Xander, computer on lap, let out a long sigh. Through the open floorplan of their Flagstaff getaway, up its rafters and stairs, he called to his wife, “I found another one.”
He heard Lisa squeal with delight and come bounding down from the loft. She leapt next to him on the couch in an enthusiasm that he could feel, but never understand. For him, watching a video of his wife being virtually ravaged by another man didn’t elicit the same reaction as it did for Lisa. He saw the deepfakes that popped up on the Internet as an umbra of her fame, while she saw their creation as a barometer of her celebrity status.
“Is it any good?”
Xander twisted up his expression. “Uhmmm…do you mean from a production value? Yeah, it’s pretty impressive.”
She leaned in to whisper warm breath on his ear. “No, I mean is it hot?”
If he didn’t know her as well as he did, and been with her almost constantly during the film promotion tour, he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the woman pressing herself into his shoulder and the one being fucked in the video. This clashed with his own libido as the scene on the screen became even more intense and the deepfake Lisa more vocal in her encouragements.
Instead of answering, Xander turned the laptop towards the woman he loved. “You tell me.”
Lisa cooed, squirming as she moved in closer to watch. She was teasing him, he knew, trying to turn him on and make him uncomfortable, his blushing and fumbling in these situations acting as a strange aphrodisiac for her. Blood rushed through him till Lisa stopped cold.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Pause it,” she commanded, which he did.
Leaning in close, Lisa took a much more clinical examination of the video than he was accustomed. Then she pointed a chipped nail at the screen. “How did they know about that?”
“What?”
“That!”
Xander put on his glasses and followed her finger. When he saw it, it became impossible to miss. The video simulacrum had a birthmark in a very private area. A birthmark that, as far as they were concerned, no one in public knew existed. Both Lisa and Xander turned from the screen to look one another in the eye.
Xander snapped the laptop shut. “We really need to hire someone else to start scrubbing these things.”
To start at the beginning go here. To hear an audio reading of the chapter, hit the play button above.
I started to mumble through the latest head trauma. Oleg ordered me to be quiet. “I do not need you to tell me any more. I only wished to see if you would lie. I already know the truth. There is only one thing I wish from you. Where is Mikhail?”
The ghost of Mikhail popping up again made me laugh out loud. Oleg lined the sights of the pistol on my face telling me he didn’t appreciate the frivolity.
Before he hit me again I asked, “What?”
“Mikhail Otari. He went with you on an errand and no one has seen him since. He is one of my men. Where is he?”
I pushed the pain around on my face, trying to mimic confusion. “You don’t have anything to worry about. He’s gone.”
Oleg leaned in. “Where did he go?”
I stared at Oleg over the sights of his pistol and found the thread of a lie, began to pull on it. “I took care of him for you. He won’t be coming back.”
Oleg’s eyes reddened around the edges, promising anger wasn’t far behind. “What?”
I raised a hand to indicate a misunderstanding. “Mitnick said to take care of him. He said you wanted him gone.” Pulling more on the lie, I wasn’t sure where it came from. It rolled out in whole cloth, as if Cheryl were weaving it in my head.
Oleg pulled away from me. “Why would I believe this?”
“Check the car I came here in. The gun I used is in the trunk.” I felt my reptile uncoil from my brainstem, shuddering with the anticipation of violence. “Or you could ask Mitnick.”
Oleg barked something at one of my escorts. I only understood the word, “Mitnick.” Oleg said something to the other one and he exited as well.
Oleg swore at me and then at Diamonds, who stepped close, brandishing his knife. Moving behind the desk, Oleg continued a steady stream of curses as he set down the pistol long enough to jerk his pants on. Cross spoke to him in a reasonable tone. Diamonds hovered near me, but didn’t stop me when I moved to sit on the chaise. I pretended to nurse my head.
More vory arrived. Oleg spoke in quiet, angry tones. Diamonds mingled among the new entrants, whispering orders to the junior gangsters as they filed in. Most moved to other furniture or stood in corners, some posing, others overly gregarious, each trying to wrestle nervous energy into being cool in front of the big boss. One was even dumb enough to sit near me. A few of the more sensible ones blocked exits.
I smeared the blood across my face to make it look like the blow from Oleg was worse than it was. I held my head, using the injury as an excuse to avoid eye contact, occasionally glancing around to get a better count of Oleg’s men.
