Worth The Risk Read online

  Worth The Risk

  Richard Gustafson

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 1

  The hotel phone rang shortly after Nick Wallace’s wife left for the airport.

  The telephone was old, cracked, lime green, with a dirt-caked cord running from the base to the handset. His grandmother used to have one just like it, back in 1970s North Dakota. But he doubted hers ever spoke Russian.

  This one did. The girl on the other end sounded young, nervous. Nick’s Russian was lousy, basically just hello, goodbye, and a few phrases dealing with adoption. All he caught crackling out of the handset was “fax message.”

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  There was a pause, then the girl spoke slowly, in halting English. “I have a fax message for you.”

  Nick immediately thought of Kelli. She was probably at the Rostov airport by now, heading home while Nick stayed in Russia, but her flight to Moscow was not scheduled to leave for another two hours. His stomach tightened. Something had happened, either to his wife or to the adoption process.

  “Who’s the fax message from?” he asked.

  There was another pause, longer this time. Finally she said, “May I come to your room?”

  “Yes, of course, please bring it up,” Nick said. “I’m in room 402.”

  “Twenty dollars.”

  Twenty bucks for a fax? But he couldn’t turn it down because it might be important. If Kelli was in trouble and Nick didn’t help her because of a few dollars, he’d have some serious explaining to do, both to himself and to her. Besides, the price apparently included delivery. So Nick agreed, hung up, and waited for the fax.

  It took longer to arrive than it should have for twenty dollars. At least ten minutes went by before he heard a quiet knock. He turned down the TV, which he couldn’t understand anyway, and opened the door.

  The girl in front of Nick was definitely not from the desk downstairs, unless they had very recently taken to wearing lingerie. A coat, once white, lay over her arm and she smiled shyly. She was short, with light brown hair down to her shoulders. Her eyes were also brown, and she wore a tired look that matched the faded black lingerie. He quickly noticed bruises on her neck. Bruises she had half-heartedly tried to cover up with makeup a few shades too dark.

  The girl flinched involuntarily as Nick’s six-foot-two, muscular frame filled the doorway. He smiled uncertainly at her, teeth white against a tan face and short black hair. She looked in his brown eyes and relaxed, slightly.

  Nick instinctively glanced behind her, looking for cameras or old military buddies pulling a prank.

  She was alone. “May I come in?” she asked. Her smiled slipped a bit when she saw the confused expression on his face.

  Nick hesitated, then held the door open without a word. She eased in past him. He took one more look around and closed the door quietly.

  “Um, may I help you?” he asked.

  Now it was her turn to look confused. “I’m here for sex massage. We talked on phone,” she said.

  “Sex massage?” Nick said. He laughed. “I thought you said fax message!” When she showed no comprehension, he pantomimed a piece of paper. “Do you know fax?”

  She shook her head.

  “Oh, well, never mind, not important. I’m sorry, no sex massage. I was mistaken.”

  “You said to come!”

  “I know I did,” Nick said. “And I’ll pay you. But no sex.”

  She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips together in the universal sign of a woman spurned. “Don’t you like me?” she finally asked.

  “It’s not that,” he said. He held up his left hand and showed her the wedding band. “I’m married. And I’m here to adopt a baby.”

  “So?”

  “So, that’s important to me.”

  She stared at Nick as if he was some kind of freak, then sighed. Her shoulders slumped and she said, “OK. You pay me and I leave.”

  Nick handed her twenty dollars in rubles. She eyed the colorful paper doubtfully. “Do you have American dollars?” she asked. He took back the Russian money and handed her a crisp twenty dollar bill.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as she shrugged into her coat. Her lingerie peeked out from under the short hem, now sad instead of inviting. She adjusted herself once she was bundled up and gave him a fleeting smile.

  “What’s your baby’s name?” she asked.

  “Nonna.”

  The girl nodded. “That’s a pretty name. She’s very lucky to go to America.”

  “Thank you.”

  He glimpsed the tears in her eyes before she turned away and walked quickly out the door.

  Nick stood for a long moment inside the doorway. He hadn’t realized staying faithful could make a person feel so lousy.

  Ten minutes, two blocks, and a world away, the woman paused outside a door. She fingered the twenty dollar bill in her hand. At least it was American. It would be worse with rubles.

  If she had some money of her own, she could have added it to the twenty. See, she’d say, the American liked me. He may even want me to come back to his room later. Perhaps she’d get a smile or a hug instead of a fist.

  But of course she had no money of her own. She knew she deserved what was coming.

  She squared her shoulders and willed her mind away from the present. She thought about what it might be like in America. Ice cream. They have ice cream every day in America. That would be lovely. Chocolate. She’d never eaten chocolate ice cream. If she was in America, she’d have it for breakfast. Maybe on pancakes.

  The thought made her smile slightly.

  Finally she sighed, squared her shoulders, and opened the door.

