19 – NINETEEN – 1.168^19
It wasn't until Don entered the break-room that he noticed how long it had been since he'd been here. Although it was the fourth day he'd been back at work, it had never been necessary. Out of consideration for Don's foot his two co-workers had always brought something for him from the kitchen with them when they fetched something for themselves (and Don had become aware that they seemed to have arranged it, for they always went alternately and at regular intervals).
Don took his crutches in one hand, closed the door with the other and hobbled towards the coffee machine. As he took a cup from the cupboard, his gaze fell on the corner of the work surface and his hand came to a halt. There it was. The broken cup from exactly one week ago, before their abduction was still there. Don had completely forgotten that he had intended to repair it, just as he and Charlie had been able to repair their relationship. Or at least had thought they had been able to.
Since their last argument three days ago, they'd been completely incommunicado. Everything concerning the case was going through David and Colby. Don hadn't been in his childhood home since Tuesday since their unintentional fight on the kitchen floor. Neither had Charlie tried to come into contact with him (and lately didn't seem to spend his time in the house either, but rather in the garage). Via telephone, Alan had occasionally tried to force them to talk to each other, but they had both refused.
But why? Don wondered. Why exactly were they keeping their distance from each other? And didn't they basically want the same? Okay, he wasn't that sure with Charlie anymore... but he himself knew exactly what he wanted.
Don thought. As long as Charlie hadn't found out something there was very little for them to do anyway, or to be exact, very little that could have helped them along. Since Charlie had told Colby via telephone the latest results they'd put out an APB for Boris Chrushtshov, the man that probably had Alex Norvtcharov's death to answer for. Until they'd found him, though, Don wouldn't be able to do anything (or at least anything important) except to wait.
On the spur of the moment he opened a drawer and took a small tube of liquid adhesive and sat down at the table. It was quite a dexterity-requiring action to put the two parts of the handle back at the cup, but finally Don had managed. So, it looked nearly as new. And it probably wouldn't be broken that easily anymore if it got dropped again. Furthermore, Don would make sure that it wouldn't fall again.
Once he'd got back to work he wondered how best he should proceed. Probably Charlie would be working when he got home. And since at this point of time his brother would probably have worked for several hours already, he surely wouldn't have anything against a little break, would he? Then he and Don could sit together and talk about the things they had been silent about in their argument. They would understand each other – okay, rather make that excuse each other, right, forgive him – and then everything would be all right again.
Don couldn't wait to get home.
0 – 0 – 0
Sometimes, Malenkov wondered why the boss bothered to talk at all. His gaze and his whole posture, his facial expressions told everyone what they had to do although at the same time no one could see behind the mask of this calm businessman.
Still, sometimes he spoke, even if not much. "So?"
"Everything went well," Malenkov reported truthfully. He even hadn't needed his second accomplice outside the garage, but you could never be too careful. "We assaulted him and forced him to finger Chrushtshov with his calculations. We continued monitoring the phone in his garage: he gave the cops his 'new findings'."
The boss nodded in satisfaction. At least something that had gone right here.
0 – 0 – 0
"Charlie? You there?"
Stupid question, of course he was there. At least in body. His mind, though, seemed to remain in the world of numbers even after Don had pushed open the door to the garage.
"...Charlie?" repeated Don carefully. He had to watch his steps; he couldn't pick a fight again.
Charlie still didn't seem to hear him, and Don came some steps nearer. He became aware of the half-full one-litre-water-bottle on the desk and the untouched banana. It rather looked like breakfast. But surely Charlie hadn't…?
"Charlie? How long have you been here?"
Don had sounded more sharply than he had intended to, but probably Charlie wouldn't hear him anyway. His brother was frowning, shaking his head slightly while he quietly murmured something to himself as though he wanted by no means to be disturbed. But at least he'd heard him. "Charlie –"
"Shut up!"
Don was so dumbfounded that he did indeed shut up. Damn, now what was going wrong this time? He hadn't wanted to argue! He hadn't even wanted to disturb his brother! He was just... Well. After all, Charlie couldn't go on brooding about the case forever. He would have expected his thoughts had to end sometime. Don would just wait.
He looked at the white chalk lines on the board without the slightest chance of understanding even a single line of it. He shook his head, smiling. He was really proud of his little brother. Charlie had already managed to do so much! He was a leading authority in the world of mathematics! And it was simply fascinating to see how much he could lose himself in this world full of numbers and formulae...
Don's smile faded. If only he would just take a little more care of himself.
But after all, that was what he was there for. His gaze fell again onto the untouched banana which in all probability had been eking out its miserable existence since that morning, and all of a sudden serious doubts occurred to Don that Charlie might ever finish his thoughts – and that before he'd have starved to death. But then why was his brother so stubborn?
