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Caution: This story contains themes of dubious consent.
Blackstone Prison
By
Ellie Wylde
Prologue
“Thanks Pierce, all I can say is better you out in that cold than me!” said Scott with a practiced laugh as he turned back to face the banks of studio cameras, “Now for our next guest it is a bit of a homecoming, the coach of our Alpine Ski team was born not far from here. Rita Kovalevsky! So good that you have joined us!”
“Hi Scott, thank you for having me,” replied Rita. She was a beautiful woman with an athletic physique that, in her mid-forties, would still put most teenagers to shame. Her rich blonde hair was tied neatly back and from her fair skin, her blue eyes sparkled. Despite the US flag on her sport’s top, she spoke with a strong Russian accent.
“So our girls are doing pretty well, aren’t they? Do you think having a Russian coach is giving them a bit of an edge here in Sochi?”
“I am not sure of that, it has been quite a while since I have been back here in Russia.”
“Getting a hard time from some of the Russian coaches? Bet they can’t be too pleased to have one of their own working for, dare I say, the other side at the Olympics!”
“I’ve lived in America for the best part of twenty years, I think that is plenty of time to forgive and forget.”
“Because you, yourself, almost competed for Russia way back in the Lillehammer Olympics way back in ninety-four.”
“I did, but injury changed that and because of that things… my entire life, turned out differently.”
“Right, because you moved to the States soon after, what prompted that move?”
“Actually my then girlfriend, now wife.”
“And it is great, absolutely great that now, in 2014, we can be so open about such… relationships. Is… is your erm… wife with you now?” asked Scott, fidgeting awkwardly.
“No…she didn’t make the journey. She has a…” Rita paused to think of the right phrase, “She has a difficult history with Russia.”
“Well, we are absolutely delighted to have you on team USA, let’s talk about tomorrow’s event…”
*****
Rita looked out of the hotel window and over the Black Sea. The sun was setting and created a line of gold across the grey calm waters. The rest of Sochi was covered in snow and while the rooftops were pristine and glistened in the last light of the day the snow on the roads had turned to a filthy slush and piles of blackened snow were piled up at the side of the street making the seaside town look drab and uninviting. She saw a funfair that was closed for the season. Thick tarpaulins covered the rides and the stalls were boarded up for the winter. In the center stood a large Ferris wheel that towered over much of the town. During the summer the view of the bay from the top of the wheel would have been quite special. As she watched the throngs of visitors make the way down the streets the snow started to fall again. By tomorrow morning everything would be fresh again.
With her team having been sent to their rooms for an early night, Rita sat in the hotel bar alone lost to her thoughts.
“Excuse me?” came a female voice.
Rita looked up and saw a pretty young woman standing by her table.
“Hi, I am Tracy Manroe, I am reporting for W.A.N… Women’s Athletics News… I was wondering if I could have a moment of your time? I mean if it is ok with you…” the girl asked nervously, stroking a stray lock of dark curly hair behind an ear.
“If you want to be a good journalist you need to be more ballsy than that,” smiled Rita, “Most journalists would have just sat down and gone for it.”
“I didn’t want to be rude.”
“This is Russia, you need to be more confident here. The people are a lot tougher than back home,” Rita gestured for Tracy to sit.
“But you seem nice,” said Tracy sitting down.
“Hmm… maybe being in America has softened me. You look familiar, you were at the race yesterday.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I am guessing you have some questions on how well you think we will do tomorrow, will we win gold… is this the best…”
“Actually…” Tracy cut her off, “Actually, I had some questions about you.”
“About me?” shrugged Rita, trying to act unconcerned but showing some discomfort.
“Yes! I want to write a piece on you! I was going to write about what it is like being an openly gay sports coach…”
“Was going to?”
“But then I started doing some research into you and it… well it threw up some interesting questions!”
“Did it now?” Rita took a sip from her club soda and eyed the young journalist thoughtfully.
“Blackstone Prison,” said Tracy, studying Rita carefully to catch any reaction.
“I am assuming your research told you that I worked there… briefly. What of it?”
“The more I dug the more I found my questions leading into dead-ends. About murders, unsanctioned executions, corruption, links to the Mafia and of course to kırşehir escort missing prisoners… American prisoners.”
