The firefight lasted ninety seconds. Maybe less. We had counted them on the way in and we had brought twice their number with us and we had come through a door they thought was locked. By the time the last round went off, the warehouse floor was ours and the men on it were either ours or on the concrete.
I did not stand back. I had not stood back in a long time. My hands were steady on the grip. I noticed that the way you notice the weather.
"Krol," I said into the earpiece. "Where?"
"Back office," one of my men called from across the floor. "He ran."
I went.
The back office was a glass box at the end of the warehouse with the blinds half down and the light on. Tomasz Krol was on his feet inside it with his phone pressed to his ear and a Beretta on the desk beside him. He saw me round the corner and his hand shot for the desk.
I kicked the desk before he reached it. The Beretta skittered off the edge and hit the floor by my boot. I knocked it under the file cabinet for good measure. Tomasz backed into the wall with the phone still up against his ear and the call still trying to connect. Then he saw my face clearly, and the phone slid out of his hand and shattered on the tile.
"No," he said.
I did not answer yet.
"No, no, please. Sorokin. Listen to me. It was a job. It was a contract. I did not know who you were. I did not know."
He kept going. He named God. He named his mother. He named a town in Poland I had never heard of. His voice came apart the way voices come apart when a man's whole body finally understands what his mouth has been pretending not to know.
I let him have one beat.
"You shot me on a road in early autumn," I said. Low. Quiet. The kind of voice I had learned from my father at the kitchen table when I was small. "Now you are going to die in a warehouse in late autumn."
I raised the pistol.
One round. Clean. He folded down the wall and slid to the floor with his eyes still open. I did not look away. I also did not stay.
I came out of the office and back onto the floor. Dario Marchetti was on his knees by the forklift with two of my men's pistols on the back of his head. He was crying. He had been driving the car on the road in early autumn. He had not pulled a trigger. He had also not stopped the car.
I walked up to him. The men stepped back. Dario lifted his face with his mouth working around words he had not found yet.
"One chance," I said. "Say something true."
His mouth worked. His eyes went around the warehouse for an answer.
"My uncle made me," he said.
I put a round in his forehead and he went over sideways into the oil stain by the forklift.
Headlights swept across the open door. The Mercedes came in at speed, brakes squealing on the wet concrete, and then Cesare Marchetti saw what was in his warehouse and slammed the car into reverse. My men had already pulled the second truck across the door behind him. He hit the truck with the back bumper and the Mercedes shuddered to a stop with a soft crunch.
He climbed out with his hands up. Gray at the temples. Old camel coat. The kind of smile he had worn in the photos was gone off his face and the face under it was the face of any man who has just learned a thing he had thirty years to learn.
"Daniil," he said. His voice was steady for the first sentence. Then it was not. "Daniil. We can talk. There is money. There is territory. I have a son in Italy I have not seen in eight years. Please. Please."
I heard him out. I did not interrupt. He talked for the length of time it takes a man to understand that talking is not going tosave him. When he ran out, I raised the pistol and ended him in the same clean way I had ended the other two.
I lowered the gun. My ears were ringing only a little.
The earpiece came back to life.
"Manhattan Beach is empty," Alek said. His voice was flat. "Lucia was not there. She slipped out at some point in the early evening. The dinner was for show. The woman is smarter than we gave her credit for."
"Note it," I said. "She is for later."
"Copy."
