Mikhail #2
“Two vehicles moved through the Lyubertsy depot using our permits and warehouse access.”
“Whose vehicles?” I kiss my mother’s forehead and walk away into the closet to choose a tie and cuff links for the day.
“We are verifying. Sergei Antonov reported it.”
I know Antonov. He oversees transfers through that section of the route. Quiet. Competent. Six years without requiring my attention. “What did he see?” I walk back out to my mirror and watch myself throw the tie over itself to begin the knot.
My mother pulls herself over to me to help, and I wave her away.
“Did you have to be quite so rude to that Olga woman?” she asks. “Your father never would have approved of speaking to a woman that way.”
Arkady says, “He thinks he saw one driver he recognized. A man who works for Orlov.” Viktor Orlov controls his own region, his own men, and more government contracts than a criminal should be able to obtain without becoming conspicuous. He is not my subordinate. He is not my ally.
Until now, he has not been my enemy. There are understandings between men like us. Not friendship. Never trust. Boundaries made useful by the cost of violating them. Orlov knows which routes belong to me.
“He is sure?” I ask.
“We are confirming. You can come see for yourself.”
My hand tightens around the phone as a chill runs through me. “What do you mean?”
“We took him.”
I still in the mirror and glance at Mama. She notices and stiffens. “Misha, what? What is wrong?” she hisses.
“Politics, Mama, leave me to it. You should go lie down. You seem tired.” To Arkady, I ask, “How?”
“We let the second vehicle continue. Once the first cleared the depot, our men forced it off the road where there were no cameras. It will look like mechanical failure until someone goes looking closely.”
Mama says, “I’ll have plenty of time to lie down when you’re at work. I want to see my only son while he is home. It seems so rare these days.”
“Does Orlov know?” I ask Arkady, and cover the mouthpiece to whisper harshly, “Please don’t make me feel bad. I’m trying to see you as much as I can. I had you moved in here, didn’t I?”
“Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was such an imposition,” Mama snaps, turning away from me.
“Not yet,” Arkady says.
“The shipment?” I ask. To Mama, I say, “Mama, you are not an imposition. I am asking you not to make me feel bad for being busy. I hate to disappoint you. You know that.”
“Secured.”
Her eyes shine instantly. “You could never disappoint me, Misha.”
I bend down to kiss her cheek and return to my tie. I finish the knot, looking into my own eyes in the mirror. I see the same emptiness I used to see in my father’s eyes. The same dull boredom. The same calculation moving behind the glass. “What was it?”
“Cocaine. Enough to make the violation deliberate.”
Not an accidental crossing. Not a driver confused about which men had been paid. Orlov has moved narcotics through a route protected by my permits, my officials, and my police. If the shipment had been discovered, the risk would have belonged to me while the profit returned to him.
“Where is the driver?” I ask, raking my fingers through my dark hair.
“Waiting.”
“Can he speak?”
“Yes.”
“Keep him that way.”
Arkady pauses. “There is more.”
“Of course there is.”
“Antonov was not the only one who saw the vehicles.”
“How many?”
“Seven of our men were present.”
“And only Antonov reported it.”
“Yes.”
“How many intended to report it?”
“Antonov says none of the others.”
The house seems to become quieter around me. Not because Orlov may have used my route. Routes can be closed. Drivers disappear. Shipments are seized or redirected. Ambition can be corrected. But six of my men saw a foreign shipment move through my depot and chose silence. That is infection.
“Do not approach them,” I say.
“I have men ready.”
“I said no. Watch all six. Verify Antonov’s account. Trace the permits, the altered records, and every payment they have received in the last three months.”
“And if the report is accurate?”
“I want every name before the first man understands we know.”
Arkady knows what happens after we have the names. So do I.
“When?” he asks.
“I will see you today. I want to talk to the driver myself.”
When I hang up, my mother is watching me from the corridor. “You need to eat. Whatever this is, it can wait until you have eaten.”
“I am the governor. Expectations are higher.”
“I have seen governors. They are usually disappointing. Maybe because they are all hungry.”
I offer her a smile and tilt my head at her. She stands from her wheelchair and walks to me. Her hand rises to my cheek. Cold fingers. Thin skin. The pressure is barely there. To anyone else, it would feel fragile. To me, it is still command.
“Oh, Misha. I won’t be around forever. You’re always so busy. I don’t want you to be alone forever.”
“I’m not alone,” I say.
She looks down the corridor, at the guards stationed discreetly beyond the dining room, at the maid clearing my untouched plate, at the polished marble floors and the towering windows and the house too large for two people.
“No,” she says quietly. “Of course not. You have your guards.”
I stop at the doorway. For a moment, neither of us speaks. There are many things my mother is too weak to do now. She cannot walk without assistance. She cannot lift the heavy teapot she insists tastes better than anything poured by the staff. She cannot sleep through the night without pain.
But she can still put a knife between my ribs with one sentence.
My phone vibrates again. This time, the name on the screen does not belong to a politician. It belongs to a man who puts knives into ribs for less than one sentence.
She should be grateful I have my guards.
I turn the phone over in my palm before my mother can read it. “I have to go.”
Her gaze flicks to the phone, then to my face. For a heartbeat, she is not the fragile woman wrapped in blankets. She is Nikita Koroleva, wife of the late pakhan, mother to the man who inherited his sins, and she sees more than I want her to. “Mikhail, this driver,” she says, her voice grim.
“Politics, Mama.” I accept her hand against my face for one brief moment, and leave before she can ask me questions I will have to lie about. I do not say just politics. It is not true.
Outside, my driver has brought the car to the front steps. A guard opens the rear door while another stands beside the gates, one hand beneath his coat.
My two phones rest in separate pockets.
The driver looks at me in the mirror as I settle into the back seat. “Where to, sir?”
I look toward the road.
Arkady is waiting in one direction. Waiting to take me to a driver, currently tied to a chair in a warehouse, who may know who sold access to my routes. He will be tortured either way.
Olga is in the other direction, gathering the papers that will improve thousands of lives, raising teachers’ salaries across Moscow Oblast.
Both require only my hand.
I consider the question as the gates begin to open.
I have not yet decided.