Dmitry brought them back into his reality with the clearing of his throat. “I’m having them dig two additional holes,” Dmitry said, walking towards the plot. “One for Balthazar, one for Manon.”
Anatoly walked up to the site and visibly counted with his fingers. “
Uhh
, there are four holes here,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Davyd. Balthazar. Manon…”
Dmitry sucked his teeth. “One may be for Khalid.” He looked down at his son but said nothing.
Anatoly raised his brow. That was a hefty undertaking. Khalid Sidorov was the second most powerful member of the council and had never had one real run-in with his father. Now, after all these years, they were discussing taking him out? Things had gotten bad quickly and there was no turning back; this he was certain of but had it gotten this bad?
Gabriel listened on attentively. He had met Khalid on a couple of occasions when he was undercover, and his first impression was that the guy was pretty solid. Evidently, his first impression had been wrong, just one more reason why he didn’t need to be a federal agent in the first place. His senses about people were still way off.
“
Under that rock is your grandfather. I say
your
grandfather, because no one knows if he was my father or my uncle,” Dmitry said, pointing at the marking. His gazed lingered for a minute. It was the first time in his life that he had ever told anyone that truth. It felt good to get it off his chest. A weight instantly released from him with his confession.
Gabriel and Anatoly looked up confused.
“
I buried him here as a reminder to me of how close you should always keep your enemies, and how blood can be thicker than water or more deadly than cyanide.” Dmitry slipped his hands in his pants pockets and rocked on his heels. “My father had many secrets, but the one he kept closest to his chest was the birth of a girl named Manon whom I fired from The Red Square Hotel just a few miles from here after I killed him and took over all of his properties. She has a vendetta, gentlemen. This is as fucking personal as it gets. The power behind her at this point is Khalid’s son. Vladimir was supposed to have been killed over fifteen years ago. But that didn’t happen and it didn’t happen because I trusted someone else to do the job.
I won’t make that mistake twice.
Keep your lips shut tight. Filter all Intel through me and make sure that you watch each other’s backs out there no matter what. We all come home when this is done, and we come home with our little girl.”
Anatoly shook his head. His father’s pep talk had given him the rejuvenation that his nap could not. Tapping his foot anxiously, he looked over at Gabriel. “You getting all of this.”
Gabriel fought a sincere yawn from tiredness. There was no way he was going to fuck up that speech. His eyes watered as he answered, “Oh yeah,” Gabriel said coolly. “Kill everyone, leave no one. Get Anya back safely.”
“
That’s about it,” Dmitry said, turning his back to the plots. “They’re going to ask for the money, and we’re going to give it to them. But they’re
only
holding it for us. Right now, they don’t know that we know who they are, and they don’t know that we know that they exist. If it had not been for the very delicate information that Langston gave us, we could have been running in the dark here, but now we know everything. I’ve arranged for helicopters and jets to be on standby 24-hours a day. We do the final part together. For now, I want you to walk back over to my office with me and get the information on Balthazar’s lover, who is currently residing in Geneva, Switzerland at their mountain-side loft with their Akita. His name, the lover that is, is Sven, and he’s a twenty-seven year old art enthusiast with a love for deutch-marks and Nazi contraband. I guess that explains why Balthazar doesn’t like little Anya. She’s a half-breed in his eyes of two races he loathes - Russians who kicked the German’s asses with snow during World War II at Stalingrad and Blacks, a race they thought to be sub-human. I cannot express to you how badly I want to get my precious little angel away from the sick fuck. But I don’t want him harmed by anyone else. That’s my job. And we all know how I love my job.”
Gabriel turned up his nose. A gay Nazi?
What the fuck?
Dmitry continued with more ease in his voice at the thought of what he would do to them. “Bring our little girlfriend here to me immediately – snatch him up before they even realize that he’s gone. I want to interrogate him in my house to see how much of this he is aware of and see if he might serve as leverage with his sugar daddy, who is away working.”
Anatoly grinded his teeth at the thought of someone abusing his sister because they thought that she was less than them. He balled his fists up and stuffed them in his pants pockets.
Gabriel could feel the angst from both of them, which made him want more than ever to just get the people responsible for this and end them.
“
We have to keep Vladimir alive. He’s going to have half a billion dollars of my money. That could get him the ends of the earth very quickly. So, once we lock on, we don’t lose him,” Dmitry ordered.
“
How are we going to get the money back?” Gabriel asked.
“
Persuasion,” Dmitry answered. “It’s one of my best skill sets.”
“
Okay,” Gabriel said, wanting to hear no more on that subject. He had watched, with a shaky stomach, as his cousin beat, burned, gutted and finally shot Upheil a few hours ago and knew that if Dmitry was better than Anatoly at interrogation then he didn’t want to be in the same city when it took place.
“
It’s there move now, but the great thing about good strategy is knowing their move before they make it,” Dmitry said, headed back towards the chateau.
Chapter 23
Balthazar watched the breaking news in utter dismay. According to flashing reports on all the important news channels, his contact, ex-colonel Upheil Kalensko, had been found hours earlier chained to the front gate of his estate with his entrails pulled out and the words
butcher
in Russian cut into his forehead while the back drop of the scene was a burned down mansion with over thirty additional dead bodies burned to a crisp inside.
The current news anchor standing outside of the estate with a microphone clutched in her hands said that authorities thought the attack could have been orchestrated by Ukrainian ex-pats who were retaliating against the former colonel for his alleged
illegal activities
during and after his time with the military, but it was too early to say for sure.
He hoped that they were right.
