Kira definitely wasn’t going to the police station. Instead her driver took her into the maze of dockside warehouses along the Thames; Sebastian could only follow so far in his own vehicle without being spotted, and parked the car so he could investigate further on foot.
The trail ended outside a warehouse, home to a small import/export company. The driver waited in the car park, scrolling his phone, but Kira was nowhere to be seen.
Sebastian quietly approached the warehouse’s side door and picked it open. The interior was a maze of crates and equipment; voices echoed through the space, bouncing off the high ceiling and metal rafters. Kira was snapping at somebody in Russian—haranguing them for their carelessness.
Between the rows of crates, Sebastian caught glimpses of beds and camping gear. Someone had set up a makeshift barracks inside the warehouse, with roughly half a dozen occupants: men like the ones Sebastian had encountered last night. Exactly like, in some cases; he spotted a familiar face slumped in a chair with his arm in a sling, nursing the elbow Sebastian had dislocated.
A masculine voice interrupted Kira’s tirade with a complaint about concussions, and two men who were in hospital. Suspicion dawned, and Sebastian moved to get eyes on the conversation.
Kira cut in again; the words “insurance investigator” caught Sebastian’s attention, followed by: “Bad enough we had to clean up a body—”
And then he had line of sight to where Kira stood. In front of her, arms crossed and scowling, was a stout, barrel-chested man somewhere just south of seventy, with a thick and slightly overgrown grey beard.
It was a face that had been on the news quite a lot over the past few days: Stepan Konovalov.
“So Kira didn’t cut ties with her father after all.” Clay was pacing again, shoes tapping rapidly across the concrete floor. “The insurance payout must be her cut of the deal. Hell, the whole thing might have been her idea.”
Jay kept quiet for the moment. He’d been all too ready to take Kira’s estrangement from her father at face value. Moran sat on the futon nearby, a distant look on his face; he’d made the same mistake, for perhaps the same reasons as Jay.
Moran turned and caught Jay’s eye. “What do we do now?”
“Oh, no.” Clay’s pacing came to an abrupt halt. “I’m not playing along with this any longer. Every man for himself.” He strode for the door.
If Clay got caught out there, then sooner or later he’d lead Konovalov and his men right back here. Jay had reasonable faith in Clay’s honour, but not in his ability to stand up to interrogation. The words left his mouth without conscious thought: “Stop him.”
Moran was up in an instant, clutching the front of Clay’s shirt in his fist to shove him against the wall.
Jay shot to his feet, but beyond that instinctive reaction his mind was a shocked blank. Clay was breathing fast, his eyes wide as he stared up at Moran.
But Moran wasn’t looking at him. He was looking at Jay. Waiting.
They couldn’t hold Clay here. All matters of morality aside, it wasn’t logistically feasible. The safe house was built to keep people out, not in—and they couldn’t afford to split focus between keeping Clay under control and resolving the situation with the Konovalovs.
The thought came to Jay, unbidden: they could kill him.
It was a fascinating, horrible idea, and he found himself prodding at it like a loose tooth. Would Moran do it, if asked? Jay had asked him to stop Clay, and he’d done that without question.
Oh, god.
“Let him go,” Jay said.
Moran released his grip on Clay and stepped back. Without another word, Clay bolted for the door.
Jay slumped back down into the computer chair. Moran was still looking at him. Still waiting.
They had to get this done before Konovalov’s men caught up with Clay. With Kira’s money and Stepan’s muscle in lockstep, the pair were more or less untouchable—but, if Moran had heard right, they didn’t fully trust each other. And that was the weak point Jay needed.
He glanced at Study of a Young Shepherdess, still propped up against the wall. The girl in the painting seemed to approve.
“How would Kira have bought most of her collection?” Jay asked Moran. “Through a broker?”
“She’d have an art consultant.” If Moran found the question confusing, he didn’t show it. “I can ask around. Find out which one.”
“Good.” Jay turned to his computer. “There are only so many fences in London who can handle a stolen Greuze. It shouldn’t be hard to find the fence Stepan would’ve been dealing with.”
There was glint in Moran’s eye; he’d caught on to what Jay was thinking.
The Portrait Gallery of London had an in-house cafe, facetiously named Palette. Afternoon tea was usually a busy affair, and Kira Konovalova arrived exactly on time for her reservation to find her art consultant, Pauline Devantier, already waiting for her.
