To start at the beginning of the story go here.

The accusation of treason was enough to get Atwell to unfurl from his fetal position and shout, “I haven’t betrayed my country! I’m –“ I held up my hand for him to stop, but he kept going for a bit, saying something about not being any good to anyone dead, the Cold War and capitulation, and necessary evils. I wasn’t really listening.

I interrupted by prodding him with the umbrella again. “So what information have you been passing to Mitnick?”

I couldn’t tell if the hurt in Atwell’s face was the result of the umbrella’s steel tip or me pointing out that collaborating with foreign agents was, in fact, treason. Whichever it was, it resolved itself into a petulant, “I haven’t.” I glared my disbelief at him and when he decided he didn’t want another slap he continued, “I haven’t volunteered anything and Mitnick hasn’t asked for anything. I get the feeling he’s busy.”

“With what?”

Atwell squirmed some more and continued. “I went to meet Mitnick at one of his properties and ended up getting harassed by some of his guests – Russians, not his crew. I think they might be a part of a security detail getting things ready for another visit by the Avoritet.”

I thought about Mitnick’s response to Mikhail’s disappearance and nodded. That made sense. Whoever the vory were Mitnick didn’t seem to want them around anymore than he wanted anyone near Nika. He was probably keeping the other Russians busy searching for Mikhail. But it still sounded like Atwell was in a perfect position to tell Mitnick about the Ukrainian and I said so. He began to splutter and when more spittle came my way I knew I had convinced him that I held his life in my hands, instead of the other way around.

To get things back on track I asked him, “So why didn’t you tell Mitnick where the Ukrainian was?”

That stopped his diatribe and he actually said something decisive. “I didn’t think it would improve the situation. I figured once you knew who killed him we might be able to use it.” I couldn’t help but grin a bit – that seemed to be everyone’s idea.

Tired of listening to him I just held up my hand and said, “OK, I believe you. You didn’t tell Mitnick.” The relief that poured out of Atwell was nearly palpable and for a moment I thought he was going to thank me. That would have been too much, even for my stomach, so I cut him off. “But if Sartre finds out you’ve been watching him and not Mitnick, he’ll never believe you. Hell, right now he’s a lot more inclined to think it was you or me rather than one of his own guys.”

At that moment, a skinny cook with a thin, drooping mustache, most likely summoned by Atwell’s yelling, stepped out from the backdoor of L’Orange. In his hand, he held the preferred weapon of Gallic cooks, the skillet. He said something in French too quick for me to understand. I just smiled and said something in English about my friend falling down. I reached out and grabbed Atwell by the armpit and elbow, picking him up out of the trash. I tucked him under one arm and headed towards the alley’s exit, smiling back as I did. The cook had the expression most people do when they aren’t sure if they should call the police, but after a few seconds he went back into his kitchen.

Far enough away not to be heard, but not quite out on the street I said, “Sartre won’t believe a simple denial. At least, not for long.”

Under my arm, Atwell felt even smaller than he actually was. “So what do we do?”

I pretended to give that some thought as we kept moving. It was late enough in the morning now that the sun was beginning to brighten the streets and we could see a few people walking on the sidewalk, appearing and disappearing across the alley’s narrow entrance. “OK so we tell Sartre you found out that Mitnick knew where the body was and had informed the police. There wasn’t enough time to warn Sartre so you sent someone to burn the corpses so they couldn’t be identified.

“Our story is you saved his ass.” Atwell nodded, weakly at first, than with increasing conviction. “I’ll tell him that next time I see him. Until I do, you should probably stay out of his way.”

Atwell kept nodding and asked, “So where does that leave us?”

“We find out where this new Avoritet sit-down is and what it’s all about.” That statement felt counter-intuitive to me, so I appealed to something in Atwell I knew I could count on – his self-interest. “They only way we can get Mitnick off your back is if we convince your bosses or Sartre or someone that the situation is serious enough that you need back-up.”

Atwell nodded at that, and I could feel his confidence grow, him standing up straighter. “Yeah, OK.”

I let him go just before we stepped out onto the street. Out of the alley, the sun had made its full appearance, the terracotta roofs of Old Town glowing orange with all their splendor. I released Atwell out into that radiance and told him, “I can help with that. I’ll let you know if I find out anything.”

