At this point, Olivia has moved to Russia, established her laboratory, and gone to Chechnya several times to test her equipment in combat with a Russian Spetznaz (Special Forces) brigade. She has met her future lover, the brigade commander, Colonel (later General) Dmitri Suslov. She is also getting boxing lessons from Major Vladimir Malinovsky, the brigade’s chief of reconnaissance, who has become a kind of brother. This chapter, set in Moscow and Chechnya, gets into their relations, and her friendship with Warrant Officer Konstantin Simonov, head of her personal security detail. But most of the chapter is about her reaction to witnessing a brutal interrogation conducted by Major Mikhail Kristinich, an attached FSB torturer. She will encounter Kristinich again, in an interrogation booth in the Lubyanka Prison.

 

 “Two things I want you to think about while I’m in Chechnya this time, Mister Borodkin,” Olivia said.  “The first is, how feasible is a new kind of self-destruct mechanism in these sensors, more reliable and safer than acid?  The second is silicon-germanium.”

“If I understand correctly, that line of semi-conductor research has been abandoned by all the companies that pursued it, including IBM.”

“You are correct.  However, I have just learned that while IBM at least officially abandoned the silicon-germanium research, some scientists and managers at IBM have gone underground, calling in chits and diverting, err, reprogramming, money.”

“You can do this in an American company?”

“Sometimes, just as you can do it in a Russian one.”

“How do you know this?”

“I correspond with my father through channels.  It takes a while.  But he does tell me things he thinks I should know.”

“Does he approve of your being here?”

“I don’t know.  I did not discuss my plans with him before I left.  But I do take such comments as that as a sign of approval.  At any rate, I like the fact that although there have been a lot of failures with this material, IBM is at least unofficially pursuing it.  Perhaps it is perverse of me, but I am mistrustful of easy successes.” 

“And yet it seems that is what you have had.”

She laughed.  “I spent eleven years trying to do this in America.  I have those years of failures and false starts and having my projects cancelled or destroyed by others.  Some of these were the sort I could learn from.  Good lessons intellectually, technically, tactically.  Also bureaucratic, from which I tried not to learn, although eventually I had no choice.  Which is why I came here.”

“In Soviet engineering, there was no failure.  There was sabotage and there were personal shortcomings.  But there was no concept of failure as part of creation.”

“And many, many American engineers avoid failure.  They avoid studying what doesn’t work and why it doesn’t.  They can’t, not when the bean counters are breathing down their necks.”

“Bean counters?”

“An uncomplimentary term for accountants.  One of the things that’s destroying American business is that too many corporations are run by accountants and lawyers who only care about money, not what you have to do to produce.  My father made sure I never made that mistake.  When I was a girl, he told me about John Roebling, who was an absolute master of the suspension bridge.  He preferred to study failed bridges.  That’s why the beauty and strength of his work has lasted.”

“We had a similar problem not so long ago,” Borodkin said bitterly.  “Impossible pressures from people who had no idea how to create anything.  Not to mention, how every chance we could, we stole what worked.”

Olivia’s eyes softened.  “Bitterness, sir, is vulgar.  Your country did what it had to, to survive.  Had it not, this conversation would be moot.  Neither of us would have been born.  So we are stealing what works because we can’t start from scratch but we are also going to steal promising failures, because Mister Borodkin, we will innovate here.  In this lab.  So as my administrator, this is another thing you are going to think towards while I am gone.  We are going to need more engineers and more technicians, and we are going to need some expanded production facilities.”

Borodkin found himself feeling a wave of real pleasure, interrupted by fear and the resentment that fear occasioned.  It had become a daily pattern with Borodkin.  His resentment of Olivia protected him from himself, a resentment that grew ever more complex, nuanced, and serrated.  “Yes, Doctor.”

“Good.”  She rose abruptly, awkwardly, catching her right hipbone hard on the edge of the desk.

In the aftermath of the accident, her ligaments, which connect bone to bone, and so tend to lie beneath the tendons that connect muscle to bone, had knotted up to support the breaks and fractures.  Many of them were still corded, one in her lower right back so much so that it felt like bone, stubbornly resistant to all her attempts to stretch it.  With the normal flexion between her pelvis and lower spine greatly reduced, she felt the impact deep in both structures.  It felt like her body was being torn apart and set on fire. 

Taken by surprise, without the least opportunity to prepare herself, the pain overwhelmed her in an instant.  She found herself choking back vomit until she could locate the wastebasket behind her desk.  Olivia knew she would never make it to the bathroom, so she didn’t try.  She motioned to Borodkin and said, “Water, please.  Paper towels.”  Borodkin complied, his concern for her vanishing into resentment that he should have to do such a thing, then sudden pleasure at her incapacitation.  He returned with the items, then looked away as she rinsed out her mouth, spat into the wastebasket, covered the remains of her lunch with the toweling while struggling to gain control over her breathing.  She had morphine although she rarely used it, but this pain was as bad as anything since rehab.  She thought she could feel, with great precision, the breaks and the metal pins.  Her hands trembling, she reached into her purse and found the bottle, shook out a tablet and washed it down with the dregs of her cold tea.  After a few minutes, she was able to force composure into her voice and manage a coherent murmur.  “I will be worthless for the rest of the day, so please call a car for me and I will see you in the morning.”

Borodkin obeyed with sullen happiness, sullen at having to obey another order, happy that, for the rest of the day, he was free.

The next morning, beginning her daily routine of stretching in bed while she was still under the warm covers and continuing in the hot shower, a near-necessity everywhere but in Chechnya that took at least fifteen minutes and sometimes was simply fucking hard, she felt she had just the slightest bit more flexion in her lower spine and pelvis.  It might have been her imagination but she set about ruthlessly exploiting the possibility.

 

The boxing ring, such as it was, that she shared with Major Malinovsky was now in Gudermes, Chechnya’s second city and the focus of fighting now that Grozny was more or less pacified.  But it was such a world to itself that it could have been anywhere.  It had four corners, sometimes demarcated only by chairs or buckets.  When she stepped into it, when the lesson began and the fear abated, she found herself in a place of floating sensations.  When she sparred with him, time did not exist in any ordinary sense.  It slowed down and accelerated.  She saw what they did with great slowness, sometimes watched their combat develop so slowly she was able to understand what he had taught her.  Sometimes she was able to react before she heard his clear, even tenor telling her how and when to hit, telling her what to do with her feet.  She had once read a thriller that described boxing not as a sweet science; there was nothing scientific about it.  But it was all art, but as the holy trinity of hitting, timing, and footwork.  That writer was correct and wrong.  It was a trinity and it was also holy.  But it was also a sweet and holy science. 

