Near Dark (Scot Harvath #19)(45)

“She cleans the houses of rich people like you.”

Nekrasov smiled. The boy was fearless and also highly intelligent. He reminded him of himself at that age.

“Do you work? Go to school?”

The teen shrugged. “Work, yes. School, sometimes.”

“Do you want a better job?” the Russian asked.

“You don’t even know what I do.”

“I don’t care. I’m giving you one chance. Take it or leave it. Do you want a better job?”

The young man nodded.

Removing his business card, Nekrasov wrote something on the back. “What’s your name?”

“Beni.”

“Come by the hotel Friday,” he said as he handed the card out the window. “You’re not a guest, so make sure to use the service entrance.”

It wasn’t meant as an insult and Beni didn’t take it as such. Rich people, in his experience, were simply direct.

Pocketing the card, he stepped back as the man gave a command in Russian and the driver pulled away from the curb.

He stood watching until the huge car turned a corner and disappeared from view. Then he did the same, calmly making his way down the nearest side street. He doubted the cops were coming. If they had actually been on their way, he would have already begun hearing the staccato, high-pitched wail of their klaxons. Besides, they had better things to do than break up groups of teenagers fighting. Nice was awash in drugs, gambling, human trafficking, and organized crime—industries he suspected his new benefactor was all too familiar with.

In the back of the Bentley, Nekrasov’s thoughts should have returned to Eva and her oncology appointment. But they didn’t. Instead, his mind was focused on a bigger problem.

He had fronted one hundred million dollars to activate the most lucrative murder-for-hire contract in history. His assumption had been that by opening it up to multiple assassins, the rush would be on to kill the target as quickly as possible and be the first to claim the prize.

The contract, though, was still open. The target had yet to be taken out. He was not happy. In fact, the more he thought about it, the angrier he became.

By the time Valery had brought the Bentley to a stop in front of the Centre Antoine Lacassagne, Nekrasov knew what he had to do.

It was time to start letting people know what would happen if he didn’t soon see results.





CHAPTER 20


VILNIUS, LITHUANIA

S?lvi Kolstad hadn’t been to the Baltics in a long time—and for good reason. The last time she’d run an operation here, she had almost been killed.

It should have been easy. A foreign diplomat, with information valuable to Norway, wanted to make a trade. In exchange for a list of Norwegian diplomats who were actively being recruited by his government’s intelligence service, the man wanted to be smuggled out of Lithuania, along with his family, and given a new life in Norway.

Carl Pedersen had put S?lvi in charge. It had been her first major operation and from the word go, everything had gone wrong.

For starters, the diplomat was a sexist. He had refused to work with a woman, especially one who, at the time, appeared so young and inexperienced. As soon as S?lvi was introduced as his handler, he had threatened to call off the deal.

“You dictate the terms of the relationship,” Carl had instructed her, “or they do. You never want it to be them. Always make sure it’s you.”

She tried everything she could think of, but nothing would change the diplomat’s mind. Finally, Carl had encouraged her to call the man’s bluff and cut off all contact.

The gambit worked. Within only a couple of days, the man finally came around. Multiple hurdles, though, had still remained.

One of the biggest sticking points was whether the diplomat’s intelligence was authentic. His story jibed with bits and pieces of information the NIS had picked up over the prior year, but the man refused to say how he had come across it. What’s worse, he refused to provide any solid evidence of his claim, nor a plan for how he would secure a copy of the list. Everything, he stated, would be handed over, once he and his family were safely in Norway.

S?lvi didn’t need to be told that it was a lousy deal. Instead, unauthorized, she had gone out on a limb and had made a counteroffer. Once he had provided evidence of his claim, she would get the diplomat’s family to Norway. Then, once he had produced the actual list, she would arrange for him to follow.

When she reported back to Carl the new agreement, he had done two things. First, he had complimented her. Then, he asked how she planned on getting the diplomat’s family out of Lithuania. To her credit, she had come up with an excellent ruse. Norway would invite a range of diplomats and their families, from several of the embassies in Lithuania, on an all-expense-paid energy, tourism, and climate delegation.

As part of the arrangement, the diplomat’s family would leave Vilnius with the rest of the guests. It would be up to him to come up with a legitimate excuse as to why he would be a day late in joining the delegation. If he tried to show up at the airport with his family having not honored his end of the agreement, a problem with his passport would materialize in order to bar his travel. S?lvi, though, didn’t think it would come to that. The diplomat was desperate to leave his country and start over in Norway.

It took some arm-twisting, but the Norwegian government eventually came around and agreed not only to host, but more importantly to pay for the delegation and the visit around the north of Norway.