"When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!" -William Shakespeare
They rushed through the streets, calling her name.
Hotch skidded to a halt, noting the presence of the liquor store nearest to the police station. If she had come in this direction, either she was inside, or she had not made it this far. He wrenched open the door and careened inside.
"FBI," he said, shoving his credentials at the shopkeeper. "Did you sell a pack of cigarettes to a woman, 5'6", 120 pounds, with red hair and a large bruise on her left cheek?"
The elderly man shook his head, mystified.
"Saw a girl like that outside, though. She looked like she meant to come in, but then she met a man and left with him."
"Agent Hotchner." He whirled at the sound Sergeant Potts's urgent voice. The tall, strapping young woman had followed him into the shop, holding out a small black object. It took him a moment to identify it as his own cellphone. Potts's green eyes were wide and frightened.
Hotch turned on the old man again, wrestling down his own alarm.
"Describe him," he commanded him, leveling the shopkeeper's nerves with a glare.
"Wh-who?" stammered the man, cowering under the flashing of Hotchner's dark eyes.
"The man she left with," he snarled. "Describe him and tell me the direction they were headed."
"He… he was small, dressed like a thousand bucks. Real nice Italian number. And… I don't know, I caught a look at his eyes and they were scary."
"Hotchner, that's Arkady. He tracked her down in person."
"Where," pressed Hotch, his voice growing quiet and deadly calm, "did they go?"
"They headed off that way," said the petrified shopkeeper, gesturing with his thumb. "He looked real calm. Real happy. I think he-"
But his interrogators had gone, leaving the elderly shopkeeper to lean on the glass counter and wipe his brow feverishly.
God help this Arkady guy, he thought, remembering the murder in Agent Hotchner's eyes. I wouldn't cross that scary bastard for anything, not even a woman.
Hotch dialed as he strode back to the precinct.
"Swann, tell me you have the location."
"I've got fifteen places in Chicago paid for by money traced back to Arkady's businesses. Our analysts can't figure out which one houses the girls. Why the rush?"
"He found her. He took Blythe and I'm betting her life that he took her there."
"What the fuck, Hotch? How did he take her from under your nose?"
He couldn't defend himself against that. Even his fury at Blythe couldn't compete with his disgust with his own negligence.
"Believe me, I know. I'll apologize as many times as you want later. Send me the addresses and I'll find her."
"My people are sending them to your technical analyst now. Bring her home, Hotch."
"I will."
He made to hang up, but she stopped him. Her voice was suddenly very small.
"Hotch-" she started. "Is he going to try to break her like Canary?"
"I think so."
"We can't lose another one like that."
"We won't. Blythe is as resilient as it gets."
"So was Canary."
"Andi, you need to focus on the job. We can't do her any good if we're compromised."
"Yeah," breathed the woman. "Easier said than done. Call me when you know something."
Click.
What Hotch hadn't told Agent Swann, and what he tried very hard not to think about himself, was that Blythe's current mental state must leave her uncommonly vulnerable to Arkady Volkoff's psychological torture. Sleep-deprived, violated, and grieving. They couldn't expect her to hold out for very long. And by the time Garcia figured out which location to storm, she would have been in that repugnant man's company for an hour at least. Hotch was relatively confident that a sadist like Volkoff would not kill her immediately, but the damage he might do to the spy's psyche in even an hour…
No time to wring your hands, Hotchner. Get to it.
He dialed again.
"Garcia, you've got the addresses?"
"Yeah, give me the parameters."
"It would be somewhere remote and large enough to hold at least thirty people captive."
"Down to five."
"Brainwashing that extreme must require Volkoff to have complete control of the victims' sensory input. Check for any renovation that suggests sound-proofing. There would be a separate chamber where he works on them individually."
"Got it. Warehouse on the riverbank. Bought by one of Volkoff's subsidiaries and modified two years ago to include a 'recording studio.'"
"You continue to amaze me. Send me the address."
"Done. Good luck-"
Hotch had already hung up and joined Reid and the SWAT team, donning his kevlar vest.
"We've got them. Move out," he barked.
Every second that passed stretched out interminably.
Not another one. Not this time.
The large black car slid to a smooth stop in front of a large warehouse on the bank of the Chicago River. Helena glanced around, noting the absence of civilians in the vicinity. With no one else to threaten, Arkady had to rely now on her instinct to preserve her own life with the gun pressed into the small of her back. Or perhaps merely her urgent need to see the inside of the "menagerie."
As they approached the door, she braced herself for the sight of thirty young, female corpses. Until that moment, she had not allowed herself to acknowledge the possibility that Arkady, frighted by Igor's sudden demise, would dispose of the merchandise immediately.
Arkady's goon opened the doors, which, she noticed, were thoroughly soundproofed. A second, thick-walled structure greeted her as they stepped into the dark interior. In a sudden fit of fancy, her mind conjured a ludicrous image of herself descending through the hollow shells of a matryoshka doll, searching for the small body swaddled in the center.
"Welcome to the menagerie, Canary," murmured her slight captor.
Melodramatic little pipsqueak, aren't you? she thought irritably. She stayed silent, however, refusing to turn and look at him. Shrugging, he threw open the second set of doors.
