TWO DAYS LATER

The president hung up the phone, feeling a tinge of the excitement he anticipated for tomorrow. The bi-level aquarium, he had been assured, would be ready.

A local university engineering professor had done the calculation for him, not knowing what it was for but knowing not to ask: he had determined the size of the cross-section of pipe that would drain the upper tank in about eight hours.

The president's specifications for constructing the tanks had included a requirement that the water in both tanks be heated. Due to his familiarity with torture techniques of all kinds, he had immediately seen the danger of hypothermia, which Miss Celenskaya apparently had not. A person immersed in cold, or even cool, water would experience a drop in body temperature, potentially causing death. Of course, in the case of Simonina, death was the object, but he didn't want it happening too soon. His preference was that Simonina be physically comfortable rather than shivering uncontrollably, so that her mind would be entirely occupied with the terror of the death that was creeping slowly up her body, and he wanted it to last the full eight hours, rather than terminating prematurely before she was fully submerged.

Body temperature is about thirty-seven degrees. Water kept at around thirty degrees would not induce hypothermia during that time frame, so he had specified that the temperature in the tanks be maintained thermostatically at that level.

He wished the drowning chamber could have been ready today, so that he could be watching at this moment... No, he told himself. The anticipation itself is enjoyable. Tomorrow is soon enough.

It occurred to him that there was something he could do right now to channel his present excitement. He brought up the video of Yelena's and Marya's room again. That never failed to cheer him.

He found he'd caught another of those times when Yelena was out of the room -- probably, he decided, checking on her schedule of encounters with the men of the prison staff. Marya was alone, curled up on the bed.

He sighed and reached for the button to minimize the image, but stopped suddenly. This did look worth watching.

Marya, who happened to be facing in the direction of the camera, had one hand between her legs, the other clutching her breast. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her mouth open, her body rocking slightly, her arm muscles tensing rhythmically. It was obvious what she was doing.

Marya said something softly several times. The president turned up the volume. He could just make out that Marya was whispering hoarsely, "Hélène. Oh, Hélène..." She moaned then, as a spasm passed through her body. Another spasm, a gasping breath, a soft cry, and it was obvious the orgasm had hit her.

The president smiled, but a thought at the back of his mind nagged at him. Something didn't seem right.

The thought came into focus. He muttered "Shit!" between clenched teeth.

There was no way to account for this. Marya was alone. She didn't know about the cameras. She thought she was completely unobserved. She had been led to believe, all through her ordeal, that she was performing for Yelena, in pretending to be passionately in love with Yelena. With Yelena absent, Marya had no reason to perform at all.

This wasn't a performance. It was real. Marya had real feelings of erotic desire for her mother. What had been intended as an emotionally wrenching punishment was actually a source of joy for her, being able to spend nearly all day, every day, satisfying her need with the object of her passion.

The president, his jaw hanging loose, shook his head back and forth slowly, unconsciously. This has to be dealt with, he thought. Now!

He put a signal through to the general, his fingers thrumming on the desk until the general answered.

The general's image now appeared on the screen, beginning to speak, stopping when he saw the president's expression.

The president spoke. "General Karozki -- is Yelena there with you?"

The general shook his head briefly. "She was in the outer office, and just left. Did you want to talk to her?"

"No, I do not want to talk to her, ever. Can you catch her before she gets back to Marya? I want you to stop her, direct her to the room she uses by herself, and lock her in. Do it now!"

The general jumped to his feet. "Yes, sir." He abruptly left his desk. The president could hear his running feet retreating.

The president's fingertips hurt from pounding against the desk as he waited.

Five minutes later the general reappeared, sweating. "I got to her in time, Mr. President. She was almost at Marya's room. She's in her own separate room now." He hesitated nervously. "May I ask what is wrong, sir?"

"Everything is wrong, Karozki. The girl was sitting alone in her room, masturbating and calling out that name she and her mother both use. Calling out for Yelena, in other words."

"I... well, I would think it's all part of the pretense she is expected to maintain..."

"Pretense? For whose benefit? Who did she think was watching her?"

The general opened his mouth, then froze. The president glared at him. Yes, you idiot, he thought, now you see what's wrong?

The general seemed to pull himself together, sitting up straighter. Apparently, thought the president, the man's brain is working again. "It's not impossible that she has become aware of the cameras, sir. She could be dissembling for them."

"How would she fit that in with the belief that it is Yelena who is controlling her life? Who would be watching?"

"Yelena herself, perhaps. Not necessarily watching the live feed, but recording the video for later viewing. Marya may assume Yelena wishes to review sessions of herself and her partner having sex. Yelena certainly wouldn't be the first person ever to do that. And if the thought occurred to the girl that Yelena might want to view a solo session, then she would give Yelena what she wants. I don't know that that is the case, sir. Just answering your question, trying to consider all the possibilities."

