Russia Girl Read online

  Russia Girl

  A Natalia Nicolaeva Thriller

  by

  Kenneth Rosenberg

  Copyright 2019 by Kenneth Rosenberg

  All Rights Reserved

  www.kennethrosenberg.com

  Also by Kenneth Rosenberg

  Vendetta Girl (Natalia Nicolaeva Thriller #2)

  Enemies: A War Story

  Memoirs of a Starving Artist

  The Extra (Hollywood Romance #1)

  Bachelor Number Five (Hollywood Romance #2)

  Bachelor Number Nine (Hollywood Romance #3)

  The Art of Love (Hollywood Romance #4)

  No Cure for the Broken Hearted

  Chapter One

  Three women swung battered scythes at undulating stalks of grain, oblivious to shifting patterns of shadow and light all around them. They wore scarves on their heads and dresses made from cotton smoothed by years in sun and wind and rain. Ivanka, the matriarch, was a stocky, determined woman, who hacked at the wheat with a vengeance. Nineteen-year-old Natalia Nicolaeva was tall and lithe, with arms whose grace belied their strength. Rita, her sixteen-year-old sister, struggled with her smaller frame not yet grown into the task.

  On better days, this work was done by an ancient heap of metal and bolts that passed for a combine harvester. Today was not one of those days. From where they worked, the women heard occasional grunts and curses from Victor, Natalia’s father, as he struggled to repair the machine. What few animals they owned needed to be fed, and the grain brought in, so in the meantime, the women toiled the old-fashioned way. Natalia didn’t mind the work so much. It took her mind off their troubles and it made her strong, though she worried about her sister who pushed herself so hard.

  “Rita, don’t wear yourself out,” said Natalia.

  “What’s wrong, you can’t keep up?!” Rita countered crossly, determined to do her share.

  “We’ll all stop,” said their mother, throwing her scythe to the ground, “and load the cart.” Ivanka walked to their fifty-year-old tractor, with peeling red paint and a wooden cart attached to the back. She launched herself up and into the seat and turned the ignition. The engine sputtered and came to life. With head raised high and lips pursed tightly in a stern expression of fortitude, the girls’ mother wheeled the tractor around beside the freshly cut wheat before climbing down to help her daughters scoop the stalks into their arms and then pile them on the cart.

  “You don’t have to be so curt with me,” an annoyed Natalia said to her little sister.

  “If I wanted your opinion I’d ask for it,” Rita countered.

  “You’re a Nicolaeva, that’s for sure,” said Natalia. “A real pain in the ass.”

  “I learned from the best,” said Rita.

  “Quiet you two!” commanded their mother.

  Rita and Natalia looked at each other with vexed expressions as they continued piling their load.

  When the day grew long and the animals were fed, Natalia’s body ached with exhaustion. Inside the family’s modest farmhouse, she used a bucket and a rag to wash herself in a large porcelain bathtub and then quickly changed into jeans and a well-worn sweater. It was Thursday, her night to meet Sonia for dinner in the village. When she was dressed and ready, she slid her phone into her pocket and took the keys to the family’s rusted Lada from a peg near the door. “I’ll be back in a few hours.” Natalia ducked out, bounding down the front steps and on past a wooden corral, where two sway-backed horses munched freshly cut hay. In another enclosure, three pigs lounged lazily in the dirt. The lone milk cow was ensconced in the barn for the night. Smoke from a cooking fire drifted up from the chimney of the small house where Natalia’s sister-in-law Olga lived with her three young children. Inside, they would just be sitting down to dinner themselves. Natalia paused, tempted to duck in for a visit with her niece and nephews; especially Constantine, who always had a smile for her, even when chronic asthma kept him confined to his bed. There was a lesson to be learned from this plucky four-year-old. His undying enthusiasm tugged at her heartstrings. She should stop in to kiss the children goodnight, but she was already running late. Natalia opened the door to the Lada and climbed in. She turned the key and pressed lightly on the gas pedal. The engine coughed twice and then rumbled to life. This car was falling apart on the outside but her father kept the mechanics in good order. Natalia drove up and over a low hill and then continued down the dirt track that led toward the highway.

