“No, no. He was jailed for a crime he committed after he returned from the war.”
“Another murder, I assume.”
“Well, no, not exactly. He was sentenced to five years for theft of property. He’d gotten work on one of the oil pipeline projects in Tomsk, operating excavation equipment, and apparently he ‘borrowed’ one of the excavators for his own personal use.”
“Like getting Al Capone for not paying taxes.”
“That was all they could get him on. The Tomsk regional police were unable to definitively connect him to something far worse that they were sure he did. The reason he borrowed the excavation equipment. For more than a year the police investigated the disappearance of a family, a husband and wife and their teenage son who vanished overnight. They questioned Zhukov extensively but got nothing. They had nothing more than unfounded rumors that Zhukov had been hired by a fellow prison inmate to do a hit.”
“A hit on a family?”
“The man owned several auto dealerships in Tomsk. He had been warned that if he didn’t sell his dealerships to a friend of Zhukov’s, his entire family would suffer. It seems these threats were not hollow.”
“So the family’s bodies were never found.”
“They were found. A year after their disappearance. And purely by coincidence. An abandoned parcel of land outside the city was being developed for a housing project, and when they dug the foundation, three bodies were unearthed. A middle-aged couple and their teenage son. The police forensic examiners found large quantities of dirt in their lungs. They were buried alive.”
“Which was why Zhukov borrowed the excavation equipment.”
“So it seems. But the case could never be proven in the courts. You see, he is very, very good. He covered his tracks expertly. I can see why Roman Navrozov hired him. But if you are looking for a psychohistory, Nicholas, you might be interested to know that when Zhukov was a boy his father died in a coal-mining accident.”
“Also buried alive?”
“Maybe ‘drowned’ is more accurate. The father worked in an underground mine, and when some of the miners accidentally dug into an abandoned shaft that was filled with water, the tunnels were flooded. Thirty-seven miners drowned.”
“How old was Zhukov?”
“Nine or ten. You can imagine how traumatic this must have been for the families. Especially for the young children who were left fatherless.”
“I don’t see a connection between some childhood trauma and—”
“His mother, Dusya, told our interviewer years ago that her son’s chief complaint at the time was that he never saw it happen. She says that was when she first realized that Dragomir wasn’t like the other little boys.”
Suddenly I didn’t feel sleepy. “He’s not doing this for the money, is he?”
“I’m sure the money will come in handy for his escape and buying new identities and such. But no, I imagine he took this job because it offered him a rare opportunity. I’m just guessing, of course.”
“Opportunity?”
“To watch someone drown before his eyes.”
81.
Alexa sang as loud as she could: songs she liked to dance to, songs she loved listening to. Or just scraps of songs, when she couldn’t remember the rest.
Anything to keep her mind off where she was.
Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.” She tried to remember the French lyrics near the end of the song. Something about revenge. That distracted her briefly. Then “Poker Face.” She sang so loud she was almost yelling. But that one was too easy. She imagined being Lady Gaga herself and wearing a skintight outfit made entirely of duct tape.
Black Eyed Peas next. “Imma Be” worked for a little while. She moved on to Ludacris: lots of lyrics there to try to remember. Too many. She tried MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This” for a while but that was too hard and she soon gave up.
When she stopped, bored with it and discouraged, her throat hurting, she remembered where she was, and she began to shudder uncontrollably again. It felt like something was raking her nerve endings. She felt chills deep down, her entire body cringing. The way the mere thought of rubbing Styrofoam against cardboard set her teeth on edge.
But the physiological reaction was nothing compared to the deep horror that came over her now, the cold black cloud of fear, as it had done over and over again throughout this nightmare. That realization that there really was something worse than death, and this was it.
She screamed, long and loud, and it became a hopeless sob. She