Chapter eleven
Past
Jim, Spock and Dr McCoy strode silently into the briefing room. Koloth sat across from them, a security guard at either side of him. "Computer," Spock said as they all took seats. "Record the evidence given." The computer whirred.
Jim began. "State your name for the record."
The Klingon in front of him took a steadying breath. "Koloth Drogaff."
"And your relation to Ensign Pavel Chekov?" Jim continued.
"He is my half-brother." Koloth murmured.
"Tell us what you know about these recent events."
Koloth drew a heavy sigh and his dark eyes met Jim's across the room. "My father and I were travelling on the Enterprise because my father wanted to see Pavel." He stopped and looked away.
"Later, my father told me we were going to snatch him. I'm scared of my father, so I agreed to help him. Obviously, we had to get him somewhere where he wouldn't be missed. I told him one night in the rec room – in Russian – that if he didn't punch me, I'd throttle his best friend. Pavel knew I meant it, so he punched me."
"Just clarify; Pavel punched you because you told him to?" Spock interrupted smoothly.
Koloth nodded mutely. "Yes. Then, my father pressed a court martial because he was trying to get Pavel kicked off the ship. I…" He faltered. I don't know where my father went when final break in the court martial was called. I never left the room. He said he was going to deal with some business so he probably did something to Pavel, but I know nothing for certain." Koloth cleared his throat.
"My father didn't know that you guys could just rule the case out as a minor incident. He was enraged when you did so.
"That night, we went into Pavel's quarters. He was asleep and I could see he already had some injuries. My father bounded and blindfolded him without ever waking Pavel up, then he handed me a weapon and ordered me to hit him. I di-d." Koloth's voice cracked and his face screwed up. Jim realised that the Klingon really hated what he had done to Chekov. "I hit three or four times before my dad stopped me. He took the weapon off me and he started hitting Pavel. He'd said I wasn't hitting him hard enough. When Pavel cried out, my dad just covered his mouth so no-one could hear him. He was laughing. I laughed too; otherwise he would've thought something was wrong. He carried on until he cracked one of Pavel's ribs. Then we left."
"Both you and ambassador Drogaff assaulted Chekov?" Bones asked. Koloth nodded.
"What relation is there between Ambassador Drogaff and Ensign Chekov?" Jim cut in before Koloth could continue.
"He's Pavel's step-father. My father married his mother after Pavel's father was killed." Jim nodded.
"Continue."
"My dad thought that maybe we'd done enough damage to kill him, if he hadn't have been found, he probably would've died." He shuddered and Jim was actually surprised to see a tear falling down Koloth's cheek. He'd never seen a Klingon cry before.
"When my dad found out that he had been found and taken to sickbay, it was a foregone conclusion that Pavel would leave. He's always taken the danger away from other people. We also knew that you'd be looking for him, so we let you do the hard work in finding him. We set up listening bugs throughout the ship so that we could find out where he was going to end up when you found him.
Getting into the brig was easy enough. My dad had some skeleton keys for every locked room on the ship. We took a body bag with us. When we got there, he couldn't walk. There was something wrong with his knee and he was stranded while we beat him again. My father dumped him in the body bag and then returned to our quarters." He paused gently. When he spoke again, his voice was softer than before, it was like he knew that what he was about to say would enrage the three officers.
"We threatened him not to make any sound. Then we put the body bag he was in into another bag. You beamed him down with us." Jim's eyes darkened.
Struggling to keep a civil tone, Jim managed "What happened to him on Earth?"
"We let him out as soon as we rematerialized. You see, it had been exactly twenty years since his father had been killed and his mother Larisa had set up a memorial to him on the roadside where he was killed. Pretty much all of the village had been there when we arrived. There were flowers and gifts right up to the roadside. He went over to the others and they held their little memorial. My dad had called me over and handed me a knife. He said we were going to kill Larisa."
"And you did. That was the body we saw, wasn't it?" Jim filled in. That had been Chekov's mother. Then, Jim realised, it had been Koloth's mother as well.
"Yes." Hot tears sprang in his eyes and spilled over his face. "I helped to kill my own mother." He sobbed. After a few minutes, he continued in a steady voice. "We took Pavel back to the house. We took him down into what had used to be his bedroom. My dad fills it with stuff for torturing now. My dad started to beat him again. I had to join in. I had to." Koloth sighed. "Then my dad injected him with something to make him sleep.
"I went to see him later, while my father was busy. He was calling out for his brother Piotr. I'd seen him like this before. There was no point telling him it was me. I let him think that I was his brother. I'd done it in the past for him. I asked how he was and told him that I'd sent two street girls that he knows to stop you from finding him. Then I said that if you came anywhere near the house I'd move him." Koloth looked up as he realised the implications of what he'd said. "I mean, he didn't want you to be there, because we'd have been able to get you."
"Where would you have moved him to?" Spock asked.
"There was this wooden house on a hill near where we lived. Pavel's father had planned it all for them. I built it as a hideout. My father used to beat them when they were kids. I made it for them. I said I'd move him there through an underground tunnel that I'd dug. I asked him why it was important." Jim was frowning. Koloth sounded so sincere, he was crying and his story fitted all the facts that they had. Could he actually be telling the truth?
"How are you sure that Pavel didn't know it was you?" Jim asked. It didn't help to find out what had happened in any way, but it spoke of a deep, unnoticed psychological problem, if it was true.