Her eyes met with only a thick darkness. Her nose, however, was instantly assaulted by the overwhelming stench of human filth. As the door swung open with a subtle creak, the sound elicited a series of groans, shrieks, and sobbing from the inside of the menagerie, as though Helena had waded into the depths of Tartarus itself.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the tormented room. Lights flickered on, casting an anemic yellow light over what looked like an enormous crate draped completely in thick black cloth. In the far corner of the room, a small chamber of thick glass stood empty save for one simple wooden rocking chair and a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Nearby, rolls of fabric in different colors were stacked against the wall.
A minimalist. That's nice.
"Persuasion," volunteered Arkady in perfect English, "does not require nearly as much vulgar paraphernalia as you Americans seem to think it does."
She turned around to face him, her eyes meeting his for the first time since she left the car.
"Torture isn't a very impressive hobby, Arkady Ivanovich."
"Perhaps not at the cruder levels. I do think, however, that my work on your predecessor… what did you call her…?"
"Her name," she spat, "was Clara. She had three siblings and she would have been an aunt by now."
As they faced each other, groans and incoherent pleas continued to emanate from the black box.
At least they're alive on some level.
"Oh yes. Clara. Clara the Canary. I re-named her, of course. I called her Anya," he recalled with a fond expression in his predator's eyes. "She took a full two months to accept her name. And to call me 'father.' I have them all call me that." He turned to ponder the box. "It's too bad to lose these. It would have been a profitable batch. I think the loss will be worth it to force you to watch them die."
He can't escape with all of them, but he has time to execute them.
"Release these women, Arkady," she pleaded. "You can't get them all out before the FBI track you down. They'll be on their way now."
"What, in your estimation," he inquired with interest, "are the chances of me doing that? I haven't had a chance to complete these ones yet. They still don't answer to their proper names."
"You've got me. You know I'll be more fun to break than all of them put together."
"Ah, but I'll still have you after I kill them."
"No," she said, with grim satisfaction. "You won't. We've got all your financial records." This revelation appeared to have turned the little man to stone. She kept going, her pleasure growing with every word. "By now the FBI has already figured out where you're keeping the girls. They're on their way, Arkady. You're finished."
He stared at her for a long minute, searching her face for signs of deception.
"You are an excellent liar, Agent Blythe."
"That's very true," she said, inclining her head with a gracious smile as though he had paid her a lavish compliment. "But this time I'm not bluffing."
"Katya could not have given you my records. She knew nothing."
"I told you, I didn't turn Katya because of the mission. That was for my own pleasure. Someone else gave me the files of the Empire."
"Who?" he hissed in Russian, "Who would dare betray me?"
He was incensed. The revolver trembled in his white-knuckled grip.
"It's hard to know who your enemies are when you've hurt everyone at one time or another, isn't it?" she mused. "Go on, Arkady. Run through the list. Think about every vicious atrocity you've ever committed and wonder: who had enough? Who in your circle of fiends finally decided to bring you down?"
"Shut up. You're lying," shrieked he. He was a control freak. The idea of a single cog in his abominable machine coming loose completely unhinged him.
"I wonder if you even remember this particular drop in your sea of blood, Arkady," she continued, flooded with adrenaline and high on her opponent's rage and fear. "She was sixteen when you took an interest in her. The daughter of one of your lieutenants. Can you picture her face?" she asked him, watching his fat lips form silent, unintelligible words. "No?"
She paused, enjoying the beads of sweat trickling down his expansive forehead.
"Her name was Nadezhda, but everyone called her Nadya," she said. It mattered enormously to her that he hear the name of the girl who had undone his regime.
"Nadya's father was a real talent with money. That's why you drafted him: to make all your little antics vanish into rows and rows of magic numbers.
"But he was an intellectual, not a mobster. He started to question you. His conscience became your liability."
"You're a filthy little liar-"
"So you sent him a message, didn't you? You tied him down, him and his wife, and made them watch their eldest child as you took her to pieces. Did you rape Nadya yourself, little man? I doubt it. I think it was probably Igor, wasn't it? That seems like his style."
"Vasil would never turn on me. He has no spine."
The sound-proofed room covered the approach of the battalion of agents outside Volkoff's crumbling empire. Inside, the spy kept talking, caught up entirely in the glory of watching Arkady's iron grip falter and fade.
"Not normally. But do you know how old Nadya would be today?" She paused again, waiting for his answer, which did not come. "She would be nearly twenty-four. She'd be my age. Vasil took eight years to find his courage, but he managed it for me. For her. Because he couldn't let another girl down. He couldn't disappoint me because he's been looking for a way to atone, to avenge, for eight long years. Do you feel her hand in this, Arkady Ivanovich? Do you hear Nadya laughing now?" she pressed. She had always had a flare for the dramatic, but now it served her well.
"Like I said," she continued in English, "you're not nearly as powerful as you think you are. You're just a silly little goblin with a silly little gun-"
Bang.
Helena stopped speaking just as the second doors exploded and Agent Hotchner, flanked by twenty black-clad men, burst into the room.
But she did not smile at him. She did not even turn.
The smoking revolver dropped from Arkady's hand as three agents converged on him, pinning his thin body to the ground.
Hotch pushed forward to reach her as she stumbled backward, staring at Hotch with wide, blank eyes. She gasped wordlessly and pulled her hand away from her stomach. The pair gazed down at the red liquid dripping over her delicate white fingers, suspended for a split second in mutual incomprehension. Then she crumpled to the ground with a sigh, her mission completed.