Свобода мысли

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The travel to China had taken two and a half weeks. The travel back was just as long.

The first days I shouted, screamed and clamored.
The days thereafter I just sat in a corner and cried.
Then the pain from my wounds overwhelmed me. All that I'd been fighting for, all that had kept me up was gone. There was no reason to still be strong. No adrenaline that kept me going.

No matter how much I want to believe that Audrey is alive, there are ten per cent of my brain, in the back of my head that scream at me: accept the facts. The Chinese wouldn't have stopped torturing you if she were still alive. They wouldn't have sent you back to Russia, unless they don't need to you any more to question her.
It's the same ten per cent who told me she's alive before. Now they're back, discomforting me, making me uncertain.

I am back at the point where I started from: believing that I'm going crazy, not knowing whether she's alive or not.
I would do anything to get her out of there.

Damn it, no.
She made it to Kazakhstan. The Chinese only let me go because they don't need me anymore: because she's gone.

No matter how often I tell myself to believe it, the doubts stay.

After some time, the container gets loaded onto a truck again and soon later arrives back at the prison. I haven't counted the days - the alternations between cold and less cold times. My mind had been consumed with other things.

It's night. At night time they can do their illegal trades more easily, I guess. The usual three guards bring me back into the building, straight to the medical ward, when they realize in what terrible shape I am again.

I stay silent, all the time. I let the doctor do whatever he does. That's the only good person I ever met around here. Wait: am I developing some kind of Stockholm syndrome?
He's just one of them! He lets the guards pay him well just to patch me back up again so they can sell me out again. He's not my friend. I don't have any friends here.

After a few days only, they already bring me back to my cell.

As soon as the door opens, I can see the letters which I scratched into the wall next to the mattress: AUDREY.

These letters have waited for me.

Where is she right now? I guess three or probably three and a half weeks have passed ever since our getaway. If they didn't get her, she most likely followed the river for about a week. I hope she found some other clothes and some food. Usually, a field of vegetables is enough to get through. They're not guarded. As long as the stuff is eatable when it's uncooked, it'll keep you alive.
I guess they're using the river water to water their fields. They won't be far away from the river bed.

If everything went well, she reached the lake - I forgot the name - and the city on its western end to get onto a train to Almaty. That could also take a week.

Summing it all up, she could be in Almaty now, at the convent, with Yokhanna. The old lady will watch over her well.
She was probably already sitting in the cathedral during the last days, acting like she was praying, waiting for me.

I'm so sorry to disappoint you, I silently murmur as I kneel down and touch the letters on the wall. I'm letting her down. She's there, waiting for me, but I won't appear. I can't think of any way how to get out of here. Maybe, when they sell me out again. Maybe I'll get a chance then.

Though I'm not tired, I lie down on the mattress, in a position that her name on the wall is just right next to my head.

I'll wait for you, she said. I can see her saying it, in my memories. She was so full of hope then.

What will happen in a week? Will she continue to wait for me? I told her to go to the US consulate and tell them the whole story, but will she do it? Or will she continue to wait for me, every afternoon, in the back of the cathedral?

I'm not sure. But I know that she was never very happy when other's told her what to do. She makes her own decisions. She said she'd wait for me.

Maybe she won't even go to the consulate. Maybe she had enough time to think and to realize that this could be a big danger for her.
I didn't think far enough when I told her to go to the consulate. I shouldn't have said that. I should have known at that point in time that the risk is too big. The Chinese could have spies in the consulate. They could have tapped the phones there. If they find out that Audrey is there before the cavalry arrives... I don't even want to continue that thought.

She's a smart girl. She thinks just like me, sometimes.
That even draws a smile off my face. Yes, she really thinks like me. We had so many occasions when we'd finish the others' sentence or started to do the same thing, which often made us laugh, when we found out. Like once, when she tried to surprise me, by waiting for me at my car... while I waited at hers, having had the same idea, for over an hour, until she disappointedly appeared there. It was such a great evening.
The whole time with her was great. That was the best time of my life.

I miss her.
I've missed her ever since that morning, ten years ago, when I left her. Seeing her again in London made it only worse, not better. When she entered that room, I actually wanted to take her and run, far away from everything. She would have done it, probably. She would have said yes. In just that second in which I had her close to me, she proved to me that everything that we once had was still there. All the feelings. All the desire. All the trust. I never trusted any woman like I trusted her. She never let me down when I needed her.
I saw that again when she followed me blindly, out of that Chinese prison. I still don't know what she had done to get the keys from that guard. Probably she let him have her... I don't wanna imagine that, even though it makes sense. She could have done that all the time, all the months before I appeared. But when saw me suffer, she did it. Whatever she did, she did it for me.
I owe her everything and even more.

Damn it, I didn't even tell her how much she still means to me. Not in London - because I was afraid of shaking up her life, and not in China - because...? Damn it, why didn't I? I was so caught up in my own pain and in getting us out of that hell that I didn't tell her how much I still love her.

But she knows it anyway, I'm sure. She knows me just as well as I know her.

She won't got to the US consulate in Almaty. She'll stay with Yokhanna, she'll be waiting for me, no matter if takes two weeks, two months or even longer. She'll be there.

I can't get out of the Russian prison. The cell is always locked, the only push the food in through a little hole, on a paper plate. I have no chance to get out, even though that's the only thing I can think about. I have to try it when they hand me over to somebody else.

That doesn't take long this time, probably because I recovered quite quickly.

It's their standard procedure. A black bag over my head. Out of the cell, left, down the hallway, two floors down, right, right again and then there's the door.
I await to be pushed into such a damn container again, but this time it seems to be different.

Somebody grabs my shoulder - quite softly - pushing me into a car. What the? Where are they taking me, with a car?

The black hood is still over my head, I can't see where we're going. But it is much more comfortable than the last times.

Half an hour later they slow down and stop. They tear the hood off my head.

I have to blink my eyes. I'm not used to daylight any more. It's blinding me.
Finally I see where we are. We're on an airfield, the car stopped right next to a private jet. It's Global Express, one that could reach 75% of all states in the world starting from here.

The men who are sitting right and left to me, in the car, they're Russians. Most likely, they're in cahoots with the prison guards, securing me during the transport. Could I knock them out? I'll have to try on my way out. I could take one of their weapons and capture the plane.

While I'm still putting together a plan, the guy on my right side has already opened up his door and pulls me out into the daylight.

I have t-

Black. Everything goes black.

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