Chapter 19 Xander
XANDER
Gray smoke coils toward the ceiling, mixing with the scent of nervous sweat that clings to everyone gathered around the table in the old warehouse conference room.
Four lieutenants sit across from me, faces illuminated by the harsh fluorescent lights that cast deep shadows beneath their eyes, causing them to appear as grim ghosts.
Igor spreads photographs in front of us—surveillance shots taken through telephoto lenses, grainy images captured from rooftops and alleyways.
Each picture shows the same man, Soran Shubin, Sokolov enforcer, forty-eight years old with graying temples and pale blue eyes as hollow as a skeleton.
"He hit the Kostas operation yesterday," Igor reports, tapping one of the photographs.
"Burned the entire warehouse, killed six of our Greek allies. The fire department found three bodies in the rubble, but the other three…"
He shakes his head.
"Pieces scattered across two city blocks after this butcher dismantled them like he was stripping a car."
I study Shubin's face, memorizing the cruel set of his mouth and the scar that runs from his left ear to his jawline.
Twenty years in the game has taught me to read violence in a man's features, and this one carries death behind his eyes.
As dark as the Devil, and as black as sin.
"Where is he now?" I ask.
"Moving between safe houses in the Zamoskvorechye district," Ivan answers, sliding another set of images across the table.
"Our sources put him at three different locations over the past week. He's being careful, never staying anywhere longer than forty-eight hours."
The photographs show apartment buildings with facades stained by decades of Moscow pollution.
Anonymous structures where men disappear into the urban maze, emerging only to kill and vanish again.
The underground network is rife with men like Shubin and he could vanish like an apparition if I'm not careful.
"He's protected?"
"Two bodyguards, maybe three. All Sokolov soldiers, all armed and paranoid now. After the shitstorm we've been raining down, it'll be hard to nab him, boss."
Igor lights another cigarette, the flame briefly illuminating his weathered features.
"But he has habits. Visits his mother every Tuesday evening, always alone, and he checks to see if he's being followed. But if we put someone on the house…"
I lean back in my chair, the weathered wood creaking under my weight.
Shubin's weakness is familial obligation, a sentiment that makes men predictable and ultimately dead.
It's the exact sort of weakness I have to avoid being ensnared by when it comes to Nadya.
If men like Shubin were to find out how truly she affects me, she would be my downfall.
"When did he last see the mother?"
"Six days ago," Ivan reports.
"Our surveillance confirms he'll be there tonight, between eight and ten o'clock. The building has one entrance, no security cameras, elderly residents who mind their own business."
The trap begins to take shape in my mind.
An apartment building filled with pensioners who go to bed early, hallways that muffle sound so said residents can sleep peacefully, and a target whose love for his mother has made him vulnerable.
"I'll take him alone," I say.
The lieutenants exchange glances.
Ivan clears his throat as he leans over the table folding his hands together.
"This isn't a simple elimination, boss. Shubin has forty-two confirmed kills, including two of our best soldiers last month."
"Forty-three kills," Igor corrects.
"We found Sergei's body this morning in the Moskva River. Shubin's signature was carved into his chest."
The giant slithering S slit into the flesh of a man killed by that bastard isn't something you soon forget.
I've seen his mark a number of times, and I won't be the forty-fourth kill.
I stand and walk to the windows where outside, a fresh layer of snow highlights the city's lights.
Office buildings extend toward the horizon, their glass surfaces reflecting the charcoal gray sky.
Somewhere among those towers, people are living absolutely mundane and boring lives.
I'm sure they're aware there are men like me out here plotting death and revenge, but they're peaceful and unalarmed—just like Shubin's mother.
"The old woman," I say without turning around.
"Does she know what her son does for work?"
"She's eighty-three and half-blind," Ivan replies.
"Probably thinks he sells insurance."
The irony isn't lost on me.
A mother who raised a killer while believing she raised a provider.
The lies we tell to protect the innocent, even as we corrupt everything they touch.
That poor old woman has lived her entire life in the dark most likely, and what a shock it will be to learn her son has been brutally murdered.
She won't believe the reports when they come out, how many men this asshole has killed, but perhaps the shock will simply send her to her grave to be with him on the other side.
"Send the others home tonight. I work alone on this."
"Boss—" Igor says but I cut him off.
"Alone."
I won't allow them to argue with me.
If I storm in there with five men simply because they're afraid Shubin will overpower me, it'll draw attention.
We'll be noticed, and that will trace back to Markov—who won't be happy.
I collect the photographs and surveillance reports, studying the building's layout one final time.
There are three floors, a narrow stairwell, and Shubin's mother lives in apartment 2B.
Her son will climb those stairs, believing himself safe in his mother's embrace.
He will die believing it.
The meeting dissolves after a few last housekeeping matters.
My lieutenants file out, leaving me alone with cigarette smoke still clouding the air and the burden of the work I have laid out for me.
I check my weapon and holster it, strapping it to my chest beneath my coat and light another cigarette to try to calm my nerves and get myself mentally focused for this.
Shubin will be a formidable enemy.