Atwell nodded, actually appearing somewhat grateful as he ran his hands through his dark hair, now oily with sweat. I decided to take advantage of that moment. “In the meantime, I need you to arrange a meet with this Rotella. Talk to your gendarme or whatever, but get word to him I want to talk.”

Out from under the danger of physical threat, Atwell immediately became suspicious again. “About what?”

“About Mitnick,” I replied, which was partially the truth. “I’d like to know whatever he might share.” Atwell narrowed his eyes in doubt and I couldn’t blame him. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to Rotella.

Not wanting to discuss that, though, I scanned the narrow street and spotted Alon’s green taxi. As if I had received some secret signal I turned back to Atwell and said, “I’ve got to go. I’ll check the drop later.”

With that, I strode out across the cobblestones and stepped into Alon’s car. The day may have been warming up, but the Frenchman was still buried in his coat, red nose jutting out from under his cap. He was none too pleased about taking a fare that promised to extend beyond the end of his shift.

Perhaps to offer something in consolation, I asked him, “Would you like some breakfast?”

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Atwell winced, the pain I was causing him making it difficult to find his lies.

So, slowly, he began with the truth. “I had been following Mitnick. At first. When he got into town on his bought passport and started throwing money around. A lot of money. You could tell he liked it here.” Atwell wiped a bit of drool and blood from his chin, grinning through it. “Can you blame him? The weather here is a hell of a lot better than Moscow or Minsk. And it’s safer. Russia may be a lot better than it was 15 years ago, but it’s still a dangerous place and he’s got a lot of enemies. I read a report that back in the motherland he traveled with a platoon of bodyguards the entire time. Here he’ll walk around in broad daylight with just two.”

“Yeah, I’ve met them.” I said, thinking about Mitnick’s stories of the vory and the gang wars, the peace that had followed, and the Russians he had staying as guests. “Why’d you stop following him?”

Atwell shifted his weight in the trash pile, angling his most sensitive parts away from me. “Organized crime isn’t my job. I’m here because of the War on Terror.” I snorted at this, as I could practically see the trademark logo floating next to the last three words. Atwell shot me as angry a glance as he could muster and went on. “Mitnick was the same as Sartre, moving a lot of things, people, money. Moving them all over – from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Syria. So I eventually approached him with the same offer – let us know if he sees anything and we won’t interfere with his operation. And that was fine for awhile. Hell, him and Sartre even did a little business.”

“Girls from the Ukraine.”

“Yeah. Mitnick sold them to Sartre for the local brothels.” Those words caused something to rise in me then that I had to chain down immediately. I tightened my grip on the umbrella. Instead of embedding it in his head, I breathed out steam and asked, “So what changed?”

“A contingent of Mitnick’s old Soviet friends showed up. Came in by boat, plane, train. They met at Mitnick’s place – it was like the Malta conference for bad guys.

“They’d come a long ways for a very short stay – they were only here for a few days. After that, things changed. Mitnick started leaning out of his territory – started smuggling Spanish cigarettes, opened up his own brothels instead of just selling girls to Sartre, started moving heroin. Eventually, he even made inquiries into buying the casino. And that was the last straw.”

Like a spring out of an old mattress, my hand flew out and I slapped Atwell again. It happened before I realized it and I had to take a moment to bring it back under my control. I breathed slowly, counted to four, then said, “I told you that was what was happening. If you knew all of this, why did you put me in this mess?” I almost said ‘us,’ but didn’t. Bringing up Sophie could give him leverage.

Atwell shook his head and almost grinned again, making me worry I might be putting him into shock. So I kept my hands to myself as he said, “I figured you might keep them off each others’ throats for awhile – keep this from turning into a war.”

“You’re an idiot, Atwell. Marines don’t prevent wars, they finish them.”

He tilted his head as if he were trying to get water out of his ear. “Well, OK, yeah, lesson learned.”

I leaned forward, the exhalation from my nose audible. “So why are you following Sartre and not Mitnick?”

Atwell narrowed his eyes and I could see his shields raising, but he spoke quickly and without doubt. “I did some digging into the people Mitnick met with. There were gangsters, sure, but not just old school vory. There were ministers, administrators, entrepreneurs, FSB agents, heads of Russian conglomerates.”

