Mitnick’s briefcase was bulging with cash, so I picked it up and took Nika by the elbow, hustling back the way we came. There was no sign of Lanzo, but the pistol he had murdered Mitnick with was on the floor a dozen yards away. I found a set of stairs going down and took them, orienting towards the outside of the house, hoping that’s where Sophie would be.
Nika was frightened but functional. Once I was certain she’d keep up I let her go, taking point. We exited the house near a massive garage, each of its five doors open, the cars gone, some of Mitnick or Oleg’s men smart enough to have driven off.
I guessed which way the pool might be, swinging around the house, keeping an eye on the shell-shocked Nika to make certain I didn’t lose her. I peeked around every corner with the pistol leading the way. A column of smoke drifted across the face of the waning moon.
The pitted white concrete of the pool patio was surrounded by columns and tall shrubs painted by cool blue ripples as the underwater lights waved up from the chlorinated depths. There was no black-clad vory or smartly dressed gangsters, but a lone figure, sitting crumpled on a deck chair. I turned to Nika and held a finger to my lips, then moved forward.
If the figure hadn’t shifted to face me, I would have thought he was dead. Both of his eyes were bruised, one to the point of swelling shut, a corner of his mouth equally distended, a trail of purple welts circling his neck. He smelled of piss and blood. The hand he raised to wipe his broken nose wasn’t much better off.
“Atwell?”
“I found him,” Sophie stepped out of the bushes, much quieter than my approach. I didn’t suppress the urge to hug her, pulling her close. I was stopped from kissing her by the appearance of the small blonde teenager behind her. The girl looked no less traumatized than she had been emerging from underneath Oleg in the study, but she floated near Sophie like the older woman was a life-preserver.Â
Ignoring this, Atwell complained, “They were torturing me,” Atwell’s blue eyes didn’t have room for any trauma but his own. Clouds of anger blew over them, though, as he added, “Oleg thought I had something to do with your insanity.”
“Oleg’s dead.”
Atwell stopped glaring at me to stare out across the blue of the pool, the green of the grass, away from a house that was bleeding fire. “Well, at least there’s that.”
“Mitnick?” Sophie asked.
“Dead too.”
“Foo,” was all she said to that. Then she turned to see Nika slowly making her way towards us, like the dangerous animals we were. Sophie somehow looked less monstrous despite the blood. She brought the girl to her the strength in Sophie allowing Nika to weep quietly, the unnamed girl gathering close, too shocked to cry, but sensing fellow survivors.
Atwell struggled to stand. “Well, that’s just great. The police are bound to show up any second. I’d rather not have to answer any questions they have from a jail cell.” He gestured weakly, “My car is around the corner.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “You drove here? Of your own free will?”
Atwell’s one good eye glared at me. “Mitnick said he wanted to see me.” And like a loyal dog, Atwell had come, landing in the loving arms of Oleg. But Atwell’s stupidity was our luck. We moved to his car.
We found the Citroen, yellow and small, much like Atwell. With his broken hand, Atwell gestured me to the driver’s seat where I found the keys in the ignition. Sophie kept an eye out on the perimeter, making sure none of the remaining gangsters made an ill-advised appearance.
Nika asked, “What about Lanzo?”
I resisted the temptation to shrug, having a newfound belief in Lanzo’s ability to take care of himself. Sophie touched Nika’s shoulder in a comforting gesture, surreptitiously glancing at me. I only shook my head. Sophie said, “He will need to find his own way.”
Truer words had never been spoken. Nika looked back, her feet shifting towards a new mission of finding him, but the younger blonde clung onto her, unwilling to let the additional strength go. Whatever guilt Nika felt for the sins of her father kept her in place.
We cramped into the Citroen’s cabin, Sophie and the girls in the back, Atwell riding shotgun. I drove us out slowly at first, peeking out from behind the mansion, accelerating quickly as we moved into open space, speeding past the burning hulk of Sartre’s car. Charred corpses lay near the fire, splayed out, arms open as if welcoming the sky.
We headed back down the mountain towards the city. It wasn’t long before a firetruck and several police cars, sirens blaring, sped past us, too busy getting to the site of an emergency they had already missed. I looked in the rearview mirror to make sure none slowed down to eye us. None did.
As always, Atwell didn’t have the sense to stay quiet. “You’ve only made things worse, you know.”
I thought about kicking him out of the car. “What?”
“Mitnick, the Avoritet, having been keeping things organized, peaceful. They would have just squeezed Sartre out slowly, but you came along and threw a bomb into the mix. When the rest of their buddies back in Russia find out what happened, they’re going to be baying for blood.”
I thought about Sartre throwing Mitnick down the stairs of the casino. “And how do you think Sartre’s friends are going to react when they find out what happened?”
“Sartre’s small fries. Regional. Oleg and Mitnick have all the Avoritet.”
I took my eyes off the road long enough to glare at Atwell. “Is that why you sided with them? Why you were willing to let all this happen? Let Mitnick and Oleg move in here, let Sergei get cozy with Sartre until they stuffed him into a sewer pipe for it?”
“I was doing my job,” Atwell insisted. “Siding with Mitnick was just a condition of the inevitable. It kept things calm. Calm makes it easier to spot the real trouble.” Trouble like Tariq, I inferred, brown and from other parts of the world. Like so many armchair generals, Atwell was too busy looking at the last war to see the next one coming.
“Your calm,” I said, glancing into the rearview mirror, “is bought with other people’s suffering.”
“It’s how the world works.”Â
“Maybe. Or maybe some fights are worth fighting.”
That was too sanctimonious for Atwell. “You’re an idiot.” I couldn’t argue with that so I let him finish. “They’ll just replace one monster with another.”
With the burning mansion and all of it corpses behind us I said, “Maybe. But I suspect with everything that’s gone down that Rotella and the Flic will be particularly wary when a new Russian shows up in town.”
“Besides,” I added, filled with a perverse joy that I suddenly wanted to share, “No one knows you were spying for Mitnick now. All the evidence is burning down in that house. Hell, I bet you get credit for disrupting the Russians’ operations.”
I felt Atwell settle into his seat as that idea acted as a balm on his soul, perhaps thinking of his narrow escape and what his rewards might be. Unwilling to simply let the argument go, though, Atwell added, “He was from Belarus.”
I did chuckle at that, grateful for the sun behind us that lit up the city as we drove down into it.
To start at the beginning of the story, go here.Â
To read the previous chapter, go here.
Photo courtesy of Hert Niks.
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