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Step nodded. “All right. Now what?”
“You need to call Volkov in Washington,” Victoria said.
“Then wecouldhave a war.”
“We’ve got a war now,” Victoria said. “We gotta hope Artyom and Kirill keep their mouths shut.”
“They will,” Step said. “I don’t know, honey. Calling Washington. Gonna have to break out a backup burner and call from downtown. And then... what happens?”
“I don’t know what happens—but I know what could happen if we don’t make the call,” Victoria said. “I’m going to look at the accounts, figure out what we can move, and where, like right now.”
“Good. I’ll call Volkov,” Step said. “Goddamnit. The guy skizzes me out.”
“He skizzes everybody out,” Victoria said.
“Was that the right word? In English?” Step asked. “Skizzes? I heard Tom Boyadjian use it.”
“Yeah, that’s the right word. Skizzes. It means exactly what it sounds like.”
Step took Sunsetback toward downtown, pulled into a parking lot, and called Volkov at a number Volkov answered any time of day or night. The discussion was brief and Volkov said, “I’m coming out there. This is a critical moment.”
“I understand,” Step said. “I’ll be waiting.”
“We’ll need cars; we’ll bring money.”
“I’ll fix it,” Step said.
When they’d signed off, Step called Victoria: “Done.”
“We should move to the guesthouse.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Yes. Call Boyadjian and have him watch this place. If nobody shows up, that’s good. If anybody does... we don’t want to be here. I’ve packed jewelry and cash and the Warhol boxes. Anything else, we can fake.”
Nineteen
Letty and Baxter had checked out of the SkyPort and hadn’t yet found another place to stay. Back in LA, with Cartwright, they wound up in a Holiday Inn Express not far off the 405. Cartwright wrangled with the night clerk and got them two rooms on the second floor—“Safer than the first floor, plus it’s possible to go out the window if you really need to do that,” she told Letty and Baxter.
“If I jumped out a second-story window, I’d hit the ground like a fuckin’ comet,” Baxter said.
“The idea would be to slide down a blanket or sheet,” Cartwright said.
“Like a fuckin’ asteroid,” Baxter answered, enlarging on the theme.
“We’ve already worked through scenarios where you wind up dead, so this wouldn’t be a big change,” Letty said.
“I appreciate the effort to cheer me up,” Baxter said morosely.
They got two rooms, connecting, Cartwright and Letty sharing one, Baxter taking the other. Cartwright broke a second pistol out of her equipment bag. The bag also contained an M4 rifle with an extended magazine, which allowed the user to select semiauto or full-auto fire.
She put both weapons on the floor next to her bed. “I get a really bad vibe from Russians,” she said. “If your lady says we’re done here, maybe we can get back to Washington tomorrow.”
“She gets cranky when we wake her up,” Letty said. “I’ll call her in the morning.”
“Let’s try not to call before noon,” Cartwright said. Baxter seconded the motion, and they went to bed.
Leigh Lawrence andBarry Martin caught the Tundra as it left the police parking lot. They stayed well back, as much as a half mile at times, following it down the 110 to LA, Martin driving, Lawrence watching the truck’s taillights with a pair of image-stabilized binoculars. If they could spot the truck when it was parked and empty, they could stick a GPS tracker on it, and follow it to South America if they had to.
