He wasn’t wearing his black velvet jacket anymore.
Instead, Darryl had put him in a medical restraint garment borrowed from the hospital at Fort Dix, used to immobilize and transport violent prisoners. It was an off-white cotton duck Posey straitjacket, with long sleeves that crossed in front and buckled in the back.
The Posey wasn’t strictly necessary-Darryl probably could have duct-taped him to the chair-but it was an effective restraint. More important, it had its effect on Roman Navrozov. In the bad old days, Soviet “psychiatric prison hospitals” used them on political dissidents.
I knew the sight would strike fear into Navrozov’s granite heart.
His son was cowering. You could see the corner of a bed next to him, its coverlet a hideous shade of orange.
Then you could see the barrel of a gun, with a long sound suppressor screwed onto the end, move into the frame and touch the side of the guy’s head. His eyes started moving wildly. He was trying to shout, but nothing was coming out except high, screeching, muffled sounds.
His father glanced at the screen, then away, as if someone tiresome were trying to show him an unfunny YouTube clip.
He sighed. “What do you want?” he said.
76.
“Simple,” I said. “I want Alexa Marcus released immediately.”
Navrozov breathed softly in and out a few times. His eyes had gone hard.
A few minutes ago he’d regarded me with something approaching admiration. Now he recognized me as a threat. I could see the predator instinct come out. He looked at me the way a wolf stalks his prey by staring it down, his body rigid.
“Is this a name I should recognize?”
I sighed, disappointed. “Neither one of us has time for games.”
He smiled mirthlessly, a flash of long sharp teeth.
“Where is she?” I said. “I want exact coordinates.”
“When I hire a man to do a job, I don’t look over his shoulder.”
“Somehow I doubt that. Guy like you, I bet you know exactly where she is and what they’re doing to her.”
“They don’t know who I am, and I don’t know who they are. Much safer this way.”
“Then how do you communicate with them?”
“Through an intermediary. A cutout, I think is the term, yes?”
“But you have some idea where they are.”
A shrug. “I think New Hampshire. This is all I know.”
“And where is your cutout located? Don’t tell me you don’t know that.”
“In Maine.”
“And how do you reach him?”
He replied by pulling out his mobile phone. Wagged it at me. Put it back in his pocket.
“Call him, please,” I said, “and tell him the operation is over.”
His nostrils flared and his mouth tightened. It rankled him, I could see, to be spoken to that way. He wasn’t used to it.
“It’s far too late for that,” he said.
“Tell your men to close the door,” I said. “Tell them you want privacy.”
He blinked, didn’t move.
“Now,” I said.
Maybe he saw something in my eyes. Whatever the reason, he gave me a dour glance and rose from the chair. He walked to the door, spoke in Russian, quickly and quietly. Then, pulling the security latch back, he let the door shut and returned to his chair.
“Cancel the operation,” I said.
He smiled. “You are wasting my time,” he said.
Now I tapped a few keys on the laptop, and the video image began to move. Then, hitting another key to turn on the computer’s built-in microphone, I said, “Shoot him.”
NAVROZOV LOOKED at me, blinked. A slight furrow of the brow, a tentative smile.
He didn’t believe me.
On the laptop screen there was sudden movement. A scuffle.
The camera jerked as if someone had bumped against the laptop on the other end. Now you could see only half of the kid’s body, his shoulder and arm in the white duck fabric of his Posey straitjacket.
And the black cylinder of the sound suppressor screwed onto the end of Darryl’s Heckler & Koch.45.
Navrozov was staring now. “You don’t think I will possibly believe-”
Darryl’s hand gripped the pistol. His forefinger slipped into the trigger guard.
Navrozov’s eyes widened, raptly watching the image on the screen.
Darryl’s finger squeezed the trigger.
The loud pop of a silenced round. A slight muzzle flash as the pistol recoiled.
Navrozov made a strange, strangled shout.
His son’s scream was muted by the duct tape. His right arm jerked and a hole opened in his upper arm, a spray of blood, a blotch of red on the white canvas.
Arkady Navrozov’s arm twisted back and forth, his agony apparent, the chair rocking, and then I clicked off the feed.
“Svoloch!” Navrozov thundered, his fist slamming the desk. “Proklyaty sukin syn!”
A pounding at the door. His guards.
“Tell them to stand down,” I said, “if you’d like to discuss how to save your son’s life.”
Enraged, face purpling, he staggered out of his chair and over to the door and gasped, “Vsyo v poryadke.”
He came back, stood with folded arms. Just stared at me.
“All right,” I said. “Call your cutout and tell him the operation is over.”
He stared for a few seconds. Then he took out his mobile phone, punched a single button, and put it to his ear.
After a few seconds, he spoke in Russian, quickly and softly.
“Izmeneniya v planakh.” He paused, and then: “Nyet, ya ochen’ seryozno. Seichas. Osvobodit’ dyevushku. Da, konyeshno, svyazat’ vsye kontsy.”
He punched another button to end the call.
He lowered the phone to his side, then sank down in the chair. The power and menace seemed to have seeped out of the man, leaving a mere Madame Tussaud waxwork: a lifelike model of a once terrifying figure.
In a monotone, he said, “It is done.”
“And how long after he makes the call before Alexa is free?”
“He must do this in person.”
“You haven’t heard of encrypted phones?”
“There are loose ends to tie up. This can only be done in person.”
“You mean, he’s going to eliminate the contractor.”
“Operational security,” Navrozov said.
“But he has to drive from Maine?”
He glowered at me. “It will take thirty minutes, no more. So. We are done here.”
“Not until I speak to Alexa.”
“This will take time.”
“I’m sure.”
“My son needs immediate medical treatment.”
“The sooner she’s free, the sooner your son will be treated.”
He exhaled, his nostrils flaring like a bull’s. “Fine. We have concluded our business here. Marcus will get his daughter, and I will get my son.”
“Actually, no.”
“No… what?”
“No, we’re not done here.”
“Oh?”
“We have more to talk about.”
He squinted at me.
“Just a few questions about Anya Afanasyeva.”
He drew breath. I knew then I had him.
“Where did she pick up such a lousy Georgia accent?”
77.
Roman Navrozov took from his breast pocket a slim black box with a gold eagle on the front. Sobranie Black Russians. He carefully withdrew a black cigarette with a gold filter and put it in his mouth.
“This is a no-smoking room, yes?”
I nodded.
He pulled a box of matches from his front jacket pocket. He took out a match and lit it with his thumbnail. He put the match to the end of the cigarette and inhaled. Then he let out a long, luxuriant plume of smoke between his rounded lips.
Navrozov didn’t just smoke Russian cigarettes; he smoked like a Russian too. Russians, especially older Russians, hold cigarettes the way Westerners hold a joint: between the thumb and forefinger. Habits like that never go away.