  “Why does he have to come here?” Sonia muttered under her breath. She was a pretty, heavyset girl with ivory white skin. Her round face was framed by smooth dark hair. On her lips, she wore bright red lipstick. Sonia’s eyes narrowed as she scowled in the direction of Gregor Multinovic, who sat eating at a table on the sidewalk just outside.

  “He pays his bill, doesn’t he?” Standing beside her friend in the back of the restaurant, Natalia turned around to look.

  “He scares away the other customers.” Sonia was the only waitress at her mother’s establishment, where the pair of them served meals six days a week and lived together upstairs. “Look at this place. It’s empty but for him! Besides, he scares me, too.”

  “He’s just here to eat. Forget about it. Come here, my love!” Natalia gave her friend a kiss on each cheek.

  “Oh, sit down,” Sonia scoffed, “I’ll bring something out.”

  Natalia chose a table where, through an open window, she could watch Multinovic quietly sipping from a bowl of soup. The man was at least twice Natalia’s age, with bushy salt-and-pepper hair. He had a rugged look about him, with a strong chin and a weathered face. Not altogether unattractive, she had to admit. Natalia wondered if he gained pleasure from eating or if it was simply a means toward survival. She’d never seen the man smile. She wondered if he even knew how. Multinovic had arrived in Drosti several years before. He kept mostly to himself but the village was full of rumors about his dark and violent past. He was an arms dealer, drug dealer, war criminal, ex-mobster. He was a killer and a rapist, running from the law. Natalia believed that there must be something to the rumors. If not, then why was he here? This Serb hiding out in the no-man’s land that was Transnistria? He might as well have disappeared off the face of the earth. As far as the local residents were concerned, Multinovic was the monster who one day came to town, and while nobody wanted him around, they were all too frightened to do anything about it. Natalia didn’t realize she was staring until he swiveled his head abruptly, catching her in his withering gaze. Her eyes shifted downwards as she gripped tightly to her table. Sonia reappeared with two plates of pasta and two Coca Cola’s. “What’s wrong with you?” She placed the food and drinks on the table.

  “What do you mean?” Natalia released her grip and eased her shoulders back, trying to hide her anxiety.

  Sonia looked briefly toward Multinovic. “You think he’s handsome, don’t you?” She cracked a wry smile.

  “What?!” Natalia recoiled. “Are you kidding?”

  “Oh, come on,” Sonia teased. “You can tell me.”

  Natalia laughed lightly. “You always did have an odd sense of humor.”

  After taking a seat, Sonia watched the man finishing his soup. “You have to admit, he does have a certain charisma. Not like the rest of the men around here.”

  “I thought you couldn’t stand him?” Natalia tried not to raise her voice.

  “You know he’s a rapist, right?”

  “All I know is rumors, just like you.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to be raped by him? It might not be so bad, eh?”

  “Sonia!” Natalia gasped. “I think you’ve officially lost your mind.”

  “That’s what this village does to me. I’m a desperate woman.”

  “That much is true.”
Natalia sipped at her coke.

  “Can you blame me?”

  “No, I don’t suppose I can…”

  “So come with me, then.”

  “Come with you where?! What is it this time, Sonia?” Natalia had long ago grown tired of this conversation, repeated weekly.

  “There’s a woman, looking for waitresses. For a restaurant in Italy.” Sonia challenged Natalia to argue with her.

  “Great, then move to Italy,” Natalia replied.

  “Two waitresses, Natalia. I’m serious this time.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “Come on! It’s the opportunity we’ve always dreamed of! Why won’t you listen at least?”

  “Because they’re your dreams, not mine!”

  “They used to be our dreams.”

  “Well, they’re not anymore.”

  Sonia put her elbows on the table and clasped her hands together. “I know this has something to do with Vitaly, but I’m talking about Italy! La dolce vita!”