"He asked me to take you – his friends – to the hideout." Koloth answered. "He said that to do a runner on the Klingons would only make them more determined to kill him." Koloth paused. "His brother died when Pavel was eight, four years after he lost his father. He didn't know it was me, he's never known it was me talking to him." The half-Klingon sighed.
"Pavel was starting to actually come around so I left. Then my father found me and we both went back down. He'd shackled Pavel at some point. I teased him verbally. It's just what my father expects of me. Then he gave Pavel a disorientation drug.
"I waited in the room while my father took some things upstairs. Pavel came round pretty quickly. I'd released him from the shackles. He asked me what I'd done to scare off a grown Klingon. I'd heard from Karina since then that you'd beamed down. So I told him. I just said that more of you had beamed down." He added at Jim's expression of shock. "Then I was about to say that he should go to the house and that I'd take you all there to him when my father came back. He told Pavel to get up and after a minute, he did. I led him upstairs into the front room. My dad had gotten five weapons out. We started by telling him the truth. A report had been filed saying that my father had killed Pavel's father. He didn't say anything. He was looking at the weapons. Then he said to my dad that he was mistaken and that he hadn't told anyone, like they had agreed." Koloth frowned. "I don't know what he was talking about.
My dad told him that he was listed as a witness and that Pavel was a loose end. He just looked at my dad then ran. My dad had picked up the whip and hit him across the chest with it. My dad threw me the whip and picked up the knout."
"The knout?" Spock questioned. Koloth glanced up worriedly and wrung his hands.
"It's uh, like uh lots of whips but they have metal hooks on them." Koloth explained. "As my father struck him on the arm with the knout, I whipped his stomach. Then he turned. The knout dug its way into his skin and he twisted it up his arm. Then he pulled. It threw my dad off balance and I just kept whipping him across his back. Pavel twisted his arm again and neither of us could reach him. Then he got out of the door. He yanked the knout out of himself and threw it back as he ran. My father told me to get him back no matter what the cost. I picked up a bomb detonator. It wasn't wired to anything. I ran after him. I could see him about to climb over a fence. I told him that he shouldn't go over it. He asked me why. I told him that the detonator would set off a bomb on the Enterprise if he touched the fence. He came back with me without a fight."
"What happened next?" Jim asked. He was trying desperately not to register the fact that Chekov had twice spurned escape so that they would be safe. Did the ensign think he was worth nothing at all?
"You came. I went to check on Alexei because I knew he wanted Pavel dead as much as my father. He's Chekov's cousin and he hates him for some reason. I found him down there, about to kill him so I knocked him out." Koloth took a deep breath and focused his gaze on the table.
"I told him that I admired him and that I wanted to help him. I said I wouldn't blame him if he didn't believe me. He said if I wanted to help, I should keep you all safe or return him and all of you to the Enterprise.
"I was shocked that he trusted me. He said that he'd always trusted me. While you were still arguing with my father, I led him the the hideout. I explained why I'd built it and told him that I was too young to get them to go to it. He reassured me. He always did. It was his job when he was younger to look after me. If I wasn't happy, he got beaten, so it was in his best interests. I guess it's just instinctive now. He told me I should go back before I was missed. I came back."
He looked up. "I shackled Alexei so that he couldn't tell my father anything. Then I saw you out." Koloth finished.
"Computer, finish recording." Spock ordered. The machine complied with a buzz.
Jim studied the Klingon closely. He was still wringing his hands and glancing nervously between them all. He couldn't imagine what it must have been like for Koloth; growing up watching his older brothers being beaten. Watching one of them die. Of course he was terrified of his father. It made sense to be.
"Koloth, what happened to Pavel as a child? You said his brother died." Jim probed gently.
"His brother was killed. So was his father. From what I've been able to piece together over the years, there was also a third brother, called Alexei." Koloth anticipated McCoy's question and raised his hand in a waiting gesture. "Their cousin was named after their brother. He was only three months old and he supposedly died of malnutrition. Piotr was 3 years older than Pavel. My father had beaten them one night for something. I was only two, so I don't remember it. It was a Friday and after he'd beaten them, they'd still defied him so he took them both out in his car. From what I can gather, he took them to an old building that was getting demolished the next week. He led them up to the highest floor. He strapped them up to the wall. They couldn't reach each other. There was no source of food or water for them. He came home and he reported them missing to the police and made a press appeal for them to come home or be returned to us. They were left all weekend in that building. I can only guess that Piotr died from his injuries – he was dead when they found Pavel. He was rushed to hospital and he stayed there until he was allowed to go home. I remember visiting him with only our mother once. It's the only time apart from seeing him here on the ship that I remember him looking healthy.
"When he was back home, life carried on as it had before. Three years after that, my father chased Pavel out of the house for something. We never saw him again. It took us five months to track him to the Enterprise."
Jim had listened in silence. There was no way that Koloth had lied. There were too many obvious habits of Chekov's that could be attributed to horrors from his childhood.
"I just hate to think of what he could've been." Koloth was saying. It was very human of him, Jim thought, to have said any more than he had to. "When I was little, he used to sing me to sleep. And when my father shut them in the basement for being naughty, I could hear him sing to Piotr –and to himself, in later years." Koloth added reluctantly. "He's a really good singer." Koloth met Jim's gaze.
"Mr Spock, take Koloth to spare quarters. He will be confined there with a constant guard. As Jim rose he fixed Koloth with an icy glare. "Pavel may trust you, but I don't. Prove that you care about your brother. Help us find him." Jim said. As Koloth was led out of the room by security, Jim heard him whisper a response, but he couldn't make out the words.
