The Shack: a Parable of Wolves

Once upon a time, a frivolous, but very pretty university student met and married a junior detective in the Saint Petersburg Police department.

It started with a slip on the dirty grey winter ice, while I was going into a coffee shop. I’d always loved winter, loved the cold, and I loved to walk through the winter streets, sipping hot, sweet coffee. As I started in, I felt the ice slide under me and I started to fall. Someone caught me, pulling me upright; I slipped again, and caught myself on a pair of broad shoulders, pulling myself to him so we were nose to nose. He had laughing grey eyes and light brown hair and a smile that seemed so completely honest.

“Easy. We can’t have pretty girls falling all over the street. It’d give the city a bad name.”

Even though I was used to flattery, I could feel my cheeks flush. “I can’t get my footing.” Something about his smile made me laugh and I slipped more, holding on to him tighter to keep from falling.

His smile broadened as he caught my waist in firm hands. “I’m supposed to say something clever, but I think I’ll just stand here and let you hold on to me as long as you like.”

And I did. I decided at that instant to hold on to Piotr forever. It sounds silly, but I knew right then that we would laugh and live, raise our children, and grow old together.

He never had a chance of getting away from me. I’d been pursued and I knew all the tricks. The coffee shop girl told me his name and told me which police station he worked at.

I showed up at his department with lunch the next day, pulled out a calendar and told him we had to choose our wedding date.

He laughed. “I don’t even know your name, how do you know we’re even compatible?”

“Because you told me I could hold on as long as I like. And I’ve decided on ‘the rest of our lives’.”

“I don’t get a say in this?”

“You get one chance. We go out and if you want to stop after two months, we stop and you get away. If not, we’re together forever.”

“Why would I agree to this?”

“Because you said I’m pretty.”

“And pretty girls get whatever they want?”

“This pretty girl only wants one thing.”

“I’ve been told to stay away from pretty girls, they can be a lot of trouble.”

“I’ll wear a mask for the rest of my life. You can be the only one who ever sees me.”

He stared at me. “You’re serious.”

“I’ve never chased after a guy in my life before today. Ever.”

He agreed. I don’t know how I knew it would happen, but it did. And it was everything I dreamed life could be – every fairy tale, every “happily ever after.”

Two months passed, then three, then four. In six months we were married. We wanted lots of children and planned on starting to work on our family as soon as I graduated.

The only mar was an argument at our wedding – not between Piotr and me, but between Piotr and his cousin Dmitri, a powerful man, covered in prison tattoos.

Piotr, a man who never even lost his temper, even with drug addicts and thieves, knocked his cousin unconscious in the vestibule of the church. When I asked about it, all he would ever say was that his cousin wasn’t welcome in our home. Ever.

Piotr and I had been married for ten months; I’d graduated the University with a degree in languages and was working part time as an interpreter at the local telecomm office. Seven months pregnant and happier than even the prettiest girl could expect to be.

Piotr’s only worry was his family. His mother and father had died in a car accident, but he had an Uncle, a respected, wealthy man named Gregor Ivanovich. He always spoke down to me in a strange, condescending, way. I wrote it off to his generation and their attitude towards women.

I learned very differently later.

I learned that to him, women, like drugs and weapons, were nothing more than commodities to be bought and sold.

Gregor ran an enormous criminal empire. Guns to Africa and the Middle East, drugs to Western Europe and girls to pretty much everywhere. Piotr had wanted nothing to do with it, and his uncle had promised to leave him alone, leave him out of everything. And the one additional promise Piotr had demanded of his uncle, as a wedding gift was to never, ever, harm me.

But promises from such men are worse than useless because you can make the mistake of believing them...

I was in the kitchen when it happened. I heard arguing at the front door. I came out of the kitchen, my seventh month of pregnancy making me awkward, although Piotr said that I was more beautiful to him than ever.

“Even if I wanted to, it’s too damn late for that.” Piotr’s voice. “The evidence is already moved.”

Gregor’s voice, calm and even. “You’ll just have to have them bring it back won’t you?”

“It doesn’t work that way, and you know it. You’ll have to use one of your pet judges to deal with it.”

Just as I rounded the corner, powerful hands grabbed me. “Piotr!”

He spun toward me. there were six men in the living room with us.

A low hateful chuckle from Dmitri. “Maybe he should see his wife with a real man. Maybe that will teach him to be more thoughtful for family matters.”

Piotr glared at him, then snarled at his uncle. “You swore you’d never let her be harmed.”

Gregor smiled. “I did.” I could feel Dmitri reluctantly begin to loosen his grip. Until Gregor curled his lip. “But using women as they are meant to be used is hardly harmful.”

I fought, scratching and kicking, as Dmitri clamped down on me and began tearing at my dress.

Piotr’s hand pistoned out, shoving the man nearest him away as he drew his gun. His first shot went into the man he’d shoved and he twisted towards me, his gun coming up. I could see it all clearly. He couldn’t kill them all, but he could try to save me. I tried to hold very still so he could.

But he failed, another gun went off just as he shot again, and his head jerked oddly to the side, then he began to sag. Piotr’s final shot, instead of killing me, tore through Dmitri’s left lung.

He couldn’t save me from them. But at least I wouldn’t be violated by Dmitri.

I began to scream. And in some ways it would be years before I stopped.

