The Lost Sisterhood (56 page)

And there’s no heaven above to punish you?

—E
URIPIDES,
Andromache

W
E DROVE AWAY FROM THE HOUSE IN STUNNED SILENCE. IT WAS
all so new, so confusing; only two things were certain: Granny had hoped I would find her in the end, and I did. I could not wait to open the letter she had left for me, and yet part of me dreaded the emotions it might unleash.

“Don’t be sad,” said Nick, putting an arm around me as he drove. “Be happy for her. She made it back home, thanks to your piggy bank savings.”

I wiped my eyes. “I just wish I had known … instead of being so upset with her all the time. When she talked about the men in green clothes, she was not thinking about doctors, but about murderous Russian partisans. What horrible memories she must have had—”

“But how fortunate she also had
you,
” said Nick. “You gave her a happy space where she could hide from it all for a while.”

Outside the car, new snow was falling on the silent forest, tumbling toward us in the pale glare of the headlights. It all felt ominous and unreal. We had found the Amazons, and I had finally learned the truth about Granny, but at what price?

“How about you?” I glanced at Nick’s profile in the blue glow from the dashboard. “Are you okay?”

“I will be,” he replied, without conviction, “once all this is over.”

Just then we both noticed an unmoving dark form blocking the road ahead. A delivery van. Slowing down, Nick changed the lights to see better, but the snow was falling so heavily they just reflected back at us. “Here we go,” he said grimly, bringing us to a skidding halt on the icy road. “Are you ready?”

From one second to the next I was filled with violent, stomach-turning fear. And then we were suddenly bathed in light—the blindingly bright beams from two other cars pulling up right behind ours, preventing us from turning around.

“Now please—” Nick turned to look at me, his features distorted by the ruthless light. “Don’t provoke them. Just play the game.”

As soon as we got out of the car, at least a dozen men in black combat gear spilled out of the other vehicles, quickly surrounding us. Half of them had guns pointed at us. The others might as well have, for their expressions were as cold and hard as any weapon.

“How cute,” said Reznik, stepping leisurely out of the shadows.

Dressed in combat gear just like his men, the retired Communist boss looked quite at home in the frosty wilderness, with snowflakes falling on his gray crew cut. “You’re a lovely couple. I have some nice footage of you.” Stopping right in front of us, he smiled that measured, forced smile of his that had unnerved me when I first met him in Istanbul—the grin of a calculating killer. “The Aqrab prince and his Amazon princess.
Complimenti.
You had me fooled, both of you. I didn’t realize Amazons could be so”—he looked me up and down with amused disdain—”meatless. Oh, well.” Reznik looked over his shoulder. “See? I told you we would find them together.”

Only then did I notice who was standing behind him.

James Moselane.

Hunched with cold and squinting against the flying snow, my old friend looked so reluctant and miserable that I first assumed he was Reznik’s prisoner. But then I noticed that James, too, had a gun.

“What on earth?” I exclaimed, so appalled I almost forgot to be afraid. “This is absurd! You know I’m not an Amazon.”

James made a weary grimace and said, mostly to Nick, “Come on, hand it over. Let’s be grown-ups.”

I glanced at Nick, sensing he was struggling not to punch James in the face. “Here.” I eased the
Historia Amazonum
out of my handbag. “We did mean to return it—”

Reznik grabbed the volume only to toss it aside with a sneer. “Not that useless piece of shit. The notebook!”

“I don’t have it,” I stammered. “We left it with Professor Seppänen—”

“Who the fuck is Professor Seppänen?”

I glanced at Nick. We had rehearsed the story with Pitana, and she had insisted it sounded more authentic coming from me. “He’s an expert on ancient languages,” I explained, my teeth chattering from fear and cold and the need to be convincing. “We just had dinner with him—”

“Where?”

I waved an arm at the blackness behind us. “Just down the road.”

Reznik looked at me with narrow eyes. Then he turned to James. “What do you think?”

I didn’t dare take my eyes off Reznik. Did James know me well enough to see that I was lying? If so, he didn’t let on.

“All right!” Reznik waved at his men. “Let’s go—”

“Wait!” James walked up to him, and the two men had a brief, avid exchange. I was sure I heard James saying, “We had an agreement!” to which Reznik responded with muttered reluctance until, in the end, he growled with annoyance and turned around to issue an order to four of his goons.

