FIC: The Good Samaritan - Part 4
Author: Trisha
Beta: kazlynh
Rating: NC17 in places
Artwork: Myself and the late and much loved _tayler
Summary: Follow on from 'The Bourne Supremacy'
Feedback:Yes please
Chapter 4
He knew they were dreams, this barrage of images that were so vivid, and at the same time so confusing. They weren’t real… And yet…There was pain, how could there be pain in a dream?
He looked up into the laughing face of the man whom he had come to learn could be either his god or his devil… He felt the iron grip of the hands that were restraining him, knew that he had to obey, not fight against whatever was going to happen.
And he tried, tried so hard to do what was expected of him, always tried but…
“Niet…”
The restraining hands on his arm, felt so cold: as cold as the dark eyes that were laughing at him. Someone had once told him that there was no soul behind those eyes… He knew that there was little in the way of humanity.
“Niet…!”
He began to struggle against the cold hands, began to disobey the voice that was ordering him to submit; to accept; to be still.
“Niet!”
“It’s alright. There’s nothing to be afraid of… Just lie back, relax.”
The words were spoken in English, not Russian. The softly spoken voice was British and the cool grip on his arms insistent… but gentle. He opened his eyes to see a different face, from the one in his dreams, looking down on him, concern in the bright blue eyes. “You were having a bad dream,” the man told him, “You’re quite safe. It’s alright.”
It took him a moment to recognise the man, to vaguely remember where he was. “M-my Samaritan…”
“Usually I just go by the name David,” the man smiled. “Lie back down now, rest.”
He didn’t even realise he’d been trying to sit up. He lay back slowly against the pillows and the cool hands released him. It occurred to him that the man’s hands felt cold because he’d been outside. He was still wearing a coat.
“Where have you been?” If he had gone to the authorities, the police… Kirill tried to think calmly, ignore the increasing feeling of panic that was rising up inside him, and listen to what the man had to say.
“I work at the hospital, teach there, part-time these days but I had to go in this morning. To be honest I thought you’d sleep through for much longer than this. How are you feeling?” Slowly warming fingers lifted his hand, resting over his pulse.
He couldn't think, wasn't sure what to do, and his head was starting to ache. “I-I need to go, to leave.”
“Go where, back out there onto the streets?” his Samaritan raised an eyebrow. “The forecast is for heavy snow today, which has already started, and tonight they expect the temperature to drop close to record levels. Do you really want to be out there on a day like today?”
“I…” He didn't know what he wanted.
He stared up at the ceiling. If he was honest he doubted he would make it to the door of the room without help. He couldn’t hold back a sigh of frustration.
“Accept my help, just for a couple of days,” his Samaritan insisted, “until you’re feeling better... I give you my word that I won’t involve the hospital, the police, the welfare authorities or anyone else.”
“Why? Why do you do this for me?” In his experience there was always a price to pay.
“Because…” His Samaritan paused a slight frown creasing his brow, and then went on, “It’s what people do. They help each other.”
He doubted anyone was that naive, but whatever the true reason he didn’t really have any choice, and they both knew it. “A day or two,” he conceded.
“Good!” The fingers that had taken his pulse gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “Why don’t we begin by you giving me a name? What do I call you?”
“Kirill.”
“I’m David, as I said. Now, what I propose next is that I go and hang up my coat, fetch my medical bag, and you allow me to examine you.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Of course. I’d like to help, but only if you let me.”
Kirill turned his face away from the man, gazed at the large snowflakes that were drifting passed the window. He should not have allowed this man to help him. He should have been stronger than this, needed to be, but he was so tired and things…
Things were so confused…
“Would you like me to leave you alone to rest for a while?”
Kirill shook his head, still unable to look at the man, “Fetch your bag.”
The examination was slow and thorough, and at times more than a little uncomfortable, but the old man had an easy, soothing manner that Kirill found himself responding to. Surprisingly he didn’t ask him all that many questions and the ones that he did ask seemed to focus on the degree of pain he was in from his various injuries.
“I think you’ve had enough for today,” the old man told him eventually, covering him with the heavy quilt. “There’s a deli a couple of blocks away that makes the most delicious chicken broth. I picked some up on the way home from the hospital. Why don’t you rest whilst I go and heat some up for you?”
“I am not hungry.” He knew he ought to be. He had no idea how long it had been since he last ate anything.
