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By the time Louis and Vasily came back upstairs, I was well into a crying fit, a silent one, with wet cheeks and an occasional shoulder-shudder. I felt like, and probably looked like, a used mop. My hair was a disaster and I stood bare-legged straight because the damn skirt was too short to sit down in.

  Vasily said something to Misha. I suppose he misunderstood my tears. If I briefly hoped for vengeance, it was a futile thought. I was new to the dynamics of the relationships within Charlemagne, but it did not take me long to see that there was a bond among these three men that I would not be allowed to disrupt. I began to understand where I stood with Vasily. This did not help my dwindling self confidence, though it brought a little wisdom. I realized that I was not important enough to cause Boris' beating, either. There had to be some other reason for that. Somehow this made me feel better, maybe because it relieved me of my share of the responsibility, however unintentional.

  I was important to Vasily, but not in the way I thought at the time. Only many years later, when he began to thaw a bit and when I learned more about his horrific life, did I realize that when I first met him, he was incapable of loving me in the fairy-tale way I dreamed of. Love is an irresistible, selfless giving. Vasily loved me because he wanted me. It is not the same thing.

  Hindsight can be comforting, but of course, at that moment, I had none of it. I simply stood, shattered and wretched, in the short blue skirt that made me feel like a whore. I had been violated, albeit with my tacit consent, and was being used ruthlessly, given a minimal chance of survival, a chance one of these men, at least, had argued I should not have. The worst was still to come and I shivered at the thought of it.

  Vasily made me sit down and sat down next to me, miserable heap that I was. He put his arm around me and drew me to him. At first I resisted, could not bear to be touched, until I gradually understood that he meant to comfort me. I buried my face in his shoulder then, taking the comfort offered, momentary protection and safety in his arms.

  He whispered in my ear, "Are you frightened?"

  "Why?" I whispered looking up at him. "Do I look it?"

  He smiled. "Can you never answer directly?"

  "I'm terrified," I admitted. "I am more frightened than I've ever been.”

  His whisper became barely audible. "So am I," he said. "And so are Misha and Louis."

  My eyes were wide open at this. “Oh great. Then what chance do I have?"

  "Every chance. We are all scared, always. We survive because we do not let fear stop us. We keep thinking and we keep doing what must be done. Does that help you?"

  "You're telling me not to panic. Is that it?"

  "I suppose."

  "So when does the fear stop?" 

  "In my world, never."

  "Then I suppose," I said. "I have an advantage. I know a place without fear."

  He looked at me with alarm, "Don't do anything foolish."

  "I am not talking about death."

  "What then?"

  "Never mind."

  "What?" he insisted. "Your God? I hope he gives you more help than he does me. Or your religion? It did you a great favor, giving you exactly the wrong thing to be prepared to die for.”

  “Virtue is not a wrong thing.”

  “Being stupid about sex is not virtue. Sex does not warrant death.”

  “Sex can feel like death in the wrong conditions.”

  He looked at me. Did I imagine a softer expression? “Assault is sin,” he said. “Not sex.”

  "No time for theology," said Misha. He handed Vasily some black clothing. "Get dressed."

  Vasily got up and Misha sat in his place. It was like a wind change, and I shivered in a cold northerly as Misha opened a make-up kit and began to transform my face.

  "For all your piety, little girl," he said, "you are no better than I am."

  "I never said I was."

  "Don't talk. You will smear the lipstick. You never said you were, but you think it. Your thoughtlessness can be as deadly as my knife. And can cause more pain."

  "You are mired in evil," I said through clenched teeth, as much in an attempt to keep my temper as to save the lipstick.

  "We are all mired in it," he said. "Or did your Messiah come only for my sake and not for yours?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Never mind. Philosophy is a luxury of the idle. We have work to do."

  My face painted, it was time to do something with my hair. This fueled a debate. The hair was shoulder length with a blunt cut that made style more or less impossible. Louis solved the problem with a side ponytail that brought my mane under control, and a scarf that added some style. I was rather pleased with it.

  Misha did not like my skirt and used a stapler to tighten it and some masking tape to shorten it. Shoes were last. They were high heeled and painful.

  The men wore black denim trousers, black boots, and black long-sleeved cotton turtleneck shirts. Over these they wore different sport jackets that drew attention away from the uniform blackness of their clothes. Why bother? I wondered.

  Misha, as usual, read my mind, or my face, or whatever it is he does to know what I am thinking. I have only ever been able to conceal one thing from him in the twenty-odd years I have known him.

  He answered the question I had not spoken. "Black makes it difficult to judge," he said. "Achim and Ahmed are big men. We want them to judge our sizes without accuracy. We want to help them make mistakes."

  Louis cleaned his gun, meticulously dismantling and rebuilding it. He rummaged through a small box of wires and gadgets and gave me a button-like object to swallow. "A precaution, so we can follow you," he said. "Don't lose it."

  Misha gave me more instructions. "Do not lie to them. You do not know or you will not say, but do not lie to them. Allow them to think you are Grayson's lover, but do not tell them so. They will catch any lies, and from these they will extract the truth. Make them work for anything you say. Keep the subject on the icon. Give us time."

  "Alex," said Vasily slowly, as if uncomfortable with giving advice, "it will help to fix your attention on something you can see, a pattern in a ceiling, perhaps, and try to breathe in rhythm."

  "Rest as much as you can," interrupted Louis. "And do not think ahead. Fear of pain is worse than the pain itself."

  "There are twenty-one distinct levels of pain," said Vasily. "Convince yourself that the last was the twenty-first, that the next will be no worse."

  "No, no," disagreed Louis. "Don't think ahead at all."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO