Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key) (6 page)

RAGUEL

HIS LOOKS MIGHT have stopped Ilana in her tracks all on their own, truthfully.

He was beautiful, this man.

Uri was very attractive too, of course––handsome enough that he got stares on the street when they’d still been together. Handsome enough to be annoying with it at times, truthfully, despite his own jealous rages about her and any man she so much as smiled at. Tall, dark-haired, with a booming laugh, dark brown eyes, a strong jaw, Uri looked like a model in Western clothing advertisements.

She’d found Uri unbelievably sexy when they first met in school.

But this man in the Moscow holding cell was a different kind of beauty altogether.
 

He almost didn’t look real to Ilana. If Uri made her think of a clothing model, this man looked more like a stone statue, something created wholly from an artist’s mind and hands and chisel. His beauty bordered on otherworldly.

He looked up at her face when they approached his cage, ignoring the officer with her.

His gray eyes shone faintly under the florescent overheads, contrasting strangely with his streaked, white-blond hair. His hair itself didn’t look real either––it had odd lines of black and dark gray woven into that white color, and while it couldn’t possibly be natural, she found herself thinking that it didn’t look dyed, either.

Something about his beauty also appeared ageless.

Ilana found she couldn’t pinpoint an age for him at all, even though she tried––postulating several possibilities from mid-twenties all the way up to his forties depending on how she looked at him. His face was entirely unlined, but somehow it wasn’t a young face, in spite of that.

Looking at his features in more detail, she found that inhuman beauty striking her again, so much so that she had difficulty looking away.

High, perfect cheekbones framed either side of a well-formed mouth, a strong jaw, those stunning, crystal-gray eyes. Yet nothing about him fit or made sense. His Adonis-like looks contrasted sharply with his clothes, which were those of a penniless vagrant. He looked like he’d been dressed with clothing they’d found in a garbage bin.

She remembered then––perhaps they had. He’d been found in Gorky Park naked.

He still wasn’t fully dressed.

His chalk-white chest wore no shirt, but she saw well-defined muscles. He’d partly wrapped his upper body in a ratty gray blanket filled with holes and moth-eaten around the edges, but it didn’t cover him entirely. The dirt-stained jeans were at least two sizes too large around the waist and several inches too short for his height. Covered in holes and worn to threads at the knees, the jeans didn’t look very warm, even apart from how they fit him.

His feet were bare, his toes white verging on blue, and hairless.

The man shivered nonstop as he stared up at her.

His face remained utterly serene––strangely calm under all of that shivering. Particularly so, given where he was and his predicament. He appeared in no way drunk or otherwise intoxicated. Apart from that violent, uncontrollable shivering, he did not appear to move at all.

Still, from the look on his face as he watched her from the cement floor, he
did
know her. She saw a flicker of recognition there, the second he met her gaze.

More than that, she saw relief.

“Ilana,” he said, even as she thought it.

So much of that relief filled his voice, it startled her.

“...You are here. At last. Thank you.”

He also spoke perfect Russian.

Once he had, she realized she hadn’t expected him to––certainly not without a foreigner’s accent. There was something strange about his voice and cadence, something overly precise perhaps, but his accent was that of a regular Muscovite.

He could be an academic, perhaps––a scholar.

“I do not know him,” Ilana said, speaking to the
militsiya
officer but unable to tear her eyes off the imprisoned man’s face. “You are sure this is the man you told me about?”

The officer gave her a startled look. “Comrade? He just said your name––”

“I know what he said!” Ilana snapped, turning. “I am telling you... I do not know him!”

The
militsiya
officer stared at her, taken aback.

“Ilana, I must speak with you,” the man on the floor said, as if he’d caught nothing of their exchange. “It is extremely urgent... it cannot wait.”

“I processed him myself,” the police officer said, his voice slightly wounded now. “It is
him,
comrade Kopovich. I was there when he first asked for you––”

“Ilana!” The man on the floor continued to ignore the
ment,
looking only at her. “I am sorry I told him those things about you, but I needed to see you right away. It could not wait. It was all I could think of to get you here quickly––”

“Be silent!” she snapped, turning on him.

“I cannot be silent, Ilana. I cannot––”

“I do not
know
you, comrade!”

He looked startled.

He glanced at the male officer for the first time, then back at her.

“I know that.” His voice reflected his surprise. “But it should be equally obvious that I
do
know you. I need your help, Ilana, please. Please... help me. I beg you.”

She swallowed, struck somehow by the depth of feeling in his words.

Moreover, he looked at her like he really
did
know her.

Somehow, the sheer certainty in his eyes brought up a fear she’d never experienced before, at least not since she’d been a child. Something wasn’t quite normal in the way he looked at her. He looked
through
her almost. Like he not only knew her, but he knew her better than others did, better than even those closest to her.
 

Perhaps even better than Ilana herself did.

He’d known of the birthmark on her thigh. He’d described it. He knew her clothing size, where she lived. He knew what and who she was. He even knew she was here to look at a case.
 

But how? How could he possibly know these things?