“Perhaps not, but you do need to eat, even if it’s just a little…”
He nodded, closing his eyes while the man continued to talk, the voice fading as sleep began to overtake him.
~~~~~~~~
David had to wake the man, Kirill, when he returned with the broth. That wasn’t unexpected of course. He’d known even before examining him that the man was exhausted, he just hadn’t realised the extent of that exhaustion.
David adjusted the pillows so that the young man was sitting up a little more. The broth had been one of the few things that he could convince Margaret to eat when she was ill. The smell of it heating in the kitchen had brought back a flood of memories, fond but sad. They had shared long conversations, talks that had gone on for days in fact, as they planned vacations to long dreamt of destinations, trips they were going to take together once she was well, ignoring that terrible unvoiced truth between them that there was no chance of recovery.
God he missed her so!
“Just take what you can,” David told the young Russian as he fed him. “I know you’re not feeling hungry but you do need to eat to get your strength back.”
He got a nod of understanding, and it was clear to David that the young man did make an effort to eat, but even so he barely took half the small bowl of soup David had heated for him. He’d try again later.
He set the bowl aside and poured water from the carafe. “Kirill!”
The young man was already starting to doze, “Kirill, stay awake a little longer, listen to me.” The uninjured eye flickered open. “I need you to pay attention, just for a moment. Are you allergic to any kind of medication, that you know of?”
“Niet… No.”
“Well that’s something at least. I have a couple of tablets for you to take, an antibiotic and something for the pain.”
“I-I do not need…”
“Indulge me,” David urged him with a smile. “Take the tablets. Your body has enough to cope with right now; a little pain relief won’t do any harm.”
“As you wish,” Kirill conceded with a sigh, taking the pills. David held the glass for him while he drank and then lowered the pillows to make him more comfortable.
“I’ll leave you to rest now.”
~~~~~~~~~
Lefortovo Prison, Moscow.
The indignity of being forced to shuffle along the ridiculous white and rose painted corridors of Lefortovo Prison in ankle manacles, his wrists cuffed to the chain fastened around his waist, was not lost on Yuri Gretkov. Nor was the fact that they had chosen Lefortovo, an FSB prison for enemies of the state, to incarcerate him whilst awaiting trial. They had paraded him like this to both his court appearances, no doubt to please the American observers who had been present to see the charges against him detailed.
It had been a farce, a circus performance with him as the main attraction.
They were taking him to one of the interrogation rooms. He knew the route well enough, though the walk hadn’t had the same crap-your-pants factor when he’d been the one leading the prisoners: back in his KGB days. The KGB of course was a thing of the past, replaced by the FSB, but no one was fooled, no one at all.
What worried Yuri, truly worried him, was that since his transfer to Lefortovo his wealth had meant nothing. In a country where you could buy your own cop for twenty US dollars this was extremely disturbing. It could only mean one of two things: that the political influence brought to bear here came from the very top; or they’d had the shit scared out of them and the fear of what would happen if they were caught accepting a bribe from him was greater than the lure of the money. Either way it left Yuri sleeping with one fucking blanket and surviving on a diet of boiled potatoes.
They reached the interrogation room and found two men outside, one either side of the door, both of them had short, almost military-regulation hair cuts, expensive clothes, and the blank-eyed stares of seasoned FSB men. One of them knocked and then opened the door, only the prison guard escorted him inside.
One man waited in the room. He was standing near one of the barred windows, staring out. He was tall and whip-chord lean, impeccably dressed in a dark grey bespoke tailored suit; pale, mauve, silk shirt; and striped tie. His thick, short brown hair was turning white, as was his well trimmed moustache and goatee. It didn’t detract from the man’s handsome, if heavily lined, face.
The guard removed Yuri’s chains.
“Leave us!”
It wasn’t until the guard had left that the man turned away from the window and smiled at him. The broad smile reached the brown eyes but that meant very little with this man; whose eyes Yuri had disliked meeting from the day the two of them had first met. There was something deep within Nikolai Uspensky’s eyes that made men shudder, something cold and empty.
“Yuri, you look terrible old friend.”
Yuri sat on one of the metal chairs that were bolted to the floor. “You’d look terrible if you were stuck in this shit-hole. Give me a cigarette, and not a Russian one for pity's sake.”
Uspensky laughed and reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. He took one for himself before passing the packet over to Yuri. He lit both with a silver lighter that he returned to his pocket.
“This little holiday has done nothing for your temper I see.”