Carefully, Don again approached his 'in-another-world' absorbed brother and laid his hand softly from behind on his thin shoulder. The effect was immediate: Charlie flinched, uttered a low cry and whirled around.
"Hey, easy, buddy!" Don tried to calm him with his eyes open wide. His little brother's violent reaction had shocked him nearly as much as his brother had been shocked by the sudden touch.
Charlie was still breathing hard. "What is it?" he asked shortly after he had recovered from the fright.
"I just wanted..." Don fell silent. Why had he come here again? Ah yeah, yes... And what had he wanted to say? "Did you... have you eaten something today?"
Charlie looked at him grimly. "Is that your business?"
Why didn't it work? Why did Charlie all of a sudden hate him?
Don suddenly felt weak, though knowing at the same instant the he couldn't be weak as long as he had to take care of Charlie. And so he covered his despondency successfully with a mask of annoyance. "You have to eat, Charlie. And drink."
"Could you just stop moaning about me for once?" Charlie shouted and then suddenly started to sway.
The next instant Don had grabbed his upper-arms tightly. "Charlie? Everything alright?"
Charlie shook his head and Don didn't care if it was an answer to his question or an attempt to get rid of the vertigo, and he led him to the old chair in front of the desk.
"You alright?" Don asked once more.
"Yeah," came the short answer.
Don, however, decided to attach more significance to Charlie's looks than to his words. He opened the water bottle and offered it to Charlie who first stared at it and then at his brother. "Stop mothering me," he murmured, though he grabbed the bottle and took a large gulp.
"How long have you been here?" Don inquired although he wasn't sure if he really wanted to hear the answer.
Charlie had turned his gaze back towards the boards, apparently having disappeared with half of his mind again into the world of numbers. "Since this morning."
"And since then you haven't eaten or drunk anything?" Don asked incredulously.
"I did drink something," Charlie answered, lifting – his gaze still on the board – the water bottle.
Don shook his head in bewilderment. "Well, then it's high time you took a break."
"No," said Charlie, standing. He only had eyes for the boards.
"Charlie, that wasn't a question!"
"It wasn't? Well, maybe no one told you, but not everyone has to dance to your tune. I don't take orders from you. I know quite well what I have to do."
"Well, evidently you don't!" Don retorted sharply, making an angry gesture, that went completely unnoticed by Charlie, towards what should have been Charlie's breakfast.
Charlie maintained his silence and it became too much for Don. "Come on," he said impatiently trying to pull Charlie outside, but his brother tore himself away with unusual violence.
"No! I have to continue this!"
"But you can't even think straight anymore!"
"Just because you've got the intellectual capacity of an ant doesn't mean that all of us are like you!"
Ouch. Charlie had hit home with this one. However, Don was trying – he really was! – not to show how exactly he knew how proud his parents were of their talented youngest son. "Okay, I admit! I'm no genius like you, but in return I know at least when my body needs nourishment! Mum and Dad didn't always to mother me!"
"Oh come on, be quiet! Can't you just leave me alone for once?"
Don heard how Charlie's voice nearly cracked and how his own didn't sound much better.
"Oh right, I'm sorry! Next time I'll wait till you're dead of thirst!"
"I didn't have time for it, okay?"
"The case is important to all of us, Charlie! But you have to know where to stop!"
"You have no idea!" There were tears of anger and desperation and exhaustion in Charlie's eyes. "Just let me do my work and leave!"
Don inhaled deeply. He was trembling with irritation, but he had to maintain a clear head – or rather get it back. Something was wrong here. It wasn't unusual for Charlie to lose himself in his work, but his violent reactions to every well-meant word were far from normal.
"What's going on here, Charlie?"
Also Charlie was breathing heavily and seemed to be slowly calming down again. "Nothing. Just let me get on here."
"But... just take a little break, okay? A quarter of an hour to eat something, that's all I'm asking of you."
The feelings were becoming deeper and Charlie's voice was rising again. "I – can't – do that. Please, just listen, I... I can't."
And there it was again, the desperation in Charlie's eyes. The thing that squelched Don's anger. "What's going on, Charlie?" he repeated much more soothingly than before while he took a few steps towards his brother. "Tell me."
"It's... it's nothing."
"Come on. You can tell me anything."
Charlie lifted his head and looked into Don's velvet-like eyes for a long time. "I... I can't." Did Charlie's voice tremble? Yes, no doubt. And not only the voice was trembling, but also the hand that – more scrawny than usual – scribbled two words on the board.
Not here.
"I... I can't do this anymore."
Charlie had lowered his hand so that it was now loosely hanging by his side and himself onto the chair. Don stared at the words and a feeling of horror began to spread inside him slowly rising up into his throat. Something had gone wrong here, horribly wrong. He didn't want to imagine what it was – and at the moment he didn't have the opportunity to do so.