I have to be prepared.
Seven p.m. arrives more quickly than I am prepared for.
I park three blocks from the target building, walking the remaining distance on sidewalks slick with ice.
Pedestrians hurry past with their heads down, focused on reaching warm destinations before the temperature drops farther.
The apartment building squats between a defunct bakery and a government clinic that closed a few hours ago.
The concrete walls stained black, windows covered by curtains that haven't been cleaned since Brezhnev died.
The entrance is a single glass door with a broken lock, security reduced to the collective apathy of the residents who live here.
I climb to the second floor keeping my footfalls as silent as possible on the old threadbare carpets, and I manage to avoid passing anyone on the way up.
Apartment 2B sits at the corridor's end.
Light seeps beneath the door, and I hear voices inside—an elderly woman's laughter mixing with a man's deeper tones.
Shubin arrived early tonight, which throws off my plan.
I expected to enter the apartment claiming to be the super, wait for him in the shadows while avoiding a good examination by his half-blind mother.
But plans change so I adapt.
I settle into the stairwell's shadows and wait.
Forty-three minutes later, the apartment door opens.
Shubin emerges alone, his coat buttoned against the cold.
He's shorter than his photographs suggested, maybe five-eight with the compact build of a man who takes his physique seriously.
I take the moment of advantage to soak in as much about him as I can.
Slight limp on the left leg, favoring his left arm too, which means someone has hurt him recently.
And he carries no gun in hand, only car keys.
It will give me a ten second advantage if he has to uncloak himself to pull his pistol.
I let him descend halfway before following, my footsteps masked by his own.
The building's entrance opens onto a courtyard surrounded by similar structures—a perfect killing ground with multiple escape routes and no witnesses, especially in the darkness this time of year.
And better yet, he still has no idea I'm following him.
"Soran Shubin," I call when I’m sure the view of the two of us is obscured from sightlines in all directions.
He spins at the sound of his name, hand already reaching for the pistol beneath his coat.
But I'm faster, closing the distance before he can clear leather.
My fist connects with his solar plexus, driving the breath from his lungs as he doubles over.
I slide my ceramic blade from its sheath in a motion so fluid it could be a dance, and slice it through the air toward his jugular.
Shubin twists away, the edge opening a shallow cut across his neck instead of the killing stroke I intended.
Blood runs down his collar as he finally draws his weapon, but I'm already inside his guard.
My left hand clamps over his gun hand while my right drives the knife toward his kidney.
He's good—twenty years of survival has taught him to fight dirty—and his knee comes up toward my groin.
I pivot, taking the impact on my thigh, and use his momentum to drive him against the courtyard wall.
His skull impacts concrete with a wet sound, and his grip on the pistol weakens.
The knife finds its mark on the second attempt, sliding between ribs to puncture his lung.
He gasps, blood frothing at his lips as the blade twists deeper.
His eyes go wide with the realization that death has found him in his mother's shadow.
"For the Greeks," I whisper against his ear.
I pull my blade out and strike again, this time deeper, finding his heart.
Shubin's body goes rigid, then slack as life abandons him.
He slides down the wall, leaving a crimson streak on concrete that will freeze before morning, and before I've even taken a breath, his urine puddles on the ground beneath him.
Hot steam rises from his corpse as the twitching begins, and for a moment I stand over him relishing my victory.
He was a foolish man who became too predictable.
Now he has paid for his sins.
I check his pockets, removing identification and anything that might connect him to the Sokolov organization too quickly.
They'll learn who he is soon enough, but the inability to identify his body immediately means the Sokolovs won't know another of their men has been taken.
His wallet contains a photograph—the old woman from 2B, smiling at the camera with innocent joy.
But I stand over another mess, another scene that requires Nadya's particular skills.
The thought of her sends electricity through my veins, anticipation mixing with the adrenaline that still pulses through me from tonight's work.
I dial her number, the phone ringing twice before her voice fills my ear.
"Da?"
"I need you," I tell her quietly, and my god is that more true than ever.
Just thinking of seeing her has me on edge.
I need to know how she's doing, what she thinks of the gifts I left for her.
A pause.
"Where?"
"I'll send coordinates. Bring everything."
"How bad?"
Shubin's piss steaming in the winter air wafts my way.
"Bad enough."
"I'll be there in a half-hour."
The line goes dead, but I hold the phone against my ear for several heartbeats longer, savoring the sound of her voice.
She'll come to me and kneel in this carnage that awaits her and she'll transform chaos into order with her careful hands.
Her dark eyes will assess the damage while her mind catalogs the work required to make it disappear.
Soran Shubin is dead, his blood already turning to ice.
Tomorrow there will be others, and the day after that even more.
The Sokolov Brotherhood bleeds out one soldier at a time while my deadline approaches without respect to the fragility of my position.
Fifteen days remain until New Year's Eve.
Fifteen days to finish what I started, or die in the attempt.
I check my watch and lean against the building's cold brick exterior.
Time to meet my Ptichka and watch her work her strange magic on the mess we've made of the world.