Yuri took a long grateful pull on the cigarette. “Not a great deal, no.”
Nikolai inspected the table carefully before perching on the edge near Yuri. “Consider this a minor inconvenience, a rock on life’s road.”
A small flame of hope ignited somewhere deep inside Yuri, but he didn’t let it show. “What does that mean exactly?”
“It means that you were incredibly stupid involving yourself with Ward Abbott. He was a problem you should have dealt with years ago!”
“He was useful.”
“He was a loose end, and you should know better than to leave those lying around.”
Yuri snorted, “Hindsight.” Everyone was a fucking expert with hindsight.
“Commonsense. Kirill recovered the Neski files without a hitch. It would have been a simple matter for him to have taken out Abbott, problems solved. But no… Abbott concocts this elaborate scheme to frame both Bourne and that half-witted zealot Conklin, and you send Kirill off to India to kill Jason Bourne.”
“And he failed!” Yuri snapped. “Your precious fucking Kirill failed. Twice.”
“I met with him when he returned from India. He thought it was a good kill, the driver in the back of the head at distance. He was proud of the shot. He didn’t even know the Kreutz girl existed, did he? You didn’t tell him about her.”
“It wasn’t relevant!”
Nikolai shook his head. “Bullshit Yuri! You know better. If he’d have known about her, he would have factored her in, been aware that the girl could have been the one driving the car and not Bourne. His plan would have included the girl. I trained Kirill not to leave the loose ends that you seem so fond of.”
“And now he’s one of them.” Yuri knew the words were a mistake the moment they left his mouth.
The smile faded from Nikolai’s face and he ground his cigarette out in the ashtray on the table. “Your attempt on his life in the hospital was foolish.”
“Only because it failed…”
“No, you’re wrong.”
“Why then?”
“Because Trediakovsky is mine you arrogant little bastard!” Nikolai gripped the front of his shirt, hauling him up from the chair and shaking him like a dog. “I loaned him to you, that is all. What gives you the right to think you can destroy something that belongs to me?”
He released his grip and Yuri fell back into the chair gasping for breath and rubbing at his neck. He watched Nikolai carefully, saw him visibly calm himself.
“This is not why I am here.”
“Why are you here?” Yuri choked out.
Nikolai got off the table. “It will be announced, sometime next year, that the Justice Ministry is taking over responsibility for Lefortovo and the other pre-trial detention centres currently under the jurisdiction of the FSB,” he told Yuri as he walked back over to the window and looked out. “The change is purely cosmetic of course, a mask to satisfy Putin’s critics. That is all your being here ever was; cosmetic.”
“But the trial?”
“There will be no trial. The American’s are agreeable.”
“Why?”
“An exchange of favours: the whole thing will be dropped before it ever gets to court.”
“And I’m free?” Yuri asked, that small flame of hope suddenly rising again.
Nikolai gave him a nod.
“When? How long? Today, tomorrow?”
Uspensky laughed. “Are you so eager to leave?”
“I hate this fucking place!” Yuri realised that he had barely smoked his cigarette, though he still held on to it. He threw it into the ashtray. “May I have another?”
“Of course.”
Yuri took one, surprised to find his fingers shaking slightly. It was the relief, he knew it was. He put it in his mouth and Nikolai took out his lighter, flicking it to life and leaning over so Yuri could light his cigarette.
“No more teasing, you’re out of here today. I just have one thing to clear up?”
Yuri raised a curious eyebrow, “What’s that?”
He felt a sudden sharp pain in his neck, looked around to see Nikolai removing the hypodermic, capping the needle before it went in his pocket.
“A loose end,” he told him, smiling as Yuri began to fight for air.
~~~~~
Nikolai watched dispassionately as Gretkov pitched from the chair to the floor, where he twitched and flopped like a fish out of water. It took the man an inconveniently long time to die.
Though they’d known each other for many years Nikolai felt no great loss. The man’s arrogance had made him weak, foolish. Worst of all, he had involved Kirill in all of this, and now…
Kirill would not die like this; for the boy he would make it personal, beautiful… And he would grieve.
He strode over the body on the floor and knocked on the door. It was opened by one of his own men and he beckoned the prison guard over.
“You might want to alert the prison doctor,” he told him as he retrieved his overcoat and gloves from his man, slipped them on, “It would appear that Mr Gretkov has suffered a heart-attack.”