The simple fact was that Malinovsky liked to hit people, a lot—but only if there were rules, and only if they could hit back, hard and effectively.  He had never had the slightest interest in hitting people who couldn’t hit back, found it a disgusting perversion of boxing, of manhood, of the soldierly virtues.  So he had begun very gently, as a man working with a woman, as a teacher working with a new student.  He never forgot that he had the advantage of twenty kilos of muscle, a quarter of a century of experience, and no serious injuries over someone who had been horribly hurt and permanently damaged.  He had quickly realized that she was far more afraid of hurting him than he was of her.  At first he thought it absurd, ridiculous.  And then he had realized, watching her move, seeing how tightly she was braced in her lower spine and pelvis, that she probably knew more about pain than he could imagine, even though he could imagine a great deal.  So he had begun hitting her sooner and harder than he expected to.  Still, he pulled his punches; he would never hit her with full force.  But he also realized that the only way to get her to hit him with conviction was to hit her hard enough to get her attention, then teach her how to discipline her anger and aggression. 

By mutual consent, they avoided full-power shots at each other’s heads.  Olivia avoided low blows, Malinovsky avoided high blows.  He had, of course, been thinking about her breasts, even though Suslova had helped her find a chest protector in Moscow.  You used them in judo, too.  Breasts mattered.  She didn’t look like any woman he’d ever seen but she also didn’t look like anything else, either.  It could be unnerving.

 Malinovsky hit low, a body blow, and Olivia deflected it lower.  She watched his gloved fist impact her right hip, had a fraction of a second to prepare herself for appalling pain, and instinctively braced herself hard.  Strange, that.  It went completely against both her common sense and Malinovsky’s training of her.

The sound of her pelvis and lower spine being jarred loose from each other, the sudden impact of the blow breaking the compression of that ligament, was obscenely loud, like a pistol shot.  The pain was there and it was intense, but to Olivia’s surprise, it wasn’t horrible.  She could feel the deep heat of blood being able to circulate freely, rather than the sensation of her body being torn apart and set on fire. 

For a moment, Malinovsky struggled with the fear that he’d broken bone, possibly even rebroken her hip.  Then Olivia backed away, got her right leg under her, feeling the sharp tingles of long-impaired circulation resuming.  She let out her breath, circled to the right, then the left.  Malinovsky could see the new flexion in her lower back, buttock and upper thigh, could see for the first time the power starting to come up her thighs into her lower back as it should. 

“Nice hit,” she said, beginning to breathe normally again.

“Continue?” he asked shakily through his mouth guard.

“Please.”

 

Alternately murderous and benign, Konstantin Eduardovich Simonov had a cheerful round face, pug nose, and freckles.  Originally from St. Petersburg, he had become a warrant officer in an unusual way.  He’d opted to be drafted, rather than continue to pursue a university education that he knew he wasn’t really mature enough to benefit from.  He did this much to the disgust of his parents, low-level apparatchiks who had worked very hard to make sure their children would rise higher.  The Army was no place to rise higher.  Then Gorbachev released all university students from their military obligation, a blatant attempt to curry favor with the intelligentsia, the apparatchiks, and the West.  His ugly gesture had tremendously insulted all those who were in service because they wanted to be or felt they were needed.  Simonov was one of those who refused to quit the colors.  He liked the Airborne, and he ended up liking Spetsnaz more.  The training was inherently extremely interesting.  And he realized that he liked combat.  He had suspected he would like it before he partook, but the actuality of liking it had taken a lot of getting used to.  He feared becoming addicted.  A very wise officer had sensed it and told him, you just needed to keep that pleasure, like all pleasures, in its particular place.  Simonov took the lesson to heart and began to ponder his future as a soldier who wanted more out of soldiering than combat.  He didn’t want to remain in the enlisted ranks.  But he didn’t want to become an officer.  Too much responsibility, too much hypocrisy, too little pay.  Becoming a warrant officer allowed him to be a soldier with some status and pursue what quickly became his second-favorite military pleasure:  training other likely lads and turning them into soldiers.  Real soldiers. 

Of course, real soldiers didn’t spend their time providing security details for an American engineer who had once worked for the American Department of Defense.  Much less a woman.  Let alone a pretty woman with a really excellent doctorate and mind.  Nor did he ever expect to have the experience of a very pretty American woman engineer with an excellent doctorate and mind flopping down beside him one day in a ruined building in a secured neighborhood where they were training, and then having her lie back on her rucksack and ask him what he wanted by way of technology.

“You can’t be serious, Doctor.  People like you don’t ask people like me what we need.  People like you aren’t even supposed to be here.  Least of all, women.”

Olivia looked into his eyes and felt a sudden playfulness, long suppressed, with this young man.  Colonel Suslov had assigned Simonov to run her personal security detail and had told Olivia, sternly and in his presence, that she would obey him immediately and without question whenever danger arose.  Since then, Simonov had barely spoken to her, even in the line of duty, except to bark an occasional “Down!” or “Into that building!” or some such.  His attitude had clearly been, “You’re here.  I have my orders.  So do you.  That’s all there is to it.”

 At first, she’d regarded him as little more than another minder, another Borodkin.  But she’d watched him as he’d watched her, and over time they’d acquired a certain abstract respect for each other.  Olivia decided she liked him, in the way Americans often liked 1950s juvenile delinquents or difficult dogs.  You never quite knew whether to beat them or scratch them behind the ears.  Today, exhausted but happy and with things going well, Olivia decided to do some scratching.

“You’re right,” she said calmly.  “But I have my reasons.  I’d heard that Russian soldiers are most excellent in bed, and as a professional woman well over thirty, my chances of marrying an American man were worse than my chances of being hit by a meteorite.  Or so I was told by the experts on all the TV shows I never watched and in all the books and magazines I never read.  I decided to become, as we say in America, proactive.  My way of improving my marriage odds involves hauling around twenty kilos of crap on a wrecked back, being cold, dirty, hungry, and thirsty most of the time, obeying you unquestioningly and unhesitatingly, even when it involves diving into sewers, and occasionally even shooting at people I can’t see, just to keep their heads down.  I can’t tell you how sexy I find all this to be, so I thought that as an even more exciting form of foreplay I’d ask you what military technology you wanted.”

For an instant, Simonov had a sensation of blowing hot tea through his nose.  Then he started laughing.  Olivia joined him and they found themselves trying to stop, looking at each other, then laughing again.  After it finally ended, with two sets of ribs hurting, Simonov wiped his sprouting beard.  “But you talk to the Kombrig and the chief of reconnaissance about what they need.”

“I do.  And I talk to people at echelons well above them about what they need.  But I also talk to the commander of my security team and his troops about what they need and want.”

“Russian boys are stubborn.  It takes a while for us to figure some things out.”

“Americans, too.”

“I believe,” he said.  “I will think about your question.  For now, we need to move on down the street and see how your others are doing.”  They gathered themselves and stepped outside.  Fifty meters later, as they approached the door of yet another ruined building, Simonov stopped, then pointed to a wire, nearly invisible amid the junk and garbage on the ground before them.  He backed her off two paces, then stopped.

“Do you see the wire, Doctor?”

“Yes.”

 “Do you see the secondaries?”

 “Yes.

 “So do I.  Note what they’ve done.  The door is wired.  But so are the logical places where you might take cover in event of ambush.  There may be more wires behind us.  Let’s give thanks whoever made this set of traps isn’t here to spring the ambush.”

“Or maybe doesn’t consider us worth the effort.”

“Then we’ll give thanks for that, too.  Now let’s turn around and walk back to where we were, one step at a time, eyes on the ground for wires or anything that looks like mines.”

Simonov took her wrist.

“No, Warrant Officer.  We walk ten meters apart.”

“Very well, Doctor.  But I must tell you.  You’ll never find a husband like that.”

 

Three days later, on a long road trip to visit the detachments outside of Gudermes, they took fire from an ambush.  Their Uazik, the tough and reliable Russian idea of a jeep, took some rounds, which infuriated Simonov, who cursed and kept driving.  Olivia caught a glimpse of motion at an intersection before them.  Time slowed and accelerated as it did when she boxed.  Calmly, she put several rounds from her assault rifle into a Chechen man’s chest.  He dropped his weapon and fell.  They didn’t stop.  Olivia fired randomly in front of them.  Suppressive fire forward, eyes on the flanks.  What went on behind them, went on.

 They got out of the killing zone unharmed.  The ambush had been sloppy, inept, or perhaps they were just a passing target of opportunity that had yielded nothing except at least one dead attacker.  Simonov slowed the vehicle as, a half kilometer later, their detachment approached, told them what had happened.  They went into tactical formation and began their slow advance to the ambush site.  Simonov then turned to Olivia.  He was curious.  She was in the midst of realizing what she’d done for the first time:  killed another human being who intended her death.  Wait until you learn how much you can really like it, Doctor, he found himself thinking.  But that would take a different kind of contact, harder, longer, far more violent.  That was an experience it was his job to make sure she didn’t have.  “Very good shooting, Doctor,” he said softly.

“Thank you,” she murmured from deep within herself, and he saw within her eyes more than the usual array of emotions.  He saw a certainty.  I have killed.  I am still…me.  He understood.

Later that evening, he found her leaning up against a wall of a shattered mountain hut, watching the sun go down, holding a cup of tea in her hands with those odd fingerless gloves.  He took in the elegant profile of her face and the strong line of her neck, the way she leaned back against the wall, one leg tucked up under her, her rifle slung in front of her body, her desire liquid and intense.

This was a new experience for her.  Olivia had never reacted that way to simple danger, or to hunting animals.  This was a reaction to killing her own kind.  She’d heard about men needing to change their shorts after successful contact, but never about women needing to do so.  She needed to do so.  She wished Irina Borisovna were there for her to ask her about it.  Put it on the agenda for our next run together, she thought.

With a downward rush of blood, Simonov realized that he wanted to rape her about a dozen times.  No, not like that at all, that was no joke, just lay her down somewhere clean and soft and warm and quiet and fuck her hard until she was thoroughly satiated.  If a woman trusted you enough to let you do that to her, it was extremely satisfying to watch her floating on the sensation.  Do it once and you’d wonder why you’d ever wanted to get off fast.  Or at all. 

He was aware that she was watching him out of one glacial eye, and as if she knew his thoughts, he found himself turning scarlet.  “I apolo…”

She raised her hand and lowered it, a small gesture of just a few inches that effectively silenced him.  She sipped her tea and Simonov took refuge in his own mug.  After a while, she spoke, her voice dry, bemused, gentle.  “So.  Have you given any more thought to your needs?”

Simonov exhaled a great deal of tea all over the sprouting orange tufts of beard that he kept hoping would turn into something terrifying or at least impressive or at least decent or at least inoffensive to the Kombrig, none of which would never happen.  “Doctor?”

“Your technological needs.  Obviously.”

“Obviously,” he laughed.  “There is something I must relay to you.  This afternoon, our boys went back into where we were…driving.  They brought in two prisoners.  One seems to be some sort of bomb maker.  They call such persons, engineers.”

“I did not know that.”

“It does seem wrong.  It may have been the man who made that trap we found ourselves in.”

“What is being done with him?”

“He has been given to Major Kristinich.”

 

Wisely clean shaven, Simonov rapped hard on the door of Suslov’s quarters, such as they were:  just a quiet alcove in the underground warren of cellars, a former honey factory that was the brigade’s forward headquarters in Gudermes.  There was room enough for his rack and some shelves, enough empty floor space to stretch out, and a door for privacy. 

Suslov lay on his rack, pondering how Olivia had impacted his schedule.  He had groups, the Spetsnaz equivalent of platoons, all over Chechnya, plus Dagestan and Ingushetia.  He had noticed that he tended, whenever possible, to coordinate his visits to any given location with Doctor Tolchinskaya.  He liked her presence.  She was calm in her own right.  His men were safer for her, and that made her very comforting for him to be around.  Russian units had been sent into Grozny back in January without satellite imagery, with tourist maps.  Whatever the FSB had been doing in Chechnya prior, it had apparently not been developing actionable intelligence.  The price paid in soldiers’ blood for that ineptitude had been very high.  Now, in addition to her audio/infrared sensors, Doctor Tolchinskaya had begun to develop aerial drones capable of quick-response, small-scale photo reconnaissance.  It was crude, still more of what she called a line of thought than any proper research and development effort, but so very much better than what they had.  The men had come to think of her as a miracle worker and Suslov had to remind them and himself that some miracles took longer than others. 

He liked, whenever he could, to watch Olivia and Malinovsky sparring.  An odd sensation, seeing two people for whom you cared very much, hit each other in very serious play.  Wistfully, not jealously, he envied them the ferocious clarity of their relationship.  His own feelings for the woman were very deep and, given the present impossibility of any decent way of discovering if she might return them, complex.  So he simply enjoyed her presence as he could.