“I was only there for six months, one rotation. Believe me, one rotation in the Arctic Circle is more than enough, even for a Russian. I am not the best person to talk to about it. Besides, I thought you were a sports journalist?”
“I know there is a story here, I know you were there when a lot of strange things happened. I think you know what happened to the missing prisoners and how that was linked to the Warden’s arrest and the whole prison being shut down.”
Rita sat back in her chair, memories of her past life flooding back, “Blackstone is better off forgotten, it is a place of misery and death.”
“Tell me,” started Tracy, leaning forward in her chair, “If it wasn’t for Blackstone, would you be here now, the first openly gay coach on the US Ski team about to lead us to three gold medals?”
Rita conceded a laugh, “No. Definitely not. I would probably be married to a big hairy Russian man, maybe called Ivan, and be living in some village somewhere in Siberia complaining about my sore knee every winter. And we haven’t won those medals yet!”
Tracy pulled out her notepad and pen, “If it had such a huge effect on your life, surely it is a story worth telling. So tell me, what happened?”
“Maybe you are more ballsy than I thought. Ok fine, but the story I am about to tell isn’t my story, it is the story of six women who found themselves in the darkest of places. But despite the terrible things these women had done this is still a story of loyalty, hope and love. For you see even the blackest hearts beat for someone else,”
“You make it sound like this is a romance,” smiled Tracy.
“You’re young, one day you will see that love will make even the coldest person do crazy things.”
“A cold Russian like you perhaps?”
“Maybe… but as I told you, this isn’t my story. Whose story it is, well that is up to you to decide,” Rita paused, took another sip from her drink and composed her thoughts, “It all started twenty years ago in the winter of 1993. Russia was a much different place then. It was just a few years after the collapse of the USSR and the country was threatening to pull itself apart. In the south, the state of Chechnya was waging its own bloody war trying to gain independence, and with war there comes opportunity.”
Chapter One – Maria Cristiana Lopez
The heavy truck ground to a hard stop sending a spray of snow against the metal fence. Instantly the headlights went off and the whole street fell into darkness. Maria looked out of the passenger window and eyed up the fencing, the beautiful soft snow that covered it did nothing to alleviate the viciousness of the razor wire that lined the top.
“Now we wait,” said Jake, his tone calm, measured.
With the engine off the cabin quickly cooled and Maria pulled her thick jacket tight around her body and rubbed her gloved hands together. Already her breath was starting to cloud in the cooling air and condensation formed on the window. She glanced across at the others. Jake sat in the middle, just staring ahead, not a single trace of nerves betrayed him. Maria liked his two-day stubble, he already had that bad boy vibe and with that stubble, it took him to that next level of ruggedness. She couldn’t wait to be back to the hotel and feel his roughness against her neck as his lips work their way down… ‘Focus, Maria!’ she scolded herself, ‘Business first then pleasure.’ Next to Jake in the driver’s seat was Frank. He kind of crossed the line of bad boy and went straight to outright scary. Cold eyes, scruffy beard, all unfortunately set off by his crooked broken nose – a legacy of his boxing days. Scary as he was, he was definitely someone you wanted on your side rather than against you if shit kicked off.
“It’s taking too long, where are they?” said Kayla, leaning forward from the cramped back seat. Her voice riddled with nerves.
“Calm down. They will be here,” Jake reassured her.
“Fucking Russians, can’t they be anywhere on time?” Kayla mumbled.
“She’s right, it’s been too long. I told you, I don’t trust them,” said Frank, his voice a deep rumble.
“They will be here,” repeated Jake, unfazed, “And they are Chechnyians not Russians. If you call them Russian they will kill us.”
“If we’re caught with that stuff in the back they wouldn’t get the chance… Jake, this is not the states!” Kayla persisted, her teeth chatting and not just with the cold.
“I genuinely have no idea why you are here, Kayla,” sighed Maria, “Ever since Kyiv you have been a nervous wreck. This is just a normal day’s work.”
“There is a big difference between shifting a few stollen televisions from Pennsylvania to Ohio than moving guns into Chechnya!”
“If you wanted to stay small time you should have stayed at home,” said Jake, “This is our big break. A couple of deliveries and we can retire. And I don’t malatya escort mean some shitty condo in Florida, I mean real retirement. A villa in the Bahamas kinda retirement.”
