Richard Montanari - The Devil_s Garden

Harkov struggled feebly against his restraints. Aleks could see bloodied spittle running from the corner of his mouth. The man had bitten his tongue.

“It really is quite ingenious,” Aleks continued. “Whenever this phone rings, it will send a charge through the wires, to your genitals. I understand it is quite painful. We used it often in Grozny, but then it was only for men who had been fighting for a cause, a cause they believed in.” Aleks took out one of his prepaid cellphones.

“You, on the other hand, are guilty of something far worse. You stole a child from its mother. In all of nature, this is punishable by death. I do not see why human beings should be any different.”

Aleks held up the cellphone.

“You can’t do this,” Harkov breathed.

“Two little girls, Mr Harkov. Where did they go?”

“I… I help people,” Harkov said. His body began to tremble even more violently. Sweat dripped from his brow.

“Have you ever thought for one moment that you might be destroying lives on the other end of your deals?” Aleks touched three numbers on his cellphone.

“These children are unwanted.”

“Not all of them.” Three more numbers.

“You don’t understand. People come to me and they are desperate for children. They give them good homes. A loving environment. Many people say they will help. I take action. I make a difference.”

“Two little girls from Estonia,” Aleks said, ignoring him. His finger hovered over the final digit.

Harkov thrashed in his chair. “I will never tell you. Never!”

“Moscow calling, Mr Harkov.” Aleks hit the last number. Seconds later the telephone on the desk rang, sending current along the wires.

A flash of orange sparks ignited Harkov’s pubic hair. The man screamed, but it was soon muffled by a greasy garage rag Aleks shoved into his mouth. Harkov’s body shuddered for a moment, then fell limp. Aleks lifted the handset, replaced it. He snapped an ammonia capsule beneath his nose. The man came to. Aleks pulled out the rag, got close to his ear.

“Tell me where the files are located. Two little Estonian girls. Little girls you had stolen from their mother’s womb. Girls you had a man named Mikko Vanska spirit away in the night. I want to know the name and address of the people who adopted them.”

Nothing. Harkov’s head lolled on his shoulders.

Aleks shoved the rag back into the man’s mouth, dialed again. Again the phone rang. Harkov shrieked in pain. This close, Aleks could smell the cooking flesh. He also knew that Harkov’s bowels had released.

Another ammonia capsule.

Aleks walked to the window for a moment. Harkov mumbled something into his gag. Aleks returned, tapped the man’s right hand. Harkov wrote a scribbled word on the pad. Unreadable. Aleks hit redial on his phone. Another jolt. This time the tail of Viktor Harkov’s yellowed dress shirt caught fire. Aleks let it burn for a second, then doused the flame.

The office was becoming a landfill of offensive odors. Greasy flesh, burning hair, feces, sweat. Aleks pulled Harkov’s head back. The man’s face was bathed in perspiration. Aleks pinched the fleshy part of the man’s nostrils until he came back to consciousness.

“Two little girls,” Aleks repeated.

Nothing.

Aleks reached into the bag, pulled out a small alligator clip. He detached the clip from Harkov’s genitals, and connected the wire to the smaller clip. This he attached to one of Harkov’s eyelids.

On the desk was a photograph taken perhaps sometime in the 1970s, a picture of a thin, nervous looking teenaged boy.

“This is your son?” Aleks asked.

Harkov nodded slightly.

“If I do not find the people I am looking for, I will pay this man a visit. It is far too late to save yourself – indeed, the account of this day was written years ago when you crossed my path – but you have the opportunity, right now, to give me what I want. If you do, you have my word that no harm will come to him.”

Aleks removed the gag from the old man’s mouth, but Harkov said nothing.

Once more, Moscow called Viktor Harkov. The charge burned away the entire eyelid in a flash of bright blue flame.

Two minutes later, the old man told Aleks everything.

Aleks found the files in the bottom drawer of the steel cabinet in the corner of the outer office. Inside the cabinet he noticed the remains of a long-ago forgotten lunch, a moldy brown paper bag dotted with rodent stool. In this tableau lived the horrors of old age, Aleks thought, of its infirmities and disease and trials, in here were the whispers of these days before death, a feeling he would never know, a…

… triumph over eternity in the moment he strides up the hill, the field of corpses thick beneath his feet, the screams of the dying a dark sonata in the distance. The stone farmhouse has taken many mortar rounds, its pitted facade now a defiant intaglio. Inside he knows he will find his answers…

Aleks glanced out the window, at the street. Kolya sat in the Hummer, a pair of earphones in his ears. He smoked a cigarette. The world continued to turn. The world was not going to miss this man who traded in human flesh, who brokered children in the night.

Aleks turned back to the dead man, took out his knife, and finished his work.

Beforeopening the door, Aleks looked at the documents. There were two files, two families with twin girls. Both were in the right time frame from four years earlier. Both were brokered through Helsinki. There was no further detail on the children, other than their gender and their date of passage to the United States.

And, most importantly, their names and addresses.

Before he stepped into the hallway Aleks turned back to the room. He had not touched anything without his gloves on. He had worn the plastic raincoat and his ball cap nearly the entire time. Although the offices were covered in dust, the path from the door to Viktor Harkov’s desk was swept clean. Aleks had not left shoeprints in the dust. Only the most sophisticated of forensic evidence gathering would reveal that he had ever been in these rooms, and even if a man like Viktor Harkov warranted such attention, Aleks would be long gone by the time he was identified.

Still, he had now committed murder in a country not his own. He could never undo this, or take it back. Everything had changed.

In Estonia he knew where all the bolt-holes were, had several identities in several safe houses along the Narva River. He knew how the police operated, how the politicians operated, who could be trusted, who could be bought. He knew the when, the where, the how and, most importantly, the how much. This was different. This was the United States.

He walked slowly down the hallway to the stairs. He did not use the handrail. When he reached the back door he used his shoulder to open it. The alley behind the building was empty. Moments later he rounded the corner and put the plastic bag containing the bloody raincoat and latex gloves in a trashcan.

When he slipped into the vehicle, Kolya considered him, but did not say a word. Aleks nodded. The Hummer pulled slowly into the stream of traffic.

They idled in a parking lot of a McDonald’s. Aleks scanned the files. He wrote an address on a piece of newspaper, showed it to Kolya, who entered the address into his GPS system. Aleks committed it to memory.

“This is not far,” Kolya said. “Maybe one hour. Maybe less, depending on traffic.”

Aleks looked at his watch. “Let’s go.”

They left the city and drove along a magnificent river. It reminded Alex of the Narva. He looked around, at the tidy houses, the manicured lawns, the shrubs, trees, flowers. He could settle here. If this was where his Anna and Marya had grown up, they would be happy in Kolossova.