Titan Trilogy 3.5-Black Soul Read online

  BLACK

  SOUL

  T.J. BREARTON

  room

  Published 2017 by T.J. Brearton / room 6 Productions

  www.tjbrearton.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by T.J. Brearton

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written consent from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  Published in the United States by the author under his DBA, room 6 Productions.

  For my brother and sister,

  who were both supposed to have been

  born in the Wild West, I think.

  They would have done well.

  PART ONE

  Cherepovets, Russia

  CHAPTER ONE

  William looked out the hotel window and watched the boats chugging along the Sheksna River, passing beneath the cable-stayed bridge.

  Cherepovets was a Russian city in the west of the Vologda Oblast, connected to the Volga River and the Baltic Sea via canals. A mining town with a thick, industrial smog hanging in the air.

  But it had something in common with every other place he’d been for the past eight months. Human trafficking.

  “William? You ready?”

  He glanced at Hanna, and at the three others crowded around a laptop in the small room.

  Nel and Maritje were Dutch women in their late twenties, part of the Peace and Justice Project.

  Bogdan Orlov was a representative of Severstal, the big joint-stock company in Cherepovets and owned the iron-and-steel plant.

  “Yeah,” William said. “Okay.”

  Hanna pressed the space bar and a video began to play.

  It showed a room full of people, all of them seated on the ground, except for one man. The video quality was not great, the cell phone which captured it a bit shaky, but it was good enough.

  The man was talking to the group.

  “What’s he saying?” William hadn’t been in Russia long enough to learn more than a few words.

  Orlov answered. “He’s talking to them about the legacy of the mazyki.”

  William knew that Orlov didn’t want to be there. This was a public relations move for him — cooperate with the PJP and look good. But he was nervous.

  William looked to Hanna for further translation. “It’s folklore,” she said. “Russia’s modernization — the transition from rural and holistic societies to contemporary industrial and post-industrial communities — hurt mazyki tradition. This man, Alkaev, claims he wants to bring it back.”

  On the screen, Alkaev walked around the room. He wore a crisp white shirt and black slacks. He had balding black hair, and a grey mustache.

  There were whiteboards behind him, it was a classroom. He moved a young man from the floor into a chair, then slid a black blindfold over the young man’s eyes. As soon as he did this, the other young men in the group — sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds with a few older ones — also blindfolded themselves.

  Alkaev paced around for a bit, shouting, gesturing with his arms.

  “What’s he saying now?” William leaned closer.

  Orlov answered. “Alkaev says he’s a native of the Suzdal land . . .”

  “That’s the holy land,” Hanna said.

  “. . . And a descendant of the Skomorokh family. Folk musicians in ancient Russia severely persecuted by the Church. In the seventeenth century many of them settled down in Shuya region, the Suzdal land . . .”

  “But is he teaching them?” William looked to Hanna for the answer. “You said this is a class.”

  She nodded, and held his gaze for a moment. In that one look he could read what she was thinking — she was worried that his blood was already rising. “The school is called the Academy of Self-knowledge. He . . .”

  Hanna trailed off because Alkaev had stepped over some of the students and bent down in front of a young blonde woman, yelling in her face. Suddenly Alkaev gripped her by the back of her hair. Still shouting, demonstrating to the class, he slapped her across the cheek. Hard.

  William flinched. He balled his hands into fists.

  Alkaev kept talking, the group still seated, though even blindfolded they seemed to understand what was happening. Then Alkaev slapped the young woman again.

  And again.

  “He’s saying,” Orlov conveyed in a small voice, “that this is the punishment we all must feel. This is the persecution of the mazyki.”

  “He’s a psychology professor . . .” William said.

  Nel answered, “Yes. He teaches at Cherepovets University. But this is off-campus. This is his own class, his own school.”

  “This is a cult.”

  No one challenged William’s observation.

  Alkaev struck the woman again. And another time. Even with the poor video quality, William could see her cheeks were red. Her hair was all over the place, strands clinging to her sweaty forehead. She was trying not to cry.

  Orlov spoke so softly that he was almost inaudible. “Alkaev considers it strength training. They practice martial arts, part of which is enduring physical pain as a means to enlightenment. He is getting rid of her gamukha, her greatest obstacle to Self-knowledge.”

  “He’s beating her.”

  Orlov fell silent.

  Maritje spoke up. “We believe he blindfolds the men because they are not ‘ready’ — they do not possess this Self-knowledge, this detachment from emotions, and so would try to stop him from what he’s doing.”

  And Alkaev kept doing it. William had lost count, but Alkaev had struck the woman at least ten times. Her cheeks were aflame.

  His heart felt like it was going to pound out of his chest. He didn’t know how much more he could keep watching.

  Mercifully, the video ended.

  “I need some air,” William said.

  He left the room and legged it down the hallway, then took the stairs to the ground floor.