  Natalia shook her head. “It’s not about Vitaly. My family needs me here. I’m not going anywhere, so you’d better get used to that fact.”

  “I don’t care what you try to tell yourself, Natalia, there is no future for us in this place. Besides, think of the money you could send home! Think what good that would do for them!”

  Natalia wanted to insist that Sonia was wrong about that last part, but in truth, she simply couldn’t. No matter how stoic her parents tried to remain, Natalia understood what a tenuous life they led.

  “What are you going to do, marry Vitaly, and then what? Spend the rest of your life here? Is that what you really want?”

  “I just want to be left alone. That’s all.”

  “My mother knows this woman,” Sonia went on. “They went to school together. Svetlana lives in Odessa now, but she’s home visiting family. She came by this morning and told me all about it.”

  Natalia’s skepticism was apparent, though her fortitude was slipping. “Why Italy? If she lives in Odessa?”

  “She knows people. Believe me, she’s very nice. I promise. And the pay! Eight hundred euros per month! Or more! Imagine what we could do with that...”

  Natalia looked down at her food. Her cheeks flushed a pale red as she tried to hide the conflicting emotions that swirled within her. It wasn’t too long ago that she and Sonia plotted their escape from Drosti together, but that was before the disappearance of her brother, Leon. Natalia saw what losing their only son did to her parents, both emotionally and physically. The abandonment of his family marked their failure, at least in their own eyes. It also meant more work for everyone else, especially Olga, left to raise their children as a single mother. Natalia couldn’t bring herself to leave them all behind as well. Things were sure to be better in Italy or elsewhere, but ever since Leon left, Natalia reluctantly resigned herself to staying put. Her parents had never been more than 100 km from Drosti. They accepted this place as their destiny. It was easier for them, though. For much of their lives, going abroad was simply not an option. Not under a communist regime fearful of an exodus to the West. Natalia was born into a free society, but with freedom came choices, and with choices came decisions. In some ways, the old life was a lot less complicated. You did as you were told. You accepted the circumstances you were born into. Things were simple. But those days were long over. Natalia had choices to make and no matter how much she tried to extinguish that fire of ambition, she knew it still burned inside her. If she let an opportunity like this pass her by, she might spend the rest of her life wondering, haunted by seeds of doubt and regret.

  At the table outside, the girls saw Multinovic reach into his back pocket and pull out his wallet. He dropped some bills on the table and stood to go, but then stopped abruptly, turning to stare at them through the window. His mouth opened slightly, as though he were about to say something, but then thought better of it, furrowing his brow before walking briskly away down the sidewalk.

  “Thank God,” Sonia said with a shudder.

  “I thought you wanted him to rape you?”

  Sonia responded with an angry glare.

  “You’re the one who said it.” Natalia picked up a fork and twirled it in her pasta.

  “I just don’t understand why he would come to Drosti of all places… Why would anyone choose to live here?”

  “Is it really so bad?”

  “Do I have to answer that?”

  Natalia scowled. “He must have his reasons. Maybe you should ask him sometime.”

  “You think I want to have an actual conversation with that man?”

  “You seem awfully curious about him.”

  “Please, Natalia.”

  “He can’t be much worse than all of those fat Americans you write to, half a world away.”

  “They’re not all fat,” said Sonia. “Or American. Some of them are fat Australians. Or wrinkly old Norwegians.” She laughed at her own joke. “Even they don’t want to come here. Why would they?”

  “Why would you want to marry some man you’ve never even met?”

  “Natalia, you know how I feel. Every day it’s like my soul is slowly being crushed in this place. I can’t take it much more, I really can’t.”

  Natalia breathed deeply. “Let’s talk about something else for a while.”

  Sonia looked Natalia in the eye. “Just promise me you’ll meet this woman, won’t you? Svetlana. All you have to do is meet her.”

  Natalia screwed her face into a pained expression. “Fine, I’ll meet her,” she relented. “But I’m not promising anything else.”

