Page 78 of Sexting the Pakhan

He doesn’t turn immediately.

That makes my voice smaller when I ask, “What happened?”

He looks over his shoulder then. The expression on his face is unreadable, but his eyes are not. There’s something alive in them now, something hard and ugly and satisfied.

“We found the mole,” he says.

11

RUSLAN

The warehouse is still operatingwhen I arrive.

Trucks come in through the west gate. Men load crates near the far wall. A forklift moves slowly between stacked pallets. Nothing stops because Anton Grekov is tied to a chair in the office above the floor.

That’s how it should be. Business continues. The organization is much bigger than just a single mole.

Stepan meets me at the bottom of the metal stairs. “He’s upstairs,” he says.

“Talking?”

“No. Still saying he’s not the mole.”

“Of course he is.”

Stepan walks beside me as we climb. “Pavel traced the payment account to him.”

“Anton signed it?”

“No. But it went through one of his shell vendors.”

I stop at the landing and look down at him.

Stepan knows what I’m asking. “It’s enough to bring him in,” he says. “Not enough to know if he acted alone.”

That’s the problem.

Anton is not a driver or a collector. He’s a captain. He knows routes, old drop locations, which cops are dirty, which customs men can be paid off, which warehouses are real and which exist only on paper. If he sold us, he didn’t just sell one shipment. He sold the bones of my entire organization, which is a problem when enemies are ready to swoop in from everywhere.

I open the office door.

Anton looks up from the chair. His hands are tied in front of him. There’s blood at the corner of his mouth, but not much. Dima must have hit him once and then remembered I wanted him able to speak.

Pavel stands near the desk with a laptop open. Dima is by the door. Another man, Ilya, watches the window.

Anton smiles when he sees me. “I was wondering when you’d come,” he says.

I take the chair across from him. “Were you?”

“You’ve made a mistake.”

“Then fix it.”

His smile fades.

I lean back. “Tell me who did this.”

“I don’t know.”