Someone Elses Daughter (9 page)

Chapter Three

Borzov’s Dilemma

I

When Georgy Nikitin strode into Borzov’s office Sara was naked but for high-heeled shoes and two clover clamps, elegantly perched on the end of the Boss’s desk as he worked. It was still early in her training, but she had learned it was called the Sex Kitten position (all the poses had names, it seemed) where knees were bent, her legs slightly separated by a different degree of flexion in each knee, her toes tucked in
en pointe
and her weight taken on her arms, allowing a number of seductive variations on the position. Borzov was very meticulous about her position, so she didn’t make any movement and remained like an exotic living ornament.

“Viktor, I need to speak to you urgently?” Georgy said, sparing a brief glance at the nude young woman.

Borzov waved a staying hand to Sara and looked across at the man. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“It’s very important,” Nikitin said, glancing pointedly at Sara in a way that left no doubt that he needed her gone.

“Gah, very well.” Borzov sighed as he rose to his feet. He reached to Sara and removed first one clover clamp and then the other from her nipples. “Leave.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, wincing at the pain as blood returned to her teats.

“Go to your cell and lock the cuffs about your wrists,” Georgy ordered.

Sara leapt from the desk and scurried from the office, her hands folded over her breasts.

After she had left, Borzov smiled to the burly interloper and spread his hands. “A Russian-speaking American girl, she shows great promise. What’s so urgent, Georgy?”

“When did you last have contact with your daughter?”

Viktor Borzov raised his eyebrows. “Anna? We spoke a week ago. Is she in some kind of trouble?”

“Was she in Moscow?”

“Yes, she was visiting her grandmother. What’s this all about?”

Georgy inhaled deeply and he studied his gorilla-like fingers for long seconds. Finally, he said: “Anna has been kidnapped or worse.”

“Kidnapped?” Borzov looked up sharply.

“You don’t answer your phone to your own mother? She has been desperate to speak with you. Anna went out for the night with friends and didn’t return home. That might not be unusual but a couple of goons broke into your mother’s house and she found them ransacking a bedroom. She yelled at them and they left in a hurry. Your mother was unharmed. The thing is, though, the burglars left behind the bag that Anna had been carrying that night... keys, cell phone, everything.”

“Fuck!” Viktor muttered, reaching for the phone. “I’ll speak to my mother. In the meantime, get Lev Salko.”

II

Lev Salko tried to ignore the strident ring tone of the mobile telephone on the bedside cabinet, but it was insistent. The second time, he rolled in the bed and swung his legs over the edge of the mattress, cradling his head in his hands and making no effort to pick up the handset. After a short time it stopped ringing, and soon after a shorter beeping tone announced that a message awaited him. He sighed and looked over his shoulder. Two women lay on the bed, naked and nubile, their long lissom limbs entwined. They were too young for him, he thought, smoothing back his dark hair. Lev Salko had seen better days. He was gnarled and hard-bitten by several grim years spent in terrible Soviet prisons. The tattoos that covered much of his naked body were testament to the travails of a hard and unforgiving past. They told a story of crimes and punishments and pronounced his status in the Vory, the criminal brotherhood forged in the gulags. The history and standing of a vory can be read from the pictures on his body, and Salko’s past was... colourful.

“Lev baby, come back to bed,” one of the girls whimpered, her arms outstretched.

He glanced back at her. She was probably not yet twenty years old and already an accomplished little whore. That’s how it was with these bitches. They were brought to the trade as naive girls, some voluntarily and others by force, and they all quickly became hardened harlots, ever-ready to fuck like rabbits for their pimps.

“Get up, get dressed and get out,” Salko said. He reached for the cell phone and glanced at its small display screen. Few people knew the number, for he bought a new one almost as frequently as he bought his expensive silk socks, and that was often. Raising his eyebrows slightly at what he saw on the screen, he punched in a single number and listened to the message. Glancing over his shoulder again, he said: “Just fuck off, the pair of you.”

“Lev, please, you promised...” the girl wheedled. “All day, you said. That was the deal. The boss will beat the shit out of us if we go back with less money. You know that.”

“I’ll pay you both for the full day,” Salko spat, listening to the terse Russian voice on the voice mail. “Now shut the fuck up and go.” Salko frowned and punched numbers into the phone’s small keyboard. Someone answered his call immediately. “This is Lev. What do you want?” he said quietly.

III

“Where is she?” Salko demanded as he sat astride the man’s chest and smashed the butt of his pistol into the already battered Slavic face.

Blood ran from the man’s lips and stained his teeth as he grimaced. “Who are you speaking about?” he asked in heavy tones. He was panting, hurt and scared, but his eyes flashed defiantly. “Who is she, this woman you seek?”

Seedy back-street sex clubs and clip joints are the same the world over in many respects. Poorly-lit, dingy, and sordid… This one in old Moscow wasn’t any different. However, the three men who had stormed the scarcely-disguised basement brothel were not typical of either the hoodlums or the customers that frequent such places. Neither did they look much like policeman, not even those shadowy and sinister police cadres who respect nobody. These three were much too professional for that, acting with military precision and with controlled and calculated brutality. Now, in a small backroom littered with women’s clothing and amidst tables laden with used paper cups and discarded cigarette cartons, the club‘s pug-faced thugs cowered wide-eyed under the threat of two confidently-held AK47 assault rifles as they watched their leader’s face being methodically beaten to a bloody pulp.

“Her name is Anna,” Salko spat, grasping his victim’s unshaven chin roughly between finger and thumb and wrenching so that he stared into the watery grey eyes.

