Blokhin’s voice came back in range of the mike, again cooing to Ioana about when Dominika was expected, perhaps not before Ioana had softened the professor up with this pretty little thing between her legs, and another nightmare scream that subsided into a sob, and Ioana slurring over and over that Egorova was not coming, then she began screaming, bellows from the pit of her stomach, over and over, and her screaming was suddenly cut short, followed by awful gurgling and gasping—Nate recognized the sound of someone drowning in her own blood from a slashed throat—then a grunt from Blokhin as if he had slung her over his shoulder, then the sound of squeaky screen-door hinges. Several minutes of silence then Blokhin was back inside, followed by three solid minutes of the sounds of him smashing everything in the cottage not already broken, then the front door slamming and nothing else but the hiss of the recorder.
Dominika pointed to the overturned armchair, the seat cushion sodden with blood. Ioana had died there. Nate walked to the screen door facing the yard and the river, and pushed it lightly with a finger. It squeaked like on the tape. Blokhin had carried her outside. She was in the river, floating downstream to Budapest, if she hadn’t already fetched up in the crook of a floating log. Nate stopped Dominika, red eyed and teeth bared, from going outside. “Stop,” said Nate. “He could be out there. Let me check.” The yard was empty, but there were drops of blood on the pontoon dock where Blokhin had walked out to reach deeper water and dumped her in. Nate walked to the end of the dock, holding his breath, half expecting to see her staring up at him from the blue-black water under the pontoon floats. Nothing underwater and nothing farther out in the current.
The Alte Donau tributary flowed steadily to join the main branch of the Danube several hundred meters south, and there was more than an even chance her body would be seen bumping through the pilasters of the A22 overpass or another downstream bridge, unless he had wired something heavy around her feet, in which case she would come up in the spring, bleached and swollen, an unidentifiable Jane Doe to confound Austrian authorities until she ended up in the communal section of Zentralfriedhof Cemetery, another Sparrow who finished up away from her home, unclaimed by the country she served, her fate and grave unknown to her family.
