Chapter 66 Nikolai
The cell was small and cold and I sat on the narrow bed with my back against the concrete wall staring at nothing while a guard walked past every fifteen minutes in the same rhythm with the same heavy footsteps. I'd been counting since yesterday morning when they brought me in and took everything I had, my phone and wallet and watch and belt and shoes, giving me orange clothes that didn't fit and plastic sandals before putting me in this cell alone.
I didn't mind being alone because it was easier this way, out there with other prisoners I would have to watch my back constantly but in here I could just sit and think.
Mostly I thought about Marlena.
How she looked sitting on the ground outside the catacombs with blood on her hands, how she cried into Katya's shoulder while the church collapsed behind us, how we spent that one night together in the hotel room like we both knew it was goodbye, how I destroyed her life piece by piece while telling myself it was for revenge.
The trial was going to be bad and Damien had made that clear when he arrested me, they had evidence and witnesses and records and I would probably go to prison for the rest of my life.
And I felt calm about it.
Not happy and not exactly resigned but just calm, like I'd been running toward this for fifteen years and now I could finally stop. I deserved to be punished for what I did to Marlena, for everyone who got hurt because of my company, for all of it, and prison was fair and simple and clean.
I closed my eyes and let my head rest back against the wall.
Different footsteps came down the corridor, lighter than the guard's boots, two sets of them, and I opened my eyes and looked at the door.
A guard I didn't recognize appeared at the small window, older with grey hair, and he looked at me for a second before unlocking the door and stepping aside as a woman walked in.
She was maybe sixty with silver hair pulled back and grey eyes like mine and simple dark clothes, her face lined with years of stress but she stood strong and straight.
I stood up slowly and the word barely came out when I said "Mama."
Irina smiled at me sad and small and crossed the cell fast, reaching up to touch my face with both hands while saying "Kolya, look at you, so much older" in a voice that made my throat close up completely.
I couldn't speak because tears were burning in my eyes, this was my mother, the mother I thought was dead for fifteen years, the mother who killed my father to save me, the mother I spent years hating for weakness she never had.
She pulled me into a hug and I bent down so she could wrap her arms around my neck and she was smaller than I remembered and smelled like lavender and something familiar I couldn't name.
"I'm sorry," I said against her shoulder with my voice breaking, "I'm so sorry."
"Hush," she said softly, "you did what you thought you had to, you survived, that's what matters."
When we pulled apart she kept one hand on my arm like she was afraid to let go and said quietly "We don't have much time, listen carefully."
I sat back down on the bed and she sat beside me while the guard closed the door but stayed inside, and then she said "Katya told me about the charges, about the trial, this FBI agent will put you away for life."
"I know," I said, "I deserve it."
"No," she said sharp with her hand tightening on my arm, "you deserve consequences but not this, not a trial built on lies, not evidence that's been changed, this isn't justice, this is revenge pretending to be law."
I looked at her carefully and asked "What are you saying?"
"We're getting you out," she said, "tonight, before they transfer you somewhere escape is impossible."
The words hung in the air and I tried to understand what she meant, escape and prison break and running, but I said "I can't, if I run it proves I'm guilty."
"If you stay you go to prison for crimes you didn't commit," Irina said, "Damien Cross changed evidence, made things up, Katya found proof, if you go to trial you'll be convicted and spend your life in a cell."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Because Marlena told Katya," Irina said quietly, "she compared the documents, found the lies, she refused to testify because of it."
My heart hurt because Marlena protected me after everything, after her mother died, after all the damage I caused, she chose not to help send me to prison based on lies.
"I have people," Irina continued, "old friends who can get you out tonight and across the border by morning, new identity, new life, clean."
I looked at the guard against the wall and he nodded once, and Irina explained "Sergei worked with me in Moscow, he's been here eight years, tonight he's on duty, tonight the cameras will fail, tonight you walk out with him."
"And then what?" I asked, "I hide forever?"
"You rebuild," she said, "you become someone different, someone better, you find Marlena and ask for real forgiveness."
"She'll never forgive me."
"Maybe not," Irina agreed, "but you can try, you can spend your life trying to be worthy of the woman who protected you."
I looked at my hands and they were shaking and I asked "What about you, they'll come after you."
"I'll be gone," Irina said, "back to Switzerland with a different name, they can't touch me there, I've been disappearing for fifteen years, I'm good at it."
"Why?" I asked, "After everything, why help me?"
"Because you're my son," she said simply, "because I killed your father to save you and I won't let you waste that by rotting in a cell based on lies, and because I want to see what you can build on something better than revenge."
Sergei checked his watch and made a signal and Irina stood and pulled me up saying "We leave now, there's a tunnel under the building, a car waiting three blocks away, you get in and don't look back."
"What about Marlena?"
"Katya will tell her you're safe," Irina said, "after that it's up to you, but first you have to survive, first you have to get out."
I nodded and she hugged me again quick and tight whispering "I love you, I never stopped" and I said "I love you too."
Sergei opened the door and checked the hall and it was empty so we moved out quietly down the long white corridor through a service door to stairs going down into darkness, down and down into a tunnel that smelled like mold and was narrow and low.
We walked fast following Sergei's flashlight while water dripped from pipes and somewhere far away I heard subway trains, and the tunnel ended at a ladder that Sergei climbed before pushing open a grate that let cold air rush in.
He helped Irina through and then me and we came up in a dark parking garage where a black car sat waiting with its lights off, and we got in the back while the driver pulled out into the Prague night without a word.
I looked back once at the building and the lights in the windows and the life I was leaving, then I turned forwa
rd and watched the city pass and felt calm.