I guess I should be jealous. I used to be my brother’s confidant. The one person he could trust. It would be easy to hate this girl who took my place at Ivan’s side.
But I don’t hate her. I like Sloane. Because she’s clever and funny and even more ruthless than my brother, if that’s possible. And most of all, she makes him laugh. The weight of taking our father’s place was heavy on Ivan’s shoulders, until she came along. Now he’s happy, maybe for the first time in his life.
So, if I’m jealous, it’s just because I’m alone now, in a way I wasn’t before.
I still have the rest of the brotherhood, of course.
But I don’t have one person who means more to me than all the rest of the world.
I don’t expect I’ll ever have that. Among criminals, it’s almost unheard of. We fuck women; sometimes we father children with them. But we don’t often fall in love. Because what kind of woman would want to be with a man like me?
There aren’t many female assassins in the world. Most girls want a normal life—the house and kids, maybe a cat and a vacation in Ibiza every couple of years. Who would want to live in some creepy old monastery where you might trip over an AR in the middle of the night, or bump into Efrem’s hairy ass coming out of the shower?
Anyway, back to the job at hand—taking the product back down the river from Arkhangelsk to St. Petersburg.
Once we’ve got it all safely stowed below deck, we unmoor from the barge, wave goodbye to Bory, and shove off.
It’s two o’clock in the morning. We want to be back in St. Petersburg before the sun comes up.
I head steadily back down the river. We pass a fishing boat and a river cruiser, but the water is mostly empty. It’s so steady and dull that Maks falls asleep, while Efrem sits up to help me keep watch.
“You want me to kick him?” Efrem says, nodding toward the sleeping Maks.
“No,” I say. “Don’t bother. We’ll be back soon enough. Then he can help us unload.”
We deliberately picked a night with no moon. It’s chilly, since it’s still early in the springtime. I’ve got my coat zipped up to the neck, and Efrem is wearing a knit cap and gloves. I wish I’d brought gloves—my fingers are practically frozen to the steering wheel.
At last we come to the private dock a little east of the city. We rent it from an old fisherman named Cosimo. Since we’ve paid for exclusive use of the place, there shouldn’t be anyone around.
However, as I pull in toward the sagging dock, I feel a strange sense of unease. The off-putting sensation of something out of place. Like those old 3D pictures that look like a double image of not-quite overlapping red and blue lines, then you put on the special glasses and the image pops off the page.
I don’t have any special glasses. I just have a feeling that something isn’t right.
I cut the engine, not quite bringing the boat close to shore. My eyes and ears are straining, trying to pinpoint the problem.
“What is it?” Efrem says quietly.
“I’m not sure,” I whisper back.
I glance down at the deck of the boat where Maks was sleeping, his head pillowed on a jumble of rope. Now his pale blue eyes are open, bright even in the dim light. He gets to his feet, quick and quiet as a cat.
All three of us are scanning the tumbledown dock, the trees lining the river, the empty rowboat tied by the shore.
Now I know what’s bothering me. Usually the air is full of the sound of crickets. But no crickets are singing right now. It’s utterly silent.
Which means we’re not alone.
I hear a popping sound and a sharp whistle. A tiny hole appears in the wooden railing of the boat, right by my hand. A bullet-hole.
“Get down!” I hiss to Efrem and Max. We all drop to ground as the trees and shrubs on either side of the dock explode with gunfire. Bullets rip through the wood of the boat and kick up sprays of river water.
“Into the water!” I bark at the men.
“What about the product—“ Maks says.
“Leave it.”
We strip off our coats and kick off our boots, grabbing respirators and tanks from under the boat’s bench seats. Fitting my rubber mouthpiece between my teeth, I roll over the railing into the dark water.
I hear two muffled splashes as Efrem and Maks follow me. I swim upriver, they swim down. They know the protocol—split up, and swim as far as possible before going to shore. Then make our way back to the monastery, or to the closest safe house. Ensuring we’re not followed, of course.
The river is fucking freezing. I’m wishing I wore a wetsuit as a precaution, though obviously I didn’t expect to actually be attacked. My sodden clothes are dragging me down; I have to kick hard to make progress.
Bullets zip through the water, leaving silvery trails. None of them hit me, thank god, or my oxygen tank. Hopefully the same can be said for Efrem and Maks. Hearing the roar of several speedboats, I dive down deeper so I’m not clipped by any churning propellers. I’m sure the police are searching close by the boat, thinking we only dove in to swim to the opposite shore.
It’s got to be the cops who were shooting at us. There isn’t a gangster in St. Petersburg who would dare.
Up until this year, the police wouldn’t dare, either.
We had a congenial relationship with Commissioner Utkin. Unfortunately, our rather public war with a rival gangster attracted some unwanted attention. There were shootings in Moskovsky, a massacre in the Diamond District, a fire at the docks, and a warehouse that exploded like a powder keg. All that might have been swept under the rug, but the final showdown that left sixteen men dead on the ground was too much to cover up.
Utkin was forced to retire, replaced by Commissioner Pavel Erdeli. Erdeli is exactly the kind of man you don’t want in your city: strict, abstentious, and uninterested in bribes. We may have been cursed with the only uncorrupted police chief in all of Russia.
You’ll notice I said “uncorrupted,” not “incorruptible.” I don’t believe anybody is incorruptible.
Everybody has a weak spot. We just need to find Commissioner Erdeli’s.
It was a looming issue, up to this point. Erdeli was an annoyance, but not yet a serious problem.
Now he’s become our biggest problem.
Because as far as I can tell, Efrem, Maks and I have all escaped. But Commissioner Erdeli has just seized our entire stock of product. And Ivan is going to want it back.
2
Lara Erdeli
Freedom cannot be bestowed — it must be achieved.
Elbert Hubbard
It’s raining.
It always rains in the springtime in St. Petersburg—or so I’m told. I suppose I should be grateful. In Moscow we might still be getting surprise snowstorms.
I do like the smell of rain—the way it makes the city streets seem washed clean, even if they’re still filthy in reality. I like how the colors of the painted buildings and the gilt domes of the cathedrals pop so much brighter against a gray sky.
There’s a haziness to the air, a gentleness to the lines that makes my fingers itch. I want to grab a pencil and sketch it all. I want to try to capture what I see.
That idea has been tormenting me ever since I came here. All these skylines, all these trees and fountains and gardens and sculptures that I haven’t drawn yet! I want to wander around adding them all to my sketchbook.