He’d had a long day, most of it taken up by arguing about pay with a higher-echelon finance officer, finally shaking loose some back pay for the men.  Food was not such a problem.  The brigade usually had it and the men could sell it.  This was a very bad idea in any unit Suslov commanded.  But he understood why it sometimes had to happen.  In any event, it wasn’t like what the higher-ups did with the brigade’s pay:  putting it out at interest while inflation soared, making private fortunes, then releasing it the men after it had lost much of its value.  And then the bosses wondered why the soldiers wouldn’t fight, as if sane men fought for those who held them in such low regard while profiteering off their misery. 

At least I’m not married, he thought.  At least I don’t have children to worry about.  He’d never thought there would come a day when he’d be grateful to be divorced and childless, but it had.  It was a day due not to American military might, but to American economic advice and to the thuggish Russian understanding of private enterprise.  He’d been indoctrinated as a Communist and been proud to call himself one.  He had also been extremely aware of the shortcomings of Communism and like most Airborne officers felt quite free to express his opinions in ways that would have horrified any member of the Moscow and St. Petersburg intelligentsia, loyal or dissident.  But he’d come to the conclusion that capitalism, at least as Americans preached for Russians to adopt it, was just another way to impoverish and humiliate his country.  What he could not understand was why Russians were participating in it.  Especially Russians with more money than they would ever need.  Doing so at the expense of Russians struggling to stay alive.

“Kombrig?”

He abandoned his thought and looked up from the novel he was trying to read, when the cat on his chest would let him turn a page, which she had not for the past few minutes.  The cat, a grey and brown tabby female that, in keeping with Army tradition, he had named Mashka, was a goodly cat.  She slept on his pillow when he was gone, and usually beside but sometimes on top of him when he was there.  More than once he had woken in the night to hear her purring away, watching him protectively and affectionately.  Lately, she had taken to bringing him gifts that he did not eat.  When he was reassigned elsewhere, he would take her.  He could provide for a cat just as she tried to provide for him.  “Good evening, Konstantin Eduardovich.”

“Sir.”  He paused.

Suslov looked at his warrant officer closely.  “What troubles you, son?”

“Our American.”  He paused.  “She knows, she has some idea what is being done to the prisoner and it distresses her.”

“How do you know this?”

“We were walking back to our quarters when the screams began.”

“Has she said anything?”

“Not a word.  She has no authority and she knows it.  But it is obvious.”

“How is it obvious?”

“Kombrig…we drove through an ambush yesterday.  She killed a man.  Her first.  She is still coming to terms with that.  This is not helping her.”

Now that he paid attention, Suslov could hear the man screaming somewhere in the underground warren of cellars that was the brigade’s headquarters.  He knew exactly where, in fact.  How it could be, he wondered with a wonderment that had begun in Afghanistan and would never end, that the really horrible thing about combat was not what you did.  Survival was survival and he’d never had much use for the high moral standards of those who risked nothing.  The truer horror was what you became inured to, and what that loss of sensitivity made possible.  He’d made his peace with that long ago.  Indifference to the sufferings of others could be dealt with by a combination of discipline and pride in themselves and their officers…and by having such as Kristinich available.  What the men felt was their own affair.  What they did was his affair.  But he had no such authority over Olivia.  All he had to help her over this moment was himself.

“Thank you, Warrant Officer Simonov.  I commend you and your men for protecting Doctor Tolchinskaya.”

“She protects us, Kombrig.”

“Yes.  She does.  I will tend to her now.”   

Ten minutes later, Suslov knocked on the door to Olivia’s quarters, a room even smaller than his own that at least afforded her some degree of privacy.  The woman who opened the door was drawn, her eyes haunted, and he realized that her privacy had been a mistake.  It had imposed upon her a degree of isolation no man in the brigade had to endure.  At the beginning, it had been necessary.  But no longer.

 “I can hear quite clearly,” she said at last.  “I have been listening for some time.”

“I know.  Warrant Officer Simonov told me that you are in some distress tonight from events of yesterday as well as,” he shrugged, “the present situation.”

“It was kind of him to do so,” she said bitterly.

“He did so because he cares about you,” Suslov answered sharply.  “Do not blame him.  Also, please do not blame me for invading your privacy.”  Privacy was an American concept but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real to him.  “Under ordinary circumstances, I would ask you if you wished me to leave.  But these are not ordinary circumstances, things that can be put off until another day.”

“I can hear that.”

“Yes.  Now you must also see it.  Doctor Tolchinskaya, I would like you to witness this interrogation.”

“Why?”

The word was a challenge, not a calm and simple question.  Suslov suddenly found it hard to speak to her.  He was furious with himself for condemning her to isolation, furious with himself for not realizing that all this would inevitably catch up with her and furious with himself for making this plan to deal with it.  But none of the words he’d ever used with his soldiers now seemed to avail.  He examined her face and eyes closely for defiance but there was none.  It was an honest question.  But it was still a challenge.  “So you know that as bad it is, it is not as bad as you think.  You’ve already learned that lesson once, yesterday.  I am sorry that you must learn it again so soon.  But we do not always have the luxury of setting our own schedules in these matters.”

“I do not really have a choice, do I?”

“No.  Out of respect for you, I am speaking courteously, but this is actually an order.  Please follow me.”  He did not look back.  Underneath the screams, he could hear the faint awkwardness of her stride.  Outside another doorway, he halted and turned to her.  “You must be silent until we leave.”  His voice was absolutely level.  Out of a sense of mercy, he took her arm just above her elbow in a firm grip.  He felt her flinch from his touch but she did not resist. 

They went in quietly and were not noticed.  She didn’t know what she’d expected.  Kristinich, burning holes in people.  Kristinich, cutting off the prisoner’s fingers one at a time, the way the Chechens did, or disemboweling the prisoner in order to strangle him with his own entrails.  Last winter, such behavior by the Chechens had been unheard of.  But that was no longer the case.  She’d personally seen the body of one Russian they’d practiced on.  Often, the Russians repaid the debt in full.  Any captive would do.  Heating bayonets until they glowed, then cutting people open, seemed to be a favorite in the nearby motorized rifle regiment.  This, by contrast, was almost decent.