  “So, how are things without Kelli?” Michelle Donohue, one of three American women in their original group of six, asked between bites of chicken. She was tall, with broad shoulders and short-cropped brown hair. She wore a yellow tank top, and her shoulders were slightly burned from a day in the sun. Her eyes glinted as she tore into the chicken.

  “A hooker stopped by my room after she left,” Nick said.

  Silence descended on the table. A piece of chicken may have fallen from Michelle’s mouth, but Nick was too busy not looking at her to know for certain.

  They were in the middle of dinner, outside at the Chicken Shack, enjoying the warm Rostov summer evening air. The restaurant wasn’t really called the Chicken Shack, but they only served rotisserie chicken and the place was a shack, so the name stuck. It was tiny, cheap, and the food was excellent. The wooden structure, originally painted white
but now with smoke stains lending an elaborate swirl to the walls, sat across the parking lot from the Hotel Rostov. American parents-to-be gathered at the Shack most evenings for beer, chicken, and war stories about their adoptions.

  Michelle and Katie Pearson, the other adopting mother, were disgusted. Their husbands, on the other hand, looked envious.

  “Was she cute?” Tom, Michelle’s husband, asked with a wink.

  Michelle slugged him on the arm. Not much larger than his wife, Tom flinched from the playful hit and rubbed his arm in mock pain.

  Nick grinned and explained the situation. He left nothing out, including paying the girl twenty dollars not to have sex with her.

  “Heck,” Tom said, “I’d only charge you fifteen bucks not to have sex with me.”

  “And I’m sure it’d be money well spent, Tom,” Nick replied. The girls laughed as Tom rolled his eyes and gave Nick the finger. “But I do feel terrible, making her walk all the way over to the hotel for nothing.”

  “Well, she didn’t come that far, you know,” Katie said. They passed the brothel every day when they walked the thirty minutes to Baby Home Number Four, where Nonna and their son, Valiera, waited to be rescued. There were no signs announcing the brothel, but the continuous presence of painted women in robes on the sidewalk, smoking cigarettes and looking fed up with life, was sign enough.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Michelle said. “You only have nine days left, right? Be a good boy and don’t get into trouble.”

  Nick held up his hands, palms out. “I don’t plan to. Once the grace period’s up, I’m out of here with Nonna.”

  “That’s a stupid rule, anyway,” Katie said. “The kids have been in the orphanage for months, and we have to wait ten more days in case their parents show up and want them after all? What a crock. Has that ever happened, anyway?”

  “Our driver says it hasn’t,” Tom said. “He said no kid’s been claimed by family once they get on the international database.”

  “It’s just a rule to keep us here and get more of our money,” Nick said.

  “Like they’re not getting most of it, anyway,” Michelle grumbled. Nick hardly knew her, except that she and Tom were cops in upstate New York, but could already tell she didn’t like being taken advantage of. She had a hard time dealing with what they had to go through to get their kids.

  “How about you guys?” Nick asked her. “Any news on Alexei?”

  “We go to court tomorrow,” Michelle said. “Assuming it all goes well, our ten days start tomorrow.”

  “It’ll go fine,” Nick said. “You meet with the judge before court, and she tells you exactly what to say. Piece of cake.”

  “So they say. I’m still nervous, though. At least we’re both staying.” She looked at Nick quickly. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Kelli was heading home early to care for their son, Danny. Danny was at home with Kelli’s parents now, but his stress would grow every day they were gone. The Russians were OK with only one parent staying, as long as they filled out the thirty-eight forms that went along with it.

  Nick glanced at Scott. The tall Texan was uncharacteristically quiet, staring vacantly at his dark bottle of Baltica beer. One hand was meshed in his brown hair while he twirled the bottle between two fingers of his other hand. He abruptly raised it to his lips and killed it.

  He stood up. “I’m getting a refill. Anybody else want one?” The two women nodded and Tom raised an index finger. Nick rose and said, “I’ll go with you.”

  The bartender, Sergei, saw them coming and reached into the beer cooler. Sergei wasn’t a big guy but had a competent air about him. Nick thought he may have been Russian military in a past life, but something about the man struck Nick as off, so their conversations were typically limited to the disbursement of alcohol in one direction and rubles in the other. They had swapped names and a handshake the first day and that was about it.

  Scott held up his thumb and four fingers and nodded when Sergei hoisted a Baltica. He got out his wallet and pushed Nick’s bills away. “I’ve got it,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Nick said, and put his money back in his pocket. They leaned against the wooden bar as the bartender opened the bottles. The bar was unfinished wood, comfortable in a shack, with furrows and initials carved in by previous patrons. Scott ran his finger along one of the grooves absently, mind clearly elsewhere.

  “So, was it the blonde or a different girl?” Nick asked casually.

  Scott’s head snapped up. “Who?”

  “The woman who came to your room.”

  Scott started to protest, then sighed. “That obvious?”

  Nick nodded. “I doubt Katie noticed anything, but you didn’t ask about the girl. In fact, you looked like somebody sucker-punched you.”