The president sat back, thinking. The general, he decided, has raised a valid point.

Well, he decided, one way to find out. "Let the girl remain alone, then, for an extended time. Her behavior, when Yelena fails to return, should be enough to reveal what she's thinking. Keep Yelena in the other room." He smiled. "Make sure Yelena can see and hear what's happening."

"Yes, sir. She does have a monitor in there with her. I'll make sure it's powered on."

"Do that. I will check with you later."

Yelena felt nausea building within her. Something must be wrong, terribly wrong.

Since the day of the snake pit, Yelena had not been out of Marya's presence for more than perhaps thirty minutes at any one time. Now it had been two hours, at least, maybe three. The general hadn't told her why he was confining her to her original room, and she had no idea why her monitor was showing Marya, apparently asleep on her bed. Both of them took short naps during the day, making up sleep lost during nights interrupted by frequent lovemaking. Always they slept embracing each other, but the need for sleep was real, and it wasn't surprising Marya had nodded off while awaiting Yelena's return. Why am I watching her? wondered Yelena. And why can't I just go back to her?

Seeing Marya curled up peacefully in sleep somehow stirred up Yelena's sexual juices again. She wanted desperately to be with Marya, to wake her with a soft kiss, to hold her, to rub against her, to smell her hair and stroke it, to taste her skin. Yelena ached at being away from Marya's touch. I have to be with her, she moaned to herself. Please let me go back.

Raisa awoke coughing, as if a sudden gasp had shaken her out of her sleep. She'd done the 2 a.m. IV switch last night, and had decided to lay down for a nap this morning after establishing the girls in another of those awful positions in the president's office.

The thought that had awakened her hovered just outside the boundary of perception. She knew it was important. She reached for it. There, that was it!

Tatyana would want me to try to send her the message, Raisa told herself. Despite the danger to herself.

Raisa remembered how Tatyana, so many times, had said she wanted to make a difference, wanted it to matter that she had lived. That was why she was so dedicated to her underground group, and why she, as well as the others, were so careful in protecting its existence. Everything would be lost if they were arrested prematurely, without accomplishing anything at all. They wanted to be free to participate in the revolution they were sure would come eventually. Perhaps soon. But if an opportunity to achieve something significant did come up, Tatyana insisted, worries about consequences had to be put aside. There are so few times in life when you can really make a mark, Tatyana had said. You can't let one go.

And Raisa knew Tatyana would never forgive her if she knew that Raisa had passed up a chance. A chance to make a difference. Tatyana would be furious with her, and dismissive of Raisa's plea that she had only meant to protect Tatyana from being swept up in the arrests that would follow if anything went wrong. You were too scared, Tatyana would say, and that's why nothing ever happens.

And one more thing occurred to Raisa.

Tatyana, in inviting Raisa to her meeting, had been putting Raisa at serious risk. Tatyana had felt it was justified. Raisa didn't doubt for a minute Tatyana's love for her. Yet Tatyana had endangered Raisa. She had thought it was that important.

Raisa went to her desk. Sitting inconspicuously beside an untidy pile of writing paper, partly hidden under the edge of the pile, was a small square of paper: her folded-up note to Tatyana. Raisa eased it just slightly farther outward, reading the writing on the outside, identical on both sides. In bold capitals, retraced several times to enhance visibility, were the words "5 U.S.A. DOLLAR REWARD!" Below that, in letters as tiny, while readable, as Raisa could manage, the message continued, "Deliver this packet UNOPENED to Tatyana Grozneva, 56 Mirski Prospekt, 5th floor, 513." Below that, the legend "5 U.S.A. DOLLAR REWARD" was repeated.

Five dollars was a significant sum in Irkhetnia, enough for a dinner in a nice restaurant, or a bottle of good wine, or something equally satisfying. Tatyana would have the five dollars, Raisa knew. The embassy paid its employees, even the local ones, in much sought-after dollars. There was no certainty Tatyana would pay five of them to the deliverer of the message. But she would be intrigued. It was the sort of melodrama she had always loved.

Raisa had written the reward offer and address on the outside of the message the day after she'd written the text inside it and folded up the paper in her bed. And it had sat here, on her desk, since then, a casualty of Raisa's uncertainty. The uncertainty was gone now. Raisa knew what she had to do, and when she had to do it. Anya's death could not be more than a day or two away -- whatever the length of time was that it would take some skilled laborer to build a glass enclosure to the president's specifications, that was how much longer Anya would live.

