Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key) (22 page)

It was different hearing it this time, knowing Raguel had heard it, too.

The two of them ate silently while they listened to the back and forth exchange, the too-long silences as the militia detective tried to get Golunsky to talk to him directly. Ilana found she blushed at some of those parts now as well, knowing the demon had been taunting this man about wanting her sexually.

If Raguel felt embarrassed by that, she saw no indication on his face.

Then, the conversation abruptly changed.

“I
found
it, my feathery friend,”
the demon said, sounding delighted.
“As you rightly surmise, I cannot pick it up in this form. Yet it follows me. It
follows
me, brother. Are you quite sure it is not yours? For I cannot help but wonder if this is so...”

When Ilana glanced at Raguel, he gave her a grim look.

“That is when I first saw the key,” he explained.

Her eyes widened. In everything that happened at the
militsiya
station and at Kashchenko, she’d completely forgotten about the key they’d found in Gorky Park. Wiping her mouth with a cloth napkin, she got up from the couch as the recorder continued to turn, her goulash still only half-finished. She walked to the closet and opened it, rifling through her coat pockets until she found it. She brought it back to the coffee table, showing it to Raguel.

“You still cannot see it?”

He shook his head, frowning. “No. Are you holding it?”

“Yes.”

“I see only the gaps between your fingers.”

Nodding, she tossed the key to the glass-topped coffee table, where it made a clinking sound when it landed.

“Did you hear that?” she said. “When it fell?”

“Yes.” His frown deepened as he slid his hand over the key where it had fallen. Again, his hand passed through the glass key as though it were not there.

“Is it there?” he said.

“Yes.” Incredulity touched her voice. “Your hand passes right through it. I would not have believed it if I did not just see it with my own eyes.”

“You saw it before,” he reminded her, glancing up.

“Da.
I guess I hoped I imagined it.”

Both of them glanced at the tape recorder, which now exuded only silence.

“Do you remember anything of the interview beyond this point?” Raguel watched her spear a piece of beef in the goulash with her fork after she sat back down. “I don’t remember any more. I am thinking I have touched the key by this time, and disappeared out of the room.”

She shook her head, swallowing the mouthful of beef. “No. My memory tells me the interview ended... that Golunsky refused to speak.”

Even as she said it, the silence was broken, making both of them jump.

Golunsky’s voice rose on the tape, louder than before.

“You are too late,”
The voice was cold, threatening, nearly unrecognizable.
“It is too late to stop the future,
podonok militsiya
pig... it is too late...”

From the tone of voice, he might have been a different person. This new person was no less disturbing than the old Golunsky had been, but he was definitely more aggressive.

Then another voice rose.

Clinical. Military-sounding.

Definitely female.

“We are too late?”
Ilana’s voice said.
“Too late for what? What is coming, comrade?”

Ilana stared at the recorder, more shocked by hearing her own voice than she was hearing Golunsky speak words she didn’t remember him saying. She froze as she stared at the recorder, so stunned she almost didn’t hear his answer.

“Why are you asking me?”
This new, harder-edged Golunsky laughed, a cold, cruel-sounding laugh.
“You know more about this than I do... ‘comrade.’ ”

“What does that mean?”
Ilana’s own voice again, jarring.

“You know exactly what I mean.”

“Let us pretend that I don’t,”
Ilana’s voice said.
“Are you saying more deaths are coming? That you are working with others?”

“Da, da... of course I am working with others! America is the future! You know this! Soviet Russia is going the way of the dinosaurs... as you told me yourself...”

Ilana felt her skin grow cold.

“Americans?”
that other Ilana snapped, disgust audible in her voice.
“What Americans? Who are you working with? Or is this just some attempt to pin the murder of innocent children on someone else? To make it part of some wider, delusional cause?”
 

The demon laughed, and there was a hard sound, a clink of metal. Ilana recognized it as the sound of Obnizov kicking the prisoner’s chair.

“Answer the question, you scum!”
the detective growled.
“Give us names. Or I will bring in those who would get the information out of you the hard way!”

The demon let out another derisive laugh.
“Do your worst, comrade. Do you think I care? Do you think I do not know I am dead, either way? What do you think you can do to me now? If I am rescued from this, it will not be by Soviet scum. If I am rescued from this, it will be by those who lead the free world, not the world wrapped in communist chains...”

“So you are a capitalist now?”
Obnizov mocked, his voice louder from being nearer to the microphone.
“Is that it? You are hoping to go to America? Maybe piss on the Statue of Liberty? Is that it, Golunsky?”

The demon laughed again, its voice holding disbelief.
 

