Love and Let Die (Masters and Mercenaries #5)(80)

“Yeah,” Alex said, his face grim. “After a long discussion with the Brits, a man named Ten took him. Is that some sort of weird CIA name? Like Mr. Black?”

Ian felt the tiniest smile curl his lips up. He was glad he’d gotten Charlie out of there because Ten would have been all over her. Then he would have strangled his second man of the day. And he considered Ten a friend. “No, Ten doesn’t play those games. He’s what the Agency likes to call a maverick. Tennessee Smith. Southern born and bred. He’s a good guy.”

If Ian even knew what that meant anymore.

“He’s a flirtatious *,” Alex shot back.

Eve grinned. “Hey, sometimes a girl needs to know she still has it. Of course, he wasn’t attractive or anything.”

Liar. Ten was six foot four, two hundred twenty pounds of pure muscle. He was known for being able to get a woman to tell him anything. If Ian had been the hardass, then Ten had been the lover. He gave new meaning to the term “close cover.”

There was a knock on the door, and Grace poked her head in. “I have two things. First, some flowers came for you. Yellow roses. Really pretty. No card.”

Very likely it was Charlie. She’d sent him flowers before. “I don’t want them. You keep them. Or you could give them to Phoebe.”

That way Charlie would get the message. He wasn’t a flowers and hearts kind of guy.

“All right,” Grace agreed. “And Damon Knight and Basil Champion are here to see you. They said you promised to cut them in on anything you learned.”

He nodded. He’d made some spectacularly shitty deals to keep Charlie with him, and now he just wanted to get away from her.

Knight walked in followed by his partner. There was a frown on the agent’s face. “I thought we were supposed to be in on this meeting.”

“I thought you would be on your way to DC.” He’d been counting on them to follow Zhukov.

“No such luck for you, mate,” Champion said, tossing himself into a chair. “We have another agent on his way. We’ve been assigned to work with you. Such fun.”

Well, if they were working together, maybe the Brits had some information he didn’t. “Zhukov was talking about Nelson possibly working for the syndicate. Have you had any luck tracking him?”

“A little.” Knight pulled out a tablet, his fingers finding the files he needed. MI6 had finally gone high tech, it seemed. “There are reports of a man matching Nelson’s description traveling to Novokuibyshevsk three times in the last year.”

“That’s in the Samara Oblast.” There was a nice-sized pipeline there.

Knight nodded. “Yes, it’s a city located on the western bank of the Volga. It’s a refinery town. Have you heard the word Indeitsy?”

Ian let out a long sigh. He needed more Russian mob shit in his life. “It’s a mafia term. It means Indians. They use it to refer to an organization that functions a little like the raiding parties of the Old West.”

“It’s not a secret that Indeitsy has its fingers in the oil industry rackets,” Knight said.

“They don’t have their fingers in it,” Baz interrupted with a roll of his eyes. “They run the whole damn thing. Give them credit, mate.”

Jake sat forward, his face serious. “What exactly do you mean by racket? How does it function?”

“They traffic in stolen crude,” Simon explained. “They literally tap into the pipelines and steal the shit. I know about this because of my family. My uncle runs Malone Oil. They’ve had an enormous amount of trouble in the region. All the American companies have. The mob has to have a man on the inside. The pipelines are guarded.”

Baz stared at Simon. “Really? So you just happen to be connected to one of the biggest oil companies in the world? Aren’t they headquartered here?”

Ian knew about Simon’s connections, knew damn well it was one of the reasons he’d been willing to come to Dallas. He had an uncle and aunt and two cousins in Fort Worth, and they were loaded. But he said nothing, allowing Simon to give away what he wanted.

“Yes. I haven’t tried to hide my connections. Malones and Westons have been connected for years. I spent some summers here with my cousins. Why do you ask?” Simon stared at Baz.

“I just find it interesting,” Baz replied.

“Could we get back to the topic at hand?” Ian requested.

“So someone who works for the rightful oil company takes a cut for tipping off the mob. They come in, steal the crude, and get out.” Alex summed up the situation nicely. “What does that have to do with Nelson? Somehow I don’t see him working a pipe cutter.”

“Who’s the head of Indeitsy in the region?” Ian was pretty sure who it would come back to.

Knight turned his tablet around. “A man named Dusan Denisovitch. Mikhail’s son, so that makes him your wife’s cousin. He gave Dusan the territory a couple of years back.”

Charlie’s family was everywhere, it seemed. So Nelson was regularly visiting the same region that man controlled. Coincidence? Not likely.

“So can we absolutely connect Nelson to Mikhail?”

“I’ve placed Mikhail Denisovitch in Saint Petersburg.” Adam had that kind of constipated look on his face that he always got when he was about to tell him something he wouldn’t like.