Her mouth nearly watered with the memory of the sweet pastry.As they drove closer, she spotted the jutting ocher cupola and battlements of Pena Palace.Rising out of the greenery to perch atop the mountain, a wall with proper crenelations surrounded the former monastery, and a burnt-red cathedral with a central tower rose from the compound against the fading sunlight.
Glorious, breathtaking, and...impenetrable.
They drove through the cobblestone town, the side streets too small for even a European car, and past the National Palace, a white Moorish building with two gnome-hat parapets that sat in the center square.
They pulled up behind a small building, one of the village houses embedded in the hill, and the doors unlocked.
Run.This time the urge swept her up and turned to fire in her veins, but Igor got out and opened her door and grabbed her arm, and even a well-placed kick would have netted her nothing in the narrow space.
She gave a fight nonetheless as he wrestled her out and shoved her against a plastered building.He leaned low, his cigarette breath on her neck, his words in Russian.“Stop.Or I will make you stop.”
She didn’t scare easily, but...
Then he led her up the narrow street to a door in the stone wall of the battlement.The white stone rose three stories, maybe more, and the door opened to a tunnel, the cool, musty breath eking past her, darkness beyond.
Her skin raised gooseflesh.
Boris stepped inside and flicked on a light.A wire ran across the ceiling, like some old-time mine or catacombs, and she became the dead, walking to some underground tomb.Igor pushed her from behind, not gently.
“Where—” But the stone ate her words, the chill seeping into her skin.Tiny alcoves were etched into the walls, many of them with bars, and the cold now ran all the way to her bones.
A real dungeon.
They reached a wider room, this one circular, and facing the center was a collection of cells, all scraped out from the outer ring.They each held nothing but darkness, a bucket, and a drain in the pitted stone floor.
Except for one.
A man sat in the shadow of one of the cells.He wore a dark beard, shaggy hair, didn’t even glance at her.She looked away as Boris stopped before the neighboring cell.
No.
Boris opened the door and Igor pushed her in.She stumbled and turned just as the door closed with a clang, a knell that nearly collapsed her.Dampness rose off the floor.An odor she couldn’t place permeated the walls.Despair, perhaps.“Wait?—”
Boris smiled.Igor stood at the entry.“Do svidaniya.”
Goodbye?
She rushed the cell door.“Wait—I?—”
Boris stopped.“You will wait.Until you are ready.”
“Ready for what?I don’t have the program!”
Boris walked down the tunnel and she closed her eyes.
He didn’t come.
Steinbeck hadn’t stepped out of the shadows to yank her away from her captors.Hadn’t forced his way into the car, hadn’t...
Maybe he hadn’t even gotten her message.
Because he was dead.
And if not, probably he simply didn’t care.
She stepped back, found the wall, and slid down against it, the dampness and chill of the stone seeping into her flimsy clothing.
Then the lights went out and left her in darkness.
