The Silent Sisters (Charles Jenkins #3)(87)

Again, it was a lot to hope for, and it would require time, probably too much time. Given the force of the kicks and the blows Jenkins had endured already, he’d likely be beaten to death before Lemore could get involved.

Jenkins’s goal, however, remained the same. Stay alive—for as long as possible. Alive, he retained the faintest chance, the smallest hope, that everything might fall in place, and he could get out of this situation and get home to Alex and his two children.

Jenkins had to give Matt Lemore credit. Federov made sense. He didn’t know how Lemore got in contact with Federov, although Lemore and the CIA had a thick file on the former FSB agent and knew the alias Federov lived under, Sergei Vladimirovich Vasilyev. Lemore likely traced Federov to somewhere in Europe tied to Viktor’s substantial bank accounts. Lemore also knew Federov had been born and raised in Irkutsk, that he had grown up in the Paris of Siberia, and Lemore likely assumed Federov, a very good former FSB officer, remained well connected.

At least Jenkins hoped so.

The chill in the room spread quickly over Jenkins’s body, the temperature some forty degrees less than the temperature outside. The cold caused the kicks and blows to hurt more when the men struck him. The pain shattered his skin like splinters of broken glass passing through his body. Jenkins’s limbs became numb, and not just from a lack of circulation. Had he been placed in a freezer of some kind?

He detected a distinct smell, an aroma he had, unfortunately, become familiar with over the years. Warm blood, tinged with iron, but the faintest odor of bleach.

Suspended from a chain that moved. A freezer. Warm blood. Bleach.

A slaughterhouse.

Another chill, this one running through Jenkins’s entire body, independent of the cold and the lack of circulation in his extremities. Fear.

He could only imagine what the Velikayas had planned for him.





46


Vasin Estate

Irkutsk, Russia

Maria Kulikova stared at the ornate iron gates at which Viktor Federov had stopped the car. What looked like an insect of some sort had been designed into each gate, which hung from thick brick columns and spanned an expansive entrance to a long, paved road. A guard, armed with an assault rifle and a German shepherd on a leash, stepped from a stone guardhouse and approached the gate. A second guard within the guardhouse spoke over a speaker and asked Federov to identify himself and to state his business.

Federov did so and within a minute the gates pulled open. Federov drove forward and the gate closed behind the car. The guard ran a mirror on the end of a long telescopic stick beneath the body of the car, while the dog sniffed and panted. After circling the car in both directions, the guard waved them through.

Unlike the front entrance, which conjured images of a prison, decorative lawn lights outlined the contours of the road as it cut between manicured lawns, pristine flower beds, and sculpted fir and birch trees that gave the property a softer feel.

“This home belongs to Plato Vasin,” Federov said. “He is a childhood friend of mine.”

“What does he do?” Arkhip asked.

“The Vasins are to Siberia what the Velikayas are to Moscow, and there is no love lost between the two families. Alexei Velikaya got his start here in Irkutsk but left when he became rich and successful. He tried to run a lucrative heroin trade from Moscow, but the Vasins would have none of it. Eventually they came to a bloody truce. The Vasins control much of the heroin trade through Siberia.”

“What is the design on the gate?” Maria asked. “It looked like an insect.”

“It is. A fly. When Plato was a young man he specialized in burglaries of small stores and warehouses. A Siberian mob boss said Plato Vasin was nothing but a nuisance, a fly he would squash. Before killing him, Plato made the man eat a bowl full of dead flies.”

“Oh God,” Maria said.

“He keeps the name to remind others of their fate if they cross him.”

“And that is what you call him?” Arkhip asked. “‘Fly’?”

“Only his friends call him ‘the Fly.’ He embraces the name, as you will see from the décor; so much so he once tried to have a fly tattooed onto the tip of his penis but gave up when it proved too painful. He settled instead for flies throughout his home, including the tiles of his shower and the headboard of his bed.”

“His wife must love that,” Maria said.

Federov smirked. “His first two, not so much. His third has come to terms with it. Plato likes to say: ‘Love and wives are more easily exchanged than flies cast in iron or stone.’”

Maria didn’t know whether escaping the clutches of one mafiya family for another was wise, but she also had no choice but to trust Viktor Federov. She had known him to be an excellent and thorough FSB officer, one who had become a scapegoat when Jenkins avoided capture. Sokalov had, in effect, offered up Federov’s head on a platter. Perhaps Federov’s desire to do the same would be enough, though she worried it would not be in time to save Charlie.

“Whatever we intend to do, we must do it quickly, before the Velikayas kill Mr. Jenkins.”

“I will be as quick as I can,” Federov said. “But one does not rush Plato Vasin when asking a favor.”

Eventually the road came to a circular drive and a mammoth house perched on a hill. The high ground. It looked like an expensive hotel, bright-yellow stucco with a promenade, columns, and balconies. More armed guards waited atop the staircase.