The Atlantis Scrolls

Chapter 5

Just short of 2 a.m. Katya slammed down her last card on the table.

“I fold.”

Nina scoffed in jest as she clutched her hand, making sure Sam could not read her poker face.

“Come on. Whip it out, Sam!” Nina laughed as Katya kissed her on the cheek. Then the Russian beauty kissed Sam on his crown and slurred, “I’m going to bed. Sergei will be back soon from his shift.”

“Good night, Katya,” Sam smiled as he spread his hand on the table. “Two pairs.”

“Ha!” Nina exclaimed. “Full house. Pay up, partner.”

“Shit,” Sam muttered and took off his left sock. Strip poker sounded better before he learned that the ladies were better at it than he first reckoned when he agreed to play. In his scants and one lone sock he shivered at the table.

“You know that is cheating and we only allowed it because you are drunk. It would be terrible of us to take advantage of you, eh?” she lectured him, barely holding her own. Sam wanted to laugh, but he did not want to spoil the moment and put on his best pitiful slouch.

“Thanks for being so accommodating. There are so few decent women left on this planet these days,” he said in utter amusement.

“That’s right,” Nina agreed, emptying the second jar of Samogon into her glass. But only a few drops, it just splashed unceremoniously onto the base of the tumbler, proving to her dismay that the fun and games for the night had come to a blunt conclusion. “And I’m only letting you cheat because I love you.”

God, I wish she was sober when she said that, Sam wished, as Nina cupped his face in her hands. The soft scent of her perfume mingled with the noxious onslaught of distilled spirits as she planted a soft kiss on his lips.

“Come sleep with me,” she said, and led the staggering Scotsman in the Y-fronts from the kitchen while he laboriously collected his clothes on the way out. Sam said nothing. He thought he would accompany Nina to her room to make sure she did not take a nasty tumble from the stairs, but when they came into her tiny room around the corner from the others, she closed the door behind them.

“What are you doing?” she asked when she saw Sam trying to get his jeans on, shirt thrown over his shoulder.

“I’m fucking freezing, Nina. Just give me a sec,” he replied, frantically struggling with his zipper.

Nina’s slender fingers locked over his fumbling hands. She slipped her hand into his jeans, prying apart the copper teeth of the zipper again. Sam froze, enchanted by her touch. Inadvertently he closed his eyes and felt her warm, soft lips press against his.

She pushed him back on her bed and doused the light.

“Nina, you’re drunk, lassie. Don’t do something you’re going to regret in the morning,” he warned simply as a disclaimer. In actual fact he wanted her so badly he could burst.

“The only thing I’ll regret is that I have to do this quietly,” she said, sounding remarkably sober in the darkness.

He could hear her boots being flung aside and then the chair shifting to the left of the bed. Sam could feel her pouncing on him, clumsily crushing his privates under her weight.

“Careful!” he groaned. “I need those!”

“So do I,” she said, kissing him passionately before he could respond. Sam tried not to lose his composure when Nina laid her small body on his, breathing in his neck. He gasped as her warm, bare skin touched his, still cold from playing poker for two hours without a shirt on.

“You know I love you, right?” she whispered. Sam’s eyes rolled back in reluctant ecstasy at hearing those words, but the alcohol that came with every syllable ruined his bliss.

“Aye, I know,” he appeased her.

Selfishly, Sam allowed her to have free reign of his body. He knew he would feel guilty about it later, but for now he told himself he was affording her what she wanted; that he was only at the fortunate receiving end of her passion.

Katya was up. Her door creaked open gently when Nina started to moan and Sam tried to silence Nina with deep kisses, hoping they were not disturbing their hostess. But among it all he could not care less if Katya came into the room, switched on the light, and offered to join in — as long as Nina kept at what she was doing. His hands caressed her back and he traced a scar or two, each of which he could remember the cause of.

He was there. Since they had met, both their lives had spiraled uncontrollably down a dark infinite well of danger and Sam wondered when they were going to hit the hard, waterless base. But he did not care, as long as they crashed together. Somehow, with Nina at his side, Sam felt safe, even in the claws of death. And now, with her in his embrace right here, her attention momentarily on him and him alone; he felt invincible, untouchable.

Katya’s footsteps came from the kitchen where she unlocked the door for Sergei. After a brief pause Sam could hear them having a muffled conversation he would not be able to understand anyway. He was grateful for their chat in the kitchen so that he could enjoy Nina’s dampened cries of pleasure as he drove her up against the wall under the window.

Five minutes later the kitchen door closed. Sam listened to the direction of the sounds. Heavy boots followed Katya’s dainty treads to the master bedroom, but the door did not creak again. Sergei was quiet, but Katya said something and then she gently rapped on Nina’s door, having no idea that Sam was with her.

“Nina, can I come in?” she asked clearly on the other side of the door.

Sam sat up, ready to grab his jeans, but in the dark he had no idea where Nina had flung them. Nina was out cold. Her orgasm had sealed the fatigue the alcohol had induced all night and her moist, limp body was blissfully resting against his, still as a corpse. Katya tapped again, “Nina, I need to talk to you, please? Please!”

Sam frowned.

The request on the other side of the door sounded a bit too urgent, almost alarmed.

