“Expand the access audit to all properties,” I said. “Don’t use the standard reporting channels—run it through you directly and bring the results to me in person. Nothing written.”
“Mikhail. The code list for Harmon.”
“I know what the code list says, Dmitri.”
“Four people.” He said it carefully, the lightness gone entirely. “And the changes after the rotation were handled by—”
“Alexei’s team,” I said. “I know.”
“Run the audit,” I said. “Say nothing to anyone else until you bring me the results.”
“Done,” he said, and ended the call.
**************
I spent the late morning constructing a timeline. This was not a new exercise. But the timeline had been primarily external until this morning. Volkov’s operation, its structure and timeline, the patient eighteen months of engineered vulnerability and strategic positioning. The attack on Elena in the alley, the escalating collection, the deliberate placement in my casino.
Now I added an interior dimension.
The compromised routes were the most troubling element, more troubling than the Harmon property access. Over the last three weeks, I had adjusted three separate logistics routes —the paths my convoys took between the casino, the manor, and the operational properties that required my physicalpresence to manage. Route adjustment was standard security practice, rotated on a schedule that only Viktor and I knew in full. The adjustments were never written down. They were communicated verbally to drivers on a need-to-know basis hours before each movement.
The convoy tonight was a prior commitment—a meeting with the Vasin brothers at one of their properties east of the Strip, the formal ratification of the alliance shift that Gregor’s presence at the reception had signaled. This kind of meeting did not get rescheduled. Rescheduling communicated weakness, hesitation, a crack in the composure that men like the Vasins read with acute attention.
I would go. I would adjust the route at the last possible moment and tell no one except Viktor.
*****************
The route adjustment happened at 4:15 pm.
I told Viktor at 4: 10 pm. Five minutes’ notice—not enough time for anything the information could enable to be organized and deployed, assuming the leak was somewhere in the chain between Viktor and the drivers. Viktor received the new route with his characteristic absence of visible reaction and relayed it to the two drivers by phone while I watched.
Then we left the casino.
At 4: 37 pm , on a service road that ran parallel to a commercial district three miles east of the Strip, my driver said, “Movement.”
I had already seen it. Two vehicles, positioned on opposite sides of the road approximately two hundred meters ahead. Positioned at angles that blocked clean passage without fullycommitting to the blockade, which meant they were waiting for confirmation of our approach before completing the formation.
“Viktor,” I said into the radio.
“I see them,” he said. “Stopping.”
We stopped.
For approximately three seconds, nothing happened. The kind of three seconds that had a particular quality, the held breath of a situation deciding which way to fall.
Then the vehicles moved. Fast. Converging from both sides of the road, closing the gap in a practiced pincer motion that had been rehearsed. The first shots came through the windshield before I had fully processed the movement.
The driver was moving—down, out of the seat, doing what he’d been trained to do. Viktor’s car was taking fire from the left. I heard Viktor’s voice on the radio, controlled and clipped, calling positions. I had my weapon out, the rear door open, using the angle of the car as cover while I assessed the firing positions. Two shooters from the left vehicle, one from the right, a fourth position elevated—someone on the roof of the adjacent commercial building, which was the piece that confirmed this was not opportunistic. The elevated position required preparation. Preparation required prior knowledge of the route.
The route I had adjusted five minutes before departure. The routes known only within my inner circle.
I fired at the elevated position. First shot, ranging. Second shot, more precise. The elevated fire stopped. Viktor had suppressed the left vehicle; his men were moving with coordinated efficiency. The right vehicle was pulling back.
The whole engagement lasted perhaps ninety seconds.
When it was done, the road was empty of anything except the evidence—two vehicles abandoned, doors open, already far enough away that pursuit would be futile—and Viktor was at my elbow, looking me over.
“You’re hit,” he said.
