Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key) (19 page)

Karkoff could not tell them not to look at her, Ilana, either.
 

He would have people on her shortly... if he didn’t already.

“You know how this works, Ilana,” Karkoff repeated.

Pressing her lips together, she nodded, giving Raguel another look.
 

“I do. I do know how it works, Karkoff.”

“I know you do.” Karkoff’s voice grew slightly less hard. “Report back after you interview the mother
. I should be able to tell you more then. Hopefully it will be good news, and you and I can speak of these things in person. But do not take any more prisoners out of jail, comrade Kopovich. Whether they are drunks with crushes on you or not...”

She did not answer, but only hung up the black handle of the rotary phone.

Looking up at Raguel, she met his gaze with a grim look of her own.

“Come,” she said. “We must get out of here. At once.”

KASHCHENKO

THEY DROVE SILENTLY, making their way through downtown traffic before crossing the river and entering the old
Zamoskvorechiye
District of Moscow. Driving through and past that neighborhood as well, she found the
Zagorodnoe
highway from memory.

This was not her first visit to this hospital.

As soon as they were alone in the car, Ilana began to question Raguel.

“Could a demon change a taped recording?” she said.

“A physical recording?” The angel frowned. “No.”

“Then how could the interview Karkoff heard be different from the one I heard? How is that possible? Karkoff tells me he heard my voice on the tape.”

“Perhaps he did.”

Frustrated, she gave him a harder stare. “What does that mean?”

“It means perhaps you were there for the entire interview and simply do not remember. Perhaps what the tape recorder heard is different from what you think happened in your mind.”

She gave him an incredulous look. “What the hell does that mean?”

Raguel shrugged, his gray eyes still. “He is a demon, Ilana. He cannot change the physical world apart from how a human would do it... but he has a lot of control over human minds. Particularly
that
demon. Lahash is a master of distortions of reality. And I wasn’t there to protect you from that after I touched the key.”

Frustrated, Ilana watched the traffic pass in front of them as they stopped at a red light. She glanced at Raguel’s profile, biting her lip.

“Could it be a physical thing?” Raguel said, his voice polite. “Could the tape have been tampered with perhaps, by someone else?”

She stared at him, thrown at first by his sudden reversal. Then it hit her what he was doing. He was forcing her to think this through logically, to assess what was possible.

Approaching his words from that angle, she exhaled in frustration.

“No,” she admitted. “There is not enough time for this.” She gave him a hard look. “To splice tape and create a new version... it would take time. To include me in this tape means they would have recordings of me already. It can be done, of course, but that is very detailed work. For Karkoff to have heard that recording already, they must have sent it to him right after the interview finished... that, or there was an extra listening device in Obnizov’s office.”

“Unless they had a fake recording ready,” Raguel pointed out.

Ilana started to answer that, then stopped.

He was right, that would explain it. But where had they gotten all of the voices?

Eventually, she shook her head again.
 

“It is possible, of course. But what you are suggesting... it is an elaborate thing, comrade,” she admitted. “Your initial explanation is sounding much more likely.”

It hit her that Raguel’s strategy had worked.

That explanation had lost most of its charge in their discussion.

Glancing at him thoughtfully, she shook her head. “You can be a crafty person at times, comrade Archangel.”

“Or a practical one,” he said. Cautiously, he rested his muscular hand back on her leg, softening his voice. “I need you, Ilana. The more I can help you to understand and accept these relevant aspects of my world, the better we can help one another.”

She nodded. “I understand.”

Rubbing her leg slowly, Raguel gentled his voice.

“To me, it is likely that once the key removed me from that room, the tenor of the interview radically changed. The part Karkoff is referencing likely occurred after I was gone... which is why my memory of the interview and your memories coincide.” Raguel’s voice grew more angry. “Lahash could not toy with your mind like that, not while I was there... but he could do whatever he wanted once I was gone. The vast majority of his mind does not live inside the human bodies he possesses, and demon minds are significantly more powerful and complex than that of a human being.”

“So you really think I was there for this interview Karkoff spoke of?” Ilana stared at him. “That it actually happened? I simply do not remember it?”

“It is likely, yes.”

She watched the angel study her face with those gray, crystalline eyes, and bit her lip, rubbing her face with a hand.

“Okay,” she said. “We will listen to the recordings when we return to my apartment.” She gave him a level look. “Given what I told Karkoff about who you are, I need to bring us both back there soon anyway. But I think we should still go to Kashchenko. If Karkoff asks, I will tell him that I brought you with me on my way to bringing you home.”

Raguel frowned. “That is risky, is it not?”

“All of this is risky now, comrade. I think this is a detail.”