Olivia looked.  Across the cellar from them, one man was bound securely to a heavy wooden chair, wired up to a field telephone, specially adapted for the purpose by the addition of a small transformer.  The Chechen was struggling not to scream, then screaming.  The conscript medic, whose job it was to work the field telephone while not doing any damage, seemed in almost as much anguish as the prisoner he was condemned to torment, then patch up.  Major Malinovsky—Brother Vladimir—was pacing, his skin and uniform barely containing a physical rage that was a terrifying contrast to his meditative peace in the boxing ring.  At a nearby desk with a tape recorder, notepad, and reference files, under a bulb rigged to expose the prisoner’s face while shadowing the rest of the cellar room, Kristinich slouched in what seemed to be the FSB’s uniform of jeans, black sweater, and black leather jacket.  After a few seconds, Malinovsky lifted his hand, a signal Kristinich dared not disregard.  There was silence, except for the prisoner’s panting.  In the silence, the same voice Olivia knew from sparring with Malinovsky, the clear, even tenor telling her how to move and how and when to hit said to the prisoner:  “You are very brave and I salute you.  But you have no choice.  You will not be permitted to die or even lose consciousness.”

“We need to discuss your contacts, money, arms, and weapons caches,” Kristinich said.  The Chechen said nothing.  “We need to discuss certain political matters.”

No answer.

“Increase the voltage, Private.”

“Sir, that much voltage and he may tear muscles or break bones.”

“Good.”  A soft, leisurely word.

Instinctively, the young private turned to Malinovsky. 

“Danger of a heart attack, Private?”

“No, Comrade Major,” the conscript said angrily.  “Not even close.” 

Electricity was relatively clean.  If you were halfway competent, there was little risk of doing serious harm.  And when it was over, it was over, which gave the subject an enormous incentive to cooperate.  Increasing the voltage so that the Chechen actually broke bones against his bonds and the chair—Malinovsky now understood why Kristinich had been so particular about how the man was secured—negated both those advantages.

“Inspect him now.”

The medic complied.  “No broken bones.  No torn muscles.” 

“Then take him close to it, Medic,” Kristinich said sharply.

After a few seconds, Malinovsky nodded. 

Lack of viciousness did not mean mercy, Medic Tarasov belatedly understood. 

It began again. Hideous, Malinovsky thought.  Kristinich sensed his disgust and decided to play with it.  “We are both majors.  Not enough rank to draw too much attention, but enough to have some fun.  He will be killed anyway, so what does it matter how he gets there?”  A sardonic, seductive voice with its own diseased logic.

Malinovsky was trapped.  He had his colonel’s orders to keep it professional.  He had Kristinich before him, using the Chechen’s torment to manipulate and humiliate him.  And there was the Chechen in the chair, who had been too pious a Muslim to commit suicide.  Russians did that, not Chechens.  Any reasonable person would, but when had anyone ever been able to describe the Chechens as reasonable?  Chechens were even less likely to be reasonable than they were to be pious.

Malinovsky decided to act.  He walked to Kristinich, stood behind him, then sank his fingers into Kristinich’s shoulder, driving them hard to bone.  Kristinich became aware of the pressure, then the pain.  Still watching the prisoner, he squirmed in Malinovsky’s grip but dared not tell him to stop or turn to confront him.  From his breathing, Malinovsky knew he was hurting him without coming anywhere close to tearing skin and muscle.  Good.  A small taste of what you like to watch.

 “Pretend you are a professional,” Kristinich sneered, “even if you are a…”

“A Jew?”  Malinovsky now began to manipulate the bones. “Indeed I am, Major Kristinich.  That is why I am doing this.  It’s my way of letting you know when you become unprofessional.”  He relaxed his grasp a moment.  Kristinich sagged.  “So, Major,” Malinovsky went on.  “Every time you turn on the voltage, my Jew fingers will dig into your bones.  Every time you increase the voltage, my Jew fingers will increase the pressure.  If any of the Chechen’s bones are broken, well, as the God of the Jews commands us, ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth…bone for bone.’”

Kristinich shuddered, sick from the pain Malinovsky was inflicting.  The screaming continued.  Malinovsky went on.  “Now, Major, should you wish to remove this inconvenience to your activities, you may either confront me physically or you may terminate the electrocution long enough to permit me to ask some questions.”    

Kristinich signaled to the medic to stop.  The Chechen sagged, exhausted and limp in his bonds, breathing hoarsely.  Malinovsky released Kristinich and went to the prisoner.  “I’m going to give you a moment to rest.  Then I’m going to ask you one question.  If you answer well, I will ask others.  If you do not answer, or answer poorly, this will continue.  The choice is yours.  We will repeat the procedure, fifteen seconds of electricity, one minute to rest, one question, until we reach whatever ending we reach.  You do understand that the rest intervals will simply make the next shocks worse.  My first question is simple.  What is your name?”

No answer.  Malinovsky returned to stand behind Kristinich and placed one hand on his shoulder gently.  “When I squeeze down on your shoulder, Major, you may order the medic to begin.  When I release, you may order the medic to stop.  The pressure will not be great, unless we find ourselves in some sort of disagreement.”

Kristinich nodded.  It began.  Malinovsky moved a bit to one side so that he could see Kristinich’s face.  What he saw on it, he had seen before, and Malinovsky wished he could dismiss it as sexual.  But it wasn’t.  It was the emptiness of watching another’s suffering, of causing another’s sufferings, and feeling nothing oneself, and taking pleasure in that.  It was more than impotence taking pleasure in degradation.  It was emptiness exalting itself.  And Malinovsky understood what a rabbi had once told him.  The Jewish Gehenna wasn’t the Christian Hell of everlasting physical torment.  It was the total absence of God.  Malinovsky had no use for a God, any god, who would permit these things to happen, even encourage and demand them.  But he’d understood about Gehenna as being thrown into an emptiness that tormented humanity by proclaiming, For you, there is nothing else. 

Malinovsky released his grip.  Kristinich signaled the medic to stop, then inspect the prisoner.  Then Malinovsky walked to the Chechen.

“Aslambek Baisultanov, you are a bomb maker and a very good one.  You have been in and out of Chechnya.  Major Kristinich will now recite your recent itinerary.”

Kristinich read off a series of names, dates and places.  Kizlyar and Makhachkala in bordering Dagestan were frequently mentioned, but so also were Sochi on the Black Sea, Rostov, Novorossiysk and Volgograd, or Stalingrad, all in Russia proper.  The Chechen mafia network, Malinovsky could guess:  a great deal of effort, of real work, had gone into obtaining that information, he knew.  “I would like to know more about your caches and contacts.”

Silence once more.  And once more, it began.  Baisultanov shrieked.  The medic operated his equipment in a trance.  Malinovsky guessed the lad had shut his mind down to the absolute minimum.  So had the man he was ordered to torture.  As the interval ended, Malinovsky took a cup of tea, crouched down before the Chechen, held the mug to his bloody, bitten lips, let him drink.  “I have said before, you are very brave.  I say this, one fighting man to another.  But courage here is worth nothing but pain.”

