Page 65 of Captured By the Pakhan

Ilya

Los Angeles, 6:05 AM

I'm awake at five and out of bed by ten past, because there's something I have to say out loud today, and I would rather not say it first to the woman it concerns.

She sleeps like something that has been switched off. That is new — for six weeks she has slept the way people in this business sleep, which is to say, four inches under the surface with one ear working, and last night she went completely under and has not moved since.

I stand in the dark and look at her for a while, which is not a thing I have time for.

Then I go and find Andrei.

He is on the terrace at half past six with coffee, watching the road below, which is what he does now instead of sleeping.

"Anything?"

"Nothing on Rennick since Friday. Nothing on the service road. The tow was a real tow — I called the company, they were paid by card, the card belongs to a leasing shell." He hands me the second cup. "Which tells us the man was extracted properly and professionals cleaned up his vehicle, and that whoever runs him has an administrative department."

"That is not comforting."

"It's not meant to be. Amateurs improvise. Departments have policies." He drinks. "Whoever is watching her is a bureaucracy, Ilya, and bureaucracies do not lose interest."

We stand there for a while. Long enough that further down the hill somebody's sprinkler comes on.

"I'm going to say something," I tell him, "and I would like you not to look at me while I say it."

Andrei turns very deliberately to face the ocean.

"I'm in love with her."

The sprinkler goes round twice.

"Yes," Andrei says.

"That is your response."

"You asked me not to look at you. You did not ask me to be surprised." He drinks his coffee. "I have known for eleven days. Yeremey has known for longer and has been unbearable about it on the telephone, and I would advise you to prepare for that conversation, because he has been saving it."

"How?"

"Kansas."

"That is not an answer."

"It's a complete answer." He sets the cup on the rail. "In Kansas, you overruled me in front of her about a room. Not about a route, or a schedule, or a weapon — about a room, and you did it badly, and then you explained yourself afterward, which you have never done in nine years to anyone, including your own father." A pause. "I did not need Kansas. Kansas was simply the loudest of it."

I let that sit, because there is nothing in it I can argue with.

"Then you understand the problem," I say.

"You have two of them."

"Name them."

"The first is that a woman who is in this house because you threatened to kill her can't leave it, which means you will never know what she would have chosen," Andrei says without any inflection at all. "The second is that a man who is in love has a second thing that can be taken from him. You have spent eleven years arranging your entire life so that there is only one, and it sleeps upstairs, and now there are two."

"Yes."

"So."