The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(31)

The second set of doors separated with a whoosh, and the Moscow cold cut through her sweater and stung her uncovered face and hands. She moved purposefully past Mercedes and BMW sedans parked in stalls beneath poles displaying the flags of numerous countries. The valet sat inside a green wooden kiosk. A black-and-white wooden arm extended across the parking lot exit. The valet had the door to the shack closed against the cold. As Ponomayova neared, he slid the door open a crack. Ponomayova felt a blast of warm air from an electric heater beneath the man’s sitting stool.

He put his hand through the opening, and she handed him the valet tag. He matched the tag to a set of keys among several sets hanging on hooks along the back wall of the shack.

“It will just be a minute,” he said, getting up from the stool.

“Nyet,” she said, holding out five rubles. “No reason for us both to be cold.”

He smiled and took the money. “Spasibo. I don’t remember a January this bad in quite some time.” He stepped from the shack and pointed to the back of the lot. “There, you see it?”

“Da,” she said.

“Are you all right?” he asked, staring at the side of her face.

“Da,” she said. “Just a small accident.”

Ponomayova crossed the lot to her car, an unassuming gray Hyundai Solaris. Across the street, the well-lit walls of the Kremlin illuminated the filtered winter haze that continued to suffocate the city. She clicked the button and unlocked her car door. As she did, she heard a man speaking in a rushed tone.

“Excuse me. Excuse me.”

Ponomayova froze. “Da,” she said, without turning.

“We are looking for someone,” the man said. “Can you look at this picture?”

Ponomayova turned but kept her head tilted to the left and allowed the hair to obscure that side of her face. The man, whom she did not recognize, held a photograph in an outstretched arm. Charles Jenkins.

“Nyet,” she said. “I have not seen him.”

“And what is your business at the hotel tonight?”

She smiled. “What business is my business of yours?”

“Tell me . . . what happened to your eye?”

“Piss off.”

The man held up identification. FSB. “Tell me.”

“I walked into a door. Too much vodka.”

The man put away his credentials. “Identification, please.”

Paulina recalled a time when no Russian would refuse to produce identification, but that had been the old Russia. “I don’t carry identification with me when I’m out drinking. It is too easy to lose.”

“Identification,” the man said, more forcefully.

“Okay. Okay. It’s in the car is all I meant. Give me a second.”

Ponomayova reached for the door handle with her left hand and grabbed the butt of the gun with her right. In one quick motion, she turned, raised the nozzle, and fired. The gun made a pfft sound, the noise partially masked by Moscow’s traffic. The man dropped like a sack between the two parked cars. Blood trickled from the nickel-size hole in his forehead. Ponomayova pulled open her car door and quickly slid behind the wheel. She turned the key. The engine groaned but did not kick over.

“Shit,” she said and tried again. The engine struggled, then kicked to life.

She backed from the stall slowly, not wanting to draw attention to herself or the body on the ground. She drove around the lot to the valet shack and raised a hand as if to wave but actually to block the valet’s view of her face. The wooden arm raised and she departed, breathing a heavy sigh of relief.



Charles Jenkins checked his watch as he stepped into the men’s room. Elevator music played from ceiling speakers, a Russian version of an American song. His intent was to go into one of the stalls but that changed instantly. A solitary man stood in a black leather coat at one of several urinals mounted on the wall. Arkady Volkov.

Before Jenkins could retreat, Volkov turned, in the process of zipping his fly. He froze. A fraction of a second passed before the recognition registered, but that was all Jenkins needed. Volkov’s eyes widened and his right arm swept across his body, but Jenkins, without a weapon, had rushed forward. He hit Volkov, and the two men crashed through a stall door, stumbled around the toilet, and fell against the tiled wall. Jenkins had one hand on Volkov’s face, fingers gouging at his eyes. His other hand gripped the hand holding the butt of Volkov’s weapon, which the Russian was struggling to pull from its holster. Volkov’s other hand was under Jenkins’s chin, forcing his head back at an unnatural angle. The two men stumbled for leverage inside the stall, twisting and turning. Volkov was as strong as he looked—his short arms as powerful as pistons. Despite Jenkins’s efforts, he felt Volkov’s hand pulling the gun from its holster, and he knew he would lose this battle of strength. He had to use Volkov’s strength against him.

Jenkins relaxed his right hand. Volkov’s head shot forward. When it did, Jenkins issued a short, sharp blow with the palm of his hand, driving the back of Volkov’s head against the tiled wall. The tile cracked and shattered. He slammed Volkov’s head a second time and a third, but the gun continued to progress, the nozzle turning, now just inches from Jenkins’s stomach.

Jenkins grabbed Volkov by his collar and spun him, shoving him out the stall door and across the bathroom. They hit the far wall together. Jenkins pirouetted, and used centrifugal force to spin Volkov a second time, this time slamming his back hard against one of the urinals. The porcelain cracked and a portion of the urinal crashed to the floor, water spraying from the broken pipe. Volkov groaned in pain. Jenkins spun him again, this time across the room, slamming Volkov’s back into the sink counter, then spun him yet again, hoping to disorient him, back toward the urinals. Volkov’s feet slipped on the wet floor, and the two men stumbled and fell. Jenkins lost his grip on Volkov’s hand holding the gun, and it jerked from his grasp.