And then there was one…
Karina started to follow Viktor, only to stop in front of Luke.
He braced himself for whatever emotional appeal she might offer. The tears. The sobs. None of which would work. He wasn’t about to be manipulated.
Instead, she simply met his eyes, her own bleak and tired. “Thank you for your time,” she said softly. With that, she moved to join Viktor.
Luke remained where he stood and watched them make their way to the vehicle parked in front of his home. The woman walked with her head up, but her shoulders still seemed to sag, her posture defeated. As though she’d given up. As though she already believed he’d made the decision he damn well should, but somehow hadn’t.
Suddenly realizing how long he’d been standing there, he forced himself to close the door. It didn’t rid him of the image of that look in her eyes, nor the slump of her shoulders as she walked away.
Troubled, he moved down the hall toward his office. He needed more information. Like it or not, it appeared he had a decision to make.
Even as part of him suspected he’d never had any choice in the matter at all.
At 6:58 a.m., Luke placed an order for two coffees with the barista at the counter. Two minutes later, he was seated at a table at the front of the coffee shop, two paper cups in front of him, when Darren Jensen walked through the door, on time as always.
He must have spotted Luke through the front window, as intended, because he headed straight toward him without scanning the room first. Jensen was already reaching for one of the cups even before he started to pull out the open chair. “For me?”
“Of course. Thanks for meeting with me.”
“It’s the least I can do. Anybody who drives in from Baltimore first thing in the morning instead of making do with a phone call is pretty much asking for a face-to-face, don’t you think?”
“I had some business in Washington,” Luke said mildly. It was the truth. He would have business to attend to, one way or another, whatever Jensen told him.
He watched the man take a long swallow from his cup, pushing back a twinge of impatience. As would be expected for someone who worked for the government, Jensen’s suit was less expensive than Luke’s own, but the man was still as immaculately groomed as he’d been when they’d been colleagues at the same law firm years earlier. Pursuing an interest in public service, Jensen had later gone to work for the State Department, making him an excellent source for exactly the kind of answers Luke was looking for. They’d always been on friendly terms, if not outright friends, and remained cordial after Jensen’s career change. If it was a friendship, it was the best kind, one where the only favors asked were professional or informational.
Not incredibly personal, he thought, his mind returning to the subject that had occupied his thoughts for nearly twenty-four hours now.
No, he would quite happily do without those kinds of friends.
As soon as Jensen began to lower his cup to the table, Luke spoke. “What do you have for me?”
“Nothing good. Is your firm thinking of doing business with Solokov? Because if you are, I’d think again.”
“He’s that bad?”
“Men in today’s Russia don’t stay as rich as Solokov without help from friends in high places and ones in low ones. And these aren’t the kind of friends you’d want to get on the wrong side of.”
“So he has government connections.”
“And mafia ones. Nothing I can prove concretely, but that’s what the talk around him indicates, and there’s too much there to just be rumors. Like most of the oligarchs who made their fortunes after the fall of the Soviet Union, Solokov knew how to play dirty, and he played to win, with plenty of backing from those friends I mentioned. In today’s economy, especially Russia’s, many of those Russian billionaires who rose up in the past few decades have lost most, if not all, of their fortunes, especially if they fell out of favor with the government. Not Solokov. He might have taken a hit, but he’s still standing.”
And if he had taken a hit financially, he would be even more protective of what he had left, Luke deduced. “Which brings us to Dmitri Fedorov.”
Jensen nodded. “Formerly of Solokov’s employ, currently six feet under. Turned up about a month and a half ago. Murdered.”
“Any word who’s responsible?”
“None officially. But considering how badly he’d been tortured, it definitely wasn’t random. And when a high-level financial manager for a very rich man turns up dead in the condition he was found in, most people are going to be casting a suspicious eye in his boss’s direction.”
“Including the police?”
Jensen smiled wryly. “I said most people. Solokov has those friends I mentioned. Officially no connection has been made between Fedorov and his former employer. I’m sure the man hasn’t even been questioned, not even politely.”
“Are there any other reasonable possibilities for why someone would kill Fedorov?”
“There’s always the chance he was involved in something unrelated to Solokov, some shady side action that got him killed. There doesn’t appear to be any evidence of that, but he could have done that good of a job keeping it under wraps. It’s a pretty distant possibility though. The smart money says it was Solokov.”
“Why would Solokov have him killed?”
“Not just killed. Tortured. The way my contact described the photographs of Fedorov’s body, he had very specifically, very carefully been tortured in a way designed to elicit information, not simply cause pain. Whoever did it to him wanted something from him. Best guess is Fedorov took something he shouldn’t have, like large sums of money, which is the only thing he would likely have access to which would be worth taking, and worth getting that upset about.”
“What about a business competitor of Solokov? Someone trying to get some information about Solokov or his company by any means necessary.”
“From what I gather, they likely would have targeted someone far junior than Fedorov, someone whose death wouldn’t make such a splash. If Solokov wasn’t involved, then taking out someone so high up in his organization would be risking getting on his bad side, which would probably lead to him bringing in all those friends of his to find out who’s responsible. No, whoever did this did so with Solokov’s full knowledge and blessing.”
“So Fedorov probably managed to take a great deal of money, enough to be worth torturing him over, and Solokov wants it back.”
“That’s what it looks like. And there might be more to it than simply being pissed off about being taken by someone he trusted. From what my contact told me, the rumors of Solokov’s close ties with organized crime are no joke. There’s a chance Solokov was working with the mafia’s money.”
“And
