Private Wars Read Free Page B

power was. While President Malikov’s other child—his only son—Ruslan, had influence and friends of his own, they paled in comparison to that held by both his father and his sister.
    This was why the four NSS men who entered Ruslan Mihailovich Malikov’s house at half past nine on a frigid February morning had no hesitation whatsoever in arresting his wife, Dina, for espionage and treason. This is why they did not hesitate to beat her in front of her two-year-old son when she tried to keep their hands from her body. This is why they did not hesitate when they had to drag her, flailing and screaming, down the stairs and out onto the street.
    And this was why they did not hesitate at all when it came time to torture her.
             
    They hooded her once they had her in the car, and they bound her hands, and when she made a noise, they struck her, telling her to be quiet. Best as Dina Malikov could tell, they didn’t drive for long or very far, and when the car stopped, she was dragged from the vehicle, and felt the instant bite of winter on her skin. They propelled her down echoing corridors, yanking and shoving her, sometimes pulling her hair, sometimes her shirt. There was the cold sound of heavy metal sliding on concrete, and someone shoved her so hard then that she couldn’t keep her feet, falling to the floor. Red light exploded across her vision as she was hit in the head again, and when she could see once more, the hood had been removed.
    She’d seen this room before, but never in person. It was larger than she’d thought it, lit by a string of naked bulbs that dangled from the ceiling, shining too bright, banishing all shadows and all illusions of the safety to be found in them. The floor was cold, poured concrete, the walls of gray cinder block. The odors of urine and mildew and cigarette smoke combined, still not strong enough to obscure the scent of feces.
    There was a table, wooden and stained, and three chairs, also wooden. A video camera stood on a tripod in one corner, and beside it, on the floor, a red metal toolbox. Other tools lay nearby, devices designed for one purpose that could be redirected to another, far crueler. Against the opposite wall, a claw-footed old bathtub sat, anchored by two pipes, one to fill it, one to drain it.
    Three men stood staring at her. Two of them she didn’t know, didn’t recognize, but the third she did, and that terrified her more than any of what had come before, because it drove home to her exactly how bad things were going to get. As they had taken her from her home, as they had dragged her and beat her, she had allowed herself the illusion of hope, that Ruslan would return, that her marriage would offer her some protection, that she might survive. But looking at Ahtam Zahidov as he removed his suit jacket and carefully draped it over the back of one of the chairs, for the first time, Dina Malikov thought she was going to die.
    “Dina,” Zahidov said, and he gestured to her with his left hand, absently, and the two other men took this cue to move forward, and they began to strip her. She struggled, alternately cursing and pleading with them, with Zahidov, and Zahidov merely watched, and the other two hit her in the back and the belly until she had no air, until she couldn’t struggle any longer. The two men tore the clothes away from her, mocking her, mocking her husband, and when she was finally naked they forced her to the table. Again, she tried to fight them, and again they beat her until she could not, and they laid her across the tabletop, and they held her down.
    Ahtam Semyonovich Zahidov moved behind her, and put one hand on the back of her neck, and with his other forced himself inside her.
             
    “Where did you get the tape?” Zahidov asked. “Who gave it to you?”
    She tried not to sob, shaking on the floor, tears and blood mingling on her face.
    “Who gave it to you?” Zahidov asked.
    She drew a long inhale, feeling the