Franny stood in the bathroom on the Gulf Stream V. Unlike the coffin-like space on a commercial plane this washroom actually had a narrow shower along with the sink and toilet. He lifted the real cloth towel out of the sink, and wrung it out. The whine and rumble of the jet engines was a soporific. He had managed to grab a little sleep before Baba Yaga’s moans had pulled him awake, and the nurse, using a lot of gestures and repeated single words, had given him this task.

There had also been an unwelcome discovery when he awoke. The pistol he’d been carrying since Talas and the burner phone he’d purchased in Shymkent were both gone. He was beginning to get a bad feeling that the roles had reversed and that Baba Yaga was no longer his prisoner. Rather he was hers.

He made his way back to Baba Yaga. The seat was reclined as far as it would go. The male nurse was checking the pulse in her remaining wrist. Franny laid the wet, cool cloth on Baba Yaga’s forehead. She gasped, tried to sit up, and cried out in pain.

He eased her back down. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere over the pole. I think.”

“Good. Good,” she sighed. She stared at him. It was like being studied by an ancient dinosaur. “What is your name, boy?”

“Francis Black.”

“Francis.” She drew it out as if rolling it across her tongue, tasting the name.

“Only my mother calls me Francis and only when she’s mad.”

“So what do they call you?”

“Frank, but the people I work with call me Franny.”

“A girl’s name.”

“Yeah, cops. They like to think they’re funny. They’re not.”

He lifted the nearly dry towel from her forehead, went back to the bathroom, and soaked it with cold water again. The nurse was switching out an IV bag. When he returned he asked, “So, what’s your name?”

“You know my name.”

“I’ve heard the legend of Baba Yaga. It’s a handle like Curveball or The Turtle.”

“And you don’t think it fits?” she asked, and the wrinkled lips quirked, the briefest flicker of a smile.

“A creepy, scary old woman who eats children and decorates with skulls…” Franny pretended to consider. “Nah, don’t see the similarities at all.”

She responded to his ironic tone with another wintery smile. “Watch yourself, boy.”

“I thought I had graduated to Frank now.”