The Silent Sisters (Charles Jenkins #3)(24)

He finished packing, went into the bathroom, discarded the ashes from the metal flask into the toilet, and flushed it. He checked his stopwatch. Fifty minutes since he left the alley.

Time to move.





9


Velikaya Estate

Novorizhskoye, Moscow

Yekaterina Velikaya stepped into her darkened office, the shades drawn across the cathedral windows. The only light in the room came from a green Tiffany desk lamp. The family—Eldar’s blood relatives and people who had worked for her grandfather, father, and now for Yekaterina—gathered in the mansion’s front room. Her father had the fifteen-thousand-square-foot mansion built on a five-acre estate in the Novorizhskoye suburb. All who arrived asked the same questions, though not of Yekaterina. Who would kill Eldar?

As the word of Eldar’s death spread beyond the family, and it would, Yekaterina’s actions would be closely monitored. Her gender would be an issue, even after all this time in power. Was she tough enough to act rationally but decisively? Would she meet violence with violence? Could she separate her personal feelings for her only child and act in a manner that protected the family business?

That depended on what had happened. First things first.

What Yekaterina did know was she would not mourn.

Not yet.

She had business to conduct. She needed information.

Pavil Ismailov stood across her desk alongside Mily Karlov, Yekaterina’s longtime fixer—what Michael Corleone in The Godfather called his consigliere. Mily had come up through the ranks with her father and was like a grandfather to her. He was largely the reason that Yekaterina, Alexei’s only child, had risen to the helm of his family empire instead of it splintering into a dozen rival factions. Her father had been obsessed with the Godfather movies, and he had modeled his own family on the Italian mafia structure, with its requirement of absolute loyalty and fidelity from those who worked for him.

Yekaterina nodded and the two men lowered into straight-backed chairs at the circle of light’s edge, their faces cast in shadows. Pavil’s leg fired like a piston. Yekaterina lit up a cigarette from a pack placed on her desk along with a fresh ashtray. She had quit, cold turkey, years ago, had every cigarette and every ashtray removed from the home and forbade anyone from smoking in her presence. Not today. Today she inhaled the nicotine, which calmed her nerves like a glass of Scotch, and blew smoke into the darkened room.

“Tell me what happened,” she said, her tone calm and deliberate.

Pavil nodded. “We were . . .” He cried, choking on his sobs. Yekaterina did not yet know if they were sobs of grief or sobs of fear. She had seen both many times. Men pleading for their lives often sobbed not because they were sorry for what they had done, but because they were sorry they had been caught.

Yekaterina nodded to Mily. He retrieved brandy from a crystal decanter at the bar and poured it into a wide-mouth glass. He tapped Pavil’s shoulder with the stem. Pavil took the glass, sipped the brandy, and regained some semblance of his composure.

Pavil had been Eldar’s bodyguard and longtime friend. They had grown up together and trained together at the Russian Sportsmen Association started by Yekaterina’s father. Like her father, Eldar had played hockey, though he was never as good as his grandfather. Alexei Velikaya had played professionally, then built his family business. A trumped-up extortion charge sent him to prison for the first time. Killing her father’s accuser had been Yekaterina’s first priority when she later became comare, the Italian word for godmother.

Eldar never had the discipline her father had, nor did he appreciate hard work. He quit too easily. He wanted things handed to him, and he usually got them.

Like Pavil as his bodyguard. When a knee injury ended Pavil’s competitive weightlifting career, her son asked that his mother hire his friend as his bodyguard, and Yekaterina had complied. Though they remained friends, Eldar abused the relationship, as he abused all relationships.

“I know how difficult this is, Pavil,” Yekaterina said. “I know how close you were to Eldar. But I need to know what happened. You will tell me.”

Pavil nodded. “We went to the bar to shoot pool.”

“Just you and Eldar?”

“Yes.”

He dropped his eyes to his drink. His tell. His first lie. Pavil had been instructed to keep Eldar away from prostitutes. Two had ended up dead in Eldar’s company, which created shitstorms Mily had to quickly rectify.

“A man came into the bar. An older man. He was drunk. He challenged Eldar to a game of pool and said he had money to bet. I told him to piss off and mind his own business.”

Again, Pavil’s eyes betrayed him, as did his tone. His sentences were too perfect. His cadence too calm and deliberate. He was not remembering a traumatic event. He was reciting an event he had re-created and practiced. A lie.

“What did he look like, this man?” Yekaterina asked.

“Older. Fifties or sixties.”

“Describe him.”

“I didn’t get a good look at him. It was dark inside the bar.”

“Do your best.”

“He was tall. Well built for a man his age. Fit. I’m sorry I—”

“Russian?”

“He spoke Russian, but maybe he was Chechen. He was persistent. Eldar wanted to play him, to take his money and teach him a lesson, but I told him it was not a good idea.”