The Chechen drank, then snarled, “We would do worse to you, Jew, and much worse to that Russian dog.”  A whisper now, the defiance almost gone from the voice.

“Insha’Allah, I learned in Afghanistan not to be taken prisoner.  Give him what he wants and we can end this horror.” 

“So, will you now discuss caches and contacts with me?”  Kristinich’s intelligent, interested voice, a voice Malinovsky knew would be in his nightmares until he died, nightmares he knew would make him miss his old, violent dreams from Afghanistan. 

Involuntarily, the Chechen looked to Malinovsky’s battered boxer’s face.  Malinovsky nodded.  “Yes.”  A whisper.  Then, “Thank you.  Jew.”

Malinovsky nodded, then stepped away.  He heard Kristinich, now all professional, say to the Chechen, “It is important to be accurate and honest.”

In the shadows, Suslov could feel Olivia shaking in his grip.  Malinovsky and Kristinich noticed their presence.  Malinovsky felt an accession of shame.  Kristinich observed them for a moment, then turned away, pleased.  Olivia shuddered with the knowledge that, what he was doing to the Chechen so indifferently, he would have no problem doing to them.  The greatest evil, the one that makes the others possible…she put the thought aside.  Then it returned to her, unbidden.  The evil that makes the others possible is the unendurable knowledge of one’s own emptiness, and of the fact that others were not.  She wondered briefly whether what was said of greatness was also true of emptiness.  Some are born that way.  Others aspire to it.  Others have emptiness thrust upon them.

Silently, Suslov took Olivia back to his own quarters.  He wanted to say something kind to her, to touch her gently.  He dared not.  He knew that if he now offered her anything remotely sexual, remotely romantic, she would never forgive him.  She would regard it as an unspeakable betrayal of the thing that was between them, whatever that was, and she would be right.

“Sit down.”  He poured them both a measure of vodka.  Officially, conscripts in the Russian Army were not allowed to drink alcohol.  Unofficially, there was endless alcohol.  If you were wise, you used it to disinfect yourself internally and ease psychological distress while understanding there was not enough alcohol in the world to numb you out, and that alcohol and weapons were not generally a good combination.  “Drink this.”  She did as she was told, coughing hard as the unaccustomed liquor went down.  “You are free to speak.”

She shook her head, opened her mouth to speak.  She shook her head again, and he realized she was struggling for coherence. 

He poured her a second measure of vodka.  “Drink this, too.” 

She took a deep swallow.  “Colonel, how can you allow this?”  Then she stopped.  The vodka was having a mercifully numbing effect.

“Before I answer you, I must ask you a question.”

“What is it?”

“What do you think of the actions of Major Malinovsky?”

“I…I honestly do not know what to think.  I know all the proper words that proper Americans, no, I don’t mean proper people.  I mean the kind who get their moral stature berating others.  I mean…I don’t know what I mean.”

Suslov answered her gently.  “I do not want prisoners taken unless they are needed for interrogation.  When that is over, we shoot them.  I will tell you why.”  He did not pour a second measure for himself.  He needed to be sober as he ticked off the points on his fingers. 

“One.  I am committed to winning this war.  This is why I did not tender my resignation a year ago.  Many officers did, including some of my friends.  The commander and the entire senior staff of the Northern Caucasus military district were sacked for their opposition to this war, and many officers left quietly on their own.  I honestly sympathized with them and respected their choices because this is a filthy war that is already getting worse, but they were wrong.  They abandoned their troops rather than fight a necessary war that Russia has to win.  We need the resources, the water access, and the land routes over the Caucasus and into the Middle East under reliable, which is to say Russian, control.  And frankly, the Caucasus is Russia, has been for centuries.  Do you understand?”

“I do.  I’ve heard the similar things from officers who stayed in the American Army during Vietnam, though they knew how wrong the war was.  I believe they deluded themselves.”

“They did.  If Vietnam had been one of your states, or on your border, it would not have been a delusion.  This is where we live.  We have nowhere else to go.  We cannot afford to delude ourselves.  My second point.  I control how prisoners are treated only while I have physical custody of them.  Prisoners are a pain in the ass to handle, but if I knew they would be treated with mercy and dignity after we turned them over, we would take far more than we do.  The worst thing you can do for enemy morale is to make sure the enemy knows humane treatment is the norm.  I see no point in evacuating prisoners to filtration points to be tortured and raped, and then killed slowly, for amusement, or released for money, so they can spend the rest of their lives avenging what was done to them.  I certainly will not risk the lives of my soldiers for such an end.  Of course, the Russians who are allowed to do such things to other human beings will take their memories home to Mother Russia, where they will relieve their distress not on their commanders, who betrayed them by refusing to demand humane conduct, but on people who are blameless.  It prevents some very serious problems to simply refuse to take many prisoners, and to quickly kill those we do take when we are done. 

“Three.  I am responsible for providing accurate, timely information.  I have the normal responsibilities of any commander to my own soldiers and their families, but I am also responsible to the soldiers and the families of the commanders I support.  And to Chechen civilians.  If I fail in my responsibilities, innocent people die needlessly.  I have no control over Major Kristinich and I find him an abomination but he has his own mission and his own organization.  I can limit him to prisoners who will not talk to my officers or me, even with the assistance of the methods I am willing to apply, although he really does not care whom he tortures.  I think I would make him as happy as any Chechen.  I know that you certainly would.  His real value is in encouraging other prisoners to cooperate.  He also provides a splendid warning to my men as to what they’ll turn into if they indulge his habits.”

The vodka had hit Olivia full force on an empty stomach, taking the anger and the disgust out of her, along with most of what remained of her strength.  Carefully, she backed up to a wall and let herself slide down it until she ended up sitting on the floor.  She did not, however, spill a drop of what remained in her glass.  What was left was simply sorrow and a shaking fear.  “Is what I saw really necessary?”

Suslov folded himself up neatly and gracefully to sit on the floor beside her, looked at her out of the corner of his eye, sidelong and wise as a stallion.  “I was told you were badly hurt in an airplane crash caused by a student who chose a final approach to give you a demonstration of his epilepsy, which he had not bothered to mention before.  Nevertheless, you evacuated him because you did not want him to burn to death.  In the process, you did yourself further serious damage.  This is correct?”  She nodded.  “That pain was the value you assigned to the life of one not particularly good human being.  Now, you have been in and out of this brigade for half a year.  You owe your life many times over to Warrant Officer Simonov and your security team, and I think no one has insulted or abused you.”