“What I would do to be in the Bahamas right now, fuck this cold and fuck Russia,” Kayla snorted.
“What’s that?” asked Maria, leaning forward and trying to peer through the snow-laced darkness.
Headlights moved towards them and as they came closer a shape of a van could be made out.
“Ok Frank, you are with me,” said Jake and the two men climbed down from the cab.
Kayla and Maria watched as Frank and Jake walked towards the van, which had stopped just ahead. The way the snow whipped around them and the wind pulled at their clothes made Maria feel cold just watching them. Three people got out of the other van and approached. Two were large, the other smaller, maybe a woman.
“What do you think?” Asked Kayla.
“I think we just sit and wait,” replied Maria.
“How can you be so calm?”
Maria’s heart was pounding and her palms were sweating in her mittens in spite of the cold. Kayla was right, if they did get caught this would be bad. Very bad. But if they didn’t… That is what Maria focused on. A private beach of white sands where she and Jake could spend all day and every day fucking.
“Just breathe. Everything will be fine.”
Jake walked back and signaled for Maria to open the window. As the window wound down she felt the icy air blow inside the cab sending snowflakes across the dashboard.
“We have a slight snag,” Jake called up.
“What kind of snag?”
“The guards on the checkpoint tonight aren’t the ones our comrades over there were expecting.”
“What does that mean?”
“We can’t cross into Chechnya tonight, we will have to wait until tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night?” gasped Kayla leaning forward. “We have a truck full of AK-47s, grenades, landmines and RPGs! Every second we wait is a second we could get seriously, seriously fucked!”
“Kayla, calm down!” snapped Jake and the girl retreated back into the rear compartment.
“What do we do tonight?” asked Maria.
“They have a farm. We can stay there, keep the truck in the barn and off the road. It’s not great but it’s not the end of the world.”
“Do you trust them?”
Jake paused and for a moment Maria saw doubt in his eyes, “Listen, we are in the middle of nowhere, we have no friends here, the only people we know are these guys. I don’t like it but we don’t have much choice.”
Maria leaned out the window, feeling the chill of the Russian wind bite into her cheek, and whispered, “We can still just dump it all. Leave it at the side of the road. We could be back in Krasnador by dawn and Ukraine by tomorrow afternoon. There will always be other jobs.”
“The people who are paying us aren’t the kind of people you mess around, and certainly not the kind of people who would forgive us for dumping millions of dollars of weapons on the side of the road,” Jake glanced back at the three Chechnyians and saw Frank heading back to the truck, “It’s a setback, nothing more. Guards change routines all the time, there is nothing sinister about that.”
*****
They followed the Chechnyians’ van out of the small border town and into the countryside. The roads were little more than mud tracks that were now covered in snow. The truck bounced up and down as it constantly plowed through an endless minefield of potholes, which made Maria think about their own explosive cargo. Out the window, there was no sign of civilization just freezing darkness in all directions. She missed home, she missed the bright lights of New York, the constant thrum of energy and life. This place felt like the exact opposite.
After about twenty minutes they pulled up outside a farmhouse. Like most buildings in the Russian Countryside, it was basic but functional. A man from the van got out and ushered them into a large wooden barn. Maria didn’t know much about farming but she was sure the crates that filled the barn had very little to do with agriculture. All were adorned with Russian military symbols, some also had the universal symbol for explosives on them.
They got out of the truck and followed the man out the barn and the short distance across the farmyard to the main house. Even in the brief moments it took to get inside, the wind had frozen them down to their bones and they quickly huddled through the door and into the warmth.
“Greetings, friends!” the Chechnyian man, who led them inside, said opening his arms out wide in welcome, “Please, take a seat, have a drink!”
The farmhouse kitchen was warm and inviting with a large oil-fuelled cooker stretching along one wall heating the room. What must have been the original occupants’ furniture was still evident, rustic tables and chairs, rural paintings on the walls and lovingly crafted straw animals decorated the sideboard. Maria doubted that the rough-looking individuals that now sat around niğde escort the table smoking and drinking vodka, their guns close to hand, were the same people who had lovingly woven the straw animals.
