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He lost his balance on the third jump, fell off the chair, and crashed to the floor.
“Ow!” he yelled. “My leg. I broke my leg. I need a doctor. Call the paramedics.”
He was rolling around on the floor, holding his leg and moaning.
“I feel sick,” he said. “I’m gonna throw up. I need air. Someone get me some air. This office is closing in on me.”
He crawled to the door, dragging his broken leg behind him, making gagging sounds. Sergei was on his phone again, calling his assistant, telling her to call for an EMT. Briggs made it into the hall. Sergei hovered over him, not sure what to do. And as soon as I was left alone in the office, I took photos of the three-page dossier on Viktor Volkov with my smartphone.
I went into the hall and looked down at Briggs. “Are you sure your leg is broken?”
“I thought it was broken,” Briggs said. “But now it’s feeling better.”
“He has panic attacks,” I explained to Sergei.
“You might think about getting a new lawyer,” Sergei said.
I grabbed Briggs by the arm and hauled him to his feet. “Upsy-daisy,” I said.
Briggs gingerly tried his leg. “It’s a miracle!”
“Oh gosh, look at the time,” I said. “I have to be at work. Thank you so much for looking into this for me. I’ll check back next week.”
“I didn’t get your name,” Sergei said.
“Joyce Barnhardt.”
Briggs was already in the elevator, holding the door for me. I jumped in, and Briggs hit the button for the first floor.
We passed the brunette on our way out. She was at the door, presumably waiting for the EMTs.
“False alarm,” I said to her. “So sorry.”
A black Rangeman SUV rolled down the street and stopped in front of us. Briggs and I got into the backseat. Ranger was in the front seat, and one of his men was driving. A second Rangeman SUV was behind us.
I removed my earbud and gave it back to Ranger. “It looks like you’re ending surveillance on the consulate.”
“I am. I don’t see Vlatko returning.”
“We did good, right?” Briggs said to me. “Did you see the brilliant way I diverted the Ruskie’s attention away from his desk so you could steal the dossier? That was an Academy Award–winning performance. I should be a movie actor. I’d make all those other Hobbits look like crap.”
Ranger turned in his seat and looked at me. “Did you get the dossier?”
“I photographed it.” I pulled the document photos up on my phone and sent them to Ranger, and he downloaded them into his phone.
“Viktor Volkov,” he said, reading off his phone. “He’s here as a representative of the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade. A government liaison to the Russian spirits trade mission.”
“Vodka,” I said.
“Yes, among other liquors, but primarily vodka. This gives a Moscow address as his permanent residence, and several contact addresses while he’s in this country. The contact addresses are all hotels. One in Miami, the Gatewell Hotel, and a hotel in Atlantic City.”
“There’s a big international trade show coming to Atlantic City,” I said. “The Russian vodka makers will be part of it. The consulate official I spoke to said he was there making arrangements for some important general who would be speaking.”
“From the little I know about Vlatko, I’m guessing almost everything in this dossier is cover and not true. He probably has a local handler who knows more, but the consulate staff would know only what they see here and take it at face value. Russian bureaucrats learn not to ask questions.”
“But we know he’s going to Atlantic City,” I said. “He might not have stayed in the hotels he gave, but he was in Miami and New York. And it looks like his cover was created to bring him into contact with the vodka makers. So maybe his primary target is one of the vodka makers.”
“That’s too simple,” Ranger said. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to get Vlatko here. He’s a Russian government assassin and a specialist. He’s been sent here to eliminate someone who’s difficult to reach, or he’s been sent here to create chaos.”
