“What seems obvious?” Arkhip asked.
“Don’t be thick, Arkhip. He came to kill Eldar Velikaya. What other explanation could there be?”
“What interest would a CIA officer have in killing Eldar Velikaya?”
“I don’t know. If I had to place a bet, though, I’d place it on drugs. On the drug trade.”
Arkhip thought of his earlier conversation with Inspector Gusev of the OCC and his statement that the Velikayas had moved toward legitimizing their businesses. The drug trade would be antithetical to such legitimization.
“But I’ll bet this is going to set off all kinds of bells and whistles at Lubyanka,” Adrian continued. He tapped the photograph of Charles Jenkins. “This man is wanted. I talked with my friend—”
“What?” Arkhip quickly looked up from the paper. “You talked to someone about an ongoing murder investigation?”
“You know me better than that. No. Of course not. I mentioned nothing of your investigation. I simply asked him to pull what information the FSB had on this man.” Adrian again tapped the photograph with his index finger, causing the table to wobble. “Like you, I thought my friend would tell me this Charles Jenkins worked at the American embassy.”
“What did he say?”
Adrian leaned forward, setting his palm on the photograph. “He said this man is a spy, that he has twice escaped pursuit by the FSB. The Counterintelligence Directorate has an entire file on him, and he is classified as being of the highest priority.” Adrian leaned away from the table, resting an arm on the back of a nearby chair. He stared at Arkhip knowingly. “He is a big fish, Arkhip. A very big fish. If he killed Eldar Velikaya, you cannot reel him in on your own.”
And therein was the problem. Arkhip did not believe the man had killed Eldar Velikaya. It was a possibility, but a remote one, at least based on what the bartender saw in the alley, and the medical evidence Arkhip had seen with his own two eyes. Arkhip also had it on very good authority that CIA officers did not carry weapons, not ordinarily. But all of that was putting the cart before the horse. Arkhip didn’t care who the man was or what he had done in his past. He cared only that Charles Jenkins was a material witness to a murder. A murder Arkhip was tasked with solving. The decedent was far more complicated than an ordinary drunk killed in a bar fight, and now so was the murder suspect, but that didn’t change Arkhip’s job. His job was to close the file, as he had always done.
Still, he wondered what this man was doing in a dilapidated bar, in disguise no less. Did the CIA have some interest in Eldar Velikaya?
Perhaps they did. Perhaps Adrian was correct and Arkhip had finally landed that very big fish.
“Why are you smiling?” Adrian asked.
Arkhip didn’t realize he had been. “No reason,” he said.
“I should think not,” Adrian said. “You need to walk away from this, Arkhip. Walk as far and as fast as you can. Retire. Something like this could linger for months, perhaps years.”
Which is exactly why Arkhip had been smiling. He liked nothing more than a good challenge. If that challenge required that he stay in his employ as a chief investigator, well . . . so be it.
He didn’t like cruises, and he didn’t like white loafers.
What he liked, especially since Lada’s death, was being kept busy and active. If he was going to be forced into a retirement he did not want, he would go his way, with a perfect record. To do that he needed to locate this man, Charles Jenkins, and find out what had actually happened.
And he would.
Maybe not as fast as some, but he didn’t fancy himself the hare anyway. He was the turtle. Slow and steady. He’d close this file.
He always did.
18
Velikaya Estate
Novorizhskoye, Russia
Mily Karlov waited patiently in Yekaterina Velikaya’s garden, holding a laptop computer. Her father had never showed any interest in the plants and the flowers. As with most things, Alexei Velikaya paid someone to take care of the garden. Yekaterina’s love of flowers came from her mother, who had spent hours planting and pruning and consulting with some of Moscow’s more prominent master gardeners. The gardens had been highlighted in countless magazines and newspaper articles and had won multiple awards.
Yekaterina ended all of that.
She would never allow her gardens to be featured in any magazine or newspaper articles. She did not garden for the accolades or the prestige. She gardened for the peace and the solitude. Yekaterina was an unwilling celebrity. She had never just been Yekaterina. She had been Alexei Velikaya’s daughter, constantly surrounded by bodyguards whenever she left the compound to do anything: visit a friend, go to a birthday party, attend school. She never knew real life as a child. As an adult, she rarely went out to dinner, rarely attended social functions, not even for the charities to which she gave lavishly. The garden was the one outdoor place she could go on her own, where she could find solitude amid her Beauty of Moscow lilacs, roses, chrysanthemums, and orchids.
Mily respected her privacy—particularly given what had happened to her father and grandfather and now, perhaps, to her son. Was it also a government bullet this third time, a not-so-subtle message, perhaps, to keep Yekaterina in her place? She was head of the most powerful crime family in Moscow, and her business acumen only increased her wealth and her power each year. Was this a shot across the bow, a warning, or something else entirely?
Mily had no doubt about one thing. Yekaterina would find out.
With his help.
Mily had done what she had asked, what he had always done. He had gathered information, and he had spun it to reflect the best interests of the family. Guns and bullets could kill, but information could destroy. You controlled information two ways. One was to pay for it. The other was far less expensive but required far more effort. The Yakimanka bartender took the first option. Mily figured he would, given the condition of the bar. If called as a witness, he would recall Eldar and Pavil Ismailov arriving to play pool in his bar with the prostitute, but claim the prostitute left on her own, or that he did not see her go out the back door with the two men. The investigator, Arkhip Mishkin, would dispute this, but what evidence did he have to do so? The CCTV video of the alley would have supported Mishkin, but no longer. And the medical examiner’s report would fit nicely into the story Yekaterina wished to portray. The prostitute and Pavil would also not support him.
The only wild card was the third man and, therefore, who could get to him first.