There were two men, both of which had women sitting on their knees. While Maria didn’t like to be presumptuous, she was of the opinion these women were local street girls and these men were not only arms dealers but also pimps. The girls checked them out impassively and continued to drag from their cigarettes, unconcerned by the hands that were roaming up their short skirts. There was one other woman that looked different, she was dressed in black pants and a well-worn old military jacket. She was beautiful, more beautiful than the two hookers, but wasn’t made-up to the nines, her complexion was dark and she had bright hazel eyes that stood out from her near-black hair. She sat at the table, glass of vodka in hand and smiled with little warmth.
They sat down at the table and nodded their greetings, Kayla nervously glancing at the guns on display.
The woman in the military jacket, slid an unmarked bottle across the table, “Here, have a drink, it will warm you up.”
Frank poured the clear liquid into a glass and took a swig, as tough as he was, he was still reduced to a coughing fit. The woman downed a measure twice the size of Frank’s and grinned, “This is real Russian vodka, not the rubbish you get in your States of America.”
“It’s…It’s… good,” said Frank, his voice reduced to a rasp.
The rest of the group took tentative sips and just the slightest taste made Maria’s face crease up.
“It’ll stop your blood freezing, eh?” laughed the Chechnyian, who led them in, as he sat down.
“Sergei, do you know why the scheduled guards weren’t on duty tonight,” asked Jake.
Sergei shrugged his broad shoulders, “Who knows? Maybe someone is ill and they just needed to shuffle the timetable around. I’ll call our guys in the morning and make sure they are on duty tomorrow night. Then you drive through no problem.
“I’m Alina,” the woman in military jacket said, “First time in Russia?”
“Yeah…” replied Kayla.
“And what do you think?”
“Erm… it’s really… lovely…” replied Kayla, unsure of what to say.
Alina turned to Sergei, “She thinks Russia is really lovely.” They both kept a straight face for a couple of seconds before bursting out in laughter.
Kayla blushed feeling she was being made fun of.
“I will tell you, Russia is a tyrannical state that has raped and pillaged my homeland for decades!” Alina said, her passion igniting, “and one day, one day soon, we will drive them from our country forever!”
“Ok…good… I guess…” replied Kayla.
Alina leaned forward and as she did, Kayla leaned back, “Typical American! You don’t understand the politics of the rest of the world! All you care about is money!”
“Settle down, Alina. These are our guests,” Sergei turned to the Americans, “I apologize, my sister feels very strongly about… politics.”
Alina poured and consumed another drink, “So let me guess; brains,” she said nodding to Jake, “brawn,” she nodded to Frank, “Hmm… what about you two. You the fuck dolls to keep the men happy?”
“What the fuck did you say?” snarled Maria slamming her glass on the table sending some vodka splashing onto the rough wood. Alina just smiled back.
“Alina, Alina,” sighed Sergei, “Again, I apologize. What my sister is asking, in her own special way, is what are your roles in this?”
“Well that bitch had better learn some manners,” said Maria, her eyes fixed on Alina, “Where I’m from you could get cut up for saying shit like that!”
“Where are you from? You have a very nice tan compared to your friends,” said Alina, sipping calmly from her glass.
“Originally from Puerto Rico, but now New York, so don’t fuck with me!”
Alina laughed, turned to the two silent men with girls on the laps and started talking Russian. The only words the Americans understood were ‘Puerto Rico’ and ‘New York.’ When she finished speaking both the men and the two whores laughed loudly.
“I’ve had enough of you, bitch!” shouted Maria standing up so abruptly her chair fell back and clattered onto the stone floor.
Alina reached forward to where her gun was resting on the table. The room took a breath. Then she picked up the packet of cigarettes next to it, calmly opened it and lit one. She watched Maria glaring down at her and took a deep drag.
“I like this one,” Alina said at last, “Got spirit.”
Sergei laughed, then so did Frank and Jake. Even Kayla joined in, nervously. Maria did not.
“Sit! Sit!” said Alina to Maria as she poured another drink and slid it across the table, more splashes sploshing against the rough wood.
Maria picked up her chair and sat down, with eyes fixed on Alina she picked up the glass and downed it. The liquid burned her mouth, scorched her throat and made her eyes water, but she refused to allow herself to cough. Alina nodded impressed and smiled as she lifted her glass in toast.
“To new comrades and to New York and Puerto Rico!”
“Za nashu druzhbu!” chimed in Sergei, lifting his glass.
“Nostrovia!” said Jake, joining in.
The Chechnyian’s laughed.
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