Ambassador Kenner went home early to finish packing, his vacation begun. Two years ago he had bought a dacha of his own outside the city, and made sure to spend a week there every few months. It cleared his head, and he found the countryside beautiful and energizing. He would head there first thing in the morning. His cell phone didn't function out there, which was all right with him. David Branch, the Deputy Head of Mission, Kenner's second in command, was more than competent to handle any situations that arose. If there were any real emergencies... He smiled at the notion. There were never international emergencies in Irkhetnia.

Yelena watched, biting her lip, as Marya, on the monitor screen, paced the room. Marya had awakened from her nap about twenty minutes ago, looked around with a puzzled frown, and called out, "Hélène?" Now she was clearly getting more worried by the minute. She stopped pacing and tried the knob of the door to the room, found it locked as always, and made her characteristic whistling tea kettle sound of frustration. She stood at the door and shouted, "Hélène? I miss you! Hélène?"

Zlata had to restrain herself from pacing her room. She had been terrified that today would be the day, and had been relieved when the morning ritual passed without change. She was sure that setting up for Anya's drowning would be done first thing, when the day came, because the president wanted it to last all day.

She felt a need to talk to Anya or Rachel one more time, but had no idea what to say to either of them. She just couldn't bring herself to tell them what was going to happen. It would only give them longer to feel the helpless panic, she told herself, and that will be bad enough as it is.

She gave up and threw herself on her bed, her tears flowing freely. It doesn't matter what this looks like, she decided. They know we're all upset. This isn't giving anything away.

Hopelessly she ran over all the same ideas she had rejected before. None of them would work any better now.

She wished the ward had some kind of medication that could put Rachel and Anya to sleep. The president wouldn't be able to tell. Rachel would miss the horror. Anya would never wake up. It was so simple. But there were only the medications the doctor had provided for maintaining the girls' mannequin state. None of it was useful for any other purpose.

Zlata thought about switching midnight duty with Veronika, so she could leave off the mannequin-drug drip. Even that seemed pointless. The girls still wouldn't be free enough to move, she reminded herself, not by tomorrow. Only parts of their faces, that's all they'd have control over by then. And if the president saw their eyes moving, he could easily guess why. Zlata would be in trouble, without having accomplished anything useful other than giving the girls a chance to look more scared. The president would actually like that, she decided.

Anya is going to die, Zlata said to herself over and over. I can't stop it. I can't do anything.

Her body shook with sobs.

Yelena was growing more sure with each passing minute that she understood what was happening. It was the worst possible thing in the world. Somehow they had seen, or at least suspected, that Marya's feelings for Yelena were genuine -- all the love, the physical passion, the erotic need. That she wasn't pretending. That she was committing the worst of all possible crimes: being happy.

Yelena felt stomach cramps. Her bowels were turning to liquid. She ran for the toilet. From there, she could still see the video monitor.

Marya was sitting up on the bed, her arms wrapped around her shins and her face buried against her knees, quaking with sobs. Occasionally she would call out hopefully, "Hélène?", listen for a moment, then resume crying.

Yelena gasped, echoing Marya's reaction, when the door to Marya's room opened suddenly. A sergeant. It was... Lysenko, that was his name. A large brute, with a preference for anal penetration. It was time for his session with Marya. He looked at Marya expectantly, a small smile on his lips.

Marya bounced off the bed, not eager to serve as she had always been since the snake pit, but instead with visible anger. It struck Yelena that she remembered a time, not at all long ago, when Marya would have tried to cover her nakedness. That time was gone. These days she flirted with the men, she learned which parts of her body each man liked best and briefly teased them with those parts before offering them, and the rest of her, for their pleasure -- and even now, in her anger, Marya stood there straight, tall, and nude, without a hint of self-consciousness. And as Yelena watched in horror, Marya, her fists clenched and face contorted, reddened eyes glaring, snarled, "Where is Hélène?"

This was the first time Yelena had ever seen Lysenko, or any of the others, without the standard-issue smirk of arrogance. He plainly had no idea what to do. He understood Marya's reference. Like all of the men, Lysenko was familiar with the cover story, and knew that Yelena and Marya called each other Hélène. But nothing he had been told covered this situation. The men had been given very strict rules for their behavior in Marya's presence: They were always to address Yelena respectfully, however much they abused her body, maintaining the fiction that she was in charge; they were never to make it appear they were taking something Yelena wasn't willing to give them, knowing Yelena, on her part, would never refuse them any sexual use of her own and her daughter's bodies; they were always to appear grateful for whatever fun Yelena had "granted" them; and so on. Sergeant Lysenko would undoubtedly have thrown Marya onto the bed and mounted her on the spot, had she been anyone other than who she was, but because he risked losing the valued privilege of raping the president's own very nubile daughter, the greatest gift of all to be obtained in this wonderful place, he would make sure he didn't violate any of those rules. Following the rules had never been a problem before, but now Lysenko was clearly at a loss to know what to say or do without screwing everything up.