~~~~~~~~~~
to be continued...
Beta: kazlynh
Rating: NC17 in places
Artwork: Myself and the late and much loved _tayler
Summary: Follow on from 'The Bourne Supremacy'
Feedback:Yes please
Chapter 4
He knew they were dreams, this barrage of images that were so vivid, and at the same time so confusing. They weren’t real… And yet…There was pain, how could there be pain in a dream?
He looked up into the laughing face of the man whom he had come to learn could be either his god or his devil… He felt the iron grip of the hands that were restraining him, knew that he had to obey, not fight against whatever was going to happen.
And he tried, tried so hard to do what was expected of him, always tried but…
“Niet…”
The restraining hands on his arm, felt so cold: as cold as the dark eyes that were laughing at him. Someone had once told him that there was no soul behind those eyes… He knew that there was little in the way of humanity.
“Niet…!”
He began to struggle against the cold hands, began to disobey the voice that was ordering him to submit; to accept; to be still.
“Niet!”
“It’s alright. There’s nothing to be afraid of… Just lie back, relax.”
The words were spoken in English, not Russian. The softly spoken voice was British and the cool grip on his arms insistent… but gentle. He opened his eyes to see a different face, from the one in his dreams, looking down on him, concern in the bright blue eyes. “You were having a bad dream,” the man told him, “You’re quite safe. It’s alright.”
It took him a moment to recognise the man, to vaguely remember where he was. “M-my Samaritan…”
“Usually I just go by the name David,” the man smiled. “Lie back down now, rest.”
He didn’t even realise he’d been trying to sit up. He lay back slowly against the pillows and the cool hands released him. It occurred to him that the man’s hands felt cold because he’d been outside. He was still wearing a coat.
“Where have you been?” If he had gone to the authorities, the police… Kirill tried to think calmly, ignore the increasing feeling of panic that was rising up inside him, and listen to what the man had to say.
“I work at the hospital, teach there, part-time these days but I had to go in this morning. To be honest I thought you’d sleep through for much longer than this. How are you feeling?” Slowly warming fingers lifted his hand, resting over his pulse.
He couldn't think, wasn't sure what to do, and his head was starting to ache. “I-I need to go, to leave.”
“Go where, back out there onto the streets?” his Samaritan raised an eyebrow. “The forecast is for heavy snow today, which has already started, and tonight they expect the temperature to drop close to record levels. Do you really want to be out there on a day like today?”
“I…” He didn't know what he wanted.
He stared up at the ceiling. If he was honest he doubted he would make it to the door of the room without help. He couldn’t hold back a sigh of frustration.
“Accept my help, just for a couple of days,” his Samaritan insisted, “until you’re feeling better... I give you my word that I won’t involve the hospital, the police, the welfare authorities or anyone else.”
“Why? Why do you do this for me?” In his experience there was always a price to pay.
“Because…” His Samaritan paused a slight frown creasing his brow, and then went on, “It’s what people do. They help each other.”
He doubted anyone was that naive, but whatever the true reason he didn’t really have any choice, and they both knew it. “A day or two,” he conceded.
“Good!” The fingers that had taken his pulse gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “Why don’t we begin by you giving me a name? What do I call you?”
“Kirill.”
“I’m David, as I said. Now, what I propose next is that I go and hang up my coat, fetch my medical bag, and you allow me to examine you.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Of course. I’d like to help, but only if you let me.”
Kirill turned his face away from the man, gazed at the large snowflakes that were drifting passed the window. He should not have allowed this man to help him. He should have been stronger than this, needed to be, but he was so tired and things…
Things were so confused…
“Would you like me to leave you alone to rest for a while?”
Kirill shook his head, still unable to look at the man, “Fetch your bag.”
The examination was slow and thorough, and at times more than a little uncomfortable, but the old man had an easy, soothing manner that Kirill found himself responding to. Surprisingly he didn’t ask him all that many questions and the ones that he did ask seemed to focus on the degree of pain he was in from his various injuries.
“I think you’ve had enough for today,” the old man told him eventually, covering him with the heavy quilt. “There’s a deli a couple of blocks away that makes the most delicious chicken broth. I picked some up on the way home from the hospital. Why don’t you rest whilst I go and heat some up for you?”
“I am not hungry.” He knew he ought to be. He had no idea how long it had been since he last ate anything.
