The Sakharovsky Ruby

Xi-wang

Svetlana's hands were tightly wound with duct tape behind her back to a metal post in the truck. The cloth sack was gone replaced by a well-secured blindfold. Her mouth wasn't covered so at least she could breathe. How long was I out for? Svetlana wondered. Who are these people and where are they taking me?

"Hey!" Svetlana yelled in perfect Mandarin. All she heard was the sounds of the wheels running over the dirt road.

"What do you assholes want!" She yelled in Russian.

"Untie me so I can kick all of your asses," she finally said in English.

"You can even keep me blindfolded so it's a fair fight" Still nothing but road noise.

"You'll never see daylight again," a young woman said in Mandarin.

"Who are you?" replied Svetlana. "Can you see me?"

"No," she replied with a shaky voice.

"Who are you?" Svetlana asked again.

"I'm a captive just like you and soon I'll be a sex slave just like you. That's what these guys do. My cousin was taken from her village. We never saw her again, but everyone knew where she was."

"I'll get us out of this," Svetlana said confidently.

"I don't think so. These people run everything around here from cocaine to women. They have lots of guns but more importantly, they are very well connected."

"Are they some sort of gang?" Svetlana asked.

"They're worse than a gang. At least gangs are illegal. These people aren't just above the law; they are the law. They are the local politicians, military police, judges, store owners. They are everyone."

"Why, how?"

"They hate all foreigners from Americans to Russians and Mongolians. They believe that China needs to be pure so anyone who they feel isn't purely Chinese gets taken by them and used for whatever they want. And when they've run out of foreigners to please their sick desires they go after the local women like me."

"Are you purely Chinese?" Svetlana asked.

"Yes, but my family are nobody so we don't matter."

"The whole thing sounds like a nightmare."

"You can't even begin to imagine. When they are truly desperate they'll order a truckload of Uyghur women, but they are used mostly to produce drugs."

"How do you know so much?"

"It's like I told you before, everybody knows. This isn't a secret."

"Then why don't you leave?"

"And go where? We are hundreds of kilometres from the nearest village. We are poor, we have nothing."

Svetlana's heart broke hearing her speak. It reminded her of the stories her grandparents told her about Stalin's Soviet Union. Fighting the system was useless. The only victories came from surviving.

"Your Mandarin accent is good but you're obviously from Russia. How'd you end up here?" the Chinese girl asked.

"Doing work for my boss." Svetlana wondered why nobody warned her about these gangs. She would been far more careful. All she was told to worry about was Sergei and possibly the odd Chinese policeman.

"Doing work here? Your boss must be into drugs or something. That's the only reason why Russians ever come to this wasteland."

"Nothing like that." Svetlana was glad to have someone to talk with, not just as a way to pass the time but to learn about what she had unintentionally gotten herself into. The more information she could get, the more she could prepare for what was coming. "We'll get out of this. You need to have hope."