Irkutsk, Russia
Yekaterina Velikaya considered Charles Jenkins, battered and beaten, but not yet broken. Remarkable. Most men caved at just the thought of enduring such pain. Those who considered themselves tough enough gave in after less than half the beating Jenkins had endured. It had convinced her that Jenkins had not been part of any CIA operation to kill her son, but rather had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It did not change the outcome, though. Because Jenkins had chosen to become involved, Eldar was dead. Jenkins might not have been the bullet, but he had been the gun. The former could not be deadly without the latter.
Under other circumstances she would have offered a man with such fortitude a job. Men with such conviction, such unquestioned belief in their principles, were rare and became more so with each passing year. But Yekaterina had no further use for him. He would not tell them Maria Kulikova’s whereabouts, or he did not know. If the former, he was the toughest son of a bitch she had ever encountered. It didn’t really matter.
She stepped away, again checking her watch. She needed to leave. They needed to find Maria Kulikova some other way.
“Do you know what they do with the scraps of meat and the sides of beef they do not sell, Mr. Jenkins?” she asked.
“I can guess,” he said.
“Yes. I’m sure you can. But let me tell you. They grind the unwanted pieces into hamburger and sausage. Have you ever seen a slab of meat go through the meat grinder, Mr. Jenkins? No? The grinder crushes everything—the bones, the cartilage, the tendons, the muscle, the fat. Of course, the cow is already dead. It feels no pain.” She turned and considered him, eyes as blue and cold as ice. “You will not be so fortunate.”
Jenkins smiled at her, but without a hint of arrogance or defiance. He smiled as if he knew her pain, and he was sorry for it. Then he said, “Nor will be the person who gets a sausage made out of me.”
A joke.
It almost brought a smile to her face. Almost.
Yekaterina turned and addressed Mily before she lost her nerve. “Advise me when this is finished. I will meet you at the plane.” She did not want to stay and watch. She’d learned long ago, when her father had died, that vengeance did not bring satisfaction. It didn’t even temper the pain of death. It would not temper the pain of Eldar’s death. It only let others know that killings would come at a heavy cost. Retribution. An eye for an eye.
Heavy is the head that must wear the crown, she recalled her father saying.
“Something else, Comare?” Mily asked.
She thought of Jenkins’s family, of his wife whom she would make a widow, and his two children who would grow up without a father. What was worse, she wondered, to grow up without a father or to grow old without a child? She thought the latter, if only because it was against the natural order. “No,” she said.
She climbed into the back seat of the SUV and took one last glance at Jenkins. She could not help but think he looked Christlike, hanging dead on the cross, arms straining from the weight of his body, no longer able to hold himself upright. Her driver started the car and dropped the engine into drive, moving across the finished concrete floor toward one of the rolled-up bay doors. The driver slowed. Then he stopped, causing her to look up from her thoughts. “What is the problem?” she asked.
“I don’t know. A worker just rolled the bay door shut and has padlocked it.”
“What?” She leaned forward to look through the windshield. The worker disappeared behind strips of plastic. “Try another bay.”
Her driver did as she instructed. Again, as the car approached the bay, a worker rolled the door closed and padlocked it. Once was chance. Twice was coincidence. She pointed to a third bay, but before she could get the words out, the door rolled shut. Three times is a pattern.
All around the warehouse she heard the bay doors rolling shut, slamming when they hit the ground.
The lights to the building dimmed, everything now cast in the red glow of the emergency lights near the exits.
The driver put the car in reverse and hit the gas, tires spinning on slick concrete, smoke filling the air. He swung around and returned to Mily and the other men, who had pulled automatic assault rifles and stood back-to-back.
Yekaterina stepped from the car. Her bodyguard moved to shield her.
“What is happening?” she asked Mily.
“I do not know, Comare.”
She looked around the room. The men who had locked the bay doors had vanished; there was nothing but the slabs of meat hanging from the hooks.
A metal door opened, then shut, the sound echoing. A man’s dress shoes clicked against the concrete floor. He emerged from between the hanging carcasses, bathed in the red light, like a ghostly apparition. He did not rush. He walked deliberately across the hall. As he neared, she saw he wore a suit, an expensive brand, and carried something beneath one arm. The driver aimed his weapon, as did Mily and the other guards.
The man stopped a few meters from the group, opened a chair, and set it down across from the folding chair already there. He held open his coat to show he was not armed. Then he offered Yekaterina a seat.
She did not know this man. They had never met. He was not the head of one of the other families, certainly not in Moscow. She doubted he ran a family in Irkutsk. She would have known.
This man, whoever he was, had a quiet confidence about him. His face wore a thin, but not smug, smile. Unlike other men he also did not rush to speak. He waited, politely, for Yekaterina to sit.
Curious, she did so.
Viktor Federov unbuttoned his suit jacket and crossed his legs. For this to work, he had to project an air of confidence. If not, he’d be riddled with bullets. Plato Vasin had made it clear he did not want a war with the Velikayas, and Federov had given him his word he would not provoke one.
“My apologies for the theatrics, Ms. Velikaya. When you have a child in the theater, you become attentive to making a favorable impression upon entry and exit.” One of the guards stepped toward him. Federov stopped him with a cold gaze. “I can assure you that will not be necessary. I’m unarmed.”
Yekaterina waved the guard to step back but kept her gaze on Federov. Good. She was curious. That was the first step if this was going to work. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Federov, Viktor Nikolayevich.”
She stared at him as if waiting for more. When Federov added nothing she asked, “Is that name supposed to mean something to me, Federov, Viktor Nikolayevich?”
“No. No, I’m sure a woman of your stature has no idea who I am. But you do know my friend.”
“And who is your friend?”
Federov nodded to Charles Jenkins. “I see you two have met. Intimately, one might say. Nice of you to hang around, Charlie.”
“Fuck you, Viktor,” Jenkins whispered.
Federov gave a small shrug. “He gets angry when he isn’t fed.”
“What is it you want, Mr. Federov?”