The brother stayed in the background for the time being and the FBI-agent in Don took charge of the situation. "Do you... do you want to take a break after all?" Did his voice always sound that hollow when the federal agent was in charge?
Don saw Charlie nod weakly. His voice also sounded hollow. "Yeah... yeah. That'd probably be the best thing to do."
"Okay, so... let's get out of this stuffy garage first of all."
"Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. I'm... not making any progress here anyway."
Don watched as his brother Charlie stood more wearily than he'd even seen him before. He wiped the 'Not here' away with one hand and dragged himself outside. Don followed him and they went down the street in silence until they reached a little park and lowered themselves onto a bench.
0 – 0 – 0
"So the others assaulted the mathematician?" the boss repeated. With his sharp gaze he looked into his two subordinates' alert eyes.
"Yes," confirmed Rurik Petrov. "Yesterday evening. Though we don't know exactly what they did to him. In any case he went back to the house some minutes later."
"So he wasn't badly hurt," the boss deduced. But then why would they have hurt him? For just like themselves the others knew plenty of ways to convince people to do what they wanted. "He's still being kept under surveillance?"
Sasha Andrushov nodded. "He can't move without us noticing."
0 – 0 – 0
"What's going on?" Don asked his question for the third time.
Charlie looked around nervously. Since they had left the garage his remaining energy seemed to have transformed into obvious nervousness. He still had doubts whether he was doing the right thing, but then it was a fact that he couldn't bear everything much longer. Without realizing it the words had already stumbled out of his mouth, "They want me to sabotage the investigations."
Don stared at him. "What?"
Charlie looked him insistently in his eyes his own filled with fear. It was this gaze that made Don feel that something was really rotten here. "They wanted me to tell you that Boris Chrushtchov killed Norvtcharov."
"Hang on... wait a sec – who is 'they'?"
But Charlie's silent, desperate look was enough of an answer.
Don swallowed. His head suddenly seemed empty and his stomach fuller. All of a sudden he had a terrible fear for his little brother. "Charlie, if you do what they tell you, then you're endangering yourself even more! If you give us wrong information, then we can't arrest the real criminals! You mustn't do what they tell you to, you hear me?"
"But... but I have to, Don! They…"
Don, however, grabbed his thin shoulders, cutting him off. "I know that these guys are scary! But we... we can put you under protection, you hear me? We've got safe houses … "
This time it was Charlie who interrupted his brother. "But it's not me who's in danger! It's you! It's dad and you they want... they'll do something to you if I don't do what they tell me to!"
For some seconds, Don was dumbfounded. Speech returned only slowly. "Wh-what? Y... you're not serious, are you?" he stammered. These bastards had threatened his little brother with killing his family? Heavens...! Thank God they had managed to get Alan out of the firing line. At least –
"What about dad," Don wanted to know.
"He's fine. I talked to him this morning."
"Good..."
However, Charlie evidently didn't seem to share his opinion. "They forbad me to tell anyone, Don! What if they... if they somehow get to know about this? They know everything! Everything! Don, I... I don't know what to do anymore!"
Don's heart felt it was tearing apart. Charlie was so desperate... "We... we'll manage somehow," he tried to calm his little brother laying his arm around his shoulders. He leaned his forehead against Charlie's. "I won't let you down."
The low volume didn't diminish the comforting tone of Don's words. It hurt his soul to see his brother suffering like this and it was clear that he would help him. The only question was how?
"Okay... now once more... straight from the beginning." Listening would also provide him with some time to think. "What exactly happened?"
Charlie inhaled, trembling. He had told Don. He couldn't change anything about that now. That meant that he had chosen the get-yourself-out-of-the-hole-by-your-big-brother card. In general a good choice. However, Don was right, he now absolutely needed all the information in order to act correctly and prevent the worst.
After he had run them over his face, Charlie used his hands to support his head. He had a headache and he was tired: after many hours in front of his boards in his stuffy garage he was finding it hard to concentrate. But the adrenaline that had also caused the panic helped him to maintain a clear head. He now only had to think about where to start.
"I think they planted bugs," he finally began. "The mafia. Probably in the garage. I haven't looked for them yet, I can't destroy them anyway, they would notice. They know that we've sent dad to a safe place, but they don't know where he is. And we've spoken about aunt Susann only in the house."
Don looked at his little brother earnestly, though trying to let his voice stay free of much too rational dark suspicion. "Charlie – if they know that we've sent dad to somewhere safe it's only a matter of time until they'll find aunt Susann."
Charlie shook his head. He had thought about all that more than Don could probably imagine. "Aunt Susann lives at the other end of the country, in another state. And she was married. These guys would have to do a lot in order to get her address."
Don breathed deeply. It was good to know that at least their father wasn't in the mobster's firing line.
"And above that... Don, I think they're watching me. There's this dark car in front of our house and all the time..." Charlie fell silent, looking around jumpily. No one in earshot that he could see, thank God.