  A light smile crossed Sonia’s lips. “That’s all I ask.”

  Chapter Two

  Natalia left Sonia’s house at dawn and drove back through the quiet streets, past the aging shops, wood-plank sidewalks and warped wooden homes beaten down by ruthless eastern winters. Fading yellow paint peeled from the Russian Orthodox Church, while the bulbous golden dome on top reflected the day’s first thin rays of light. As she passed the school, Natalia remembered the terror she’d felt being dropped off there for the very first time. Yet while Drosti was little changed since that day, Natalia herself had grown beyond it. Despite her apprehensions, a part of her longed to fly far, far away, to leave the hopelessness and the pain and the despair of this place behind.

  Of course, there was also Vitaly to consider. He’d be home from the army in a just a few more months. Everyone in the village expected them to get married, eventually. Even Natalia expected it. Part of her longed for the stability that represented. But did she love him? Natalia wasn’t sure. Maybe in time she would, like her parents had grown to love each other.

  Continuing along the single paved road out of town, Natalia watched as the countryside came to life for the day. Farmers hitched up horses or climbed aboard their own antiquated equipment and headed for the fields. She slowed behind an old tractor moving ahead of her down the road, recognizing Oleg behind the wheel, a neighbor with a shock of billowing gray hair. His was another ancient machine like her father’s, becoming harder and harder to repair as the spare parts ceased to exist. Natalia tooted her horn as she passed and Oleg raised a hand in reply.

  After a few more kilometers, Natalia turned left off the paved road and wound up and over rolling hills, through wheat fields and past small scraps of remnant forest. Thoughts of her future still swirled through her mind. Everyone had heard the stories about what happened to girls who went abroad. Nightmarish, terrible stories. But those things didn’t happen to girls like Natalia. They happened to naïve girls who didn’t know any better. Or girls of questionable morals, who put themselves in compromising situations. Sonia and Natalia were too smart for that. Right? She couldn’t help but wonder. For the time being Natalia had her other things to worry about. First she had to milk the cow and collect some eggs from the chicken coop so that her niece and two young nephews could have their breakfast. Then she had to help again with the harvest, one way or another.

  As
she pulled up to the farmhouse, she saw their neighbor Vladimir talking to her father. Victor Nicolaev was a burly man, with a round face and large, bushy eyebrows. He kept mostly to himself and rarely said more than necessary. Some thought him gruff, but Natalia knew he was merely practical. Vladimir, the neighbor, was a skinny, energetic man who never seemed to stop moving. He’d pestered Natalia’s father for years to join a local collective, but Victor was too proud. He was a slave to that system for most of his life. Now he wanted a farm of his own, to work by his own rules, only it seemed they were always one bad harvest away from disaster. Vladimir knew it only too well.

  “Good morning, Natalia,” said her father.

  “Good morning.” Natalia climbed from the car and then moved into the barn where she found the cow patiently waiting.

  Chapter Three

  As soon as she walked in the front door, Natalia felt as though she were on display. Eyeing her was a round woman dressed in a beige velour top and brown polyester pants, with an unnatural orange tint to her hair. She took a long draw on her cigarette and exhaled from the side of her mouth. She looked innocuous enough, like anybody’s aunt or mother. Beside her at the table sat Sonia, across from her own mother, Raisa.

  “Here she is!” Sonia beamed. “This is my Natalia.”

  “Hello.” Natalia returned her own uneasy smile. She placed her phone and keys on the table and took a seat, trying to relax. It would be over soon enough.

  “So, do you have any experience as a waitress?” the woman asked right off.

  “Me? No. No, I don’t.” Natalia leaned back. Was this an interview, already?

  “I don’t suppose you speak any Italian, but that’s ok, you’ll learn. Some English would help. Do you speak any English?”

  “I studied it in school.” She turned to look at Raisa, who took a puff from her own cigarette but said nothing.

  “Not that the Italians speak it, heaven forbid,” the other woman continued, “but the tourists all do.”