Ah, fuck it! he thought. So I hammered Nina. What would it matter anyway? he thought as he scuttled in the dark, hands on the floor to find anything resembling clothing. He had barely pulled on his jeans when the doorknob turned.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Sam asked innocently when he appeared in the dark crack of the opening door. Under Katya’s hand the door stopped abruptly, where Sam had his foot lodged against the back of it.

“Oh!” she jerked, startled by seeing the wrong face. “I thought Nina was in here.”

“She is. Passed out. All that homebrew kicked her arse,” he replied in a self-conscious chuckle, but Katya did not look amused. In fact, she looked downright terrified.

“Sam, just get dressed. Wake up Dr. Gould and come with us,” Sergei said ominously.

“What’s wrong? Nina is fuck drunk, and she is not waking up until doomsday, it looks like,” Sam told Sergei more seriously, but he still tried to play it all off.

“Christ, we don’t have time for this shit!” a man shouted from behind the couple. A Makarov appeared against Katya’s head and the finger pulled the trigger.

Click!

“Next click will be made of lead, comrade,” the gunman warned.

Sergei started to sob, rambling madly to the men who stood behind him, begging for his wife’s life. Katya’s hands covered her face and she fell to her knees in shock. From what Sam gathered they were not colleagues of Sergei’s, as he first thought. Although he could not understand Russian, he deduced from their tone that they were very serious about killing them all if he did not wake Nina and come with them. Seeing the altercation escalating dangerously, Sam put up his hands and stepped out of the room.

“All right, all right. We’ll come with you. Just tell me what is going on and I’ll wake up Dr. Gould,” he calmed the four vicious-looking thugs.

Sergei put his arm around his crying wife and shielded her.

“My name is Baudaux. I am to believe you and Dr. Gould accompanied a man named Alexandr Arichenkov to our lovely patch of land,” the gunman asked Sam.

“Who wants to know?” Sam snapped.

Baudaux cocked the gun and aimed at the cowering couple.

“Yes!” Sam shouted, his arm outstretched toward Baudaux. “Jesus, will you relax? I’m not going to run away. Aim that fucking thing at me, if you need midnight target practice!”

The French thug lowered his weapon while his companions kept theirs at the ready. Sam swallowed hard and thought of Nina who had no idea what was happening. He regretted affirming her presence there, but if these intruders found him out, they would surely have killed Nina and the Strenkovs and strung him up outside by his balls for the wildlife to find.

“Wake up the woman, Mr. Cleave,” Baudaux ordered.

“All right. Just… just take it easy, okay?” Sam nodded in surrender as he slowly reversed into the dark room.

“Lights on, door open,” Baudaux said firmly. Sam was not about to put Nina in peril with his wisecracks, so he just agreed and switched on the light, grateful that he covered Nina before he opened the door for Katya. He did not want to imagine what these brutes would do to a nude, unconscious woman if she was already spread-eagle on a bed.

Her small frame hardly lifted the covers where she slept on her back, mouth agape in a drunken siesta. Sam hated having to spoil such a perfect rest, but their lives depended on her waking up.

“Nina,” he said rather loudly as he bent over her, trying to obscure her from the leering beasts that hung around the doorway while one held up the homeowners. “Nina, wake up.”

“For fuck’s sake, switch off the fucking light. My head is killing me already, Sam!” she whined and turned on her side. He quickly looked apologetically to the men in the doorway, who just stared in amusement, trying to catch a glimpse of the sleeping woman who could shame a sailor.

“Nina! Nina, we have to get up and get dressed right now! Do you understand?” Sam urged, rocking her under a heavy hand, but she only frowned and pushed him away. From nowhere Baudaux stepped in an walloped Nina so hard across the face that her node bled instantly.

“Get up!” he bellowed. The thunderous bark of his cold voice and the crippling anguish of his slap shocked Nina stone cold sober. She sat up, bewildered and furious. Lashing out her hand at the Frenchman, she screamed, “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

“Nina! No!” Sam shouted, afraid that she had just earned herself a bullet.

Baudaux caught her arm and backhanded her. Sam darted forward, spearing the tall Frenchman up against the wardrobe along the wall. He rained down three right hooks on Baudaux’s cheekbone, feeling his own knuckles shifting backward with every punch.

“Don’t you ever hit a woman in front of me, you piece of shit!” he screamed, fuming.

He grabbed Baudaux by the ears and rammed the back of his head hard on the floor, but before he could land a second shot Baudaux grabbed Sam in the same way.

“You miss Scotland?” Baudaux laughed though bloodied teeth, and pulled Sam’s head into his own, delivering a debilitating head butt that immediately rendered Sam unconscious. “That one’s called a Glasgow kiss… laddie!”

The men roared with laughter, while Katya pushed through them to come to Nina’s aid. Nina’s nose was gushing and her face was bruised badly, but she was so angry and disorientated that Katya had to hold the petite historian back. Letting out a torrent of curse words and promises of certain death at Baudaux, Nina ground her teeth while Katya covered her with a robe and held her tightly to calm her, for the good of them all.

“Let it go, Nina. Let it go,” Katya said in Nina’s ear, holding her so close that the men could not hear their words.

“I’ll fucking kill him. I swear to God he is dead the moment I get my chance,” Nina sneered in Katya’s neck as the Russian woman held her close.

“You’ll get your chance, but you have to survive this first, okay? I know you’re going to kill him, sweetheart. Just stay alive, because…” Katya soothed her. Her tear-soaked eyes glanced at Baudaux through the strands of Nina’s hair. “dead women can’t kill.”