He was much too occupied trying to get back his composure to notice Don's shocked features. A dark car in front of the house?
"With the bugs they must have heard that we've found this second mafia group," Charlie continued, still trembling slightly. "Probably one of the parties wanted to take advantage of this situation by denouncing the other one. Boris Chrushtchov is a member of the big mafia, therefore I guess that the guys that were in the garage last night belong to the branch-mafia."
"Wait a sec," Don managed to utter, breathing deeply. The awesome amount of information surmounted him. Now slowly, in his mind he put it in the right order.
A sub-organization had split off from the local Russian Mafia. However, both groups had the same aim – whatever this aim might be. Now, one of these two groups had one of their agent's death to answer for, Alex Norvtcharov's. They had kidnapped his brother and himself probably in order to prevent them from working further on the case and also to deflect the other investigators' attention away from this great aim.
At some point of time they must have planted the bugs in the garage so that they could keep Charlie's progress and thus the whole progress of the investigation under surveillance. And now they had assaulted Charlie, probably the sub-mafia, in order to blame the big mafia so that the sub-mafia could work without disturbance and see their aim through. But did that mean that the sub-mafia was behind Norvtcharov's death? No... no, not inevitably. They just could have wanted to be left alone.
Just like Don did.
What did these mobsters want from his little brother?
And how on Earth was he supposed to prevent them from getting their way?
"Okay." Don swallowed hard. "Okay. First of all we have to take you out of the firing line."
"Wh-? No, Don, we've already covered that! I will not just leave!"
Don couldn't believe how stubbornly Charlie was acting. "Charlie, now listen closely, there is NO way that you're staying here, did you get that? Maybe I gave way last time, but not this time! These mobsters are gunning especially after you and I won't let it happen. I won't let you endanger yourself any further! I want you to be safe!"
Charlie had hardly listened to his words, so much did his own thoughts occupy his mind. He had only paid attention to the weak points in Don's argument. Everything else was marginal and inefficient. "These mobsters aren't especially after me, I'm only a means to an end for them to misdirect you! But that won't work, don't you see? As long as I'm still there and they think I'm still playing their game you'll know what's going on!"
"Charlie, trust me, we've got other means and ways to find out what they're playing at. And far better ones than making a lure out of you."
Charlie inhaled deeply. He didn't want to get angry, but Don just didn't understand what was at stake here. He, Charlie, had already become a part of the equation; he couldn't withdraw that easily, even if he had wanted to.
"Don, even if I wanted to go to Baltimore – it won't work! The mafia will watch my steps closely enough to notice if I leave town, and if they do so they'll find out where dad is staying, so he'll also be in danger, and maybe also aunt Susann. They won't allow me to simply escape; after all they need me to give you wrong information. Trust me, it's best if I stay."
Don shook his head silently. He knew that he couldn't agree with Charlie, but his head was still so occupied with the large amount of information that no appropriate argument came to his mind. He had to clear his mind so that he could think.
He rubbed his forehead. "What does that mean, you're supposed to be giving us wrong information?"
"They ordered me to prove Chrushtchov's guilt with my network analysis. I've –" Charlie swallowed. It wasn't easy for him to admit that, he had really done it; that for an instant he had indeed seriously thought about it. "I faked the analysis to make it look as if Chrushtchov is Norvtcharov's murderer although he still belongs to the big mafia and is subordinate to Max Bolshoyov – it looks as if Bolshoyov is the boss of the big mafia –"
"Does that mean that you really... that you really meant to do what they told you and were going to deceive us? When you told Colby on the phone that Chrushtchov was the murderer you lied to him?" Don neither knew if he had understood it correctly or if he didn't want to understand. The more they had to do with the mafia, the less his brother seemed to bother about unimportant values like honesty.
Charlie bowed his head, and Don could read his silent answer. Though Charlie couldn't resist the urge to defend himself. "I wanted to make sure that the mafia believe they control me. But at the same time I've been trying to find out what their real aim is and what's going on there. Don, I... I just want these guys to finally disappear."
"You wanted to find out on your own what's going on there?"
"I – I'm sorry, I wanted... I just didn't want them to hurt you and I didn't know what to do and – and I couldn't –"
"Hey," Don interrupted his little brother's stammered words, placing his arm that had left its place during the discussion back around his shoulders. Whatever might be standing between them right now – he couldn't deny that once more, he was quite impressed by Charlie's behavior. "Hey, Charlie, that's... You should've told me right away."
Charlie bowed his head even further and Don continued, "But I think it was unbelievably brave of you to continue despite of everything."
Charlie's head jerked upwards, and hope was gleaming in his eyes while he tried to decipher his big brother's gaze. Don had taken him in his arms and at the same time was taking him for being brave – what exactly was the problem after all?