Without hesitation, the men came forward to seize Nick by the shoulders and drag him away from me. I tore at their arms and yelled at them to release him, but Reznik restrained me with a crushing grip. When I kept writhing and pulling, he slapped me across the face with the back of his hand.

It was a numbing blow, and for a few seconds my world went black. I faintly registered Nick calling my name, but didn’t have the air to respond.

“I lost two of my best officers in Kalkriese,” sneered Reznik, right into my face. “It has not been a good week. You Amazon bitches are all the same—”

“Please!” I croaked, trying to regain my balance. “Don’t hurt him!”

Reznik snorted with mirth. “Isn’t that touching? The Amazon is in love. That makes it all so much more fun.” Snapping his fingers, he had the men yank off Nick’s ski jacket, then his sweater as well, leaving him in nothing but trousers and a T-shirt. “How do you like that?” he asked me, his eyes bulging with the need to dominate. “Your hot date is getting very cold very fast. Now, let’s see … ninety kilos, six feet one inch, thirty-five years, minus ten degrees.” He wagged his head in mock calculation, then snapped his fingers once more.

“Stop!” I cried, when the men started tearing at Nick’s T-shirt. “You’re going to kill him!”

“Wrong.” Reznik took me by the jaw, a sardonic smile on his face. “
You
are going to kill him if you don’t—”

Nick threw himself at one of his guardians—the one holding a submachine gun to his ribs. The man fell down with a hiss of pain, clutching his throat, while the gun changed hands. It happened so rapidly I could barely follow the movements. Within a heartbeat, the three other guards were backing away, fumbling for their weapons.

“Don’t!” yelled Nick, aiming at each of them in turn. “No blood. Okay? No blood. Let’s keep this clean. You don’t want to piss off my dad, do you?”

For a few tense moments, the forest was so silent you could hear the howl of a distant wolf. Then Reznik let go of me and waved at everyone to calm down. “We’re just having fun. Back to business. No need to fuck with al-Aqrab.” He gestured impatiently at the man holding Nick’s clothes. “Give the man back his jacket.”

Reznik was too busy issuing orders to notice that James, pale with fury, raised his own gun and aimed it at Nick.

I burst forward and pulled down James’s arm, but the gun went off with a hellish, ear-rending blast that had Reznik leaping forward and tearing the smoking weapon from James’s hand with a barrage of swearwords.

Horrified, I ran toward Nick, who had fallen to his knees with a groan of agony, clutching his hip where a red stain was spreading. Sick to the stomach at the sight of his blood, I threw myself down next to
him, tore off my coat, and draped it over his shoulders to shield him from the cold. “He needs to get to a hospital!” I yelled. “Please!”

I heard Reznik grunt. “You want to go to the hospital? Sure! I’m an old romantic. You can spend the night together in the morgue. Maybe they will even zip you into the same bag.”

“Don’t be a moron,” said Nick through gritted teeth, still clutching his hip. “It’s the notebook you want, right? Diana already told you: It’s just down the road. But you need her to guide you.”

“No!” I threw my arms around him. “I won’t leave you here like this!”

Nick looked at me pleadingly. “You
have
to. I’m counting on you.”

“Enough!” Reznik tore my coat from Nick’s shoulders and sent a shock wave of pain through my scalp as he yanked me away by the hair. Then he yelled an order to one of his men, who went to our rental car, got in the driver’s seat, and drove the vehicle off the road into the ditch.

Reznik turned to James. “You’re a fucking idiot. Now we have a hell of a mess to clean up. Just pray al-Aqrab doesn’t find out who did this. Better buy yourself a one-way ticket to Mars, little Lord Moselane.”

I glared at James, disgusted with this slithering snake of a man. Although Reznik had long since taken his gun away, James still stood with his arm half-raised, apparently frozen in place. “I didn’t mean to shoot him,” he whispered, the words barely audible. “I just—”

“Too late!” Reznik gave James another whack on the back of the head as he walked by. “Let’s go find that notebook. We’ll deal with the body later.”

That was how we left Nick: crouching in the bloodstained snow. The next thing I saw was the dirty backseat of a car as the men shoved me inside, headfirst.