Hesitating a bare beat, Raguel only nodded.

Minutes later, they had reached the mental institution.

Taking them to the guard house, Ilana showed them her badge and Raguel’s new papers. The security guard barely glanced at the latter once he saw Ilana’s ID. After getting instructions where to park, they drove past the booth and made their way slowly up the drive towards a low complex of red brick buildings.

Trying to shove her worry down about both Raguel’s fate and her own, as well as what might be about to hit them next with this whole Golunsky affair, she gave Raguel a warning look as they drove past the guard house, wondering suddenly why she had risked bringing him here after all, given who and what he was.

But there were many things she did not understand about her own behavior on this day.

“You will let me talk, yes, comrade?” she said to him warningly.

“I will, Ilana.”

Again, the pure seriousness of his answer brought an involuntary smile. She pulled into an empty parking space on the lot where the guard had indicated, and killed the engine. They got out at once and Ilana led Raguel towards the main administrative building, their shoes crunching rhythmically on the dirt and gravel in the road.

Once inside, she approached the caged reception booth, again with her Party ID badge up for inspection.

“Who can we ask about Golunsky?” she said, her voice blunt.

The woman’s eyes widened. Clearly, she recognized the name.

“One minute,” she said, holding up a finger. “I will be right back, Party comrade Kopovich.”

Her voice was polite, bordering on afraid.

Puzzled, Ilana glanced at Raguel.

A faint frown touched his lips as well.

Seconds later, a man appeared at the door of the booth, looking flustered. Probably in his mid-fifties, he was overweight with dark-rimmed glasses and a clean-shaven face. He wore a stained lab coat over a rumpled shirt he might have slept in.

“You work for Karkoff?” he said, his face flushed.

Ilana fought to hide her bewilderment, feeling her heart beat louder in her chest.

“Yes,” she said.

The doctor in the stained lab coat didn’t seem to notice her confusion.

“I will buzz you in,” he said, reaching for the switch to unlock the side door even as he spoke. “Meet me by the door... to your right.”

The door buzzer made a grating, broken sound as he hit the switch.
 

By the time Ilana and Raguel had walked over to unlocked door, the doctor had left the glass booth and waited for them on the other side.

“Come with me, please,” he said, his voice still openly nervous.

Glancing again at Raguel, Ilana shrugged, following the man down an unmarked hallway. They passed primarily plain but clean administrative rooms and what looked like shared offices. Ilana knew the wards themselves were housed on the other side of more locked doors.

They had a research lab here as well, housed in a separate building.

The doctor took them to a small conference room that had bars on the windows along with chickenwire mesh on the outside of the glass. Indicating for them to sit in two of the vinyl-padded chairs, he sat directly across from them, looking even more flustered than he had before.

It struck Ilana a second time that he looked afraid.

Terrified, even.

“Doctor, I––”

Before she could finish, he burst out with a rush of words.

“––I have done as your superiors asked, comrade,” he said, pushing his dark-rimmed glasses up his nose. He was sweating, she noticed, despite the coldness of the room. “There is no need to worry. It is already done, for all intents and purposes. All of the visitor files have been removed for patient #4920110. All of them. They are being burned in the basement furnace as we speak...”

Ilana felt her breath stop in her chest.

Next to her, Raguel stiffened.

Recovering as fast as she could, Ilana pressed her lips together nodding.

“I had actually hoped to take a look at those before they were destroyed,” she said, her voice polite, calm. “Did Karkoff not mention that?”

The man blanched, turning the color of chalk. “He did not.”

Afraid the doctor might have a brain embolism right in front of her, she held up a calming hand. “It is quite all right doctor, I am sure that is my fault. A communication problem on our end.”

The doctor blinked at them, then swallowed visibly, some of that fear lessening in his eyes. “We might be able to catch my nurse before she finishes,” he offered.

Ilana glanced at Raguel as the man got up, walking over to a phone on a small desk on the other side of the room. Raguel’s expression looked tense, borderline angry. Both of them turned back to the doctor when his voice rose.

“Anna? Did you finish with those files I spoke to you about? The ones that required disposal?” There was a pause while he listened to whoever spoke on the other side. Glancing at Ilana, he gave her a grim look then, shaking his head perceptibly. “Okay. Yes. Thank you, Anna. I appreciate your quick work in this matter.”

Setting down the phone, he walked over to them.

Ilana could not help but noticed he looked marginally more calm. Sighing as he sank his weight back into the larger chair, he wiped his forehead with a folded handkerchief before meeting Ilana’s gaze.

“I am sorry,” he said, still sounding relieved. “But it is done.”