  The video replayed in his mind, the woman taking Alkaev’s beating on an endless loop.

  He banged out of the stairwell directly into the side parking lot and walked out beneath the grey sky. It wasn’t anxiety he was feeling, or even depression. It was fury.

  He paced the parking lot, winding through the vehicles, headed towards the river.

  The door to the hotel opened behind him. Hanna came out, pulling a light coat on as she walked. He didn’t want to talk to her because he knew what she was going to say. There was sorrow in her eyes, and concern.

  “Will . . .”

  “I know. I know.”

  “This guy . . . he’s fucking bad. He’s the worst of it I’ve seen yet. But you know how this goes — if this Alkaev is preparing these young women for sex slavery, we have to make the careful moves now.”

  He looked down at the ground. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. There was no way he was going to get through the next twenty-four hours without some nicotine. He thought for a moment, feeling her eyes on him.

  “This isn’t Tampa, or someplace like that,” William said. “You know? Where strippers consider their job an expression of American freedom, and own two houses, and assault rifles, and love what they do. This isn’t empowerment. I don’t care how this guy spins it.”

  “There’s no argument here. All I’m saying is . . .”

  “Soft touch. I know.”

  “He probably had tha
t done to him as a child,” Hanna said. “Or saw his father do that to his mother. It’s learned behavior.”

  William squinted at her through the smoke. “Learned or not, that type of behavior has to end.”

  She watched him for a long moment. “Are you going to be alright to handle this?”

  “I’ve seen three videos now. He’s beating them with a stick. He’s slapping them until they can’t think. It’s not liberation; it’s assault. He’s running a cult and brainwashing them.”

  “I told you, I’m not arguing with you. But he’s an incredible asset. He’s a way in. He uses this kind of nationalist propaganda, this ‘rediscover the old ways’ to line his own pockets through the sex trade, and it connects to a whole network.”

  “Fine. Then let me find him. Get him and bring him in.”

  “The PJP doesn’t work like that. We’re not bounty hunters.”

  “Well, maybe they should work like that.”

  “Will . . . This is what we decided. You and me.”

  William thought back. Two years ago they had been like newborns. Brand new identities. No records. Able to move through the system undetected and with a singular purpose — to root out corruption around the globe.

  At first they’d focused on shell corporations used for illegal purposes — fraud, embezzlement, evasion of international sanctions. And they’d worked alone. But eight months ago they’d found the Peace and Justice Project, who hired them on.

  The PJP were a group committed to the rescue of sex slave victims around the world, and to the punishment of those involved.

  William and Hanna were exactly what the organization was looking for: two people, no family between them, with law enforcement backgrounds. She had worked for the United States Justice Department, he had been both a homicide detective and a private investigator. They could pose as a married couple when it was needed. Or, they could work independently.

  The international sex trade was a one hundred and fifty billion dollar a year industry. An estimated two million children were involved.

  But since joining with the PJP, they’d been stymied by local governments and law enforcement, or outright ejected from the countries where they were trying to do some good.

  All of the measures they’d taken and sacrifices they’d made, and there were still stifling encumbrances.

  He stomped out his cigarette on the pavement.

  “I’ll be fine,” he told her.

  He hadn’t had a drink in years, but he wanted one now.

  He continued to see the loop of the woman getting slapped, her head rocking to the side with each blow, hair flying, Alkaev towering over her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  William opened his eyes at two a.m. His body was covered in sweat. In his dreams, he’d been standing in a garden, under a blue sky, holding a gun. Kevin Heilshorn, a ghost from the past, stepped in front of him. William pulled the trigger, and Kevin dropped.

  William sat up in bed, breathing hard, groping at his chest. The after-image lingered: Kevin lying there in a pool of his blood, turning the soil dark.

  He looked around for Hanna but quickly realized she wasn’t there. She had her own room. They weren’t posing as a married couple this time out.

  It felt symbolic.

  They’d had their ups and downs over the past couple years. A few months ago, he’d sensed her really withdrawing from him. And he hadn’t resisted it. Because maybe he wanted to be alone, and she knew it. Maybe that was all he could do right now. Maybe it was too difficult to feel love for her, too risky to feel close. He didn’t know. But it felt like the more frustrated their efforts to fight trafficking, the more stress on their relationship.

  He swung his legs out of the bed. Quietly, he went about showering and getting dressed. He thought about putting on a cup of coffee — one of the drab hotel’s few perks was that the rooms had small coffee machines — but he decided against it. He didn’t need it. Didn’t even deserve it.

  Instead he opened up his computer and found the Alkaev videos. He watched each of them, and felt the emotion rising, then turning to anger, then dissipating into numbness. It was like a drug. Spent, he rose from the desk and left the room.

