18. Ivan
IVAN
Pyotr Witte is sixty-three, compact, silver-haired, and arrives in my office on a Thursday morning with the studied casualness of a man who has spent decades making the powerful feel they invited him.
His family started in machine parts in Minsk, moved into defense contracts in Chicago when the money pointed that direction, which for the Wittes is sufficient ethics.
He didn’t wait for an invitation. He called Armin two days ago and asked for a meeting. I respect that he didn’t wait for my invitation. An eager man is one I can work with instead of against.
He comes alone, which is either trust or theater. Once seated, he doesn’t mince words. “I’ll be direct, as I do not wish to waste your time,” he says. “I made an investment in the wrong Fedorov. I knew it before news of Jaba’s condition reached me, but that settled the question.”
“I didn’t realize you were looking to settle the question, Pyotr. I could’ve done that for you without the trouble of a big wedding.”
He doesn’t look embarrassed. “I’m here to discuss terms of being useful to each other, rather than continuing to be a nuisance. No sense in enmity when we could both profit.”
“I don’t want your weapons contracts,” I tell him, because opening with what I won’t take is the fastest way past posturing. “I don’t want an alliance that puts me crosswise with existing relationships.”
“What do you want, then? I don’t have more daughters.”
I smile curtly. “One thing, clearly stated. We can do this with witnesses if you prefer.”
“State it.”
“Your formal, unambiguous withdrawal of support from any move Hugo makes toward the leadership of this organization. Past, present, or future. He moves? You do not help. At all.”
“He’s my family now, Ivan. You expect me to betray my son-in-law?”
“Has he done anything to earn your loyalty?”
He exhales loudly through his nose. Irritated. “Have you done anything to earn my loyalty?”
“We’ve had dealings in the past. I was under the impression that you were happy with those transactions, as they were profitable on both sides. Were they not?”
Pyotr is quiet. He is thinking, or performing thinking—the two are indistinguishable in him at this range. “They were.”
“I, for one, would like to continue that aspect of our relationship. Profit, as you said. But I cannot do that with someone who supports a man who attempts to undermine me.”
“That’s not an unreasonable ask.” Pyotr sits back. “But he’s my son-in-law, Ivan. I cannot participate in undermining him without complications.”
“He married into your family. I recognize that means he’s in your family, but let’s not pretend it’s more than a piece of paper at the end of the day.
He spent your daughter’s love to buy himself a seat at tables he had no business at.
He’s playing at games bigger than he can handle, and forgive me for saying so, Pyotr, but that could leave your daughter in danger of getting caught up in his follies. ”
His eyes narrow. “Are you threatening Olga?”
“Not in the least. As far as I’m concerned, spouses and children are off-limits.
Call me old school, but there are limits to my dealings.
” I pause. “But I’m not the only person in this city.
There are those who do not hold to the old ways, and Hugo likes to feel like a big man.
It’s going to get him hurt one day. I pray that does not involve Olga. ”
“Keep it that way.” The old protective father has no tolerance for even a whiff of danger for his daughter.
Good. I can use that, if needs be.
“I will. Now, regarding Hugo?—”
“I can agree to your terms. I will not support his undermining of you. “What do I receive in exchange?”
“My goodwill, which is worth more than my enmity. And I will float you some of the tech business that comes through here, provided it doesn’t compete with Greenstone’s existing agreements. You manufacture things Greenstone does not. We buy from you.”
He drums his fingers on the chair’s arm. “Greenstone,” he says, the word clipped.
“A standing relationship of mine. Non-negotiable.”
“Mm.” The sound of a man swallowing something that went down crooked and deciding it stays down. “I’m amicable to those terms.”
I let the silence hold for a count of three, which is one count longer than comfortable and two shorter than aggressive. “Good. One more item. No more intelligence gathering inside my organization. No purchased access, no planted questions. And you leave the Lavender Girl alone.”
“I have no intention of harming that child. I’m like you—there are limits.”
“What even brought her up?”
He sighs. “I believe Jaba thought the witness to the Harmon murders would make for good leverage, should the right people come asking. Truly, I was at a loss as to why else he would tell me about her. That’s the only reason I can think of.
