Chapter 12
LUKE
“He’s going to do what now?”
Charlie, Zinaida’s driver, glares at me on the pavement outside the club.
“Luke will ride with you until he’s up to speed,” Zinaida explains, “and occasionally take over as my driver to free you up. Anatoly needs help training the new security staff, and you’re the only one with the experience to do it.”
She delivers the news with a smooth professionalism which provides both explanation and seems to soothe Charlie’s ruffled feathers. “I know how much you hate the day shift,” she adds, casting Charlie a slight smile. “This way you can train in the afternoons and work nights.”
“Can’t argue with that.” Although going by the belligerent stare Charlie gives me, there’s going to be nothing easy about the induction. “Up to speed.” She sniffs. “I’d need a goddamn year to get you up to speed.”
“I told you that Luke is one of Mak’s men,” Zinaida says.
“He’ll pick it up fast enough. He needs access to every aspect of my schedule and security arrangements; I expect you to give him everything he needs.
” She glances at her phone. “I’ve got meetings all morning, then we’re heading to Sophie’s House. Let’s hustle, Charlie.”
Charlie wrenches the limo door open, still glaring at me. “Don’t expect me to open doors for you, kangaroo boy,” she snarls as she slams Zinaida’s closed. “I don’t give a fuck if Mak gave birth to you himself.”
“Noted.” I stifle a grin as I take the front passenger seat.
She pulls out of the square onto Grosvenor Street with a speed that makes a passing street cleaner frown, then darts between traffic like a Formula 1 driver in second place. “So what’s with the muscle?” she asks without looking at me. “Last I heard, Mak ran mercenaries, not a chauffeur service.”
“Mak was asked to recommend a driver. He offered the job to me.”
Charlie snorts. “A driver, huh?” She gives me a sideways glance. “Hope that suit is steel lined. This job takes a lot more than driving skills.”
We drive in silence for another ten minutes before she pulls up in front of a gleaming office building. I open the door for Zinaida, who moves past me in another delicious waft of scent. We escort her into the building, then return to stand beside the limo.
Charlie folds her arms and stares grimly at the revolving doors, lips pressed tightly together.
I suppress a smile and wait her out.
Half an hour later, Zinaida returns and I open the limo door again. Charlie pulls back into the traffic. I don’t miss the tension in her body, nor the way she stares at every approaching vehicle like it’s a bomb waiting to go off.
We travel in silence until we reach the location of Zinaida’s next meeting. Charlie’s eyes cut across to me. “So not a talker, then.”
I tilt my head.
She sniffs. “Well, that’s something, at least.”
My introductions at Pigalle Soho kick off much the same way.
“Holy shit,” Nadja greets us, staring at me in blatant fascination. “Enzo wasn’t lying for once.” Her eyes cut to Zinaida with a knowing look. “Nice,” she says.
I have the satisfaction of seeing Zinaida color slightly.
“Thanks for coming in early,” she says crisply. “I’m going to leave Luke with you and Anatoly to explain the security setup.”
“Sure.” Nadja is stunningly beautiful, despite the shit-eating grin she’s currently giving Zinaida.
“Da.” Anatoly turns cold eyes on me. “At least you use front door dis time. Last time he break in to prove point,” he explains when Nadja looks confused.
“Really?” She looks even more intrigued by that disclosure. “Well, that explains why I don’t remember meeting you. Because I would remember,” she says, shooting Zinaida another dirty grin. “He definitely makes an impression.”
“Hmph,” Anatoly grunts, looking rather less than impressed.
The old man is clearly her self-appointed bodyguard, and from the soft way Zinaida smiles at him, he’s also the person she trusts the most.
He’s the one who matters here.
“Well,” Zinaida says, glancing at her phone. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
I know she has back-to-back meetings with suppliers, which gives me a clear run to get to know her staff.
“Hope you don’t mind taking a punch or two,” Charlie says, grinning at me. “Anatoly has the new recruits in for training today. We could do with an extra body.”
“Sounds good.”
“Don’t be afraid,” she says cheerfully, then winks at Nadja.
“Be afraid,” Nadja shoots back. “Be very afraid.”
I look between them. “The Fly?”
“Holy shit!” Charlie does a double take. “You know that movie?”
I hold up my hands and give them Veronica Quaife’s line: “I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
“Oh!” Nadja feigns a swoon. “And he delivers another one! Welcome, Luke, darling. You just won yourself a coffee. After you’ve finished taking whatever punishment Anatoly has planned for you, of course.”
Anatoly scowls. “He has no gear.”
“Yeah, he does,” Charlie answers for me. “There’s a bag in the back of the limo.”
Anatoly frowns at me. I lift a shoulder. “Wasn’t sure what we’d be doing today, so I thought I’d come prepared.”
“Hmph.” He gives me a skeptical up-and-down look. “Ve see.”
I take the obligatory beating from Anatoly in the boxing gym he runs around the corner, letting him get a few decent ones in before I actually put him on his ass.
When he gets up, we both turn our efforts to his trainees instead of each other. By the time we’ve put half a dozen of them through their paces, Anatoly’s stopped grunting insults at me in Russian and begun pointing out how useless the trainees are instead.
Back at Pigalle Soho, Zinaida is still tied up with meetings. Enzo, having clearly decided that I’m not to be trusted alone, arrives when his shift at Pigalle Mayfair ends and picks up where he left off, bickering with Charlie while I finish my briefing with Nadja.
“Follow us, darling,” he tells me imperiously when Nadja and I emerge from her office. “Time we took you to the mother ship.” All four staff members accompany me along the corridors and through a thick steel-lined door to the security room, exchanging humorous insults the entire way.