I did this until I saw Pyotr muscle his way in. When he saw me, his eyes widened with recognition. I expected him to run off half-cocked and start swinging. He only smiled.
I gave a big, wide, dumb American grin right back to him. At the casino, I had always had to hold back, couldn’t hurt anyone too badly. There, in Mitnick’s house, it wouldn’t matter any more.
Through the interior door to the right of the desk, Mitnick appeared, Brick and Whip flanking him. Someone must have told him trouble was brewing because more of his men were with him. The vory cleared the floor so there were two unobstructed paths, one to me and one to Oleg, making sure Mitnick could see both.
The lines around Mitnick’s eyes collected themselves in worry, but that bright, white smile came out from behind his beard. He chided me. “What are you doing here?”
Oleg didn’t wait to be addressed. “I was asking him what became of Mikhail.”
Mitnick replied, “There was trouble, I sent Mikhail to help.”
“Then what became of Mikhail?” Oleg’s spoke like he might to a child, a high sing-song that promised punishment at its end.
Mitnick raised himself up, squaring his shoulders and planting his feet. He gestured to me, hand out, palm flat, waiting for me to put an answer into it. “Well?”
I did not return his gaze. “He was in Sartre’s service station when I lit the place on fire. You can ask Rotella – the cops have the body.”
The room went still, all of the restless energy among the men freezing cold. Mitnick only shook his head. “You told me that Mikhail died fighting Sartre’s men by your side. That he died as your comrade.”
Oleg didn’t let me answer, jumping into the widening breach between the truth and lies. “You knew Mikhail was dead?”
“I suspected Mikhail was dead,” Mitnick emphasized the first verb. “I had no proof.”
“The police, this Rotella, who you have had in your home, have his body. You could have known had you wanted.” Oleg spoke quickly, the red in his face turning purple.
Mitnick let out a long exhalation. I heard my lizard hiss, savoring expectation. “Things here are not as they are back home, Oleg. They are delicate and require patience. I would have found Mikhail eventually and sent him to you.”
“After you murdered him? That would have been kind of you.”
Mitnick’s eyes hardened in the same flinty way as they had at the bottom of the casino stairs Sartre had thrown him down. “Why would I have killed Mikhail?”
I interrupted. “You said he knew who killed Sergei.”
The forest of vory shifted in the wind between the two men, the surprise clear in Oleg’s voice. “You killed Sergei?”
“No,” I spoke loudly and clearly. “Nika killed Sergei. She got pregnant by a local boy and Sergei forced her to have an abortion. She killed him for it. Mitnick covered it up, but Mikhail found out about the whole thing and had to go.” I looked at Oleg. “I thought you knew all this.”
After the days of watching Mitnick’s carefully controlled persona, there was a pleasure in seeing it crack with the bounty of confusion and fear that this web of falsehoods produced. Mr. Smooth actually stuttered in the face of the lie’s enormity, which was enough proof for Oleg.
Oleg spit something in Russian and raised his pistol. Mitnick’s men closed ranks around him, causing the vory to move forward. Diamonds pivoting between us, not sure who to stab. With eyes off me, I scanned for a target of opportunity, knowing if Mitnick got control of the situation it would give away the lies I was weaving.
Mitnick lifted his hands, calling for calm. I was lucky he didn’t get any farther.
To start at the beginning go here. To hear an audio reading of the chapter, hit the play button above.
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.
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Detective Thompson’s best guess was suicide. People who dove off buildings of their own free will usually landed with arms tucked in, legs straight. Sometimes they almost looked at peace. People who were thrown, on the other hand, made a mess. Trying to scramble back air, they landed with arms and legs at all sorts of disjointed angles.
This one, though, had dived head first, which meant a hell of a mess, but a quick and almost assured death. So they were either a very brave and determined suicide or drugged before someone dropped them.
Looking at the burst skull and fractured pieces of spine, Thompson had a feeling that the toxicology report would come back clean. When he received it, he’d wonder why they had chosen to die this way, but then he’d put the file away.
Then and there, Thompson said a quiet prayer for the jumper. If the city and his job ever got to be too much, he’d know that whoever this poor soul was, they had shown him the way.
To start at the beginning go here. To hear an audio reading of the chapter, hit the play button above.