He squared his head and looked straight at me.. “Do you understand what I’m saying? These aren’t just criminals. These are men and women in positions of legitimate authority. People who aren’t supposed to be fraternizing with criminals.”

“So?”

“So I did some more digging. This meeting wasn’t some kind of mistake. Hell, one of the Russians that met at Mitnick’s was a member of Putin’s cabinet. A man, by the way, that MI-6 suspected of arranging the assassination of Chechnya’s premier in 2011. They weren’t at Mitnick’s as some kind of social call or peace meeting. They were coordinating. They work together.” Atwell was still afraid, but I realized it wasn’t of me. “They even have a name. They call themselves the Avoritet – the Authority.”

“Sounds like we’re starting to get into terrorism territory.” In case that left any doubt I added, “Your territory. So why does it look like your working for Mitnick?”

Atwell wormed in the trash pile. “It only looks that way.” I raised the umbrella again and he rushed out, “After I had been doing some digging, Mitnick paid me a visit. With some guys. No threats, all sweetness and light.”

I thought about Mitnick’s demeanor and how quickly I could have fallen into its influence, how natural it felt to want his approval. Shame colored my cheeks, but it was still dark, so I just told Atwell, “I’ve seen that routine. And?”

“He let me know he knew I had been digging. He knew that I had been watching him, which of his associates I’d been looking into. Hell, he even knew what I had included in my last report.” Atwell stopped his quick speech for a deep inhale, recapturing whatever fear he had previously expelled. His eyes pooled with dread, enlarging until I thought he might try to make a run for it. Instead he whispered, “They know everything. Whatever this Avoritet is, it’s not just some Russian gangster trying to capture a piece of the Mediterranean sun.”

There was a part of me that always made smart ass remarks in mission briefings when we knew things were going to be dangerous. That part popped up now and I countered with, “He’s from Belarus.”

Atwell blinked again. “What?”

“Mitnick. You said he was Belarus.”

The cemetery dirt of Atwell’s eyes contracted again, his pride so spiteful that even now the contradiction brought him back to the alley. “Whatever he is, Mitnick suggested that my time would be better spent watching Sartre.” He shrugged and sniffed, wiping the blood from his nose. “So that’s what I’ve been doing.”

I felt my loathing for Atwell combine with my own shame at being involved in this. All of that dropped into my gut and swelling feet. “You piece of shit. You didn’t even have to be threatened to betray your country. You just had to sense a threat.”

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I wrapped the trench coat around me as I stepped out of the casino’s employee entrance. While the afternoons had started to feel like spring, this early in the morning it was still cool and damp. I watched the mist fall from a light sky and felt the droplets on my face. For a moment I didn’t think about the city, what it was or where it was going.

Eventually, I opened my umbrella and stepped over the stream running in the gutter to head over to L’Orange. The trams weren’t running for another hour or so, but I had picked the place based off its proximity to the casino and a few other factors.

The first of those other factors was that there were a number of spots nearby that I could watch the restaurant without being easily noticed myself. The second was, like a lot of places in Old Town, L’Orange faced out onto the narrow street while it had a service entrance in the rear. It was basically a shotgun shack in that you could have stood out in the street and aimed through its front door to shoot someone in the back alley. All in all, a very controllable space.

I watched the citrus-colored shutters of its front doors until I heard the tinny horn of the Citroën blare at some unfortunate pedestrian. I stepped behind the corner where I was roosting while Atwell found a place for the BX. After he did some impressive parallel parking, I watched his dark hair bob its way into the restaurant. His legs loped along with an urgency I wasn’t accustomed to seeing in him.

If Atwell held true to form, he’d pick a table at the very back. I circled the block until I found the entrance to the restaurant’s backstreet. I continued to think about what I’d say to Atwell as I walked. There were the usual rubbish bins and stacked boxes down the alley, but many of these had been covered with green, leafy plants in clay pots. Someone had attempted to make the row more livable space than the trash-catcher they usually were. I could imagine the bright Mediterranean sun lighting up fronds, but now they were only the silhouette of a jungle. Passing through that, I made up my mind for the direct approach.

The backdoor to the restaurant was open to let some of the kitchen’s heat escape. I walked through it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, just an ox there for a delivery. The clatter of the one working cook didn’t break in its noise. I made sure there was a clear path through the kitchen to the exit.

