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“You’ve had cigarettes for dinner.”

“It’s midnight.”

Dmitri takes another drink. “Then cigarettes for breakfast.”

Kirill mutters something in Russian and gets up and pours another cup from the coffee pot.

I study the three devices again and point to the camera. “The man who entered through the pool passage clipped it beneath the courtyard drain on his way to the family rooms.”

“Why the courtyard?” Yuri asks. “It beats me.”

“Belov knows how I think,” I say. “He knew I would move Vera and Misha into the inner family suite, and the women and children use that courtyard.”

“Check the printed photograph again,” I say. “Show me the time-stamps.”

Yuri brings up the north-gate camera. The time reads 5:40 p.m. The path is empty, snow lies along the wall, and two guards stand outside the gate.

At 5:41, the picture goes black. It returns twelve seconds later, and a clear plastic sleeve is fixed to the inside of the gate.

Dmitri puts Kirill’s cup down. “Convenient.”

“It wasn’t a power loss,” Yuri says. “Someone inside the estate restarted that camera.”

“Who can do that?” Leonid asks.

“Abramov, Kirill, me, and members of the maintenance office.”

“I didn’t touch it,” Abramov says.

“Neither did we,” Yuri replies, pulling up a duty schedule. “The order came from a maintenance account.”

“Maintenance received temporary archive access while the new cameras were installed,” Abramov says.

Kirill opens both access records. “The same maintenance account restarted the gate camera and pulled the breach footage tonight. Anton Serebryakov.”

“He's an assistant maintenance clerk,” Abramov says. “Six years in the house. He deals with repair crews, visitor passes, and work orders.”

Petrov looks up from the plumbing company’s payment records. “Including the plumber who entered fourteen days ago.”

Everyone falls silent.

Dmitri picks up Kirill’s cigarette packet and shakes one free. “Where is Anton now?”

Abramov presses his radio. “Second team, find Serebryakov. Don’t call his phone, and don’t let him near an exit.”

A guard answers through the speaker. “He missed the last staff count.”

“Of course he did,” Dmitri says. He lights the cigarette and hands the packet back to Kirill.

Abramov gives the next order. “Check his room, the maintenance office, the boiler room, and every service stair. Take him alive.”

I look at Misha’s photograph again.

“The camera sent the picture outside,” I say. “Someone sent the file back to a man inside the estate. That man stopped the gate camera, printed the picture, and fixed it to the gate.”

“Anton may be that man,” Abramov says.

“Or someone used his account,” Dmitri replies. “We ask before we decide.”