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“Would I be here if I weren’t?”
Valeria shrugs. “Fair enough. It should be an easy enough job, for a man of your…skill.” She waves a hand towards me, glancing up from sharpening again. “A man named Yuri Korov. He gave me bad information and led me to a dead end. So now I want him dead.”
It takes every measure of self-control I possess not to let what I’m thinking show on my face, keeping my expression carefully blank. “Yuri Korov,” I repeat, feeling a pit in my stomach. Not for the sake of the man himself, but for the information he gaveme. I’d been leaning towards believing that “Athena” really is Natalia Obelensky, that he’d been correct, but now my doubts surface again, making me waver.
Nothing slips past Valeria. She looks up, going still as her gaze searches my face. “You know this man already,” she says finally, and it’s not a question.
There’s no point in lying to her, and no good could come of trying. I nod. “I’ve used him for information myself,” I say carefully. “I’m familiar with him.”
“Good. Then you’ll have no difficulty finding him. I prefer if you draw it out a little. Make him feel some regret. And bring me a piece of him, so I know the job is done. I don’t care what piece.” She returns to her sharpening as casually as if she’d asked me to run out for butter and eggs, but it’s notthatthat’s bothering me.
I’ve been just as callous when it comes to carrying out jobs. I’ll mourn the loss of a source of information, but if it’s true that source has gone bad and Yuri has led me astray as well, I’ll makehis death even slower. I have no love for the man and no feeling about dispatching him from this earth.
“Should be an easy enough job. Even if he gets a whiff that he’s in danger and tries to go underground, I’ll dig him out. No problem.”
“Good.” Valeria sets the knife aside, leaning forward with her elbows on her spandex-clad knees. “Now for the rest of it. I know you have questions for me that have nothing to do with the job, Kasilov. So spit it out while I’m in a good mood.”
I can expect no better invitation from her. “Natalia Obelensky,” I say bluntly.
Valeria raises an eyebrow. “What about her?”
“I’m looking for her. Her father’s dead, so I can’t get to him. She’s all that’s left of the family now.”
Valeria laughs, leaning back. “The Obelenskys are a hot topic these days, it seems. Are you looking to avenge her father? Some blood debt owed to them?” Her eyebrow lifts, and I know that how I answer the question will matter for what comes next.
“I wanted her father dead. Someone else has done that, so now I want the daughter.”
There’s a flicker of curiosity in her eyes. “For what purposes?”
“My own.”You’re not the only one who can keep secrets. You might be a deadly snake, but I was theUssuri’swolf.
My heart beats hard in my chest, once, because a statement like that to a woman like Valeria is a dangerous one. Depending on her mood, she might take offense, or not.
To my surprise and pleasure, she chooses not to. She nods, picking up the knife again as she flicks it contemplatively against her fingertips. “Interesting,” she says finally, “how many have come to my doorstep with Obelensky’s blood on their mind. You are the third, but that’s three more than I’ve had in recent memory. Although,” she adds, twirling the knife, “that’s not to say there haven’t been many more who have wanted it. They just haven’t had the balls to come to me.”
“Who else?” It’s my turn to lean forward, my eagerness forgotten in my need for information. “Who else came here looking for Obelensky?”
Valeria shrugs. “It’s not for me to give names. An old friend–and someone he was helping. Obelensky had his woman.”
“Your friend’s?”
She shakes her head. “No. The one he was helping. He wanted to get to her, get her free of him. The interesting thing is–”
Valeria pauses, drawing out the word, her eyes glittering as she looks at me. She knows she has me on the hook, wondering what she’ll say next, and she’s enjoying every second of it.
“The woman they wanted back,” she says finally, “was Obelensky’s bastard daughter. I heard his other daughter, the legitimate one, had some play in all this. What it was, I don’t know precisely. It’s hard to separate rumor from fact, especially with something like this.”
I struggle to keep my composure, seeing the beginnings of the truth unfold in front of me. “And you helped them? You helped them get to him?”
Valeria shrugs. “I gave some information in exchange for information of my own. A fair trade, when I had no love for Obelensky either. No reason to protect him. Business, that’s all. You can’t fault me for that.” Her gaze chills a little, warning me off from a train of thought in which she’s responsible for the loss of my first target. “He wasn’t yours to kill. Someone else got to him first, that’s all. We all lose sometimes.”
“Well, now I have a new target.” I don’t look away, holding her gaze. “I’d like to know what happened to Obelensky. Who, precisely, killed him, and what Natalia’s part was in all that.”
Valeria shrugs. “I can’t tell you much more. Natalia Obelensky is gone, as far as I know. I’ve largely stayed out of digging into the details surrounding Konstantin’s demise. It’s a clusterfuck and a power shift that I want no part of.”
“That’s where you might be wrong.” I let a small smile creep onto my mouth, enjoying the novel feeling of the possibility that I might have information she doesn’t. “Natalia might be here, in Moscow.”
I pull the photo of her at the club that Yuri gave me out of my pocket, holding it out to her. After a moment’s hesitation, Valeria takes it, unfolding the sheet of paper. She peers at it, frowning.
