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“What do you have for me?” he asked in a voice as cold as ice.
“The wiretap has been extended,” the man began in his most ingratiating voice.
“Do not bleat at me like a sheep. And do not tell me things I already know from other sources.”
Intimidation sometimes worked with this man, as he yielded information he would not otherwise reveal in his fear of losing his usefulness to Vishenko.
The money Vishenko had paid him through the years was enough to supplement the man’s lifestyle, not support it. Vishenko had made sure of it. He wanted him to remain with his current federal agency employer. Even though this man was one of the weapons in Vishenko’s arsenal, he never let on just how important his information had become over the years or paid him what the information was really worth. He always downplayed its significance, as he was doing now. Vishenko hadn’t heard the FBI’s wiretap had been extended. But he knew it now.
Not that he ever said anything incriminating over the phone. He wasn’t stupid. His homes—the condo in Manhattan and his estate on Long Island—as well as this car, were electronically swept for listening devices daily. Everyone who met with him was screened by his men for a body wire—neither the FBI nor the agency would ever convict him that way.
“So what do you have to tell me that is worth our meeting like this?”
“The agency has been sending out feelers again,” the man said quickly. “Asking for the FBI’s assistance. The two agencies haven’t worked together since their joint task force was disbanded six months ago. The joint task force focused on your nephew and his super PAC, NOANC.”
“Michael is in jail, and will remain in jail. And his political action committee, NOANC, is dead.” Vishenko’s voice grew even colder. “What does this have to do with me? The task force tried—and failed—to establish a link between Michael and me, other than the familial one. We are related, yes. But that is all. The joint FBI/agency task force could never prove otherwise.”
And they never will, he thought but didn’t say. He’d been extremely careful to keep his distance from Michael Vishenko’s plots and schemes, the product of his nephew’s uncontrollable desire for revenge against the men he held responsible for the death of his father, David Pennington.
The task force had also tried to tie Aleksandrov Vishenko to David Pennington, again with no success, because there hadn’t been anything to find. Except for one minor detail. One extremely minor detail he’d almost forgotten. Which meant the task force had nothing on him. Unless...
Unless Caterina Mateja had surfaced. Unless she’d given the FBI or the agency—or both, he thought grimly—the evidence she’d stolen from him when she ran. If someone pieced together the two seemingly disparate documents, that would be the evidence the now-disbanded task force needed to bring him down. A task force that could easily be revived.
Vishenko dismissed the man and watched him as he got out of the car and walked away, furtively glancing around to make sure he wasn’t spotted. Vishenko laughed softly to himself, then called his chauffeur on his cell phone just in case the chauffeur hadn’t seen the other man leave.
As he was being driven back to Manhattan, Vishenko coldly reminded himself he needed to find Caterina and silence her permanently. Even if the documents surfaced, they could not be introduced as evidence without her to authenticate their source.
Failure to find Caterina was no longer an option he could afford.
* * *
Alec and Angelina dozed briefly. Then woke, ravenous. They raided her kitchen wearing nothing but T-shirts, and she was glad she’d restocked her refrigerator that afternoon. Alec’s appetite for food was as unapologetically hearty as his appetite for sex.
They feasted in bed, and Angelina didn’t even care about the crumbs. Crumbs could be brushed away. Watching Alec eat, watching his enjoyment of the little delicacies she’d bought with him in mind—although she hadn’t admitted it to herself at the time—was another sensual pleasure she cherished.
“So tell me,” she said, forking a pickled beet from the jar she held, popping it in her mouth before it could drip and making a face at the sweet tartness.
“Tell you what?”
“Why you had a hell of a day.”
He grimaced and shook his head regretfully. “Sorry, Angel. It’s something I can’t really discuss with you. But it was, believe me. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job most of the time. But today was a hell of a day. And it’s still not resolved.”
“Nothing to do with what you told me, is it? About why the king brought you here?”