“All of this is your fault,” said Reznik, getting in after me. “If you had given me the notebook in the first place”—he grasped my face with one hand, looking into my eyes with a mocking smile—”we would all still be friends.”

I said nothing. It was all I could do not to throw up when we sped down the road, leaving Nick behind in the freezing darkness.

The drive was a blur to me. I told the driver exactly where to go with unthinking certainty, while the only thing racing through my mind was Nick’s blood, draining from his body as fast as his warmth, leaving him helpless against the arctic night. He had been shivering when we left him, and he would shiver for a while longer as he fought off hypothermia. Then the shivering would stop. And that’s when I had to be back there to save him. If I wasn’t, his body would shut down, organ by organ, until there was no life left.

When we finally drove down the bumpy path to the Amazon hideaway, I was so frantic with impatience I leaned forward to push at the driver. “Keep going! Faster!” As I spoke, the peeling house façade and boarded-up windows became visible in brief flashes, and the ghostly effect of the place was enhanced by the erratic flicks of our headlights and those of the two vehicles behind us.

“That’s it?” Reznik leaned forward, peering at the run-down building. “It’s an empty house.” He stared at me, twitches of anger pulling at his eyes. “You little whore—”

I was too distressed to hold back my fury. “Nick is freezing to death back there!” I exclaimed. “Why would I lie to you?”

Getting out of the car, Reznik took stock of his men and instructed the three drivers to stay behind and keep the engines running. Then he jammed the muzzle of his gun into my back and made me walk ahead up the stone steps to the front door.

I had no idea what awaited us inside. Pitana had not divulged this part of the plan to Nick and me. How would a mere handful of Amazons—most of whom were barely of age, not to mention Otrera at eighty-plus—fare against a gang of heavily armed brutes?

When I had knocked several times without result, Reznik shoved me aside and banged on the door with his fist. Then, when there was still no answer, he tried the door handle … and found the door unlocked. As James came to join us, Reznik grabbed my shoulder. “Go, go!” he hissed, pushing at me to enter the house first.

With a tentative “Hello? Professor Seppänen—?” I stepped across the threshold and entered the dark house. Because the cars outside were idling with their headlights on, greeting me as the door swung
open was only my own shadow, stretched out across the wooden floorboards. The hallway was all but empty. Every piece of furniture had disappeared, including the rifle rack. The only object left was the umbrella stand.

Frazzled as I was, I nearly cried out with frustration. The Amazons were gone. Their headquarters had been compromised, and the planned ambush had been nothing but a way of getting rid of us. I felt my chest tightening; never had I felt so forsaken. Even James’s betrayal dwindled by comparison.

Reznik poked me again hard with the muzzle of his gun. “So, where is it?”

“I don’t know.” I looked around, trying to figure out what to do. “It’s so late. I’m sure Professor Seppänen has gone to bed.”

Turning to his men, Reznik gave instructions to search the house. Two were sent into the congregation room, two into the library, and the rest upstairs. Then he nodded at the door to the dining room, which was straight ahead and slightly ajar. “What’s in there?”

“I don’t know,” I said. It was just the three of us now—me, Reznik, and James. My head was racing with possible ways of escaping the two of them and leaving the house.

“Ladies first.” Reznik took me firmly by the arm, his gun digging into my ribs as we walked across the floor together.

The dining room was almost dark. The headlights outside that had made the entryway so bright were helpless to illuminate more than just a few feet of the long dining table, which, in the murk of night, appeared to continue indefinitely in either direction.

Just then, we heard a noise from upstairs, right above our heads. It was the sound of a rushing scuffle … then a muffled shriek … then silence.

Stiffening, Reznik pulled out a walkie-talkie and barked a question. There was no reply.

“Turn on the lights!” he said, prodding me with the gun. I heard in his voice he was beginning to have misgivings about the place, and it didn’t help that no lights came on when I flicked the switch. “Try again!” he sneered.

“Shh!” said a heavyset thug of a man wearing a ski cap and pointing a gun—he was one of the four men who had searched the rooms downstairs and who had now rejoined us.

Everyone listened intently.

The house was perfectly still. The only noise to pierce the impression of utter abandonment was a faint neigh from outside. The sound drew a grim curse from Reznik. “Out!” he barked, pushing at everyone. “Out, out, out!”