I shake him, and he comes to, pushing me aside so he can focus on the nun.
“You getting a good look at her?” I demand. “Because it’s not Tanechka.”
He glares at Yuri.
“Hey!” I shake him. “Look in the mirror if you want to find the asshole in this room! Seriously, Viktor. You would keep something this big from me and Yuri? The two people who love you most in this world?”
He focuses in on me for the first time, and I can see the pain. How could I have missed it?
“We are your family. We’re with you in everything. We’re here for you.”
His eyes look a little glassy.
“Brother,” I say, letting him sink down into the couch. “Let us be with you in this. You’re feeling a little crazy, I get it—”
“You do not get it,” he growls. “It’s her.”
“You threw her off a sheer rock face. That gorge—”
“It’s her.”
“You haven’t even seen this woman’s face. How can you know?”
“It’s her.”
I look helplessly at Yuri, who shakes his head.
Viktor pulls away and sits. “The fact that she’s able to sit there perfectly still—that’s a Tanechka thing to do. The few times a day she leaves the room, she’s careful not to ever face that camera. When she returns to her spot—the same thing. Tanechka was a master of stillness, and she was always aware of camera placement and angle. Always. Why would a nun avoid the camera? This is what an assassin does.”
“You’re registered for the auction. You can write things to the girls. Why not write to her?”
“No,” Viktor says. “Making contact could endanger her. Yuri understands.”
“Is true, but you could write one of your codes,” Yuri says. “Or say something about Gorky Park. ‘I want to take you for lemon ice in Gorky Park.’”
Viktor glares.
Yuri ignores him and turns to me. “Tanechka loved anything lemon-flavored.”
“No contact,” Viktor whispers. “I won’t endanger her.”
We all turn to watch the nun. She kneels at the bed, praying, in the small cell that’s a parody of a nun’s simple room, I suppose. “What’s she holding?”
“Prayer rope. Russian nuns, they do this. Her hair was bright like that,” Viktor whispers. “Blonde like inside a lemon peel. I wish she would take off her head scarf so you could see all of her beautiful hair.” He rubs his eyes. “But I’m glad that she doesn’t. These other men, they don’t deserve to see all of her.”
“Coffee with ten sugars,” Yuri says. “That was their code. Viktor, just message her that and see what she does.”
“No!” Viktor says.
Tito and Mischa come back in with the pot of coffee for all of us. Viktor pours loads of honey into his and stirs.
“She sees the console,” Yuri says. “Guys always write stupid things, senseless things—nobody will mark it.”
I click to read through the exchange archives. It’s true—men are always writing in asking her to turn, asking her what’s in her prayers, asking her to masturbate, asking what she has on under the dark robe. When guys ask the lewd questions, the others jump to her defense. Some ask more G-rated stuff—where she’s from, what her hobbies are when she’s not praying, what she likes to eat. She has quite the fan base. Everybody is curious about the nun.
“You could just be like, ‘I’d love to treat you to a ten-course meal,’” I say. “‘And after, a coffee with ten sugars.’ What do you say? Just type that.”
“No!” Viktor says. “No.”
“Why the fuck not do it?” I try. “That’s the whole fucking point of a secret code!”
“You do not contact a person in deep cover,” he says.
“Are you afraid it’s not her?” I ask.
“No—it’s her.”
I nod at Tito. Viktor sees the nod and guesses my intention. He springs up, but he’s slow. Tito and Derek grab him and wrestle him to the couch. Even so, Viktor fights like a madman—so hard that I have to get involved—I won’t ask Yuri to subdue him. Tito gets him in a headlock, Derek has him in an arm lock, and I grab his face and look him right in the eye. “You see what madness this is?”
“It’s her,” he grates out.
“Then why don’t you even want to confirm it? Isn’t that a little suspicious? So I’m going to do it for you, and then we’re going to get the fuck out of here, because this is fucked beyond belief!”
I go to the keyboard over his protests and type in the message. The ten-course meal in Gorky Park. The coffee with ten sugars.
When I’m done, Tito and Derek let him go. He angrily pushes them away and draws near the screen, swearing in Russian, vowing terrible things, I’m sure. The message I typed flashes onto the screen below, and onto her monitor mounted on the wall to her side, well within her field of vision. She doesn’t move at all.
“She saw it,” Viktor says after a while.
“How do you know?”
“She is aware of all things in her environment at all times. Perfectly aware, but she will never show it.”