The Silent Sisters (Charles Jenkins #3)(69)

Zhomov shifted his gaze back to the delivery driver, then to the windows of the apartment building.

He placed the gun on the ground.



Mily Karlov and two of his associates surveyed the apartment buildings on the street to which Ugolov said the CCTV footage had tracked Jenkins and Kulikova. A gap in the coverage, for reasons Ugolov did not know, prevented him from identifying which apartment building Kulikova and Jenkins had entered. Ugolov assumed they had hidden in a building when he did not find footage of Jenkins or Kulikova emerging at the opposite end of the block or the intersecting alley. That limited where Jenkins and Kulikova could be at present to a dozen apartment buildings and dozens of apartments.

Mily’s driver inhaled his cigarette and blew smoke out the window. “What do we do?”

“Be patient. See what develops,” Mily said.

A delivery van drove down the street toward them but stopped and parked. Mily watched the driver closely.

“We have company,” he said. A good sign they were in the right place.

Minutes after the driver had entered the apartment building wheeling a large box on a dolly, he exited with the same box. Mily reached for the door handle, but a man approached down the sidewalk and, as he passed beneath a streetlamp, Mily saw him remove a handgun from a holster at the small of his back.

Mily’s heart skipped a beat. “Zhomov,” he said. The man suspected to have pulled the trigger and killed his boss, Alexei Velikaya.

Mily felt his anger build, the chance for retribution strong. He reached for the gun in its holster beneath his left armpit and moved to get out of the car.

The driver reached across the seat and gripped Mily’s arm. “No. Police.”

Mily looked back to the windshield. A short man in a tweed sport coat and brown porkpie hat approached Zhomov from the side, gun in one hand, a badge and identification of some kind in the other. Zhomov had clearly been caught off guard.

“A setup,” the driver said.

“We need to go,” Mily said. “Now.”

The driver started the engine. Police sirens wailed a split second before blue-and-white Moscow police cars rounded the street corner at the far end of the block, lights flashing.

“Back up.” Mily looked over his shoulder just as more police cars emerged at the opposite end of the block and stopped behind their Range Rover. Police exited their cars in combat position, doors open, submachine guns resting on the open window frames.

Mily looked back up the street. Zhomov had placed his weapon on the ground and kicked it away. He knelt, hands on his head, eyes staring up at a window. Police officers moved forward and cuffed Zhomov’s hands behind his back, then shoved him face-first onto the ground and went through his pockets.

Police officers shouted at Mily and his men to exit their car with their hands raised over their heads. Mily nodded to the others to comply. As he stepped out, Zhomov, now on his feet, shifted his gaze and their eyes met.

An elderly man and woman emerged from the apartment building’s door and scurried down the sidewalk. Mily studied their faces. Jenkins and Kulikova, he presumed, though in disguise.

The elderly man’s eyes shifted, for just a beat, but met Mily’s gaze.

Mily smiled and gave the man a nod. He would see them both again.





33


Varsonof’yevskiy Pereulok

Moscow, Russia

Police sirens. The man heard them also, and although he looked momentarily hesitant to do as Arkhip had commanded, the sirens—and the sudden appearance of police cars hurtling around the corner from both ends of the block at high rates of speed—seemed to convince him. He carefully placed his gun on the ground, kicked it away, and knelt, hands behind his head.

Arkhip reasoned that this man had either done this before, many times, or he had instructed others to do it.

Uniformed officers exited their cars and took defensive positions. Arkhip held up his badge for all to see, though in the early morning light that was anything but a certainty.

“I am Arkhip Mishkin,” he shouted. “Senior investigator with the Ministry of Internal Affairs.”

As officers approached and handcuffed the man on the ground, police officers at the other end of the block removed three men from a Range Rover.

A uniformed officer approached Arkhip. “What do you have, Senior Investigator?”

The question surprised Arkhip. He had no idea how or why the other police cars had arrived. “What do you mean? What do you have, Officer?”

“We received an emergency call of armed men in the process of robbing a delivery driver. One man in a black Mercedes and three men in a Range Rover.”

“Who made the telephone call?”

“A woman.”

“What was her name?” Arkhip asked, thinking it Maria Kulikova.

“She wanted to remain anonymous. Why are you here? And how did you get here so fast?”

Arkhip wasn’t sure until the door to the apartment building opened and a tall man with a woman emerged. They looked at the scene, then hurried down the block away from him. They looked older, but Arkhip’s memory, well conditioned from his years of practice, was certain the man and woman were the same two people he had watched on the CCTV cameras, now in disguise. He took a step toward Jenkins and Kulikova, then reconsidered. He looked to the man he had in custody. He, too, stared at the couple. Arkhip looked to the three men down the block. Their gaze also fixed on the man and the woman hurrying past them.