Coercion (2 page)

A powerful gust of wind shook the helicopter and yanked Leo out of his contemplative trance.  As his hand verified its grip on the
bucking joystick, his eyes refocused their thousand-yard stare on the wild surroundings.  The Siberian outback, with its craggy peaks and crinkled slopes, was breathtaking in the moonlight.  Leo used to find peace while flying in conditions like these, but tonight his mind was as blustery as the weather.  There were too many reminders.

First, there was his passenger, Andrey Demerko.  Sitting down in the gunner’s seat, Andrey was as perceptive as a man could be, yet ignorant as the rocks over which they flew.  He had once been Leo’s good friend—in fact Andrey still believed he was—but Leo was no friend to him, not really.

Then, there was the date.  In three hours the sun would rise on the first anniversary of Leo’s enslavement.  He found it hard to believe that the moon before him had come to full just eleven times since he was last a happy man, with a loving family, interesting work, and great prospects.  Now he had dismal prospects, repulsive work, and an estranged wife.  But little Georgy was still alive, so Leo had made a good trade.

He switched the helicopter’s joystick to his left hand so he could wipe away tears with his right.  Then he went back a year in his mind, playing over once again the dreadful night it all began.  He was picking at the scab of a wound that would not heal.  Like a penitent monk, Leo needed the pain—

It had been a quiet evening.  Only the thunderstorm raging outside hinted at the danger hidden within Leo’s home.  Oxana was off visiting her sister, Maya and Georgy
lay tucked in their beds, and his work was in order:
check, check, and check
.  This combination gave Leo the ever-welcome opportunity to enjoy a good book the right way.

He grabbed a bottle of vodka from the freezer,
Crime and Punishment
from the bookshelf, and sank into his favorite leather armchair.  These stolen hours and his children’s smiles made Leo the happy man he was.

Raskolnikov was drunk and Leo was somewhat adrift himself when the phone finally disturbed his
cherished reprieve.  It was midnight.  He set down Dostoyevsky and picked up the cordless receiver, answering without preamble: “How was your trip?”

“It’s not Oxana calling, Deputy Antsiferov.”  The voice was cold and computerized
, its tone commanding.  “Listen to me very carefully.  Go to Maya’s room.”

Leo suffered a momentary mental delay something like a power glitch, then shock, fear, rage and panic all ran their course in a millisecond, jolting his synapses and neutralizing the vodka that basted his veins.  He pulled the phone away from his ear, clutching it like a venomous snake while his mind and body accelerated to combat speed.  He ran to the master bedroom and retrieved his handgun from the lockbox under the bed.  The Makarov felt oddly heavy in his hand, reminding Leo that his days in uniform were well behind him now. 
Had his reflexes atrophied along with his muscles?

Leo arrived at the door to his daughter’s room just twenty seconds after the phone’s first ring.  He found Maya peacefully asleep in her bed, but resisted the temptation to dismiss the caller outright.  Instead, he stepped back to think
.  It wasn’t easy with his heart playing timpani on his eardrums.  There was no place in the room for an adult to hide, and the window was twelve stories up…  It was a long shot, but Leo looked out anyway: nothing but the full moon above and the empty road below.  He let out a deep breath and Maya stirred, causing the moonlight to dance in her hair.  She looked like an angel with a halo of curly blond locks—Leo froze.  Little Georgy also had curly blond hair, and his mother kept it a little too long, perhaps … No! 

Leo ran to his boy’s room and popped around the doorframe ready to fire.  He found … nothing.  Georgy, too, was quietly asleep in his bed.  

Leo walked back to Maya’s room and sat on the edge of her bed.  Only practiced, diplomatic nerves kept him in check as he picked up the receiver again.

“I’m there.”

“Good boy.  Now, tell me today’s pass codes for the Ministry mainframe.”

The Ministry the caller referred to was Russia’s Ministry of Foreign A
ffairs, where Leo was one of six Deputy Ministers.  Handing over the computer pass codes would be like tipping Russia’s hand at dozens of high-stakes international poker games.  Other government organizations might have their books cooked for appearance’s sake, but negotiators at the MFA had to know what was of true strategic importance to Russia, and what was propaganda.

“I cannot do that.”

The mechanical voice did not waiver at the rebuff.  “Of course you can, Leo.  It is a simple choice, a trade really.  You give me the codes, and I let your daughter live.”

Leo’s heart jumped back into his throat
as the percussion recommenced in his ears.  He threw down the phone and raced to the front door, his finger poised on the Makarov’s trigger.  All was quiet.  He checked and double-checked the black-and-white screen of the intercom, unsure if he should trust the fuzzy image.  The guard appeared to be at his post.  Leo pushed the talk button.  “Anything unusual to report, Arkady?”

