Panthera Spelaea

When a nurse returned to check my vitals and give me my pills, she didn’t speak a word of English. She wrote a few things down, watched me take the tablets, and removed my IV before leaving the room.

I was insanely bored. The room had no windows or clocks, so I couldn’t tell what time it was. I pointed to the television and motioned for the remote on the table next to my bed. The nurse asked the officer outside and shook her head no when she came back in. I figured Viktor wanted me to be unaware of what was going on so he could trip me up in his interrogation. I listened to the muffled conversations outside, hoping to hear something I could understand, but it was all in Russian.

I closed my eyes, but sleep didn’t find me. My mind wouldn’t shut down. What happened to my friends? Why would they suspect me? And who took the Cave Lion?

Finally, the solitude ended with a knock on the door. Two men entered; one was a middle-aged white man in a blue suit and red tie, the other a gray-haired Russian woman in a power suit with a briefcase. “Good afternoon, John,” the man said. “I’m Brian Burghammer, the Deputy to the Assistant Ambassador for Legal Affairs at the US Embassy. With me is Marina Federov, a criminal defense attorney retained by your father to assist in your defense.”

I looked at the woman. “Do you speak English?”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course, Mr. Cantwell. It wouldn’t help you much if I didn’t.”

I laughed at that. “The quote-unquote ‘lawyer’ who was in here before didn’t speak a word of English, yet Senior Investigator Viktor Kaprisov thought that was enough to interrogate me. It didn’t work.”

“You’ve made no statement,” Marina asked?

“I refused to speak without counsel, and I requested someone from the embassy to be present. Now that you both are here, I need to see some identification, and for Mrs. Federov, proof my father has retained her. You can’t be too careful.”

“In Soviet Russia, the lawyer finds you,” Marina said with a laugh. She showed me the email from my father on her phone and her court identification. Brian showed me his Embassy identification.

“Thank you. Do you have something to write on?”

Marina handed me a legal pad and a pen from her briefcase. It was awkward writing while handcuffed to the rail, and moving still caused me pain. “My room is bugged,” I wrote. “Viktor listened to me talk to Nurse Svetlana about it but stopped us when she started to tell me what she knew about what happened on the river.”

Marina took out her pad and wrote something, then showed it to me. “Not illegal to plant listening devices or send people in to get you to confess. What did you say?”

“I’ll give you my statement,” I told her. I flipped back a few pages so the pen depressions wouldn’t show, then spent the next ten minutes writing out what happened. Marina watched as I wrote, jotting down notes as she read my story. When I finished, she asked me to sign and date it.

She removed the pages from the pad and put it in her briefcase, then gave the paper back to me. “Nothing here is incriminating, but the authorities will see your claim of memory loss to be convenient. You have no recollection of anything after touching the cat?”

“Just pain, then waking up here.”

“I’ll speak with your doctors to see if there is a medical reason for the gap. In the meantime, say nothing about what happened, not even to a hot young nurse. She was, wasn’t she?” I just nodded. “Viktor wants a conviction, and you’re the only suspect. He’s not above using people to get to you.”

I liked Svetlana, and I thought it was mutual. Had she been playing me? If she came in and kept interrogating me, I’d know. “What happened to the others?”

Brian looked at Marina. “It’s public knowledge, and he needs to know.” She nodded her assent, so she continued. “When the boat didn’t arrive in Belaya Goya after an hour, they tried to raise the boat operator on the radio. He didn’t answer, and the team at Cave Three hadn’t seen you either. They sent another boat downriver to investigate. That group found your craft six kilometers downstream, run aground on a mud bank with the engine still running. There was no sign of any of you, and the cave lion specimen was missing.”

“How could it be missing? It took eight of us to move the dang thing!”

“I don’t think they know. I read reports of a fire in the front of the boat that melted the tarp and left scorch marks on the boat.”

I thought about it for a while and couldn’t explain it. I didn’t get knocked overboard by an explosion, and I hadn’t been burned. I couldn’t move, and I was in a lot of pain, and then nothing. “What about my friends?”

“Vitali and Nicole drowned, with the cause of death confirmed by autopsy. No other injuries were noted. The speculation is that the cold water combined with the chest waders they wore made swimming so difficult they couldn’t get to shore after falling overboard. The deaths might have been written off as an accident, except for how they found you and Vladimir Zhukovsky.” Vladimir was the boat captain.

“What happened to Vladimir?”

“They recovered his body, but his head wasn’t attached.”

Holy shit! How was that even possible? I didn’t want to say anything else that Viktor might listen to, so I kept my questions back. “And me?”

“Police recovered pieces of your clothing were recovered on the boat, with evidence of burning at the edges. They found you half a kilometer downstream, naked, with your body part submerged in the river. You almost died of hypothermia in the river, John. If not for a helicopter flight and prompt medical intervention, you wouldn’t be here.”

It was a lot to take in at once. “What happens now?”

“I go to court in the morning to try and get these removed,” Marina said. “There is no arrest warrant, and they can’t restrain you like this on suspicion of doing something wrong. They have confiscated your passport and your possessions pending the completion of the investigation; I’ll try to get those back too. The clothing should be easy, but your electronics and passport are a whole other matter. You’re a criminal suspect in a multiple murder case, so they aren’t letting you leave the jurisdiction.” Great. Was I stuck in Russia? I might have to see what the University of Moscow Paleontology Department is like if they’ll let me in.

“How long will this take?”

“There is no way to know, John. The best thing that can happen now is for the authorities to find the people who took the cave lion. If it is as priceless as I’ve heard, it’s the most likely motive for the death of the crew.”

And that was why Viktor looked at me like I was the lowest of the low. He thought I’d cooperated with the theft and faked a near-drowning to escape accountability.

I didn’t have to fake anything, and I had no idea what happened to the lion. I just prayed the Judge would buy my defense.