“Perhaps not, but you do need to eat, even if it’s just a little…”
He nodded, closing his eyes while the man continued to talk, the voice fading as sleep began to overtake him.
~~~~~~~~
David had to wake the man, Kirill, when he returned with the broth. That wasn’t unexpected of course. He’d known even before examining him that the man was exhausted, he just hadn’t realised the extent of that exhaustion.
David adjusted the pillows so that the young man was sitting up a little more. The broth had been one of the few things that he could convince Margaret to eat when she was ill. The smell of it heating in the kitchen had brought back a flood of memories, fond but sad. They had shared long conversations, talks that had gone on for days in fact, as they planned vacations to long dreamt of destinations, trips they were going to take together once she was well, ignoring that terrible unvoiced truth between them that there was no chance of recovery.
God he missed her so!
“Just take what you can,” David told the young Russian as he fed him. “I know you’re not feeling hungry but you do need to eat to get your strength back.”
He got a nod of understanding, and it was clear to David that the young man did make an effort to eat, but even so he barely took half the small bowl of soup David had heated for him. He’d try again later.
He set the bowl aside and poured water from the carafe. “Kirill!”
The young man was already starting to doze, “Kirill, stay awake a little longer, listen to me.” The uninjured eye flickered open. “I need you to pay attention, just for a moment. Are you allergic to any kind of medication, that you know of?”
“Niet… No.”
“Well that’s something at least. I have a couple of tablets for you to take, an antibiotic and something for the pain.”
“I-I do not need…”
“Indulge me,” David urged him with a smile. “Take the tablets. Your body has enough to cope with right now; a little pain relief won’t do any harm.”
“As you wish,” Kirill conceded with a sigh, taking the pills. David held the glass for him while he drank and then lowered the pillows to make him more comfortable.
“I’ll leave you to rest now.”
~~~~~~~~~
Lefortovo Prison, Moscow.
The indignity of being forced to shuffle along the ridiculous white and rose painted corridors of Lefortovo Prison in ankle manacles, his wrists cuffed to the chain fastened around his waist, was not lost on Yuri Gretkov. Nor was the fact that they had chosen Lefortovo, an FSB prison for enemies of the state, to incarcerate him whilst awaiting trial. They had paraded him like this to both his court appearances, no doubt to please the American observers who had been present to see the charges against him detailed.
It had been a farce, a circus performance with him as the main attraction.
They were taking him to one of the interrogation rooms. He knew the route well enough, though the walk hadn’t had the same crap-your-pants factor when he’d been the one leading the prisoners: back in his KGB days. The KGB of course was a thing of the past, replaced by the FSB, but no one was fooled, no one at all.
What worried Yuri, truly worried him, was that since his transfer to Lefortovo his wealth had meant nothing. In a country where you could buy your own cop for twenty US dollars this was extremely disturbing. It could only mean one of two things: that the political influence brought to bear here came from the very top; or they’d had the shit scared out of them and the fear of what would happen if they were caught accepting a bribe from him was greater than the lure of the money. Either way it left Yuri sleeping with one fucking blanket and surviving on a diet of boiled potatoes.
They reached the interrogation room and found two men outside, one either side of the door, both of them had short, almost military-regulation hair cuts, expensive clothes, and the blank-eyed stares of seasoned FSB men. One of them knocked and then opened the door, only the prison guard escorted him inside.
One man waited in the room. He was standing near one of the barred windows, staring out. He was tall and whip-chord lean, impeccably dressed in a dark grey bespoke tailored suit; pale, mauve, silk shirt; and striped tie. His thick, short brown hair was turning white, as was his well trimmed moustache and goatee. It didn’t detract from the man’s handsome, if heavily lined, face.
The guard removed Yuri’s chains.
“Leave us!”
It wasn’t until the guard had left that the man turned away from the window and smiled at him. The broad smile reached the brown eyes but that meant very little with this man; whose eyes Yuri had disliked meeting from the day the two of them had first met. There was something deep within Nikolai Uspensky’s eyes that made men shudder, something cold and empty.
“Yuri, you look terrible old friend.”
Yuri sat on one of the metal chairs that were bolted to the floor. “You’d look terrible if you were stuck in this shit-hole. Give me a cigarette, and not a Russian one for pity's sake.”
Uspensky laughed and reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. He took one for himself before passing the packet over to Yuri. He lit both with a silver lighter that he returned to his pocket.
“This little holiday has done nothing for your temper I see.”
