When They Came For Us
Flicka von Hannover
I could see it in their eyes.
The next evening, the ninth of December, the Russian guards came for them.
Flicka was sitting with Alina for her supper before the toddler had her bath and put on her pajamas. Outside, darkness had fallen over the lawn. Lake Geneva turned black and quiet.
One of the guards at the door tiltedhis head and pulled a phone out of his pocket, reading the screen. With a wary look at the other guy, he stepped toward Flicka. “Would you and the child get your coats and come with us, please?”
Flicka watched the unnatural stillness of his face and the hard set of his jaw. She kept her voice light. “You don’t have to do this. We could leave Alina at one of Raphael’s sisters’ houses or a firestation.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am. They know where my family is, too. Let’s do this quietly so we don’t frighten her, yes?”
In retrospect, it was good that Alina was still wearing her thick tights, wool dress, and heavy sweater under her coat. At least she wouldn’t be cold.
As Flicka carried Alina down the grand staircase to the open space in the center of the house, she called,“Sophie?”
The guards made sure she continued walking.
“Sophie!”
The house was silent but for their footsteps on the patterned wooden floors.
Though Alina was belted into her booster seat in the car, Flicka scooted across the rear seat to be next to her and held her hands the whole time. Alina babbled and talked, happy to be going somewhere at night because night was fun and delayed bedtime.
Flicka breathed slowly and deliberately, inhaling and exhaling complete yoga breaths, not allowing herself to become overwrought. Several of her ancestors and relatives had gone to the guillotine or into desperate pitched battles with their heads held high. She wasn’t going to embarrass herself unless a ruse would create a chance to get Alina and herself to safety.
And Raphael, wherever he was.
He might not even be there. He might be elsewhere. He might be safe.
During the brief drive through the city of Geneva, Flicka pointed out sparkling Christmas lights to Alina, and they identified colors, laughing. Red lights wrapped poles. White lights twinkled like stars in the evergreen boughs draped from the flower baskets that hung from the street lamps.
The two guards in the front seatseemed to shrink in their seats every time Alina laughed, so Flicka made sure she laughed often and loudly. First, they deserved every damn moment and each iota of guilt that they would take a two-year-old to slaughter, and second, it diverted their attention from the slight glow of Flicka’s cell phone screen they might have otherwise noticed in the rearview mirror.
Flicka had kept the cell phonein her ankle-high boots that were now her favorite fashion accessory. Bulging pockets might have been searched. The buff half-boots with a cuff around the top and laces up the front hid a small phone much more effectively.
Indeed, they hid one cell phone in her right boot and another in her left.
Brilliant reflections from Christmas lights slid backward across the windows as they drove.
Alinaand Flicka high-fived with every correct color, which was often. Alina giggled and danced in the car seat as she fought sleep. Her usual bedtime was approaching quickly, and they’d had a full day of playing in the park and ha-boo around the couch.
The noise and movement further distracted the guilt-ridden Russian guards as Flicka frantically texted, both her thumbs flying over the screen as shetyped.
I accept your offer.
Track this phone. Come now. Right now.
And more.
She turned the screen down so it wouldn’t light up if a message came back in. Light shining from her boot might alert even these dunderheads that something was up.
That task completed, Flicka slid that phone back down her boot and retrieved the other one. While she and Alina pointed out colors and shapes in the cold,Swiss night outside the car, Flicka dialed a series of phone numbers into this cell phone, listening to the tones and patterns of the digits in her head, as she thumbed many numbers. To this group, she sent a mass text, telling them what was happening.
I have been held hostage by the Mirabaud family of Geneva Trust Bank for several weeks. They are associated with the Ilyin Bratva crime family,and they are going to kill me. I am not suicidal. I am not planning to harm myself. I have been abducted, and they are going to murder me. Valerian Mirabaud has given me to them to murder me.
