Mikhail
I study the photographs in Arkady’s hands while he stands across from my desk.
Neither of us speaks for several seconds.
In the image, my mother is standing outside the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, one gloved hand resting on Anton’s arm.
Her other hand is wrapped around the gold head of a cane.
She will not take a wheelchair to church.
She’s wearing the dark green coat I bought her last winter and looking toward the street as though someone has called her name.
The photograph was taken from far enough away that she never knew anyone was watching.
There is no message attached. There does not need to be.
Outside my office, staff begin arriving. Chairs roll across the floor. Someone starts the coffee machine. The building wakes around us with the ordinary sounds of people who do not know how close violence has come to them.
“Where is she now?” I ask, staring at the photo like I might make it come alive.
“At home. Anton is inside with her.”
I smile despite myself. Anton she trusts. If Anton tells her to go inside, she will complain while doing exactly as he asks. “Good. And who else?”
“Two men in the east wing and four outside.”
“She knows?”
Arkady nods. “She knows something happened.”
“Something happened when three men came to her gate. Something happened when they knew her pharmacy. Now someone follows her to church and photographs her.”
“She was not pleased when we doubled the security.”
“She is never pleased when I do anything sensible.”
Arkady places the next photograph on my desk. The angle is different, my mother farther down the cathedral steps. Another shows the car waiting for her. Another shows Anton opening the rear door. “They followed her from the house?” I ask.
“We don’t know yet. Yuri is reviewing everything from the eastern gate to the cathedral. No vehicle appears consistently enough to be obvious.”
I look at the photographs again. Someone has stood close enough to my mother’s life to know which entrance she uses at church, which side of the car she enters, which man accompanies her.
Before that, men came to the eastern gate knowing her name, her pharmacy, and exactly which wing of my house belonged to her.
The pharmacy could have been learned once.
This is a pattern. This is someone studying her.
“Orlov. He’s angry about his men. And his routes. My routes.”
Arkady doesn’t answer immediately. That’s answer enough. “We still have not proved the pharmacy information came from him,” he says.
“The second phone leads to Orlov. His cocaine moved through Lyubertsy. Six of my men concealed it. Then men arrived at my mother’s gate knowing her pharmacy, and now this.”
“I said we have not proved it. I did not say I disagree.”
I rise from behind my desk. Anger is often described as heat. Mine is cold. Heat is uncontrolled. It consumes oxygen, destroys whatever lies nearest, and eventually burns itself out. Mine never ends. Someone wants me to imagine what else they could have done to my mother. I am imagining it.
“You wanted Orlov alive before,” Arkady says.
The sentiment beneath the words is unspoken, but I hear it anyway. If I had killed him, we would not be discussing this. “I did.”
“You wanted to know how deep the breach went.”
“And now I know enough.”
“Do you?” he asks. I look at him. Arkady doesn’t retreat. He never does. “If you kill Orlov before we know which people inside your organization belong to him, you kill the easiest man to watch.”
I hate when Arkady is right. It’s one of his least attractive qualities.
“I want him brought to me.”
“Alive?”
“For now.”
Arkady gives me a long look. He picks up one of the photographs again. “He wants a response.”
“I intend to give him one.”
“So you will give him what he wants.”
“If I do nothing, he believes my mother can be used to control me.”
“I did not say do nothing.”
“Then say what you mean.”
Arkady sets the photograph down. “Take something from him. Something he cannot complain about publicly without exposing himself.”
I consider him. “What?”
“His nephew moved a shipment last night.”
“Where?”
“Northern route. Pharmaceutical freight.”
I know the shipment. Cocaine concealed among legitimate medical imports. Orlov’s nephew has been moving small quantities for months, carefully enough that police attention has remained elsewhere. We have allowed it because information is often worth more than interference. Not anymore.
Arkady says, “I suggest we give it to narcotics control.”
“Federal,” I mull. “Not local.”
“That shipment is connected to people beyond Orlov. They will blame Orlov for allowing exposure.”
“And his nephew?” I ask, pacing.
“Let the police take him,” Arkady says simply.
“He may talk,” I point out.
“He will not live long enough. You know that.”
“Sorry,” Taylor squeaks.
Arkady and I turn to see her standing in the doorway of my office, the color drained from her face and a folder against her chest. I don’t know how long she has been standing there, and I don’t know when Taylor Hayes has become a blind spot for me.
Her gaze moves from me to Arkady, then to the photographs spread across my desk. She stops. After last night, she knows enough to understand immediately that she has walked into something she should not have.
“The revised benefit vendor summary needs your approval before noon.”
I know what she sees. The rage I have not yet forced from my face. I cannot force it from my voice either. It comes out like broken glass. “Leave it,” I tell her, and she flinches, looking down at the floor. “Get out. Close the door behind you. And knock next time.”