That, or he was trying to sound like he had even more valuable information. ”
Sounds like Jaba. I still don’t trust Pyotr entirely, so I make a note to send some protection her way. She’ll never know it, because she doesn’t need to. She’s a child who’s witnessed far too much in her twelve years. She doesn’t need more on her plate.
I clear my throat. “Understood. If I find another Jaba, another one of your spies in my organization, I’ll not take it as business. I’ll take it as a declaration of war. And I kill my enemies, Pyotr. I will execute them to the last.”
The old man is quiet for a moment. He is, I have come to understand, a man who respects declarations because he has made enough of them himself.
He built his company in a decade where declarations were the only binding contracts that mattered, before lawyers got involved and made everything expensive and slow and deniable.
“It was just business,” he says, and I believe him, which is almost the problem. A man who acts personally is predictable. A man who does everything as business has no floor. “Nothing personal, Ivan.”
“Perhaps it is easy for you to see things in two categories. I do not. Never again. I don’t do business with my enemy. Do you want to be my enemy or my associate, Pyotr? The choice is yours.”
He looks at me for a long moment with something that is not warmth but is adjacent to it, one professional’s recognition of another. “You are not what Hugo described.”
“We are each other’s worst biographers.”
He almost smiles. It doesn’t quite arrive, but it comes close enough to mean something. “I think, given our history, I would rather be your associate than your enemy. Or your biographer.”
We shake hands on it, and I walk him out myself. Armin finds me at the window afterward, watching the city below. “Say it.”
“Hugo has now lost his most powerful external ally. A man who has been losing pieces for three months and then loses the kingmaker at once is a man who will make mistakes.”
“Yes. He will.”
He steeples his fingers. “In my experience, men in that position lash out.”
I give him half a look. “One might say that’s the point.”
“You want him to lash out?”
“When he overreacts, and he will because that’s what he does, it gives me all the reason I need to cut him off from the organization.
Were I to do it now without obvious provocation, people would talk.
Captains could become… shaken. Those under them could be, as well.
” I lean in. “But if Hugo implodes, he forces my hand. He’s a spoiled brat, getting his toys taken away. Of course he will overreact.”
“I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who thinks of Hugo in those terms.” A pause, a delicate one, a man checking whether the sentiment is welcome. “For all his prettiness, the man’s a snake of the lowest order.”
“He is,” I agree. “And he’s still a Fedorov by marriage, which means he’s my snake to handle.” I turn from the window. “Handle the paperwork with Pyotr by end of week. The tech business item needs a separate memo, nothing that touches Greenstone’s line. And Armin?”
He waits.
“Keep the Jaba story alive. Not as threat. As education. For whoever comes after him, if anyone does. Let them learn what happened before they decide to spy for Witte, or anyone else.”
“And if no one comes after him?”
“There is always the next betrayer, Armin. Since when are you so optimistic?”
He shrugs. “Not optimistic. Hopeful, perhaps. I would like to think the men see what you have done for them and appreciate it.”
“I would like to believe that, too. But that does not appear to be how things work. Ever.”
He nods, gathers his folder, and pauses at the door. “The woman,” he says, as if he’s been holding it since the handshake. “The candle shop. I have yet to find an issue with her. So, either she’s exactly who she says she is, or she’s very, very good at what she does.”
“She is not a security matter, as we have established. Why do you press on this?”
“Because I have never seen you so smitten, Ivan. It’s concerning.”
I snort at that. “Can’t a man enjoy a woman’s company without it being a conspiracy?”
“A man? Yes. You?” He shakes his head.
“I’ll take it under advisement.”
Armin accepts this the way he accepts everything he disagrees with—quietly, completely, like a man who has learned that filing his objection doesn’t change the outcome. He goes to write the papers.
I go back to the window. I think about texting her. I don’t. She asked for time, and I have never kept a promise that cost me more.
The city sits below me in the Thursday light going about all its complicated business, and somewhere south of the river, in a shop that smells of bergamot, a woman is deciding something. I’m determined to be worth whatever she decides.
That’s the only campaign I’ve run all week that I care about, and unlike the others, I cannot strategize it. I can only wait, and work, and be who I am, and hope that it’s enough.
It is, by a long distance, the most frightening position I have ever held in my life.