Page 39 of Captured By the Pakhan

"Ilya." He rarely uses it. "When she does it again — and she will, because she is exactly what you hired her to be — what happens?"

I look at the map on my wall. Eleven years of it. Four cities, and a napkin, and a line drawn through eleven circles by a man who was too decent to walk it.

"Prepare the vehicles," I say. "We leave Thursday."

The call to Chicago takes four minutes.

Victor Rozovsky picks up himself, which he does for perhaps six people, and there is the ritual first — his wife, his children, whether the winter has been as bad there as they say. I ask after Alex. He asks after nobody, because he knows there is nobody to ask after, and has known it for eleven years and has never once made it a question.

Then:

"Italian money is moving," I say. "Newark, through a leasing shell. They are looking for a man who has been inconveniencing them, and they have started to look properly."

A pause on the line.

"Which family?"

"I do not know yet. My man will have it in a week."

"And when he does, will I be receiving a call in which you ask me for something?"

"You will be receiving a call in which I tell you what I found. Whether you do anything with it is entirely your business."

Victor laughs — a short, dry sound. "You know, your father used to say it exactly like that. 'Entirely your business.' It always meant the same thing."

"What did it mean?"

"It meant: I'm telling you before it becomes your problem, so that when it becomes your problem you remember who told you." A rustle, a chair. "Fine. Consider it remembered. And Ilya — the debt from Milwaukee is settled. I have considered it settled for two years. You may stop declining to mention it."

"I have never mentioned it."

"That is what I said."

He rings off.

Yeremey comes back at four with a route, a schedule, and three suites reserved under a name that has never been used.

"Two vehicles, twenty-nine hours, one stop." He drops it on the desk. "Kansas. There's a hotel where I keep a standing suite and a manager who has been very well paid for six years to have a bad memory."

"How many bedrooms?"

"Two," says Yeremey, and does not look up from his folder, and does not need to.

I let that pass, because the alternative is a conversation.

"There is one more thing," he says, "and I want you to hear it in this room rather than in a car in Nebraska."

"Go on."

"Whoever those men were, they sat outside a house at three in the morning to measure a response." He finally looks up. "So somebody now has a stopwatch on your security. Somebody has your posture. And on Thursday you are going to take everything you actually care about in this world and put it on an interstate for twenty-nine hours."

He lets that sit.

"You will have made it very easy," Yeremey says, "for the second measurement."

Chapter 11

Raven