She knew it was not personal. She could not have slept with this man. Just the thought made her face heat, and anyway, it was not like her to do this. She had not been with anyone but Uri since university.

She’d been thinking about it again lately, yes, contemplating an affair at least, but so far hadn’t been able to move past that gun-shy thing left over from Uri turning into someone she didn’t recognize as soon as the ink was dry on their marriage certificate.

But it’s not like she ever drank so much, or had been with so many men as to forget any of them––much less someone like
this
man, with his riveting smoky eyes and that heavy jaw. So that was out of the question. It left only one thing.

He had to be a spook.

Perhaps he came from a rival faction in the KGB. Which meant he had to be from somewhere else, or based out of somewhere else at least. Some place far enough from Moscow that they would not have crossed paths.

Unless he was American. In which case, he had mastered the accent to a disturbing degree. Perhaps he had a parent born in Moscow, or was a sleeper agent of some kind.

He rose abruptly to his feet as she continued to think.

Throwing the blanket off his shoulders, he walked directly to the bars, so swiftly and deliberately she found herself backing away in reflex. When he reached the bars, he did not hesitate. He reached through for her, his hands outstretched.

Somehow, she felt his desperation to touch her.

For the first time, she also saw the fear in him. She saw it in his face and eyes––it practically emanated from his skin.

“I need you,” he said. “But I can also help you, Ilana. You need me too. You do not yet know it, but I promise you... you need my help.”

She winced again. Maybe it was how he said her name.
 

Maybe it was him saying he needed her... or what she felt when he said it.

“I need your help with what, comrade?” She held his gaze warily. Her reactions to this man were frightening her. To her logical mind, they bordered on delusional, and Ilana was not prone to delusion. She was also not the type to moon over handsome men.

“Golunsky,” he said at once. “I can help you with Golunsky.”

She felt her throat tighten.

That time, a feeling of unreality washed over her, along with a harder suspicion. No one knew about Golunsky. He’d been picked up that morning, early, in the pre-dawn hours. But even that didn’t explain the totality of her reaction.

Something in how this beautiful man said Golunsky’s name struck her at a deeper level than she could articulate to herself. It wasn’t fear she heard in his voice, not that time. Well, not fear of Golunsky at least. But it was... something.

An added knowledge.

“Let me help you, Ilana,” the man said, his voice lower. “Please. We could help one another with this. Do not leave me in here. It will be bad for you, for me... for many people, if you do. I
must
have your help. Please, Ilana... please. More depends on it than you know.”

She could not hold his gaze.

Turning, she spoke to the
militsiya
officer instead, ignoring the blond-haired man still reaching for her through the metal bars.

“What is his name?” She clutched the files she carried tighter to her chest. She could not trust herself to look back at the prisoner’s face, or the depth of feeling in his eyes. She felt her heart beating too fast in her chest. “Who is he? Where is he from?”

“He did not give us a name, comrade.”

“Where are his papers?”

“There were no papers.”

She stared up at the face of the
militsiya
officer. “No papers? That is not possible.”

The officer shrugged, disinterest on his face. “He was naked, comrade.”

Ilana’s jaw clenched briefly, but her shoulders relaxed. “Ah. And he refused to give you his name or address to find them?”

The officer smiled indulgently. Clearly he did not believe Ilana that she and the man in the cell did not know one another. Given their reactions to seeing one another, Ilana could almost understand his skepticism, but it still infuriated her.

She opened her mouth to speak, but the
ment
cut her off.

“––He tells us he has no name that will mean anything to us, comrade Kopovich.” The officer shook his head to show what he thought of that idea. “He says that it ‘will not benefit us’ to know it, that it would only benefit you.”

“Me?” Frowning harder, she turned, once more studying the man in the cell. She still avoided direct eye-contact. “You! You just agreed I do not know you. You still think your name will mean something to me?”

The beautiful man hesitated, glancing at the officer. Then he looked back at Ilana. His eyes serious, he nodded, the motion barely perceptible.

“Yes,” he said only.

“Tell it to me,” she demanded. “At once. And tell us where you live.”

Again, the man in the cell glanced at the other officer.

Clearly, he did not wish to speak with the
militsiya
officer present.

When Ilana glanced back at the
ment
herself, the man smirked.

He inclined his head. “Your friend here explained that he could not share his name with us for fear of ‘confusing the issue’ of who he is and why he was found the way he was.” The
ment
gave her another knowing smirk. “...Then he would only ask for you. He would not tell us any more about himself. He told us only about you.”

“You have fingerprinted him?”

The man exhaled impatiently. “Yes, comrade, of course. But you know it will take days to find him that way, if not weeks.” He gave her another of those oily smiles, winking. “You are certain you have no name to share with us, Party Comrade Kopovich? It would certainly save us a great deal of time and trouble. Perhaps you could whisper it in my ear? I will say I got it from him during interrogations...”

Ilana gave him a cold look. “Are you implying I would jeopardize an ongoing murder investigation by refusing to provide critical information if I had it?”