The Silent Sisters (Charles Jenkins #3)(41)

“I had not yet heard the name, but the details are accurate.”

“Then something is seriously wrong . . . perhaps purposefully.”

“What do you mean?” Arkhip asked, though “seriously wrong” would certainly fit with the evidence to date.

Adrian turned and pulled a sheet of paper from a briefcase beside his chair. He slid the paper facedown across the table while looking behind Arkhip at the others in the café. “Be discreet,” he whispered.

Adrian was laying it on thick. “I will. I assure you.”

Arkhip took the paper and discreetly turned it over. He stared at the face of a Black man. He read the vitals. Charles William Jenkins: 1.96 meters; 104 kilograms.

American.

Central Intelligence Agency officer.

“This is the fingerprint match?” Arkhip asked.

Adrian nodded his head.

“Are you certain?”

“More than sixteen matching points of identification,” Adrian said. “Without doubt.”

Arkhip sat back. He would have thought it a mistake, but too many other things—the missing facial recognition video, the doctored medical examiner’s report, and the two eyewitnesses now dead—indicated this was no mistake. And that made it truly of interest. Arkhip had wondered why someone who had never been inside the Yakimanka Bar picked it that night. Now he wondered if the choice wasn’t a coincidence at all.

But what did a CIA officer want with Eldar Velikaya?

“Does he work here in Moscow at the American embassy?”

Adrian shook his head. “I checked. The embassy denied knowing the name, and there is no one there registered under this name.”

“A CIA officer,” Arkhip said to himself.

“That is Lubyanka’s designation, not the Americans’. As I said. This man does not exist.”

Arkhip doubted it. Movies had romanticized spies. Most were far removed from the swashbuckling Hollywood creations of James Bond and Jason Bourne.

“Why would he come to the Yakimanka Bar?” Arkhip asked.

“It seems obvious, doesn’t it?”

“What seems obvious?” Arkhip asked.

“Don’t be thick, Arkhip. He came to kill Eldar Velikaya. What other explanation could there be?”

“What interest would a CIA officer have in killing Eldar Velikaya?”

“I don’t know. If I had to place a bet, though, I’d place it on drugs. On the drug trade.”

Arkhip thought of his earlier conversation with Inspector Gusev of the OCC and his statement that the Velikayas had moved toward legitimizing their businesses. The drug trade would be antithetical to such legitimization.

“But I’ll bet this is going to set off all kinds of bells and whistles at Lubyanka,” Adrian continued. He tapped the photograph of Charles Jenkins. “This man is wanted. I talked with my friend—”

“What?” Arkhip quickly looked up from the paper. “You talked to someone about an ongoing murder investigation?”

“You know me better than that. No. Of course not. I mentioned nothing of your investigation. I simply asked him to pull what information the FSB had on this man.” Adrian again tapped the photograph with his index finger, causing the table to wobble. “Like you, I thought my friend would tell me this Charles Jenkins worked at the American embassy.”

“What did he say?”

Adrian leaned forward, setting his palm on the photograph. “He said this man is a spy, that he has twice escaped pursuit by the FSB. The Counterintelligence Directorate has an entire file on him, and he is classified as being of the highest priority.” Adrian leaned away from the table, resting an arm on the back of a nearby chair. He stared at Arkhip knowingly. “He is a big fish, Arkhip. A very big fish. If he killed Eldar Velikaya, you cannot reel him in on your own.”

And therein was the problem. Arkhip did not believe the man had killed Eldar Velikaya. It was a possibility, but a remote one, at least based on what the bartender saw in the alley, and the medical evidence Arkhip had seen with his own two eyes. Arkhip also had it on very good authority that CIA officers did not carry weapons, not ordinarily. But all of that was putting the cart before the horse. Arkhip didn’t care who the man was or what he had done in his past. He cared only that Charles Jenkins was a material witness to a murder. A murder Arkhip was tasked with solving. The decedent was far more complicated than an ordinary drunk killed in a bar fight, and now so was the murder suspect, but that didn’t change Arkhip’s job. His job was to close the file, as he had always done.

Still, he wondered what this man was doing in a dilapidated bar, in disguise no less. Did the CIA have some interest in Eldar Velikaya?

Perhaps they did. Perhaps Adrian was correct and Arkhip had finally landed that very big fish.

“Why are you smiling?” Adrian asked.

Arkhip didn’t realize he had been. “No reason,” he said.

“I should think not,” Adrian said. “You need to walk away from this, Arkhip. Walk as far and as fast as you can. Retire. Something like this could linger for months, perhaps years.”

Which is exactly why Arkhip had been smiling. He liked nothing more than a good challenge. If that challenge required that he stay in his employ as a chief investigator, well . . . so be it.

He didn’t like cruises, and he didn’t like white loafers.