Robert Sandoval. That was my new owner’s name. Although officially we were husband and wife, and while he was cleaner than the men that had used me at first, he was many times worse. While the others saw me as an object to use, he saw me as something to torture. A cruel little boy, pulling wings off of flies. Not so much physically, although he did that, but by humiliating me, forcing me to perform for other men and women. Sometimes in groups. Sometimes to get something he wanted, but most often just to “keep me in line” and enjoy my degradation.

And he had the perfect way to force me. In a filthy, overheated shipping container, seasick and miserable, I went into labor and gave birth. Completely alone, in pain and darkness. But when my baby began to cry, I stopped wishing I was dead and understood that I had to live, to protect my baby. I could hear my Great Grandfather telling me, “Whatever terrible things happen, Russians, true Russians, can endure pain and misery like no others.”

Robert saw my love for Kisa, and saw it as a weakness, a way to make me do anything he wanted. As long as it was for my baby, I realized I didn’t care what happened to me, or how I was used. I was Shameless; after all, how could a mother be ashamed of doing anything, or everything, to protect her baby?

I could endure.

He was a scarecrow of a man. Dirty and ragged and skinny. His filthy hair was a shaggy mop and his untrimmed, ratty beard was worse. He was clearly an alcoholic – I’d seen it all my life; alcoholism is rampant in Russia and I could see it eating him alive, as I’d seen it eat so many others. But he stared at me the way Piotr had. As if I was the only beauty in all the world. At first I was repulsed, but I began to see that he didn’t see me like all the others; as an object, a thing to use and discard.

He did something I hadn’t dared to even think to do. He sensed my hatred of Robert and began to gently tease me, making fun of Robert. Mockery has real power, it can make the unbearable, bearable. His mockery seemed to eat at Robert’s power over me, his power to make me despair.

Robert never noticed. And Robert never noticed that the man he called “Grease” was fighting his disease and winning. It even took me a while to notice, but he slowly became cleaner, gained weight, and I saw that he drank less and less. I was amazed. In all my life, I’d never seen anyone beat alcoholism. In my heart, I began to see him differently, without even knowing it at first. And when Robert gave me to him, he refused to use me as others had. So I gave myself to him. For the first time since Piotr, I was with someone I wanted. He introduced me to the others, the peculiar men with their special place. They accepted me, in their odd way.

Leaving Thomas to go back to Robert was the second worst pain I’d ever known. I know it was hard on Thomas, but I had to protect Kisa. I had to endure.

I tried to let him know how I felt. Even so, I could see his pain, a pain that echoed mine, and I began to wonder if, somehow, some way, I could find a way to flee with him, with my Kisa.

For years everything was beautiful. Thomas and I understood each other more deeply than I would have ever dreamed. We’d both lost our first loves painfully. We decided to keep their memories alive, keep their pictures in our home. I touched Lillian’s picture every time I left the house, promising her silently that I would watch over Thomas and our children.

More joined our strange little family. Sometimes by choice, like Spooky, and sometimes not, like Evelyn. Monster’s daughter, Danni, became my closest friend and I tried to let Gregor fade into the past even though it pained me that Piotr would never be avenged. But it was not to be.

On a quiet night, well after dark, Thomas and I found ourselves sitting with Pogo, Howard, and Chief.

Pogo drummed his fingers on the table. “We may have a problem. Wendy called.”

I’d never met Wendy, but I knew she was a very expensive smuggler of sorts.

Pogo continued. “Somebody is shopping for transport. Three weeks from today. Six men and they’ll be guarding a thousand pounds of uninspected cargo.”

“Headed here?” Howard cocked one eyebrow.

“That’s the strange part. From here. To the Sudan.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s why she called. Wanted to see if it was us using a Russian cover.”

“Russian?” Chief looked over at me.

Pogo nodded. “That’s what she said. I don’t like it. Whatever it is has to be coming in by ship or plane.”

Thomas gripped my hand. “Or it’s already here. Bobert might have cached weapons on one of the little islands.”

Howard looked thoughtful. “Maybe MANPADS,” he glanced at me and noticed my confusion, “shoulder launched anti-aircraft missiles. They’d bring damn good money with some of those Middle Eastern groups. Not sure it would be enough to cover Wendy’s prices. Even with a ‘family discount, ‘ she’s damned expensive.”

Chief grimaced. “If something bad happens and a shipment gets tracked back to here, it’d be bad. Besides, this could be really bad, maybe a commercial airliner.”

A flash of pain washed over Howard’s face. “Grease, you and Angel need to make a list of every place Bobert could have put something, probably the size of a pallet container.”

I shook my head. “I was only with Robert two weeks of the month; he could have put things anywhere when I wasn’t around. The only place I ever stayed was at the house on Komi Key. Other than that, I was on the boat here.”

“Who did you sell the Key to?”

“Wing Ho Development. I don’t think they’ve ever done anything with it, they just bought up a bunch of little islands for investment.”

“Christ, I hope it isn’t a PLA cover. I’m going to ask Evie to find a way to buy that island back through one of her front companies, just in case.”

We’d made almost seven million dollars from the sale of the island, but for Evie, that would be like a normal person buying a candy bar. Even if it wasn’t, she’d do it for Howard.

Chief pulled out his notebook and flipped it open, pulling out a chart that had the Key on it. “Not much area to hide a pallet container on, really just the house and a couple small beaches. I’ll have my guys keep an eye on it. We’ll have to watch visitors. Six guys, probably mercenaries, won’t be too hard to spot.”