Chapter 10 #2
The casino captain reacts first, his shoulders shifting toward the hidden door as one hand enters his jacket, though nobody has explained the code aloud.
Katie presses two fingers into my thigh, sending the signal through my trousers without turning toward the man or changing her expression. If I had kept her behind reinforced glass, the captain would already be through the door before Boris spoke.
I look at the cabinet, and the mirror gives me the captain’s hand closing around a phone inside his coat.
Boris begins, “There is a service interruption below us.”
The casino captain runs, striking the shelf release with his shoulder as bottles slide aside to expose the steel door behind them.
“South garage,” I tell Boris.
Katie is already standing, so I take her hand rather than ordering her back into the room. Boris reaches the hidden door first, and we follow through a narrow service corridor as guards close the game room behind us.
The captain disappears around the lower stairwell with his shoes striking concrete below.
I keep Katie behind my right shoulder as we descend, and she uses the polished handrail to watch the landing below us.
The captain’s reflection breaks across each steel bracket before his body comes into direct view.
“He knew before Boris spoke,” Katie says as we descend. “He was reaching for his phone when the server entered.”
“I saw him.”
The stairs end behind a steel pedestrian gate overlooking the private garage, where the captain is halfway across the vehicle lane and running toward a rolling door that has begun to rise.
A dark sedan waits on the other side.
The opening is too low for the vehicle to pass, but the sedan moves anyway.
Its front wheels turn toward Boris.
“Move left,” Katie shouts.
Boris throws himself behind a concrete post as the sedan clips the corner where his hip had been, tearing metal from the right rear quarter panel before striking the half-raised door.
My heart strikes hard against my ribs when Boris disappears for one second behind the moving hood, then he rolls into view beside the post with his pistol already drawn.
The impact shakes dust from the ceiling as guards fire into the tires.
The sedan continues forward on the damaged wheel until hydraulic bollards rise from the garage floor and catch the frame.
The casino captain reaches the passenger side. “Open it.”
The driver raises a pistol through the shattered window.
He fires into the captain’s chest.
I shoot the driver before he can turn the weapon toward Katie. His head snaps against the seat, and the pistol drops through the shattered window onto the concrete.
The captain collapses beside the passenger door while Boris kicks the driver’s weapon onto the concrete and guards clear the empty back seat. Katie stays behind the post where I placed her, one hand gripping the edge as she watches every entrance reflected in the sedan’s windows.
I kneel beside the captain as blood spreads under his jacket. His eyes find mine, but his breath catches without producing words.
“Who is your handler?” I ask.
His mouth moves once, releasing air between his teeth before he dies without giving me a name.
The garage alarm begins after the gunfire ends, red lights flashing above the damaged door while guards search the vehicle and the sound drills through the concrete space.
Katie comes to me only after Boris confirms the back seat and trunk are clear. She looks at the dead captain, then at the driver I shot.
Her face has gone pale, but she doesn’t ask to leave; she checks Boris first. He raises both arms to show he’s uninjured before returning to the sedan.
“He ran toward the man who killed him,” she says.
“The driver chose silence over rescue.”
Her attention moves along the sedan before she crouches beside the right rear quarter panel, where a wide repair has rippled under the dark paint. The collision scraped away the top layer, exposing silver underneath.
Katie touches the undamaged edge without placing her fingers near the sharp metal. “The fake maintenance van had this silver under the white paint. Same rough boundary above the wheel. I noticed it because the rest of the van looked newly painted.”
The repair would mean nothing to me without the earlier sight of the van. Katie carried that detail through the apartment attack and forced move. She retrieves it during a war without exaggerating what it proves.
When Boris joins her, he asks, “You are certain?”
“I stared at that van from my window for hours before the men came inside. I’m certain.”
I look toward the guards surrounding the vehicle. “Photograph the repair before anything moves. Send paint samples from both attack vehicles to the same lab.”
One neutral captain has followed as far as the pedestrian gate, where he hears Katie identify the connection and watches my men respond without waiting for me to repeat her words.
“My wife prevented Boris from being hit,” I tell him. “She also connected this car to the apartment attack.”
The captain looks at Katie rather than me. “Then Dymov security should begin listening sooner.”
“We have begun.”
The captain looks at Katie once more before returning upstairs. “I’ll tell the others who caught the breach.”
Katie rises, though the pride on her face lasts only until she sees the blood crossing the garage floor. Ivan arrives from the service stairs after securing the neutral guests upstairs, looks from the dead casino captain to the silver repair, then asks Boris for the sequence.
Boris gives him the facts without theory as Ivan removes his glasses and cleans one lens with a cloth.
“This captain joined after Misha’s death.
The men who came later learned procedures without learning loyalty.
Suspend every officer appointed in the last eight years and let the old guard run the properties until we finish reviewing them. ”
Katie stands beside the damaged sedan as he speaks. Her attention shifts toward Ivan at the reference to Misha, but she stays silent.
The recommendation would remove dozens of newer soldiers but leave the senior structure untouched. Ivan belongs to that structure, along with the men who helped me rebuild after the bombing.
“Suspension tells the actual traitor where we’re looking,” I say. “Review them without announcement.”
Ivan replaces his glasses. “Sentiment toward Misha’s generation won’t protect you from the ambitious men under them.”
His reasoning fits the dead captain at our feet, but it doesn’t explain the access request at Velvet Fortune or the safe-house reconnaissance; I order both groups reviewed.
As Ivan’s mouth flattens before he nods, Katie catches the movement in the sedan’s rear window and looks at me, but the phone in Boris’s hand interrupts before either of us speaks.
Boris holds up the dead captain’s phone, its screen still open from the fall. Inside an encrypted message thread, times and location codes stand in for names. The most recent photograph shows the south garage gate from inside the casino.
He scrolls backward, bringing two earlier images onto the screen.
The first shows Velvet Fortune’s staff door with the latch still closed. The second was taken through the smoked panel of my private room. My chair stands in its original position before Katie dragged it across the carpet.
Both photographs were taken more than an hour before she drew the diamond.