And underneath the banter, I think, they’re all exhausted and strung out as hell.
Anatoly’s and Charlie’s shoulders are perpetually hunched, and they scrutinize every face like it’s coming for them. Nadja is far too thin and jumps at the slightest sound. Enzo, for all his bravado, is wired tighter than a bomb.
All of them have deep shadows under their eyes, and hands that shake just a little when they drink their pitch-black coffee.
Zin’s inner circle is taking care of her, all right. But they’re doing so at a pace they can’t keep up. They’re scared, overworked, and desperately worried.
And despite the incessant jokes, they don’t trust me at all.
Which, ironically, makes me like them rather more than I expected to.
They all pull up chairs as I begin going through the system. I’m familiar with most of it already, but it’s good to get behind the camera lenses.
I work away in silence for a while, letting them all get comfortable bantering around me.
I learn, among other things, that Enzo has been asked to set up a date with the private secretary to the minister for business and trade, whose name is Andrew; that Anatoly recently beat the hell out of a journalist he caught taking photos out the back of the Quartier; and that Charlie hasn’t had sex for a month, which, in Enzo’s opinion, is why she’s so tetchy.
“You should be nicer to me, you raving queen,” Charlie says indignantly. “I got him the job here,” she explains. She’s leaning up against the counter on which I’m working, having edged gradually closer as she’s been speaking. “Got Zinaida to poach him from the Shangri-La a few years ago.”
“For an indecent salary, darling,” Enzo adds, visibly preening. “And I’m worth every penny.”
“Ven you stop talking, maybe,” Anatoly growls.
“Oh, stop it, you great bear.” Enzo blows Anatoly a kiss. “You know you love me.”
Anatoly rolls his eyes with a long-suffering air, but his wry smile betrays him.
“I’ve been with her from the start,” Nadja says quietly. “Me and Anatoly. Ever since Brixton.”
“Her first club?” I ask, still watching the screens.
“Yes,” she says. “But before that, I was a dancer in her father’s club.” She throws the line out with a slight edge, as if daring me to treat her differently.
“Oleg sounds like quite the treat,” I say, smiling at her.
“He vas bastard.” Anatoly folds his arms. “Good riddance.”
Nadja returns my smile. “At least it helps me understand the dancers,” she says. “Do you know Shelby, our top dancer?” She goes on to tell me that Shelby is not only her girlfriend but also the current favorite of a Saudi prince.
“He pays her a fucking fortune to dance at his parties,” she says, grinning, “but he’s never once worked out that she bats entirely for the other team.”
It also means she’s mixing with some dangerous people.
Then again, all Zinaida’s staff mix with dangerous, high-level, powerful people.
Enzo is dating the private secretary of a government minister. Anatoly is beating up paparazzi.
They’re all vulnerable, and they could all be a problem.
Nadja and Anatoly have worked for Zinaida the longest.
Which doesn’t rule them out.
The truth is that one of them is likely betraying her—all of them could be. And yet they all seem so fiercely loyal to her that it’s hard to imagine any of them doing so.
The same instincts that have saved my life a thousand times are telling me that none of these people are the problem.
No wonder she came to Mak.
I keep my focus on the security as I listen in to their conversation.
The setup throughout her clubs is far better than in Zinaida’s penthouse, or even in her own office here, which I don’t have access to.
It’s not lost on me that Zin seems to take the security of her clients far more seriously than her own.
“She disables them,” Charlie says when she sees me frowning at the blank screen from the camera in Zinaida’s office. “And she won’t let you put any more in there.”
“She tells us she’s entitled to a bit of privacy,” Nadja adds. She and Charlie exchange a glance which tells me this is an old topic of conversation.
“We’ve all complained about the security risk,” Charlie goes on defensively. “Me, Enzo, Nadja. Even Anatoly has tried to make her tighten things up.”
“Da.” Anatoly scowls, nodding emphatically.
I’m starting to feel a definite sympathy for Zinaida’s staff.
“She acts like she’s invincible,” Charlie is saying, “even after all the assassination attempts. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? The attacks?”
I move my head noncommittally.
“I’m not going to lie,” she says, “she needs more security. But even with what we’ve got, we’ve managed to spot every attempt before they got close to her.”
I don’t miss the defensiveness in her voice. I understand it, too. I can’t fault their dedication.
“The last thing we need is to have to train someone new,” Nadja says, giving me a skeptical glance. “We’ve all been taking care of Zin for a long time.”
Nothing new there. Nobody wants some smart-ass telling them how to do their job.
That said, it’s clear that Mak was right: “Zin needs someone to have her back.”
And not just to have it. To insist on having it.
And the fastest way to get there is to get her team on my side.
I turn my chair to face them. “I’m not here to get in your way,” I say quietly. “It’s clear you’re all highly competent. But you’re also exhausted.”
Enzo thrusts his hands in his pockets. Nadja looks slightly tearful. Anatoly’s scowl deepens, and Charlie gulps her coffee in subdued silence.
“None of you have had a real day off in months. You’re mainlining coffee and running on fumes.
I know I’m new to your operation, and I’ll be relying on you to pick up on any details that I might miss.
But operational security is what I’m trained to do, and if you’ll allow me to, I’d like to make your jobs easier. ”
I turn my laptop around so they can see the screen. “I’d like to go through my suggestions with you before I take them to Zinaida, so we’re all on the same page.”
There’s a long silence, during which I can see them all looking surreptitiously at each other. Eventually Anatoly nods curtly at me.
“Talk,” he says.