The Silent Sisters (Charles Jenkins #3)(98)

Kulikova stopped alongside Mishkin. “I am told that your father was a fan of the Godfather movies, that he ran his family based upon the fictional Corleone family,” she said.

Yekaterina’s eyes narrowed. “This is true.”

“Then I believe, Ms. Velikaya, that I can make you an offer you can’t refuse.”





52


Irkutsk Meatpacking Plant

Irkutsk, Russia

Jenkins didn’t know how long he’d been suspended from the meat hook. He’d lost all sense of time, certain he had passed out more than once, his only reprieve from the pain. After awakening a second such time, he decided it best not to focus on the present, on each blow, each prick, each electric shock. It was better if he let them blend together, let time pass unimpeded as he got closer to the end. His punishers had hit him like well-trained prizefighters, attacking the body first to weaken his will. When that didn’t cause him to provide information, they had moved to his face. The beating had stopped long enough for Yekaterina Velikaya to interrogate him, but the pain, the excruciating pain, continued. He had thoughts of Alex, and of Lizzie and CJ. He’d wished he’d taken the time to have the talk with his son, to better prepare him for what was to come, being a large Black man in America.

He saw Maria Kulikova enter the warehouse and cursed silently, wondering what game Federov was up to. Maria looked calm, relaxed. She nodded to him, as if to let him know everything would be all right. When he heard Federov tell Velikaya that Maria could provide Dmitry Sokalov, things began to fall into place.

Before Maria spoke, however, Federov requested that Yekaterina remove Jenkins from the meat hook, which he called a sign of good faith. She had agreed. One of Federov’s men, a behemoth Charlie’s height but as thick as a redwood tree, lifted Jenkins from the hook as if lifting a child, Jenkins grimacing in pain, and gently sat him in a chair.

“Spasibo,” Jenkins said, struggling to catch his breath. He could barely sit upright. His rib cage burned as if someone had lit it with an acetylene torch. The question wasn’t whether he had fractured ribs, but how many. He hoped one of those cracked ribs hadn’t also collapsed a lung. He labored for each breath, but mainly from the excruciating pain. He had spit out more than one tooth, and now his tongue traced the jagged remains of several others. He couldn’t breathe through his nose, a clear sign it had been broken; so, too, was the crunch of cartilage when the men struck him. It sickened him. He didn’t want to look in a mirror.

Maria faced Yekaterina Velikaya and provided the intimate details of her relationship with Dmitry Sokalov. She did so as if reciting some bizarre sexual behavior that she had observed, not that she had participated in. Her voice remained soft and even-keeled, rarely rising in volume or displaying any emotion. Jenkins thought that must have been how she had survived all these years, by not allowing herself to become emotionally attached to Sokalov’s demented fetishes. Instead, Maria had created, in a sense, an alter ego—perhaps that person who stares back at us in the mirror; that person who looks like us but lacks depth, morals, and ethics. In addition to the details, she assured Velikaya that she had many locations in Moscow where she had stashed photographs of Sokalov in various compromising stages.

Jenkins had the sense that Yekaterina Velikaya understood Maria Kulikova on a level the men in that room could never understand, that she understood Maria had done what she had done to accomplish what needed to be accomplished, that she had done her duty, without any emotional investment or attachment. She understood because, Jenkins speculated, Velikaya had done exactly the same thing to survive for so long in a man’s domain. When her father had been murdered, Yekaterina had been thrust into the role of head of the family, and Jenkins suspected she did what she had to do to preserve what her father had worked so hard to achieve. She met grisly violence with more grisly violence, and deadly force with more deadly force. Jenkins wondered if she, too, had created an alter ego—if Catherine the Great was that mirror image—but that she had never truly believed she was anything more than her father’s Malen’kaya Printsessa. Jenkins met a movie star once at a charity auction in downtown Seattle, an A-list actor making $20 million a film. But that wasn’t what drew him to the man. What had drawn him was the man’s quiet intimacy and his humility. When asked, he told Jenkins acting was simply his job. A well-paying job, for sure, but still just a job. The job did not define him. He did not believe the accolades heaped upon him any more than he believed the assaults that ripped at the characters he portrayed, because it was just that—a character created to play a role in a film. It was not him.

When Maria finished, neither woman moved. No one spoke. A good minute passed. Then Velikaya stood. Maria followed. The two women stared at one another for a moment before Velikaya stepped forward and the two women exchanged a kiss on each cheek in a mutual sign of respect.

Velikaya looked to Federov and, without emotion, said simply, “I accept your counterproposal.” Then she stepped toward Alexander Zhomov and considered him. “Do you know what they do with the scraps of meat and the sides of beef they do not sell?”

His mouth duct-taped closed, Zhomov could not answer.

“Let me tell you,” she said.



After Velikaya and her men had left the hall, Jenkins said to Federov, “I’m assuming Matt Lemore got in touch with you?”