it,” Bella asks, “didn’t sneak a peek inside?”

  “Yes.” His eyes narrow, eyebrows drawing close together. “I believe Rudolf.”

  Bella leans forward in her seat.

  His eyes widen. “Because I have the package here with me.” He looks over to his desk. “It’s in the drawer under the desk.”

  From behind us comes the sound of boxes sliding on the floor. Sergei appears in the doorway to the man’s back room, stopping at the wooden frame. “We have a problem,” he says. “Security is here.”

  ***

  The man hands the package to Bella. His fingers linger on it before he lets go. “You take this,” he says. “Whatever it is, I don’t want it.”

  “We need to go,” I urge. “Is there another way out of here?”

  “No,” says the man. “You can go out the front. I will handle this. I know MVS.”

  “MVS?” Bella echoes.

  “Ministerstvo vnutrishnikh sprav Ukrayiny,” says Sergei. “The Ministry of Internal Affairs. They are security here.”

  “There are three dead bodies out there,” she says. “What do we do about that?”

  “I will handle.” He walks gingerly to the table and picks up his gun. “We meet them outside.”

  We follow one another through the storage room, past the blue curtain, and into the store. Sergei has wisely turned out the lights, but the front door is open. Outside, I can see headlights and a couple of flashlights aimed at the SUV I disabled.

  “Maybe they’ll leave,” Bella says hopefully. “They don’t know we’re in here.”

  “They know there are two automobiles out there on the road,” says Sergei, “and one of them has four flat tires.” He and Bella glare at me simultaneously.

  “What?” I shrug. “That was a smart move.”

  “Let’s wait here and see what they do,” Bella says. “There’s no need to confront them if we don’t have to, right?”

  I nod in agreement. “That’s good. We’ll wait here. But if they approach, we need to meet them outside. In the meantime, Sergei, help me move the bodies.”

  Even in the dark, I sense his distaste for the new assignment. Nevertheless, he trudges over to the first body and grabs the hands. I grab the legs and we grunt our way to the counter. “Let’s hide him back here with the others.”

  We awkwardly round the edge of the counter and drop the body to the floor. The head hits the ground with a sickening crack.

  “Do we move others?” Sergei asks.

  “They’re fine back here,” I decide. They’re out of sight for now.”

  “There is blood on floor,” he says. “We cannot hide that. No rugs.”

  “We’ll just deal with it,” I hop the counter to avoid falling over the bodies, grabbing my Tec-9 as I jump down. “That’s why we’ll need to meet—”

  “They’re coming,” Bella says urgently. “What do we do?”

  Sergei and I reach the front windows and look out. There are two large, burly men in dark uniforms with reflective stripes across their chests. They’re walking side by side toward us, both of them guiding their paths with flashlights aimed just ahead of themselves to the ground.

  “We go outside,” Sergei pushes the door to open it fully. Then he says loudly to the MVS, “Добрий вечір!” Good evening!

  The men stop and raise their lights to Sergei, who raises up his arms to block the dual-beams of light in his face. Both men have sidearms at their hips. One of them instinctively has his right hand on his holster, his stance bracing for a confrontation.

  “Хто ви?” calls the holster man. He hasn’t reached for his weapon.

  “He wants to know who Sergei is,” I whisper to Bella. We’re now crouched low enough to hide beneath the window. The old man is standing at the door, holding his gun. His hand is shaking as it did before.

  “Я потребуюсь довідник подорожі котра деяка горіл
ка,” Sergei takes a step toward the officers. They yell at him to stop and raise his arms.

  “What did he say?” Bella asks.

  “He told them he’s a tour guide who wanted some Vodka,” I translate. “They told him to stop and put his hands up.”

  “Not good,” she whispers.

  I quietly pull my pack onto my back. I have the six shooter in the small of my back, but I haven’t reloaded it since Sergei emptied it into one of Blogis’ goons. My Tec-9 is strapped over my shoulder. It’s got plenty of ammo left in the oversized magazine.

  Sergei puts his hands above his head, but he protests the treatment.

  The officer with his hand at the ready pulls his weapon and steps carefully toward Sergei, “Ви вторгнення.” You’re trespassing. He approaches Sergei and, with his weapon pointed at Sergei’s head, shines the flashlight directly in his eyes. He’s holding the light with his left hand, his right gun hand leveled on his left arm. “На ваших колінах,” he instructs and Sergei drops to his knees, hands still above his head.

  “This is not going well,” Bella whispers. “What do we —”

  “Що являє собою джентльменів проблеми?” The old man bangs through the front door and out into the night asking the officers what they’re doing and if there’s a problem. The moon makes a brief appearance between thick, dark clouds, illuminating the tension in front of us.

  The officer farthest from Sergei draws his weapon and aims his light at the old man, noticing that he’s armed. He yells at the old man to drop his weapon, which he doesn’t do. Instead he repeats his question, his hand visibly trembling with the gun at his side.

  “What’s he doing?” Bella nudges me with her elbow.

  “I don’t know,” I reply. “Follow his lead. He’s got something planned.”

  “Ця людина є замовник,” he tells them Sergei is a customer.

  The guards exchange a glance. “Упускати вашу зброю!” one of them yells. He wants the old man to drop his weapon immediately.