Last Violent Call (Secret Shanghai, #3.5)(68)
Benedikt offered a nod. “Safe travels the rest of the way, Mr. Ivanov.”
Stepan tipped his hat. “You as well. Please excuse me, gentlemen—I am off to find something to eat.”
He proceeded to the dining carriage. Left alone in the hallway, Marshall and Benedikt exchanged a glance, then both wobbled in sync when the train started to move again, the doors closed and the wheels turning. At this hour, most of the remaining passengers were either preparing to sleep or using the washroom. Earlier, Benedikt had suggested waiting for the train’s activity to wind down before they proceeded with their next move. Marshall had agreed, needing a bout of rest after the police exited the carriage.
The time had arrived now. Benedikt swiveled his eyes to the side in a silent question, and Marshall nodded. Together, they stepped out and proceeded to the next carriage. Once again, they knocked on Mila’s door.
She poked her head out, looking left and right. Unsurprisingly, she hadn’t been present when they were delivering their findings to Vodin.
“So,” Marshall began, “now that we’ve covered for you, care to explain?”
* * *
In Benedikt’s procession of logic, it had only clicked together when he thought about his conversation with Juliette on the phone, trying to grasp the details of the two kids she was telling him about.
“So this Yulun boy… did you mention his last name?”
“No, no,” Juliette had corrected. “That’s his full name. Yu Lun. He introduced himself a little fast, and I suppose we picked up on the habit.”
The Y dangling off the necklace. Lourens’s connection to the deceased. Every part of this investigation had already been waiting before his very eyes, but he couldn’t have put the pieces together until that moment with the wristwatch.
“I will explain,” Mila said, closing the compartment door after them. She gulped nervously. “But… why cover for me?”
“If you start at the beginning, I suppose I should too,” Benedikt said. He offered a handshake. “My name is Benedikt Montagov.”
Mila breathed out a visible oh. The shift in her disposition was immediate. Suspicion transformed into understanding; tension into inherent trust. She shook his hand. “So you know about the experiments.”
“I know that you escaped from Vladivostok after Lourens exited the facility that looked after you. I know they were testing on you but that you have been freed now.”
“Well.” Mila gave a tight smile. She folded her arms, then walked a few paces around the compartment, looking out her window. The curtains remained open, their heavy checkered pattern fluttering in sync with the movement of the train. “I was freed from their control. I wasn’t freed from their attempts at getting me back. If anything, the facility only tried harder because the throat-clawing fail-safe was gone and the man who put that in me was dead.”
“The facility,” Marshall said. “Popov runs it, right?”
Mila nodded. “Him and his board,” she said quietly. “They heard that the experiments had been erased from my body, but they still wanted their subject. The board has always had a sense of ownership over the girls they plucked off the streets.”
Benedikt grimaced. He stayed quiet, letting Mila continue.
“In these four months, they have sent three separate groups. The moment I circumvented one, the next was already on its way.” She pressed her palms into her eyes. “It was no way to live. I was happier than I had ever been, but I couldn’t go a day without fearing the rug was going to be swept out from under my feet. I didn’t know if they would give up on retrieval one day and opt to snipe me from a distance, make it so that if they couldn’t have me, no one could. I didn’t know if they might switch tactics and go after Yulun instead, use him as a way to lure me in.”
Mila took a deep breath. She stayed like that for a long moment, holding it in her lungs. When the train bounced underneath them, she finally exhaled and shrugged off all the frustration evident in her tone, smoothing her shoulders down and tilting her chin high.
“It hasn’t hit the news because I was careful about it,” she said. “There are six members of Popov’s board, including himself. Four located in Moscow. One has gone missing, yet to be reported. One has caught a mysterious disease that will atrophy his every muscle over time. One couldn’t seem to brake his car properly, and now he is paralyzed from the neck down. And Popov himself… well, I don’t know if he realized there was something in the air, but he boarded this train before I could get to him. So I followed.”
“We told everyone he was arguing with himself,” Benedikt said. “I have to give credit where credit is due. You didn’t leave any trace behind.”
Mila looked a little proud of herself. “I wasn’t in there to argue with him. He yelled and he yelled, but I only needed him to know which sins he was answering for. He had to know about the irreparable damage he did to me, and he had to realize he was dying for thinking he could ever do that to another person.”
“You showed him a syringe.” Marshall patted his pocket. The needle piece was still with them since they had never mentioned it to Vodin.
“He got incensed and flung it away,” Mila confirmed. “It didn’t really matter. At the end of the day, he is a weak man who pays others to do his bidding. He is nothing. Alone in a room with him, all I had to do was pick up his pen and shove it through his throat.”