“Yes, Governor,” she murmurs. “I wasn’t being nosy.”
“You are always being nosy,” I say, almost calm again, her youthful innocence refreshing against a morning of dirt and corruption.
Taylor crosses the room cautiously and places the folder on the edge of my desk. Her eyes flick toward the photographs again, and I see the exact moment she recognizes my mother from the photographs in my home. Her expression changes. “That’s your—”
“Yes.”
She looks at Arkady, then at me, then back at the photographs, connecting them. “Is this about Orlov?”
The room goes silent. Arkady looks at me, and my attention settles entirely on Taylor. She seems to realize a fraction too late that she has just stepped across a line. Of course she knows Orlov’s name. I watched her read it last night.
“What did you say?”
Her fingers tighten against the edge of the desk. “I said—”
“I heard you,” I cut her off. Her mouth closes. “I was giving you a chance to take it back.”
I walk around the desk. Taylor stays where she is until I’m close enough that instinct finally wins and she takes a step backward.
The office door is still partly open behind her.
I reach past her and push it closed, and she takes another step with it until her shoulders meet the wood.
Three days ago, she stood against this same door and looked at me with heat in her eyes.
Now there is fear there. I brace my palm against the door beside her head.
Not on her. Never on her. But the effect is immediate. Her green eyes widen.
“Whatever conclusions you are drawing from what you saw last night and what you heard this morning, stop. And you will not discuss Orlov with anyone. Not Viktoriya. Not Dima. Not your roommate. Not your friends. No one.”
“Mikhail—”
“Governor Korolev.”
Her lips part. I hear Arkady shift behind me.
“Say you understand.”
Taylor’s breath catches. Her pulse beats rapidly beneath the skin of her throat, and for one ugly second the part of me accustomed to fear recognizes it as compliance. I hate seeing it on her. “I understand, Governor Korolev.”
Arkady’s voice comes from behind me. “You are scaring her.”
“I can speak for myself,” Taylor says immediately. Her voice trembles only slightly. I look down at her, and she looks directly back. “Are you threatening me?”
The correct answer is no. The political answer is reassurance.
I should step away, apologize for my temper, explain that a private family security matter has made me impatient, and send her back to her desk believing she misunderstood everything.
Instead, the photographs of my mother are still visible over Taylor’s shoulder, and my restraint has been exhausted.
“If I were threatening you,” I say, “you would not need to ask.”
The fear in her face deepens. I hate myself for causing it approximately one second after deciding I do not care.
I step back. Taylor remains against the door for a moment.
She stares at me, breathing hard, and then anger begins replacing fear.
Good. I prefer her angry. Her gaze moves past me toward the photographs on my desk and narrows.
“Your mother should change her routine.”
I stare at her. Taylor nods toward the photographs. “Whoever took those knew exactly where she would be.”
“So did a thousand parishioners.”
“No.” She steps away from the door, rubbing her palms against the sides of her skirt.
“I mean the photographer.” Arkady looks at the pictures.
Taylor points toward the photograph closest to the edge of the desk but doesn’t approach it.
“That picture is looking down at her. The photographer wasn’t on the street. ”
Arkady picks it up. I look at it again. She’s right.
“The café,” Arkady says. I look at him. “There’s a café opposite the cathedral. Second floor overlooks the entrance.”
Taylor reaches for the door and slips out.
For several seconds, neither Arkady nor I speak.
Through the darkened glass, I watch Taylor cross the outer office with her arms held close to her body.
Viktoriya says something as she passes. Taylor shakes her head and continues toward her desk. She doesn’t look back at me.
Arkady is still holding the photograph. “She noticed it before either of us.”
“Don’t start.”
“I said nothing.”
“Send men to the café,” I say. “Quietly. Get the security recordings before anyone knows we’re interested. Check every Sunday for the past month.”
Arkady gathers the photographs. “And Orlov?”
“Take the shipment.”
“And the nephew?”
“Let federal narcotics have him.”
“Alive.”
“For now.”
“That phrase again.”
I ignore him. Arkady slides the photographs into the envelope, then pauses. “The page she found last night.”
My attention shifts back to him. “How did it end up in the benefit paperwork?”
“One of my folders was brought through this office yesterday afternoon. Someone mixed a loose sheet into the wrong stack when the conference room was cleared.”
“Someone.”
“I’m finding out who.”
“Find faster.”
“I generally do.”
Through the glass, Taylor has reached her desk. She sits down beside Dima without looking toward my office.
“She heard more than she should,” Arkady says.
“She saw more than she should last night.”
“And now she knows Orlov is connected to whatever frightened you enough to treat her like one of your soldiers.”
I look at him. Arkady slips the envelope inside his jacket. “She’s more observant than most,” I say, watching Taylor through the glass. “It’s becoming inconvenient.”
“For whom?” Arkady asks.
I don’t answer.