The door opened. One of the rifle-bearing men shot a wary glance towards it as a young woman stood framed in the doorway, naked except for the briefest of G-strings and high spiked heels. She gasped and hastily withdrew, shutting the door again.

After a few seconds the man on the floor said hoarsely, “Thousands of whores call themselves Anna.”

“Anna Borzov,” Salko said, smashing the butt of his pistol across the man’s jaw in emphasis. “Tall, blonde… she has a blue rose tattooed on her left shoulder. Here…” He paused to take a photograph from his pocket and hold it before the man’s eyes. “This is her.”

A bewildered look crossed the grey and bloody features. Recognition flickered there, accompanied by a slight narrowing of the eyelids. He said, “A blue rose. There was one bitch recently... mouthy, with attitude...”

The man seemed about to say more but he hesitated for a few more seconds, as if reviewing his options. Finally, he said, “What is she to you, this Anna?”

“She is the daughter of Viktor Borzov.”

The man’s eyes widened further. “
The
Viktor Borzov? Holy shit!”

“Yes, you fucked up big time,” Salko said with a growl, scrunching up the photograph and stuffing it into the man’s mouth with his thumb. He bunched his left fist, taking slow, deliberate aim before ramming it against the man’s exposed Adam’s apple. It wasn’t a killer blow, for he had pulled its power, but it was undoubtedly painful. The man gurgled and grunted simultaneously, producing the strangest sound. “We know you took her,” Salko said grimly, watching as the man’s face turned puce. “I want to know what happened to her.”

The man’s eyes widened as his tormentor raised his fist once more. He made as if to speak but could only manage stretched grunts. He gulped, to try again. “She is gone,” he said at last, struggling with the painfully-rasped words. “I no longer know where she is.”

“Gone!” Salko’s eyes hardened as he eased the safety-catch from the gun and placed its muzzle at the man’s temple, where a prominent vein throbbed noticeably.

“She will be far away from there. I sold her-”

“You sold her!”

“Of course, I sold her as a whore,” the man said, and despite the pain in his throat, he uttered a choked laugh. “It is funny. I sold Viktor Borzov’s daughter.”

“You’ll tell me everything,” Salko said grimly, reaching down to grasp the man’s testicles.

Later, they found the man’s body floating in the River Moskva.

IV

The club in downtown Odessa was much like any other of its kind. Blue neon lamps behind wispy blue gauze drapes cast a
gloomy
li
gh
t on the half
-
a
-
dozen patrons and a similar number of whores. The floor was a chequered pattern of glass panels lit from beneath by blue flashing lamps. A bare breasted girl, clad in tight spangled shorts and knee-length boots, swayed in a desultory manner beside a steel pole, sparing only a disinterested glance as the man ushered the six terrified girls to a door at the rear of the dance area. The back room was dim and dingy, in stark contrast to the glitter of the bar and dance area
, which was just plain tawdry
.
F
our men sat at
a
small table, drinking and playing cards.
The
trafficked
girls
stood quaking
as the four swarthy men all but ignored them
and
continued
to play
their game
.

“Strip
,
”
Plakici said.

One of the men
glanced up briefly at the women
as Plakici spoke
and then looked back at the playing cards in his hand. He took some moments to select a card and tossed it onto the table. He was a swarthy unshaven man in his late twenties, with greasy black hair swept back in a pony-tail, a small moustache and long sideburns.

“What is this?”
Anna
demanded as she was pushed forward.
“Look,
my father—”

“Shut up, cunt
,
”
Plakici said, swiping the back of his hand across Anna’s face. H
e dragged the padded coat from her shoulders. “Take off your clothes
.
”

Anna reel
ed back with a screech
, her hand on her cheek
.
The man with the pony-tail looked up and sighed.

“Take your clothes off, all of them,”
Plakici
snarled to the other women but his rage was unnecessary, because they had already started to undress, their fingers fumbling at buttons and zips in their haste.

Anna
shrugged off her coat and unzipped the heavy woollen cardigan they had provided. She stood wearing a black bra and blue jeans.
The main card player
glanced ominously towards her and gave a small gesture of his hand. With an inward sigh, she unbuckled the belt at her waist and pushed the jeans down over her thighs, and
Plakici
stepped forward to roughly yank her panties down around her knees.
Anna
reached behind to unclip the garment
and
allow
ed
it to fall from her breasts.
The other girls disrobed too
. Ann
a’s jeans and panties were bunched around her knees, but her body was fully displayed.

The card player
glanced up at the line of women as
Plakici
went to sit beside him at the card table. “I’ll give you twelve hundred each,” he said. “Not more.”

“The bitch with the fair hair and? The one with the blue rose tattoo on her shoulder...
They told me you would buy her.
”

“That’s her?”
He gave Anna
a quick appraising gaze. “Her father is
the
big fish?”
The man
smiled and he threw his playing cards onto the table before rising and walking to stand in front of
Anna
. She
sullenly
held his stare without blinking as his fingers traced his down over the rose tattoo and settled on her right nipple. “What is your name?”

“I am
Anna Borzov
.
”

The man
tweaked
Anna
’s nipple, making her grimace. “So it is true.
I will enjoy fucking
the daughter of
the
mighty criminal oligarch
bastad
,
uh? Kick off those jeans and pants,
you whore
. I ordered you to be naked.
”

Anna
inhaled deeply but she obeyed, pulling off her shoes, jeans and panties and dropping them to one side.

“You’ll buy her?”
Plakici
asked.

“No,” the man said, drawing a knife and slashing it across the Albanian’s throat. “
But
I will take her from you
.
I can’t afford to have any witnesses that might lead
Viktor
Borzov to me.”

Anna and the girls screamed as
the
stricken man slid to the floor, his life blood spraying over their naked bodies.