The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [149]
For a while nobody spoke. Raul and Antonio sat together, their eyes never leaving Russo’s face, now placid and seemingly dozing. Tyler leaned against the living room’s door frame, a can of beer in his hand, probably warm; he hadn’t sipped from it since Russo started to speak. Each seemed lost in their own thoughts, perhaps wondering how they would survive a tank—a frightening possibility considering their circumstances.
Then Russo’s eyelids fluttered and again he moved his mouth as if to dislodge a bad taste. “Cold, darkness, and Beth’s voice.”
“Marco Polo?”
Laurel glanced at the Woody Allen look-alike, surprised to notice that Lukas fixed Russo with an intense stare as if he was sending or waiting for a vital secret.
“Yes. And The Jungle Book, and Kim, and … ‘Gunga Din.’”
“Did they wake you often?” Floyd stretched his arm again to slip the straw between Russo’s lips.
“I suppose so. It was numbing cold and dark. Then, after a long time, I would drift back to sleep and the darkness of my nightmares.”
Behind her, Laurel heard ice cracking and chinking against the sides of a glass as Tyler trickled a drink over the cubes.
“How long?” Russo asked.
Laurel jerked upright and dug her fingers into Floyd’s hand. She had been dreading the question. Probably they all had, but nobody voiced it. The air seemed to pulse and flow like water running under ice.
A faint smile tugged at Russo’s lips. “That long?”
She realized all eyes were on Floyd.
“Eight years, two months, and six days.” Floyd’s voice rang with the brutality of truth.
“Thank you.” The smile never left Russo’s lips.
“You knew …” Laurel blurted.
“A rough guess only.”
“But, how …?
“You. Difficult without hair, but mid-twenties is my guess. And you,” he turned his face toward Raul, “also helped to fish me out?”
Raul nodded.
“Thank you,” Russo repeated. Then the dark sunglasses Russo had permanently stolen from Tyler rotated, and Laurel could sense his eyes settling on her. “Why?”
It was a personal question voiced in public—a question she couldn’t answer yet. “First we need to win this war.”
Russo nodded once.
“How did they do it?” Lukas asked.
Russo turned his head a fraction in his direction. “I don’t follow.”
“I mean, they said you died in a car crash.”
“Ah, that. I don’t remember much. It was done in a tunnel. As I neared the exit, I spotted two cars blocking it; behind me was another car. A police car. As I reached for my driver’s license, an officer hit me with an electric prod. When I woke up it was cold and dark.”
“But why?” Lukas insisted.
“I can answer that,” Laurel intervened. “The vendetta of a spurned woman.” She highlighted the salient details from the story her anonymous recruiter had hinted at in their telephone conversations and from the dossier Tyler had let her read when she knew him only as Shepherd. Laurel detailed the tragic relationship between Odelle Marino and Araceli Goldberg, stopping the narration after Russo’s abandonment of the pregnant young woman before the police’s charge.
“I was twenty-three,” Russo whispered. “And a coward.” He paused. “I still am.”
“Well, she extracted her pound of flesh,” Floyd said.
Russo moved an almost translucent arm to his emaciated thigh and squeezed. “Rather more, I fear.”
“Still.” Floyd pinched his lower lip. “I can’t figure something, though. Why did she wait so long? There were almost twenty years between Araceli’s death and his abduction.”
“Clout,” Russo said. “Up until ten years ago, Odelle Marino wasn’t powerful enough to get away with it.”
“And means,” Laurel echoed. “Hibernation is not that old a technology.”
After a thick silence lasting a few seconds, Russo’s head lolled, and the sound of his breathing deepened.
Russo slept until well past dusk. When they switched on the TV screen to watch the evening news, he stirred and waved his hand to hike up the volume.
Laurel neared the sofa to help lift him higher on his pillows so he could watch. As she reached under his emaciated arms, she felt Russo’s