At last he stammered, "Ahh... I'm not just sure, Miss..."

Marya interrupted his stall for time. "Then go find her! She might have fallen and broken her ankle or something! You work for me! Go find her and see if she needs help!" Marya folded her arms. "I'm not doing any of the men until I know where Hélène is!"

Yelena blinked at Marya's assertion of authority. She really is that deeply into it, Yelena thought in awe. She really thinks she and I are the same person. If the men work for me, then they work for her too, and should leap to obey her commands.

And Yelena knew, feeling all hope leaving her, that Marya had now gone well past the point of no return. Dimitri, the general, the doctor, whoever is watching and evaluating this, they've seen her refuse to continue servicing the men until she knows what's happened to me, Yelena told herself. The entire foundation for the punishment Dimitri has consigned Marya and myself to has just gone up in flames. They know that Marya is no longer motivated by fear of the snake pit, or she wouldn't have dismissed Sergeant Lysenko. They can surely figure out, from her behavior, that she is living the cover story. That she is deeply in love with "Hélène," and takes joy in sexual play with her. That she services the men happily because they help her be with "Hélène." It makes perfect sense, in that context, that if the men fail in that duty, as Sergeant Lysenko clearly had, then their access to sexual treats is cut off.

They know how happy she has been, all this time.

Yelena, still sitting on the toilet, buried her face in her hands.

Yelena had returned to her bed, tears seeping from her closed eyelids, wishing she could close her ears as well and not hear Marya crying, when the door opened suddenly.

Yelena sighed and opened her eyes to see the general standing there. She had expected him at some point. In a flat, listless voice, she said, "What do you want?"

The general stood with arms folded. "I'm sure you know. I have been talking with the president. He has ordered us to implement the alternate plan for punishment of you and your daughter."

Barely audibly, Yelena asked, "Why?" Knowing the answer already.

"The president is very disappointed in you -- again. It's clear you have been hiding your knowledge of your daughter's mental state, as you have hidden so many important things from him before -- I'm quoting him, of course. He has ordered that your daughter be prepared for the next phase of her punishment immediately." Yelena, bending every effort towards avoiding sobbing aloud, not wanting Dimitri or the general to have that satisfaction, remembered what Marya's "preparation" would consist of. Her jaw immobilized, her lips and eyelids sewn shut, so that she could never protest her torture, could not see what would next torment her. And Yelena herself forced not only to watch Marya's agony, but also to contribute to it.

Yelena choked out in a raspy voice, "How... how long before it starts?"

The general turned to look at the video monitor. "For the moment, the president is pleased by the amount of anguish she is displaying. He is content to let her cry herself out. After that point, Doctor Tourachev will perform the procedure needed to prepare her for her punishment."

"And... after that?"

The general shrugged. "The doctor says she will require a few days healing time after the procedure. You will spend those days, as I have said before, with the general prison population, treated as one of them."

Probably treated far worse than the rest, Yelena told herself bleakly. I am still who I am.

Yelena nodded her head, almost letting go of a sob but catching herself in time. "Fine. Now get out."

Surprisingly, the general did so, though Yelena was sure it was only because he had no more to say.

Yelena listened to Marya crying. She had wished Marya would stop. Now Yelena had to hope Marya would continue crying for some time.

She heard Marya suddenly draw in a noisy, gasping breath, unlike the sound of her crying, something like a rusty gate hinge. Yelena looked at the screen, and saw Marya suddenly sit up, her mouth open in astonishment.

Marya spoke a single word that shocked Yelena to her core: "Mom?"

Yelena saw Marya slap her hands over her eyes, breathing hard. Then she shouted, "Mom!! Help me, please!"

Oh my God, thought Yelena. After all this time, the armor has broken down. The fantasy protecting her has dissolved. Now that it had failed in its protection, her mind has broken through it from inside.

Marya started crying anew, interrupting her sobs with pleas to her mother. After a few cries for Yelena's help, Marya sobbed, "Mom, I just want it to be like it was. Please?"

Yelena shook her head in despair. She wants her old life back, Yelena told herself. Living in the People's House as the president's daughter, all her needs met, seeing all her friends. She probably knows as well as I do how impossible that is. But it's equally impossible to stop wishing for it.

Yelena watched as Marya fell sideways onto the mattress, crying harder than ever.

Raisa decided it didn't matter that her hands were shaking, and that she didn't eat more than a few bites of dinner. She knew she was displaying nerves at the breaking point, but the other nurses were in the same state, and they weren't even working on something that would get them immediately tossed into prison. As far as she knew.

She had secreted the message to Tatyana in her palm at the beginning of the meal. As she shuffled plates, utensils, and drinking glasses listlessly, she slipped the folded packet underneath the largest of the plates.