In the dining room Atwell was sitting at a table in the back, watching the entrance, confident that’s where I’d be coming from. In this early hour, with the sky just beginning to lighten, he had the restaurant to himself.

I took the steel-cored umbrella in hand by either end, looping it over his head and across his throat. I let him get his hands up for a meager defense before I yanked him out of the chair, silencing whatever protests he was bound to launch into. His legs thrashed out, knocking his teetering chair away, and they kept kicking as I dragged him out into the alley. When I was sure he was choked out enough that he wouldn’t immediately start yelling, I tossed him onto a pile of trash that was surrounded by elephant-eared plants, landing him in a refuse wilderness.

I’m sure it was all very confusing for him. I didn’t give him a chance to get his bearings. I grabbed him by the sweat-stained collar of his shirt.

I jerked Atwell towards me, throttling him as I pushed all of my anger into the sentence, “You idiot. Who did you tell?”

I derived more than a small amount of pleasure from the fear and confusion that was evident on Atwell’s face even in the alley’s dim light. “What?!?”

“The Ukrainian. Who did you tell about the Ukrainian?” I pulled Atwell up to his knees, continuing to shake him. I rattled him around enough to keep him disoriented. The product of this combination came out of him with another, more prolonged, “What?”

I repeated that the Ukrainian was the topic of conversation. “The cops found him. And only you, me, and Sartre knew where he was.” With my free hand I pointed out each of the subjects from my sentence, only thumbing out to the streets of Old Town to indicate the Night Governor. I ended with putting my finger in his face. “Who did you tell?”

Atwell recovered enough of his composure to use the leverage that had always kept me in check in the past. “Let go of me, you stupid fucker, or I’ll have you back in a cell before nightfall.” To his credit, Atwell tried to pry my hand off his throat. “Or worse.”

“You think I care about that?” I asked honestly. “Sartre thinks I might have tipped the cops. I’d rather be back in prison than vanished.”

The realization that the shield of his authority was no longer effective slowly transformed Atwell’s face. The anger in his eyes drained, his mouth gradually opening as if to give it someplace to escape. Instead a series of incomplete, stuttered words came out. “You mean –?”

“Yes. Sartre visited the casino to shake me down. If I hadn’t convinced him it wasn’t me who squealed, I’d be in a dumpster somewhere by now. So – who did you tell?”

His anger completely supplanted by fear, Atwell managed an honest denial. “I didn’t tell anyone!”

“Bullshit. The cop you told me about, Rotella, is investigating it.” I shook him hard enough that Cheryl’s voice reminded me not to kill him. I stopped long enough to make sure Atwell could understand my next question. “You just happen to know him and now he’s digging up the Ukrainian?”

“I don’t know him! A gendarme I coordinate with told me about the investigation!” Atwell’s words came out sharp and shrill. Even if I didn’t know he was telling the truth I probably would have believed him.

“Then how did Rotella find out about the Ukrainian?”

“I don’t know!”

Atwell was beginning to thrash in his panic so I decided to get to the question I really wanted to ask him. “You found out about the Ukrainian because you’ve been following Sartre. Why have you been following him?”

Atwell stuttered, a sure sign he was trying to think up a lie. I shook him again and switched to another question. “Have you been following Mitnick?”

More stuttering, which meant more shaking. I finished by throwing him back into the garbage pile. I crouched down to lean in close to him, my frame taking up all the space between two of the plants. “You’ve been following Sartre, but not Mitnick. Why?”

Atwell sputtered, “I – I – I –“

When he showed no signs of stopping I slapped him.

That got through to him. He stopped his noise. After all his time lording over me he actually sulked, holding a hand to his cheek, his brown eyes like a child’s. I almost hit him again. “Why are you following Sartre, but not Mitnick?” I pointed the umbrella at him, digging its sharp point into his flesh.

Despite the implied threat of a more sturdy beating, something that wasn’t fear or hurt rose in Atwell. “That’s a need to know, Marine. And you don’t need to know.”

I almost laughed that he trotted out that old chestnut. I had to admire his attempt to appeal to my sense of duty. “Normally, I might agree with you. But you’re fucking around is going to get me killed. So I need to know.”

Atwell opened and closed his mouth, searching for words that were most likely lies, so I jabbed him with the umbrella. “Out with it.”

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To read the previous chapter, go here.

To read a polished and published prequel to this story go here.

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