“You say that like I should be ashamed of such a thing...”
The contempt in his voice grew more biting.
“...like going to America would be some kind of curse. Are you really so stupid? Why do you think our best athletes and artists have to be guarded by KGB for every second they set foot in another country? Why do you think the military builds walls to keep its own people inside? Why do you think so many are shot on the wall, trying to escape? Is it because it is better here? Because the West is so terrible?”

The demon let out another derisive laugh.
 

“...You are a fool. No wonder she despises you,”
it finished coldly.

The other Ilana spoke up, anger in her voice.
“Are you saying you were asked to do this? By someone from America? Why? What is their goal?”

Golunsky only laughed.

“You would ally against your own people?”
Obnizov growled.
“And just how does that work exactly, ‘comrade’? Please enlighten us.”

“My people? What makes you think they are mine?”

“So you are American, is that it?”
Obnizov sneered.
“And this is the work of the great America? Raping and butchering children? This is the goodness the West brings us?”

Golunsky’s voice changed once again. It grew sharper than it had been, more intelligent-sounding. Less randomly crazy-sounding, despite his actual words.

“I guess we will see, won’t we?”
he said.
“Everything is set in motion now. It is time to make way for a new world. A world where we face the truth. That communism is a dangerous dream and a failure, and its time is over...”

Something in the words rang of truth.

Truth mixed with lies, perhaps, but truth nonetheless.

She glanced at Raguel, remembering what he’d said about the old
gulags
under Stalin, about how the demon likely wanted the exact opposite of what it was saying right now. Did he wish to make the USSR so hate the idea of change that they would return to those dark days?

The angel didn’t return her gaze, but continued to stare down at the tape recorder, a look of frustration on his handsome face. She saw him glance at where the key sat on the coffee table. She could tell by the way he squinted, looking at several different spots on the table, that he still could not see it. She could almost feel what he was thinking.

He wanted to be an angel again.

He thought he could do something about this, if only he were an angel again. In this form, he felt stripped of his power.

She only turned away from him when her own voice rose once more.

“We need names, Golunsky. Who are you working with? Who else is a part of this conspiracy? Are there Americans here now? In Moscow?”

The demon laughed louder.

“And again I say... why don’t you tell me, Party comrade Kopovich? My lovely, sexy Ilana... why don’t you tell both of us the answer to that question?”

Hearing the demon’s words, Ilana felt her skin grow cold.

The demon called her by name.

She’d never been introduced to Golunsky. Not by Obnizov. Not by anyone.

She’d certainly never told him her name herself.

Remembering what Karkoff said to her on the phone, how strange Obnizov had been to her ever since they left the interview, she felt that fear and dread in her chest worsen, even as she took another hard swig of the wine.

Karkoff had said they would pick up Obnizov. No doubt, the homicide detective had voiced his suspicions about Ilana to the KGB already. He would tell them about the writing in the cell, about Raguel being with her that day. They would assume the writing was about her, that Raguel was her accomplice, perhaps an American spy.

If they investigated Raguel’s identification papers, they would realize they were fake. They would discover he didn’t work where those papers said he worked. They would discover he didn’t live where those papers said he lived either... and eventually they would realize that Raguel wasn’t a Soviet citizen at all.

They likely wouldn’t believe he also wasn’t a citizen of Earth.

No, they would think he was a foreigner, here to bring down the Soviet Motherland.

Thinking all this, Ilana glanced at Raguel.

She took another swallow of wine, then set down the glass, pouring more of the bottle into it. Sipping the wine, she stared at the glass key and frowned, looking over at the angel.

“I guess he has both of us out of the way now, eh, comrade?” she said.

Raguel didn’t answer.

She saw him glance back in the direction of the key, however, that frustration once more tightening his features.

SHADOW WINGS

“WHAT DOES IT mean?” She focused back on Raguel when the silence stretched. “What is the point of these murders? Are they really just to implicate you and me?”

They’d listened to the tape from beginning to end twice by then.

After the demon practically fingered Ilana herself as a part of his conspiracy, he refused to speak. The remainder of the tape was Ilana and Obnizov peppering him with questions, both of them sounding increasingly angry when the demon refused to answer.

Ilana knew her anger and fear would be heard differently however, depending on who was listening to the tape.

“...Is there anything to what he said?” she pressed, when Raguel didn’t speak. “About Americans being involved? Or is that all just bullshit, too?” Feeling increasingly angry and helpless, she said, “Karkoff said they would pick up Obnizov today. I do not know what he said to the KGB and others... and they likely have him in custody still, so I can’t even ask him. He’ll have told them about the writing in the cell... and about you.”