“No, I have been treated with nothing but courtesy and even kindness.”

“So now let us assume I am a Chechen intelligence officer and you are my prisoner.  Are you going to tell me what I want to know, what I need to know to keep my people alive?  And if you refuse, the worst I do is shoot you in the head?”  Silent, Olivia took another swallow of vodka.  It was rough but it did what it was supposed to.

“Did you learn this in Afghanistan?”

He turned directly to her and she met his eyes.  Their faces were inches apart.  He made no attempt to close the gap, mercifully gave no sign of wanting to.  She could see the intricate network of fine lines around his eyes, even the pinpoint scars from the stitches where his face had been sewn back together after one of his wounds.  She could also see briefly the real pain behind the professional distance.  “My younger brother was killed in Afghanistan.  He was not career; he planned on doing his two conscript years as a sniper.  He was, like our mother, a wonderful marksman.  Then he planned on being a scientist, perhaps a geologist, perhaps a naturalist.  He was sorting through those ideas when he was captured alive.  The grenade he had saved for himself was defective.  His captors first flayed him alive, then disemboweled him.  I escorted the remains back in a sealed coffin.”

Suslov could not say why, exactly, he had told her about Aleksandr.  It certainly wasn’t the vodka talking.  He might not drink the way so many Russians did but he could still drink.  Then he realized that in some faint and delicate way, she reminded him of Aleksandr.  He pursued that thought with great care.  When Aleksandr had spoken of his interests, Suslov felt his younger brother could lead him straight into the heart of the world.  Doctor Tolchinskaya made him think that he could follow her straight into the workings of the universe.  He supposed it was no worse a reason, and certainly a more interesting one, than a large, firm bosom to find a woman intriguing. 

Olivia watched him compose himself, regain his distance, and look away.  As quickly as it had come, the personal moment was gone and she was grateful. 

 “Many techniques are actually taught to Spetsnaz.  I would think your Army’s Special Forces and Rangers, the Recon elements of the Marines, teach the same or similar techniques.  How much they actually use them…”  He shrugged.  “In Afghanistan, the only mistreatment of prisoners by Soviets that I saw was just hot-blooded anger by men who had lost comrades and very little of that.  The Afghans treated prisoners, Soviet and Afghan alike, with horrible cruelty.  We did not always take prisoners or accept surrenders, but I never saw a prisoner murdered, never heard of it.  Certainly it was done by all kinds of units and I know people who did these things.  But these things were not done in any unit I or my close friends commanded or served in. These were Airborne and Spetsnaz troops, whom I know you were told murdered very casually and with great brutality.”

“And the mines disguised as toys and the machine gunning of women and children and old men from helicopters?”

“Those things happened, yes.  If you want someone to defend them, I am sure Major Kristinich will.”  He paused.  “We studied your tactics in Vietnam very closely.  No, you did not disguise mines as toys, although you turned your ally of South Vietnam into a single immense field of unexploded ordnance.  Ninety percent of all your bombs and nearly all your artillery were used on South Vietnamese soil.  Would you have been so generous with your ordnance if you’d been fighting in California?” 

 “I doubt it.  But that is not the issue here.”

“What is the issue?”

“The issue is Kristinich and those who accept him.  Kristinich’s crime,” Olivia said through the vodka, “is that he tortures not because he needs to but because he likes to.  Your tragedy is that if you believe that if you can limit torture to what you or Major Malinovsky defines as professional methods to a moral end, you see nothing wrong with it.”

“And what do you think of what Major Malinovsky did tonight?”

“I think,” she said, suddenly intense, “that if torture could be measured by the kilo, and tonight you used only ten instead of twenty, there might be some value.  But it’s all tragic.”

Suslov realized that he had been exceptionally foolish not to have a second measure of vodka, hesitated, then poured for himself.  “Tell me, with so many lives at stake, what else would you have me do, Doctor Tolchinskaya?  This is not two knightly armies meeting on an empty field.  This is trying to separate people who want to kill us from people who do not—and who look and speak and dress identically.  The only apparent difference is that the bad Chechens aim weapons at us while the good ones do not.  The good and the not so good, amongst whom the bad ones hide, some of whom are hostages and some of whom are quite willing shields and supporters—how are we to know?  Chechen clan structure is very difficult for Russians to penetrate and exploit, or even sometimes understand.  Sorting this out is not so simple as learning American divisional patches and branch insignia.  Yes, for us torture has been for at least a century just a way of life, a means to control people, enforce compliance, and impose terror.  But I also know of no other tool, professionally used, so effective at producing information within close time constraints if you know what to look for and when you are dealing with tough prisoners who know something and who are motivated not to cooperate.  It works.  Often enough.”

“Comrade Colonel, I am an engineer, not a philosopher.  I did not say you were wrong.  I did not say this is your crime, I said this is your tragedy.  And I know I am disturbing you.”

He inhaled sharply as if he had taken a hard body blow.  “It would take one call to have you on a plane back to Moscow.”

“Probably.  To do my job to the standards of others, I do not have to be here.  Perhaps some of them would even prefer that I not be here.”

“You will certainly not be punished for not doing more than they do.  Not when those who should be here, are not.  The sons and daughters of the generals and the politicians who think this war is a good idea are not here.  They let other people’s children die doing their duty to Mother Russia.  So that leaves the professionals, like myself, the conscripts who refuse to dodge the draft, sadists who expect to be paid for their cruelty, and people who think they can actually do something decent here.  You are one of them.  I would expect you to go running to the human rights activists, except that I see so few of them here.”

“You won’t.  They don’t need to be here.  Their agenda is feeling good about themselves.  I despise them.  If their figures were accurate and their operations practical, it might be different. I cannot abide the ways they twist tragedies and crimes to inflate their own self-righteousness.  I knew human rights activists in America.  Too many remind me of dogs barking furiously from behind the screen door.  Open the door and watch how they refuse to go into the street.  So, what do you want me to do?  Am I enough of an additional duty and a burden that you would prefer I not return?”

“No.”  Spoken as softly and quietly as the word could possibly be pronounced.  He did not know what was showing in his eyes.  Longing, perhaps.  Or something that might be called desire if he hadn’t chosen to dismiss his sexuality as nothing more than the annoyance of a passing erection.   Love, if love between men and women was not hopelessly confused with sex. Friendship, if you were allowed, when you thought of a woman, to remember your brother, not your sister or your own former wife, who had turned away in disgust at things you had found it necessary to do for your country a few years before.