“Nothing, Sir.”

“Thank you.  Keep a watchful eye; I think something may be up.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Enough with diplomacy
.  Leo returned to his daughter’s room and picked up the receiver.  Maya was still sleeping so he spoke softly, but firmly.  “
K chortoo!
  Go to Hell!”

“No, Deputy Antsiferov, it is your daughter who is going to Hell, and you are the one who is sending her there … Last chance Leo.  The codes.  Do not make me do it.”

The speaker sounded sober and sincere.  Leo clenched his jaw.  He was by his daughter’s bed, gun in hand, guard at door.  In all probability it was a Ministry security check—severe but not without precedent.

“No.”

Three simple words followed, words that made it difficult for him to ask for anything ever again: “As you wish.”

The scene that followed
burned itself into Leo’s retinas.  It would be there every time he closed his eyes for the rest of his life.  Little Maya suddenly lifted her curly locks and opened her big blue eyes to look up at him with a scared look on her angelic face.  She said “Papa” in her sweet soprano, and then she died.

Leo stared in disbelief.  It was as though someone had turned out a light, Maya’s light, the light of his life.  His angel was dead.

Some time later—whether seconds or hours he was not sure—Leo remembered the telephone.  He peeled himself off his daughter’s corpse and picked up the receiver.

“I’ll get you!  I’ll get you if—”

“Listen, Leo!  Listen!”  The mechanical voice cut him off with its icy command.  “Go to Georgy’s room.”

This is no time for self-pity
, Leo thought. 
You have a problem to solve
.

Problem to solve?
  More like disaster to avert.  With one careless slip of the tongue, just a few superfluous words in a bar, he had set his friend Andrey up to receive a similar midnight call.  Leo had to undo what he had done, and quickly.  Each sweep of the helicopter’s rotors brought Andrey that much closer to sharing his hell.  The question was
how
.

Cruel coincidence had landed
both Leo and Andrey in Krasnoyarsk on the same evening.  Fate had picked up the job from there.  Somewhere in the endless stream of vodka and war stories Leo had let it slip that he was piloting a helicopter to Novosibirsk early in the morning.  Then, as if prompted by the Devil’s own cue, Foreign Minister Sugurov had called his Chief of Staff: he needed Andrey in Moscow.

“We’re in luck sir.  Leo is here with me and he happens to be flying to Novosibirsk in a few hours.  If I go with him, I can
catch the early flight from there.  That will get me to the Ministry by ten.” 

Leo had choked on his drink as he heard those words.  That was six hours ago.  He still tasted the vodka.

What Leo had not let slip was how or why he was flying.  That story could never just slip out.  The truth was, he had used rank, intimidation, and lies to gain the use of a military helicopter to smuggle a briefcase of God-knows-what to a dead-drop in Novosibirsk.  He was playing messenger for his merciless masters.

Leo suspected that his
masters had many clever ways of circumventing Soviet security, but he had few details on how they worked or even what they wanted, and he didn’t care to speculate.  One bugbear, however, managed to gnaw at his dreams: In all likelihood, there were dozens if not hundreds of slaves like him out there, a plague of conscripts secretly ravaging Russia—perhaps even the world.  Who were they?  What did they want?  Where would it end?

Although Leo had no clue
who his masters were, he knew they expected him to be alone in the helicopter.  They would likely interpret Andrey’s presence on this secret mission as an offensive maneuver, and act accordingly.  If it were not so serious, the outlandish coincidence would almost be funny.  Leo wasn’t laughing.

Gazing through the helicopter windshield toward the black horizon, thinking about the void that occupied the place where his future had been, Leo was ready to be honest with
himself.  He had gotten drunk and let his plans slip because subconsciously, he wanted Andrey to probe.

Leo had kept his dreadful secret for a year, but he would not be able to hold it together for much longer.  The stress of constantly deceiving everyone he loved and continually betraying everything he believed in was killing him
: cancer of the soul.  Ironically, in some regards it wasn’t killing him fast enough.  Not knowing who his Masters were, what they had in mind, when they were watching him, or where this would lead, was literally driving him mad.  He did not want to go out that way.  If only he could find some release, some way to share his pain…

Leo wiped his eyes.  As much as he had longed to do so, he had not told his wife the truth about Maya’s death or Georgy’s imminent peril.  He knew Oxana would not be able to handle it.  She, like everyone else, still believed that five-year-old Maya had died of a rare heart condition.