  * * *

  Cherepovets was as dismal at three in the morning as it was by day. At least, the outskirts were. The hotel sat on the river across from a smelting plant, the smokestacks pealing out long clouds of dark smoke. The hotel was just a large brown box, a single awning over the front entrance. Someone was standing there having a cigarette, wearing a cheap black suit. Probably the front desk worker, taking a break.

  William found the rental car, unlocked the door, and slipped behind the wheel.

  He still felt numb as he keyed the ignition. The wipers turned on — it had been raining when they’d arrived yesterday afternoon. He shut them off and looked up at the five-story hotel. Hopefully Hanna was sleeping.

  The PJP agents had their own room — Nel and Maritje were a couple, William suspected. Bogdon Orlov had returned to his home in the Western Suburbs, near Endeavour Park. A PR man for Severstal, William knew the whole thing with Alkaev made Orlov uncomfortable, because Alkaev was associated with the company.

  Severstal had a hockey club in the Kontinental Hockey League and Alkaev had played for the team as a younger man. Alkaev also coached the chess team in the Russian Major League. How could someone so visible and such a part of the community be getting away with blatant abuse? And why wasn’t anyone doing anything about it?

  The local law enforcement had made it clear that the IJM was not welcome in the city. Not only was Cherepovets industrial, they’d said, it was also a center for arts, sports, and education. A scandal about Alkaev, for sure, would tarnish the city. But they’d seen the video — Alkaev hadn’t tried to hide it. In fact, he seemed proud of it, and used it for recruitment. As long as no one pressed charges, the cops didn’t move. So the PJP needed someone to do just that.

  William drove out of the parking lot and turned towards the downtown area. The road bisected rows of steel lattice towers, the power lines black scratches against the dark sky. At this hour there were few cars out, and he cruised along for a little while, lighting a smoke and cracking the window. His hands were shaking, but he tried to ignore it.

  A few years ago, Alkaev had founded the Academia Samopoznania, or “Academy of Self-knowledge” where he held his classes in an abandoned kids’ summer camp on the edge of the city. The mission statement, according to the website, was to revive the folk traditions and the sacred places — the sanctuaries for performing holy rites. Alkaev said he was bringing back the spirit of the mazyki and restoring the city — and the country — to its former greatness.

  It was bullshit.

  William drove through the downtown district. There were no brightly lit onion domes or cupola rooftops in Cherepovets, but squat, drab buildings, scattered maple trees, high tension towers in the misty background.

  Near a run-down bus station, two women worked opposite sides of the street, dressed in high heels, one of them in fishnet stockings. They tracked his movement as he passed, and one of them called out. They were young, late teens, early twenties. Street workers were the most visible victims of sex trafficking. But many victims remained unseen, operating out of unmarked brothels in unsuspecting neighborhoods. The traffickers also operated out of spas, massage parlors, and strip clubs.

  Human trafficking tended to flow from East to West. The poorest and most unstable countries had the biggest problem. Extreme poverty was a common correlation.

  Economic disadvantage made many young women susceptible, and often downright physical intimidation worked. But William thought psychological manipulation played just as big a role.

  Alkaev had coopted mazyki folklore to appeal to youth. They were attracted by the promises of magic, secret knowledge and personal empowerment.

  And Alkaev was funding his fucked-up school of “self-knowledge” with human trafficking. Once the women were ready, he’d
sell them. If they were too old or unattractive, they’d become recruiters, madams.

  William knew it, the PJP knew it, Orlov knew it. The cops ignored it. Many of them were on the payroll.

  And if Alkaev was really any sort of crusader, chances were good he was taking some of the profits and channeling them into organizations dedicated to reinvigorating nationalism. People looked the other way because of his efforts to reestablish tradition.

  Zapovednoe mesto, Alkaev called it. The Sanctuary of Folk Life.

  Through the downtown district, William made his way towards the abandoned summer camp. He left the beat city behind as he drove into more rural territory, passing an abandoned gas station, then nothing but trees. The road became bumpy and uneven.

  A half mile later, he found it. The school camp consisted of several small buildings and two wooden watchtowers. Behind it, a dark field rolled up towards a smoggy sky glowing in the distant city lights, like a fire burning, filling the sky with its slow smoke. The whole thing looked medieval.

  William parked a safe distance away. The buildings were all dark except for a set of double glass doors at the top of some steps. A dog barked in the distance, from the direction of the Sheksna suburb beyond.

  He sat there in the car, watching for a moment before he crossed the street and headed up the steps towards the main building.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The door was locked. William peered through the window at a long corridor with a dirty floor leading to several closed doors. He checked to see if anyone was watching him and then went around the building, looking for another way in.

  There was an unmarked, windowless door on the east side of the main building, also locked. He continued on, mindful of his footing. A crunch of grit under his boots echoed around the camp. Everything was too quiet.

  He’d flown into Russia just that morning. There had been no chance to get a gun of any sort. William and Hanna were civilians and couldn’t bring in guns through customs.