Reamde

to collect such evidence.”

Sokolov sat there impassively, waiting for Igor to figure it out.

“If they had found this, why have they not come to arrest us?” Igor demanded, sounding almost like a self- righteous, upstanding citizen, scandalized by the complacency of the local cops.

“Unless,” Vlad said, “they have put us under surveillance.”

“Why would they bother if they already have evidence?”

Vlad said, “It would be a major investigation. Not just of burglary but kidnapping, murder, other things. International spy shit. They don’t give a shit about people like us. A couple of burglars!” he scoffed. “They would put on the surveillance and hope that sooner or later someone more important would get in touch with us.”

Four eyes turned toward Sokolov.

There was a long pause. Igor raised the fingertips of both hands to his temples, making his huge fat hands into blinders, tunneling his vision at Sokolov.

“Fucking asshole!” Igor finally said. “Why did I let you into my house?”

“Stupid, greedy motherfucker,” Sokolov said. “The money wasn’t enough. You had to go back. Steal some more.”

“Hey, calm down!” Vlad squeaked. “We don’t even know if the cops found the video.”

“The uncle of Zula is a billionaire, moron,” Sokolov said. “He would bring in investigators of his own. There is nothing they would not find.”

Something occurred to Igor and he exclaimed “Fuck!” then made a grab for his phone. Sokolov’s hand jerked toward the Makarov in his jacket pocket, but he restrained the urge to draw a weapon—as did Vlad, watching him attentively.

Igor made a one-button call: a redial. “It’s better that you don’t come,” he announced into the phone. Then listened to a blast of verbal abuse that forced him to pull the device away from his ear. “No, it’s nothing like that. I’ll explain later. Turn the car around. Don’t come.”

“You invited some others to the pizza party?” Sokolov asked, after Igor had shut off his phone, terminating more furious denunciations.

Igor held his hands out. “I am sorry, Mr. Sokolov, but I must answer to certain people; and when you showed up, I had to make them aware of the fact that you were here.”

“Are there any other ways you have fucked me that I have not been made aware of yet?”

The fat hands became flesh pistols, index fingers aiming at Sokolov’s eyes. “I never should have worked with you. Now, the cops will come, I’ll do time. Be deported.”

“Doing time. Getting in trouble. All very normal for a man who breaks into another man’s house and steals his computer and his rifle. If you had just followed my orders—”

“Why should I take orders from you, motherfucker?”

“Because I actually know what I am doing.”

“Then how did you end up in this fucking situation?”

It was a fair question, and it rocked Sokolov for a moment.

In that interval, Vlad noticed something. “They’re coming,” he said.

Sokolov looked up at him to see that Vlad was gazing out the house’s front window.

“Who’s coming?” Igor asked.

“How the fuck should I know?” Vlad said.

Instinctively, Sokolov dropped to a crouch and peered over the sill of the front window, down the length of the cul-de-sac. A dark SUV, headlights on, was headed up the street, moving at little better than a walking pace.

“Why headlights?” Vlad asked.

“To blind us!” Igor said.

“It’s a rental,” Sokolov suggested. “The lights come on automatically.”

“Who rents a car for a bust like this?”

“Not cops,” Vlad supposed. “Guys from out of town.”

“What kind of guys?”

“Maybe private dicks? Hired by billionaire uncle?”

“Fuck!” Igor said, and stomped over to the corner of the living room. He hauled the rifle case down from the shelf.

“What were you thinking of doing with that?” Sokolov asked him. The two options he could think of were to hide it, so that it couldn’t be used as evidence, or to take it out and start using it.

“I am not going back to Russia,” Igor said. As if this answered the question. Which it didn’t. “I’ve got an escape route out the back.”

“Asshole, they’ll be covering the back exit!” Vlad pointed out. No doubt correctly. “You won’t get more than a couple of steps!”

The SUV came to a stop, directly in front of the house, headlights glaring brightly enough, on this dull overcast day, to make it impossible to count the number of people inside.

Its driver’s-side door opened and a pair of blue-jeaned legs dropped to the ground. The driver stepped out from behind the door and slammed it shut. Short hair did nothing to hide the fact that this was a woman. An Asian woman. She stepped out farther from the SUV’s headlight glare.

It was Olivia. And she had apparently come here alone.

“What the fuck!?” Vlad shouted, holding up his hands. He would have been ready for a whole carload of heavily armed federal agents. But not this.

Sokolov spun around to face Vlad and raised an index finger to his lips, shushing him. Glancing up toward the ceiling in a gesture that any Russian would recognize: Remember, someone is listening to us. Vlad, wide-eyed, seemed to take this in. After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded. Okay, I’ll shut up.

They were distracted by a crisp mechanical clunking noise from the other side of the room. Sokolov looked over to see that Igor had pulled the rifle out of the case. It was some sort of AR-15 variant. The sound had been made by him drawing the bolt carrier back, locking the action into an open state. As Sokolov watched, Igor plucked out one of several loose cartridges that had been rattling around loose inside the case, manually fed it into the breech, and slapped the side of the weapon, releasing the bolt and letting it slam the cartridge into firing position.

Sokolov noticed that his Makarov was in his hands, aimed at Igor.

Olivia rang the doorbell.

“Get down!” Sokolov shouted in English. Unsure whether she’d heard him, he pivoted and fired a round through the door, far above Olivia’s head. That should give her the general idea.

“Kill him!” Igor shouted, apparently to Vlad. Then he raised the rifle and aimed it at the front door.

Vlad was fumbling in his pocket. But he was poorly trained and was having trouble getting the weapon out. “Run out the back door,” Sokolov suggested. “There’s no one there.”

“How would you know?” Vlad asked.

“Do it or I’ll fucking kill you,” Sokolov said, aiming his Makarov at Vlad.

“I told you, he’s setting us up! Motherfucker!” Igor shouted, letting the barrel of the rifle drop and using his free hand to pull a revolver out of the waistband of his trousers.

Sokolov pivoted and fired two rounds into Igor’s midsection, waited for him to hit the floor, then fired one more.

Vlad was crouching on the floor next to the PC with his hands on top of his head, completely unmanned. An utterly ruthless, animal instinct within Sokolov told him to simply execute this miserable person, who could only cause trouble for him. But he could not bring himself to do it.

“I suggest you run. Fast,” Sokolov said.

“Why bother? Didn’t you say we were under surveillance?”

“By someone,” Sokolov said. He had crossed the room and picked up the rifle. Setting his pistol down for a moment, he hauled back on the rifle’s bolt carrier, ejecting the round that Igor had chambered, then set the rifle into its case, which he slammed shut. He carried it to the front door, which he opened. Olivia was no longer there.