Balthazar watched the television like a child seeing it for the first time. Clinging to every word, he felt the contents of his breakfast nearly leap back into his mouth. He was nauseous and nervous all at the same time.
Authorities said there was currently an open investigation and officials were still trying to identify the other bodies, but all Balthazar wanted to know was did the fucking child molester squeal before he died.
No one knew about his impending second deal, one that would secure a small fortune in the event that his new friends chose to cut him out of their kidnapping farce. However, now it seemed that he had put them all in peril. If Vladimir and Manon found out, they would surely do more than cut him out. They would see him dead. But he could not jump the gun. The call would be made today, and it was possible that the money could be collected and the child returned before anyone was the wiser. He simply had to play things very carefully for the time being.
Hearing the familiar clink of stiletto boots behind him, he quickly grabbed the remote and turned off the television. His shaking hands nearly giving him away, he stuck it under the table and stilled his quickened breaths.
Avoiding conversation about Upheil would be a necessary thing for the current time. The television would only broach the subject and with the sweat that formed on his bald head, he would only create suspicion.
With as much charm as he could muster, he turned with a painted on smile and pushed his worry down in his trembling gut. “Are you joining me for a bite to eat before we make the call?” he asked, motioning towards his unfinished breakfast.
Manon’s gaze was critical. The lines around her lips showing as she pursed her lips, she breezed past him, her perfume lingering shortly behind.
For once, she was alone instead of flanked with bodyguards. Her eyes were set ablaze with fury and her fists were clenched around a piece of paper. A hiss escaped her lips. “Have you seen this?” she asked in a shrill voice, throwing down a wire that had gone out to various powerful organized crime syndicates worldwide. Her palm lay flat on the paper, nails gleaming blood red. “This is a photo of the both of us with a bounty on our heads of 100 million dollars. It just came out…
just
.” Her bottom lip quivered in both fear and anger.
Balthazar pried the paper from her hands and looked at it. He blinked. “It can’t be,” he whispered, knowing now that Upheil had given him up before he died. Fucking traitor!
Manon gripped the end of the island, grasping its coldness so tight until she chipped her nails. “Vladimir is on the way as soon as he picks up the money. We have to regroup,” she said, sitting down on the barstool. “I told him that it was unwise for all three of us to stay together in the same place, but he disagrees. He thinks our only leverage may be the girl at this point. We’ve been pushed into a fucking corner!”
“
Does anyone know how Dmitry found out?” he asked, hiding his true knowledge.
“
No,” she said absently. “Vladimir plans to reach out to his father to find out himself.”
“
Won’t Khalid become suspicious if Vladimir suddenly appears to show concern about someone other than himself?” Balthazar asked with a hint of venom in his voice.
The woman ignored him. “Now might not be a good time to fall apart, considering that we cannot even trust the men who help us to hold the girl. $100 million is a hell of a lot more than we are paying them,” she reminded. She looked across the room at the guard standing outside of the door and took a deep breath. For all she knew, they were already under attack.
The thought sobered Balthazar. “So are we to stay here and wait for one of our own to stab us in the back or will we be leaving soon?”
“
We continue as planned,” she said, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “We make the call for the money. At least with that, we have more ability to go mobile.”
“
Do you really think that is wise?” he asked, turning around to look at her. He had pegged her for a stupid woman but he had no idea that she was a fucking idiot. “We’ll be sitting ducks,” he reminded.
Hitting the table again, she looked over at him and snarled. “Where are we to run, Balthazar? Anyone who is anyone will happily hold us captive to collect the bounty on our heads. We stay to the plan until we find out who has stabbed us in the fucking back. Once we get the money, we’ll change locations. It’s that simple.” Manon came to her senses and calmed herself. “Now, prepare to make the call. You have thirty minutes.”
“
I’ll go and see to the girl first,” he said, wiping his mouth with the napkin by his hand.
“
You are not to go near her for the remainder of this job,” she said, standing back up. “Your purpose is to provide us mobility and to communicate with Dmitry. We paid you for your men and your service. Nothing more. There is absolutely no reason for you to talk to her.”
There was no way that she would have Balthazar run off with their payday. Clenching her jaw, she walked up to him and looked down into his eyes. “My men are watching her now. You leave Anya Medlov to me and focus on making that call and keeping her father right where we need him.”
“
I sense a trust issue all of a sudden,” Balthazar said with a wicked grin. “After all that I have done, haven’t I proven myself to you and Vladimir?”
“
Until we find out how Dmitry found out about you and I, there is no trust to be won.”
“
The only person who is capable of that is Vladimir. Maybe he found a way to get rid of both of us and just take his half and flee. A quarter of billion dollars is better than none at all.”
“
You don’t know him,” she said growling. “And don’t pretend to, you slimy Nazi bastard.”
“
I would say the same for you,” he said, watching her walk away. “Maybe you have fulfilled your purpose now and you can finally see the true colors of your lover. Maybe you can finally see what everyone else already knows!”
“
Just make the fucking call,” she ordered as she disappeared beyond the door.
***
Balthazar sat in the communication room of his beach house, already set up by his men, with a single cell phone behind an oak desk. With no windows in the room and only a large halogen light, swinging above from the rafters, the space had a dark, third-world feel to it, adding more menace to the act that he was about to perform. A tech guy sat in the corner in front of two computers, making sure that the call would bounce over four continents, ensuring that they would not be traced and two bodyguards stood at the door.
After going over notes on a pad and taking a drink of water, he picked up the phone, listened for a dial tone and carefully dialed Dmitry’s home phone. The one ring seemed to be the longest that he’d ever heard. There was an answer on the second.