The statue of Athena was lit by one of the floodlights that dotted the grounds. Celebratory noises issued from the house. Men stood on the steps watching some joker pantomime choking out, going down on his knees, raising a melodramatic hand to the sky as he shriveled in a parody of Sartre’s death.
My headlights painted two figures blocking the drive. Bulky leather jackets marked them as a different kind of blackbird from the rooks. Vory.
I slowed the car to a stop. Both slid their weapons forward to make them visible. I set the MP7 on the passenger’s seat and then pushed down the parking break. I rolled down the window and held out a hand, hoping to signal friendliness, or at least harmlessness. One of them gestured for me to get out of the car.
I looked at the two men in the headlights, both like young recruits reduced to near identical likeness with their pale skin and shaved heads, black leather coats and dark pants. Either of them would be willing to gun me down, and neither of them was important. I thought about Mitnick’s smiling face and what it might take to get close to him.
I had promised Sophie a distraction, though, so I bent over, took out the grenade, pulled the pin, and then pushed it under the parking brake. Jammed between the pedal and the floorboard, the brake would hold the grenade’s safety lever in place until someone released it.
When I came up, both men had their weapons trained on me. I raised empty hands and reached out to open the door from the outside, keeping everything nice and visible. I slowly stepped out of the car, hands in the air.
They were smarter than they looked. They kept their distance until they could see I was alone, not police or overtly French. They asked me something in their Cyrillic tongue. I replied, “I’m here to see Mitnick.” I tried it in both English and French and got nothing. One of them flashed a light on me, lingering on Sartre’s fresh blood. I repeated the one word I knew they’d understand. “Mitnick.”
One stepped forward and I obediently let him slide a hand up and down my sides, finding and extracting the pistol. The other spoke into a handheld. A voice like chocolate covered gravel came back over the radio.
The vory stepped aside. One used the constellation of tattoos along his hand to point me to the house. I started walking.
The laughter and the jokes of the Russians died away as we got closer, all eyes on me. I was grateful to see Pyotr wasn’t in the mix, but the latent hostility in the group made up for his absence. Like walking past a group of angry dogs, I tried not to make eye contact.
In the foyer, I moved toward the stairs, but vory blocked the path. One of myescorts slammed his submachine gun into my back, hard enough that my knees nearly buckled, directing me deeper into the house. I complied and walked past the fountain, towards the door on the right.
Through the parlor and into the interior rooms, I saw none of Mitnick’s men. I kept walking past the hostile eyes of other black-clad vory. I mentally tallied how many I saw. There were a lot of them.
After walking through that long corridor we came to a door I recognized. I entered Mitnick’s library. The roomed smelled of book glue and sea breeze, an odd combination that reminded me of the prison library. Whatever pleasure I might have gotten out of that was robbed by a repetitive wet sound like a broken water pump.
Flanking Mitnick’s big desk with its liquor cabinet globe were two more vory, more grizzled than the others. Their black clothes were nicer, their jewelry bigger and shinier, their hair longer and slick. One was taller, broad-shouldered, going grey, and wore a cross so large it might have been out of penance if it weren’t so flashy. The other was short and narrow shouldered, everything but the diamonds in his ears connected by ropey muscles. He lit a cigarette with a silver lighter.
They both evaluated me with apathetic eyes. This drew my attention enough that I didn’t spot the grey blob behind the desk immediately.
Nearly bald, the pale skin of an older man’s pate barely rose above the desk’s horizon, its owner leaning back in Mitnick’s chair, head tilted towards the ceiling. When I entered he didn’t move other than to open his eyes and glance towards me, his eyes flickering with irritation, followed by a melodramatic sigh.
He raised a lazy hand and gestured towards the seaside of the room’s exits. I waited for more instruction then I realized it wasn’t for me – a young girl, probably not out of her teens, rose up from behind the desk, wiping saliva from her lips with the back of her hand. She looked as a frightened child does at foreign soldiers, a fear of reprisals for breaking undefined rules. She tried to adjust what little clothing she had on but Diamonds grabbed her by the elbow and pushed her towards the door.
The older man behind the desk sat upright, his bulk causing the chair to squeak in protest. His eyes and mouth formed uncaring horizontal lines, only twitching downward as his figure rose up. His skin had the gray flabbiness of age, but his eyes were quick and hard, his open shirt exposing a tattoo of an onion domed palace that could have been Old Town’s own cathedral.
From all of this I wagered a guess. “Oleg Churbinov.”