  Scott gazed down at the bar for a long moment. Finally he said, “Katie went shopping with Michelle for the afternoon a few days ago. When they were gone I got a call.” He shrugged. “It sounded fun, harmless. And a lot cheaper than in the states.” He smirked at the bar. “Now I know why.”

  “Herpes?” Nick asked, only half joking.

  “Nah, nothing like that. The next day I got another phone call. This time from some punk who said he knew what I’d done. If I didn’t pay them off, he’d tell Katie.”

  Nick whistled. He felt better about turning the girl down. “Did you pay them?”

  “Yeah, I left a hundy at the hotel desk.”

  Nick was silent, non-judgmental, as Sergei put the bottles down next to the Americans. Scott looked up. The man’s face was shiny with sweat and his eyes were slightly glazed. Nick wondered how many beers Scott had already put away.

  “The bastard called again this morning. Now they want two hundred.”

  Nick groaned and rubbed his forehead. “Oh, boy, Scott, you’re in it now. When do they want it?”

  Before Scott could answer, Sergei leaned in close, elbows on the table, breath sour in their faces. “Da, Scott,” he said in heavily accented English, his voice a low rumble. “When you pay us the damn money?”

  Chapter 2

  Scott recoiled, eyes wide in shock. Nick just stared at the bartender.

  “What the hell…” Scott said thickly, as if he had a wad of peat moss in his mouth. “Sergei?”

  Sergei smiled, all teeth, all predator. “So we’re friends, da, Scott? Tovarich?” He slapped the bar hard enough that Scott jumped. “Then pay your friend Sergei, like we ask.”

  Scott looked at Nick, then back at Sergei, then back at Nick, then back to Sergei. He was an animal trapped in a cage.

  “I don’t have two hundred dollars,” he finally said in a rush. “All of our money is for the adoption and if I take any more Katie will find out—“

  Sergei slapped the bar again and Scott stopped cold. Nick glanced back at their table. Tom watched them, concern on his face, but the women were talking, oblivious. Tom started to stand but Nick waved him off.

  “You had enough money to play with Marina,” Sergei said. “Did you use adoption money for that?”

  Scott just looked at the Russian. His mouth moved but no sound came out. Then all of the fight went out of him. His shoulders slumped and he cupped his head in both hands.

  “Back off, Sergei,” Nick said. “He told you he can’t get the money. You have a hundred, be happy with that.”

  Sergei slowly turned to look at Nick. “Shut up, American. This isn’t your concern.”

  “I’m making it my concern.”

  “That’s a bad idea,” Sergei said. “You’re weak, like all Americans. Be careful we don’t become your enemy.”

  The Russian turned back to Scott. “I work until ten o’clock. I want the money then. Do you remember what happens if you do not pay?”

  Scott mumbled something into his hands. Nick couldn’t make out what he said. Sergei leaned in close to Scott and said, “What?”

  Scott spread his hands but did not look up. “I visit my son tomorrow with only one eye.”


  “Da, that is correct. Do you want that?”

  Scott put his head back in his hands. Nick stood up abruptly. “Jesus, Sergei! We’re done with this conversation.” He put his hand on Scott’s shoulder and spoke softly to his friend. “We have our beer. Let’s go back.”

  Scott nodded numbly and stood up. He didn’t look at Sergei as he picked up three brown bottles. He turned and walked slowly back to the table.

  Sergei grabbed Nick’s arm as Nick reached for the last two bottles. “If your friend doesn’t pay, you will. One way or the other.”

  Nick sat quietly with the others, biding his time, only half-listening as Katie and Michelle droned on about kids, their homes, work. Nick’s mind kept wandering back to the conversation with Sergei. From time to time he glanced over at Scott, who sat stone-faced, brooding, also obviously not listening to the conversation.

  Eventually, as he knew they would, the ladies announced a trip to the restroom. Since the Chicken Shack had no bathrooms, the closest points of relief were their hotel rooms. Nick knew he had time to talk while the wives were gone.

  As soon as they disappeared out the door, Tom turned to Nick and Scott. “So, what the hell happened over there?” he asked.

  Nick looked at Scott, but the man barely moved. He appeared to be in shock, so Nick answered. “Well, it looks like a girl also went to Scott’s room.”

  “Uh, oh.”

  “Yeah. After Scott was, um, with her, her bosses decided a little blackmailing was in order.”

  Scott snorted and Tom whistled. “Sergei?” Tom asked.

  “Yep,” Nick said. “I’m not sure if Sergei’s the only one, but he wants Scott to give him two hundred bucks. And that’s after one hundred yesterday.”

  “Are you going to pay it?” Tom asked.

  “Hell, no,” Scott replied, looking up. “I don’t have that kind of money, and if I did I wouldn’t give it to that bastard.”

  “Tell him what Sergei said he’d do if you didn’t pay,” Nick said.

  “He said he’d carve my eye out,” Scott said through clenched teeth. His shock seemed to be receding, replaced by anger. “He said I’d visit Valiera with one eye.”

  Tom glared at Sergei, who had his back turned, helping a customer. “Sonofabitch,” he said. “We should call the cops.”