She stood as Kira approached. They made the usual show of intimacy, air-kissing each others’ cheeks, before sitting on either side of the small table.
“So sorry to call you out at the last minute like this.” Pauline was babbling, flustered; she made minute adjustments to the dishes and cutlery on the tabletop as she spoke. “All my clients are in a tizzy this morning—after the theft of your Greuze, everybody’s convinced their own pieces are next.”
Kira hid her disinterest behind a polite smile. “Why did you need to see me so urgently?”
“Right—yes.” Pauline cleared her throat. “I did manage to meet with a potential client this morning. He said an old friend of his was short on cash, and was trying to sell him a painting he had, and he’d heard I was the person to talk to about handling the particulars—”
“The point, Pauline.”
“The point is, the client’s friend sent him a photo of the piece.” Pauline tapped at her phone before turning it around so Kira could see the screen. Displayed there was a badly-lit, slightly blurry photo of Study of a Young Shepherdess, propped up against a wall.
“Tell me everything,” Kira said.
“The client was ex-military,” Pauline explained rapidly, tucking her phone back into her purse. “He said his friend’s been working in eastern Europe.”
A soldier, then—or a mercenary—operating near the Russian border. A contact of her father’s, perhaps.
Was it possible Stepan had lied? That he’d been in possession of her painting this whole time? And if so, why concoct a story about losing it to the thieves he’d hired?
What was he planning?
The warehouse had been Kira’s idea. Stepan’s initial plans upon arriving in London involved a hotel, ideally one with room service, but Kira insisted his men would draw too much attention. And now they were stuck here, those same men searching the city for the key to their escape while he, their commander, hid away and fumed.
This place made for an inadequate barracks, but an even worse medical ward. Of the nine members of his personal guard who’d fled Russia with Stepan, four were nursing injuries while two were in hospital—mystery patients too damaged to provide their own names.
Which was just as well; so long as they were unconscious, they couldn’t tip the authorities to Stepan’s presence or location.
“Call for you, sir.” Orlov—the captain of Stepan’s guard—approached with the burner phone they’d used to arrange the theft and sale of Kira’s precious painting. “It’s Booker.”
Booker was the fence who’d agreed to move the piece for them. Stepan took the phone and put it to his ear. “What?”
“I just got a call from a contact of mine,” Booker replied, unruffled by the rude greeting. “He tried to sell me your Greuze.”
Stepan’s fingers tightened around the cheap plastic of the phone until it creaked. “Give me his name.”
“I don’t leak the names of my contacts. It’s bad business. And it doesn’t matter, anyway—he was selling the piece on behalf of a client.”
“What client?”
“Some posh bint—too respectable to know who’s who about this sort of thing, hence why she hired my contact to move the piece for her. Don’t know any more than that, I’m afraid.”
“You have told me more than enough.” Furious certainty settled in Stepan’s gut. “Goodbye.” He hung up.
Kira had betrayed him—stolen the painting right out from under his nose. Was the insurance payout not enough for her? How dare she lay claim to what was rightfully his?
He tossed the phone to Orlov and stood. “Call the men,” he said. “Tell them to regroup here. We’re getting our money back.”
In the passenger seat of the car he’d procured for the evening, Jay fidgeted. They were parked down the street from Kira Konovalova’s front door; it was coming close to midnight, and so far there was no sign of movement.
The spyware he’d installed in her phone was still working, and Jay had listened in on her meeting with the art consultant. Meanwhile, it turned out there were only four fences in London who could handle the kind of business Stepan was offering. Jay had called all of them; Booker’s reaction was the most promising, and Jay was confident he’d passed on the information he’d been given.
Now it was just a question of who made the first move: Kira or Stepan.
Jay tugged the hood of his jumper up a little more tightly around his face and sank down in the passenger seat of the car. It was highly probable that Konovalov’s men were still looking for him. But Clay’s status was still unknown, so Jay didn’t dare stay at the safe house without Moran there. Better for them to stick together.
Moran had one hand propped up on the steering wheel, his long clever fingers curling slightly as he watched Kira’s flat. The other reached out blindly and gave Jay’s knee a reassuring squeeze, warm through his jeans.
Perverse curiosity pushed Jay to ask, “What happens if Konovalov’s men find us here?”