Leo’s was in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation.  By withholding such crucial information from his wife, he was choking off the intimacy that fed their marriage.  Yet all he could do was watch in helpless horror while it slowly suffocated before his eyes.  The only alternative was to tell Oxana the truth.  But then she would share his hell and Georgy would lose his mother.  That was no alternative at all.

Leo was desperate for the opportunity to win back his life and his wife’s heart.  He needed to find a way out.  If anyone could contrive a solution to his predicament, Leo thought, Andrey Demerko could.

Andrey was the best strategist Leo knew, and a powerful operative as well.  Even with Andrey’s help, however, he feared the situation was hopeless.  Leo was no fool himself, and he couldn’t even fathom how to begin to fight.  The problem was the absolute anonymity of the powerful people who controlled him.

How do you attack an invisible enemy?
  Sure, he could try to uncover them, but how could he possibly avoid all the conscripted eyes and wary ears while scouring the darkness for his masters?  How could he wipe them all out before they counterattacked?  How do you thrust a sword when you don’t know who is friend and who is foe?  Where do you turn when you can’t trust anybody?  If they could reach a Deputy-Minister, why not a Minister?  Why not a President?  Gorbachev has a daughter.  It was an agonizing situation for a soldier and a patriot to be in, to have the knowledge that the Devil was at work in your beloved country, and yet be powerless to crusade against him.

Despite these seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Leo hesitated in turning to his friend only because he knew that Andrey had a profound sense of duty.  Whatever Leo’s excuse, and regardless of his circumstance, with all that he had done for his
masters, Leo was now a traitor and a criminal, and Andrey would feel duty-bound to turn him in.

Leo clung to the hope that Andrey would not choose that course.  He was counting on
his friend to find another means of satisfying honor, gambling that Andrey would defer to a duty that came before career and country.  Andrey also had two children, children the same ages as Maya and Georgy.  Because of them, Leo figured that his chances of enlisting Andrey were fifty-fifty, and he knew that those were the best odds he would get.

Leo had been on the verge of b
roaching the subject in the bar, and found himself feeling like Eve about to hand Adam the apple.  Then Sugurov’s call had disrupted the collegial atmosphere, crumbling his will and providing a welcome chance to procrastinate.

Perhaps now was the time?  They were still three hundred kilometers from Novosibirsk.  It would normally take
the Mi-28 only an hour to cover that distance at full throttle, but to avoid radar Leo was flying contour to the ground at low-altitude so their flight time would be closer to ninety minutes.  Would that be long enough? 

His alternatives were very limited at this point.  To save his friend, Leo had to find a way to make sure
his masters did not see Andrey arrive with him.  One option Leo had was to tell Andrey the truth, hoping to enlist his help but at least gaining enough understanding that he could then drop Andrey off somewhere before anyone saw them together.  Alternatively, if Leo did not confide in Andrey, he would then have to contrive some inevitably far-fetched reason for getting his colleague out of the helicopter prior to reaching the airport.  What could that possibly be?  Leo started to brainstorm, but stopped himself abruptly.  Who was he fooling?  The time to talk had arrived.

Leo tried to imagine how he would cold-start the discussion without a vodka-lubricant. 
Andrey, you probably think I’m flying this way for practice, but actually it’s to avoid radar.  You see, this is an un-logged flight and I’m
…  No, that was no good.  He would just have to open his heart and let it all tumble out.

Admittedly, the setting was ideal for such a discussion.  With Andrey down in the gunner’s seat and Leo above in the pilot’s, neither could see the other’s face.  And it was dark.  All in all the conditions mimicked those of a church confessional. 
So why not?

Leo took a deep breath and began.  “Andrey.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s time I told you how Maya died.”

For a second there was a silence as, Leo assumed, Andrey tried to digest the implication of what he had just heard.  Then the world erupted around them.

After an explosive crash somewhere behind them, a proverbial starter’s cannon, the helic
opter shook violently and then dropped into a plummeting spin.  Time slowed down as Leo’s mind raced and the rotors passed one by one.  Had another aircraft hit them?  Did a fuel leak catch fire?  Were they fired upon?  The helicopter was behaving as though the whole tail were gone.  It was uncontrollable.  He knew it didn’t matter at this point what was causing the ground to come up so fast, what counted was the effect.

As a veteran pilot, Leo knew that the only thing you could do without a tail was brace for impact.  He thought of Oxana and Georgy, and how he loved them.  He thought of Andrey and Sugurov, and how he had betrayed them.  He thought of Maya, and how he would see her now.  Strangely enough, it occurred to Leo that he was not scared.  Perhaps he had no fear left for
himself.  Perhaps he just welcomed death.  He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and thought about how sad it was for a man to go to his death knowing that he had failed.