Yuri took a long grateful pull on the cigarette. “Not a great deal, no.”
Nikolai inspected the table carefully before perching on the edge near Yuri. “Consider this a minor inconvenience, a rock on life’s road.”
A small flame of hope ignited somewhere deep inside Yuri, but he didn’t let it show. “What does that mean exactly?”
“It means that you were incredibly stupid involving yourself with Ward Abbott. He was a problem you should have dealt with years ago!”
“He was useful.”
“He was a loose end, and you should know better than to leave those lying around.”
Yuri snorted, “Hindsight.” Everyone was a fucking expert with hindsight.
“Commonsense. Kirill recovered the Neski files without a hitch. It would have been a simple matter for him to have taken out Abbott, problems solved. But no… Abbott concocts this elaborate scheme to frame both Bourne and that half-witted zealot Conklin, and you send Kirill off to India to kill Jason Bourne.”
“And he failed!” Yuri snapped. “Your precious fucking Kirill failed. Twice.”
“I met with him when he returned from India. He thought it was a good kill, the driver in the back of the head at distance. He was proud of the shot. He didn’t even know the Kreutz girl existed, did he? You didn’t tell him about her.”
“It wasn’t relevant!”
Nikolai shook his head. “Bullshit Yuri! You know better. If he’d have known about her, he would have factored her in, been aware that the girl could have been the one driving the car and not Bourne. His plan would have included the girl. I trained Kirill not to leave the loose ends that you seem so fond of.”
“And now he’s one of them.” Yuri knew the words were a mistake the moment they left his mouth.
The smile faded from Nikolai’s face and he ground his cigarette out in the ashtray on the table. “Your attempt on his life in the hospital was foolish.”
“Only because it failed…”
“No, you’re wrong.”
“Why then?”
“Because Trediakovsky is mine you arrogant little bastard!” Nikolai gripped the front of his shirt, hauling him up from the chair and shaking him like a dog. “I loaned him to you, that is all. What gives you the right to think you can destroy something that belongs to me?”
He released his grip and Yuri fell back into the chair gasping for breath and rubbing at his neck. He watched Nikolai carefully, saw him visibly calm himself.
“This is not why I am here.”
“Why are you here?” Yuri choked out.
Nikolai got off the table. “It will be announced, sometime next year, that the Justice Ministry is taking over responsibility for Lefortovo and the other pre-trial detention centres currently under the jurisdiction of the FSB,” he told Yuri as he walked back over to the window and looked out. “The change is purely cosmetic of course, a mask to satisfy Putin’s critics. That is all your being here ever was; cosmetic.”
“But the trial?”
“There will be no trial. The American’s are agreeable.”
“Why?”
“An exchange of favours: the whole thing will be dropped before it ever gets to court.”
“And I’m free?” Yuri asked, that small flame of hope suddenly rising again.
Nikolai gave him a nod.
“When? How long? Today, tomorrow?”
Uspensky laughed. “Are you so eager to leave?”
“I hate this fucking place!” Yuri realised that he had barely smoked his cigarette, though he still held on to it. He threw it into the ashtray. “May I have another?”
“Of course.”
Yuri took one, surprised to find his fingers shaking slightly. It was the relief, he knew it was. He put it in his mouth and Nikolai took out his lighter, flicking it to life and leaning over so Yuri could light his cigarette.
“No more teasing, you’re out of here today. I just have one thing to clear up?”
Yuri raised a curious eyebrow, “What’s that?”
He felt a sudden sharp pain in his neck, looked around to see Nikolai removing the hypodermic, capping the needle before it went in his pocket.
“A loose end,” he told him, smiling as Yuri began to fight for air.
~~~~~
Nikolai watched dispassionately as Gretkov pitched from the chair to the floor, where he twitched and flopped like a fish out of water. It took the man an inconveniently long time to die.
Though they’d known each other for many years Nikolai felt no great loss. The man’s arrogance had made him weak, foolish. Worst of all, he had involved Kirill in all of this, and now…
Kirill would not die like this; for the boy he would make it personal, beautiful… And he would grieve.
He strode over the body on the floor and knocked on the door. It was opened by one of his own men and he beckoned the prison guard over.
“You might want to alert the prison doctor,” he told him as he retrieved his overcoat and gloves from his man, slipped them on, “It would appear that Mr Gretkov has suffered a heart-attack.”
~~~~~~~~~~
to be continued...