Hard to wait.
I force myself to stand. Sitting on the couch all day, it is not so good. I bring last night’s pizza box and a few glasses into the kitchen, where I also have a monitor showing the Tanechka feed.
I should clean. After this is over, I’ll bring Tanechka here, and she always liked things clean and bright. She loved sunflowers and daisies and soft lighting from lamps—never overhead lighting; only lamps.
Tanechka gets cold easily. Back home, we could never have enough comfortable quilts and furs and blankets. She likes big slippers. Thick shag carpets. She was such a fierce soldier out in the field, never complaining; it was as if she saved up her warmth-seeking, comfort-loving self for later.
Back in the living room I study her. Now and then the girls all cock their heads or change the directions of their glances in response to sound—a scream. A siren.
Only Tanechka stays still. She gives the camera nothing.
So often I picture myself finding this place and storming in. I imagine going to Tanechka’s bedside. I would pull her up and tell she can rest now, that I will do anything for her. What would she do? I knew her so well when we were together, but two years have passed. What’s more, the man she loved and trusted with all her heart cast her into Dariali Gorge.
I walk around to the back of my couch and study the screens.
I’m recording them, but it takes so many hours to review and catch up that I watch them live as much as possible. I look for anything. A hand with a telltale ring coming into view. A reflection on glassware that I can run through facial recognition.
I need to know everything.
I grab a barbell and do curls as I watch. Curls are good for keeping awake.
I cringe when I hear the knock at my door. Yuri. My best friend, one of the men I brought from Russia. I’ve been putting him off. Always too busy to see him. Now here he is. I cut the light on Tanechka’s screen. I can’t let him see. He’ll think I’m crazy, believing this is Tanechka.
Worse, he’ll tell my brother Aleksio. They would pull me from this mission. I would do the same if I were them.
“Come in,” I say.
He walks in, addresses me in Russian. “What are you doing?”
I nod at the barbell.
“Do you have your phone off or what? You’re not answering.”
I grab my phone and see that it’s dead. “Ah.” I plug it in.
“Chto eta…” He gestures at the monitors. He wants to know what’s up with the monitors.
“Preparing,” I say. “Getting ready. Confirming the relationship of rooms. I’m more convinced than ever that Nikki’s room is in the center of the basement.” I show him my diagram, the gap where I believe the server closet is.
“Well, you look like fucking hell.” He switches to English with “fucking hell.” More and more he speaks in English. He opens the curtains.
I squint.
“Aleksio wants to know why you missed the meeting.”
“I’m getting ready to be software engineer Peter.” I move Tanechka’s laptop down alongside the others so Yuri won’t think it’s special. “I’ve arranged the monitors according to where I believe they are, relative within the structure.”
“Mmm.” Yuri comes round and looks. In Russian, he says, “It’s a simple infiltration. Do you need such a thorough layout?”
He knows I don’t. My job is simple: get spyware on the server. If I can’t do that, I must get to one of the girls’ computers. I wave off the question. “I’m hoping for a clue to the location of this place…”
“We’ll know the location when you get there,” Yuri says.
“Best to know it ahead of time.”
He furrows his brow. “Does Aleksio think this is the best use of time?”
“What are you saying?” I sound belligerent. Unreasonable.
He comes near. “Chto eta?” he asks again.
Insolently, I grab a vodka bottle. Beluga, our favorite. “A Boy Scout is always prepared.” Yuri loves the American phrases. When I remember it’s morning, I put the bottle down.
“No, something’s wrong.” Yuri’s looking at the monitors. I know the instant he zeroes in on the laptop with the dark screen. He looks from me to the screen and back. He wants to know what he’ll see if he lights it. The question is, does he want to know enough to defy me?
When he makes his move, I pull him back. “Is this my operation or yours?”
“What’s on the dark screen?”
“Idi nahuy,” I say. “Go fuck,” it means in Russian. “This isn’t your home.”
“Chto eta?”
“I don’t have to explain anything to you.”
Yuri is fast for such a large man, and he’s been getting a proper amount of sleep, unlike me. No surprise, then, that the second I release him, he’s able to get to the monitor and turn the screen on. I can’t stop him.
“A nun.” He eyes me suspiciously.
“Satisfied?” I sit back down. “It disgusts me. Auctioning off her virginity.”
“You don’t give a fuck about nuns.”