Moran turned to look at him, then; there was a cold determination on his face that Jay shouldn’t have found reassuring. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
It wasn’t a dismissal—it was a promise. Another jolt went through Jay, like the one he’d felt when Clay implied what Moran had done to find him.
But what tumbled out of his mouth was, “I’m sorry.”
Moran’s expression took on a bemused cast.
Jay struggled to explain; even he wasn’t sure what he was trying to say. “You’ve got a whole life that’s not … this.”
Moran was silent for a moment. Then: “Jay, I used to kill people for a living.”
“That’s different.”
There was something haunted in Sebastian’s eyes. “Is it?”
And … well, it was all context, wasn’t it? Konovalov’s men had been criminals in the eyes of the law, and then Colossus came calling and suddenly they were patriots—all while doing worse things in service of their country than whatever they’d been incarcerated for in the first place. And now, thanks to Konovalov’s ambitions, they were traitors.
For that matter, if Jay’s life had taken a few different turns, he might easily be doing the same things he was doing now—just for government money, instead.
And it made no difference at all to Sebastian. No wonder he’d cleared that drawer, left out that toothbrush, welcomed Jay into his life so readily.
But there was no drawer in Jay’s flat. No toothbrush, either.
Shit.
A second apology died on Jay’s lips as he spotted movement on the roofs ahead. John Clay was breaking into Kira Konovalova’s flat.
“Fuck’s sake,” Jay snarled, and pointed.
Moran peered through the windscreen and groaned. “What is he doing?”
Rhetorical question. It didn’t really matter what Clay’s plan happened to be, because any possible plan he had was almost certain to fuck up Jay’s plan.
Moran said, “If he gets caught—”
“I know. We need to get him out of there.”
There was movement at the end of the street. A large van turned the corner and pulled up in front of Kira’s front door.
“Too late,” Moran said.
Eight men did not easily occupy one London flat, no matter how expensive it was. Stepan followed at the tail end of the initial charge through the front door; Orlov barked orders to the men, coordinating the search. It was possible Kira had the painting stashed off-site, but Stepan knew her—she’d consider her own home the safest possible hiding place.
And what a home it was: a temple to western decadence, flashy furniture and overpriced art and pretty foreign maids squeaking and scurrying away from the commotion.
“You!” Kira advanced on him, shoving past his men. “What do you think you’re doing? How dare you—?”
“How dare you betray me?” Stepan snarled back.
“Betray you? You’re the one who lied to me!”
“Don’t play innocent, girl! You stole from me, and I’m here to take back what’s mine!”
There was a commotion upstairs, and the sound of shouting. One of Stepan’s men dragged a familiar figure down the central staircase: John Clay, the thief.
“We found him upstairs,” reported the man who held him, shoving Clay to his knees on the floor.
“So Clay was yours from the start.” Stepan turned a suspicious glare on Kira. “Has he been hiding here all this time?”
“You’re a paranoid old bastard,” Kira shot back. “I’ve never met this man before!”
“Lies! You’re lying!”
“Excuse me,” Clay piped up, in English. “It’s rude to talk about someone when they can’t—”
The rest of the sentence broke off into a sharp grunt as Stepan backhanded him across the face. “Orlov!”
Orlov stepped forward, drawing his gun and pointing it at Clay.
“You can’t fire that in here!” Kira reached out toward the gun as if to push it away. “You’ll get us all arrested!”
Stepan backed away from the scene, switching his glare from Kira to Clay as he snarled in English: “Tell me where it is!”
Clay glanced sidelong at Kira, studied Stepan for a moment, then shifted a little to face her. “We should tell them.”
Kira rounded on him with a furious expression. “What?”
“If you think I’m dying for this—”
“You ridiculous little weasel, I don’t even know you—”
Orlov made an impatient noise low in his throat and cocked the pistol. Both Kira and Clay flinched at the sound.
“If we kill one,” Orlov pointed out, “the other can still talk.”
Clay met Orlov’s eyes in a defiant glare, even as the barrel of the gun drifted to point between his eyes.
“Attention: soldiers of PMC Colossus.”
The voice was in Russian, and it took Stepan a moment to pinpoint the source: Kira’s phone, held in her hand.
“Kira and Stepan Konovalov are both wanted for treason against the Russian state,” the transmission continued. “Any among you who work to deliver them to us will be granted leniency. Any who don’t will be executed alongside them.”
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