He snorted a single laugh as he flared his shirt to pull it across his wide chest and belly to button it. He spoke in the chocolate gravel voice I had heard over the handheld. “You know who I am.”
I thought about the girl that had just left and that he was willing to treat someone like that with Nika only rooms away. Someone who wasn’t that different from his daughter, young and frightened, a slave to someone else’s whims.
I decided Mitnick could wait.
“I try to stay on top of things,” I replied.
Oleg pushed himself up to walk around the desk, staring at me like I was meat hanging from a hook. He was wearing black boxers, exposing pale and tattooed legs, large baroque stars on each knee, no shoes. He might have looked ridiculous, but staring into his uncaring eyes was like looking at Stalin. From behind that blood-stained veil of history, he said, “You are Mitnick’s American.”
“One of them, yeah.”
Oleg narrowed his eyes, then they crackled with realization. “Ah, you mean the U.S. agent. Yes, we speak with him.” I wondered at the ominous statement and for the first time I felt sorry for Atwell.
Oleg gestured to the trench coat. “Blood?”
“It’s not mine. It’s Sartre’s.”
“Sartre. I have heard much about him.”
“You won’t anymore.”
“He is dead? I have been told, but did not see it myself.”
“Well, take my word for it. I was close enough to feel his last breath.”
Oleg studied me. “You worked for Sartre?”
“I worked at the casino.”
“For Sartre.”
“I picked up some extra work from him, from time to time. Mitnick probably told you that.” I made a show of scanning the room, as if he might appear. “Where is Mitnick?”
“Preparing for a celebration.”
“So Nika’s back safe?”
“Da.”
“Good. Glad I could help with that.”
Oleg snorted. “You help with that? Is that why you are here? To claim a reward?”
“Sartre died trying to bring the girl back to Mitnick. I’m not sure who killed him, but I saw your boys on the scene.”
Oleg’s eyes widened beyond their lizard slits. “You come for revenge.”
“Sartre died finding your daughter.” That lie was hard to tell, but I kept going. “Your men followed us to the scene and then snatched her rather than play nice. I think there needs to be an accounting for that.”
Oleg openly chuckled then, looking to his lieutenant, Cross, and indicating me with a hooked thumb.
Back to me he said, “You say Sartre and you went to find my daughter. Perhaps you were in on her kidnapping. You work for Sartre, you work for Mitnick, friends in the police.”
“I like to have my bets covered.”
“You are the one person in all of this that no one knows who you are working for.”
I shrugged. “Who do you work for? Putin?”
Oleg burst with laughter, a loud and braying noise that I imagine was as close to good natured as a man like him could get. Which sounded like it was about sixteen countries away.
Cross and Diamond joined in. I half-smiled the grin of a foreigner caught on the outside of a joke. Something I had a lot of practice at. When the laughter died, Oleg’s hard eyes came back to me and he laid the tip of a forefinger at the tattooed star on his knee. “Do you know this?”
“No.”
“It is Thieves’ Stars. It means I kneel for no man.”
I imitated his cynical snort. “So Putin works for you?”
Oleg reached behind him on the desk to pick up a chromed pistol. I didn’t recognize the model, but its shininess and proximity made it huge. When he was sure it had my attention he said, “A few years ago, in Bogota, we were using the Russian embassy to hide a shipment of cocaine.”
He paused, watching my face to make sure I understood what he said. The idea that an embassy would be used for smuggling produced the confusion from me he must have been waiting for because he went on. “We were going to bring it to Germany and sell it. Germans love the cocaine. But the embassy employees were careless and the police came to suspect. They intercepted the shipment on the way to the airport. Do you know what happened?”
“No.”
“Nothing. Nothing happened. No one was arrested, none of the embassy staff were expelled, no one was chastised. We lost the cocaine, but got much of it back later.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Oleg did a good, derisive imitation of an American accent. “Do you know what this means?”
I shook my head.
“It means we,” Oleg touched his hands to his chest, then opened his arms to indicate his men, “and Russia, are one.” He smiled and I clenched my jaw around what that meant for everyday people. Like the girl.
I thought about what Atwell had said, about how Mitnick was plugged into Russia and working with criminals and supposedly legitimate oligarchs and bureaucrats and the word he had for that. I said it quietly. “Avoritet.”
That got Oleg’s attention. His lieutenants perked up as well. “You do seem to be, ‘in the know.'”
“I know that murdering Sartre is going to make a lot of people very angry.”
Sniffing dismissively, Oleg stepped toward me, shifting his shoulders, telegraphing what came next. Sure enough, he raised the pistol and cracked it against my skull. I swiveled my head enough to avoid the worst of it, but my knees buckled.
Oleg hovered over me. “The West, this country, is weak, divided. Just as you and Sartre and this Atwell are weak and divided. We will take what we want from you and you will take what we give you.”
Oleg grabbed my chin and forced my head up, the pistol’s muzzle floating inches from my face. “We watch you and you led us straight to Nika. Did you not think we would not know you were a part of her escape? Did you think you could simply walk back in with no consequences?”
With his eyes floating in front of mine, I refused to stare at the pistol even as he pushed it closer to me. Behind Oleg, Diamonds produced a long, serrated knife and chuckled.
To start at the beginning of the story, go here.
Photo courtesy of Hert Niks.
To read the previous chapter, go here.
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“chocolate gravel voice” … brilliant!
Thanks Jenny.