 Suslov turned to look at her again.  Watching his eyes, Olivia realized that he was very remote and detached, and yet also entirely present.  This was the way she lived:  remote and detached, too much of herself buried far down, out of the reach of the weak, the petty, the trivial.  In America, she’d buried herself to protect herself against the smallness.  Now she was returning to life, but in this awful way, in this awful place, on behalf of a country as inured to its own brutality as America was to its own stupidity.  Then Suslov spoke.

“I would rather be blinded than fight in this city without you.  I do not want you hating yourself for coming to terms with what I do and what you will be helping exploit.”  He looked away from her, closed his eyes, listened to her breathe, out of respect for her refusing to want anything from her.

“Then I will go on as I have.”

“Thank you, my friend.”  His eyes still closed, he reached out, meaning to touch her lightly where he had gripped her so hard, then let his hand fall to the cement.  “How long since you have really slept?”

“As long as I have been here.”

“Tell your medic that you have had a hundred grams of vodka—the daily ration for front line troops during the Great Patriotic War, incidentally.  He can adjust sedative dosage so you don’t wake up dead.  If at all possible, you should get about twelve hours’ sleep.  Tomorrow, you move in with the brigade staff.  It was a mistake to separate you like I did.  We have been cruel to expect you to go through this alone, rather than with your brothers.”

“Thank you.”

“One final question, if I might.”

“Please, go on.”

“What do you think of what your boxing instructor did tonight?”

“I think that…I think that he is my brother.”

 

After two days of more-or-less very delicately avoiding each other, Olivia sat down before Suslov in the mess area.  He looked up at her with a startled relief that, he knew, showed clearly in his face.  He watched her acknowledge the fact, then tuck it carefully away inside of her for later examination.  “I will be back in approximately six weeks’ time,” she said.  “I’ll be bringing some of my people into Khankala.”

“I had wondered about that.”

“I’m an American.  I need to prove my work and my worth in the way a Russian wouldn’t.  I couldn’t ask anyone else to risk their lives for something I created until I was certain it would perform well enough and reliably enough under combat conditions to justify initial low-rate production.”

“You understand that you will soon not be allowed that purity?”  There was no scorn in his voice.  “You understand that they may die because of your success.”

“I do.”

“If I can, I will be here.  If I cannot, please regard my brigade not only as your test bed, but also as your military home, even as your work takes you elsewhere.”

“I will do so.  Thank you, my friend.”

He smiled at her, a beautiful man, worn and weary and elegant as a Japanese sword.  “Be safe, my friend.  When you see my sister again, give her my love.  Both of them, please.”

At the other end of the mess area, Simonov was having breakfast with a buddy from back home in Petersburg, a sergeant with a nearby motorized rifle regiment.  He watched his pal break off his conversation with him to stare at Olivia.  “Your colonel could do a lot better.  I mean, she’s not ugly, but she’s not really a woman.”

Simonov found himself getting angry.  “Misha, she’s my principal.  And she’s not like that.”  He wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but he didn’t really care.

“Sure, you’re just being a loyal, politically reliable whisperer.”  There was a first time for everything, Simonov thought in amazement, but a whisperer, not much better than a stool pigeon, was not something he’d ever expected to hear himself called.  On the other hand, Misha’s colonel was famous for calling his soldiers dumb pricks and worse.  Clearly, Misha was learning some very bad habits.  Back in Petersburg, he had been a lower class street thug, but not a dumb prick.  Well then, fish rot from the head down.  Simonov remembered his first reaction to Suslov and the simple rules of conduct he ruthlessly enforced, breaking hard on offenders and harder on them the more rank they had.  An idealistic Communist who didn’t understand the world had changed, Simonov had thought at first.  Then:  well, maybe and maybe not.  But Suslov was by far the best officer he’d ever served under and you could see it in how the brigade responded.  It occurred to him that in the way of soldiers who have good officers, he had a father he was proud of, and who was proud of him. 

“She’s an American engineer,” Simonov began cautiously. 

“And we know what they say about American women.”

“Whoever they are, they aren’t here.  The brigade thinks very highly of her.  American television crap doesn’t count.”

  Misha smirked.  Simonov glared.  He had known Misha for years, since he was a kid.  What he wanted to do now was grab his head and acquaint it with the tabletop. 

“Sure, the Brigade thinks highly of her.  For sexual services.  I mean, beggars can’t be choosers.  I certainly wouldn’t say no to her.”

The day this brigade lets an uncultured pig like you say two words to our Doctor is the day you become an American rock poet…

As Olivia began walking towards him to begin their final day, an idea presented itself to Simonov.  He wondered if she could read his mind.  Very likely.  They had, in the way of people who spent a lot of time together in danger, gotten extremely good at picking up on the other’s thoughts with very few, if any, words.  “Her Russian is better than yours.”

“I bet it is.  Hey, Pah Pah Zhe.  I mean, what’s she going to do?”  Simonov grimaced at the invocation, PPZh, was military slang for pokhodno polevye zhenya, or marching field wife.  Still, Misha had given him his chance.  Simonov rose to greet Olivia.  “Do you know what he said about you, Doctor?”

“Please, sit down, Warrant Officer.  Of course.  I couldn’t help but hear.”

She gets it…

“My buddy’s lucky,” said Misha.  “Working for you.  I bet you’re working for him, though.”

Olivia looked down at Misha with mild curiosity, then turned calmly to Simonov.

She gets it!

“Friend of yours, Warrant Officer?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps you could suggest to your friend that he stand in the presence of a woman he has taken such an interest in.”

Misha turned and gaped at him.

“Go ahead,” Simonov said cheerfully.  “It could be a new experience for you.”

Misha grinned, then started to rise.  The next thing he felt was Olivia’s right fist slamming into his jaw and the floor coming up hard in his back and his head.  The next thing he saw was the two of them standing over him before Simonov dumped water in his face.

“You didn’t tell me she could hit,” he sputtered.

“She kills, too,” Simonov said quietly.

Olivia bent down, offered Misha her hand.  He looked at it cautiously.  It was her right.  Slowly, he extended his hand.  She took it.  He had an instant to be startled by the strength of her grip before her left fist slammed into his jaw.

“Nice, Doctor.  I hoped you would do that.”

“Didn’t you teach me that if he’s moving, shoot him again?”

“Got any more water?”

“No.  But my tea won’t scald him.”

“Do it.”

Misha sputtered back to consciousness, angry and afraid and humiliated, took in the fact that only Simonov was standing over him.  “What the fuck did you let her do that for?”

“Let her?  It’s not like she needed my permission.  Only my telepathic encouragement.”

“I’m not going to forget this.”

“Hey…I told you she wasn’t like that.”