10. Dmitri
DMITRI
“Who was the man?” I ask.
“No one.”
“Cara.”
Her fingers close around the phone. “Kathryn isn’t involved.”
“Innocence doesn’t stop information from being useful.”
She hates that. I see it in her mouth and in her eyes. For one second, a memory pulls her away and leaves fear behind. Then she comes back and sets her shoulders.
“Her boyfriend,” she says. “Evan. Finance operations, last I knew. That’s all you get.”
Evan in Boston. Kathryn Walsh’s boyfriend. Finance operations.
Inside my head, Evan Mercer becomes a file. Employment, accounts, travel, associates, phone records, messages, old favors, new debts. Abramov will pull every thread.
Cara sees the calculation settle.
The anger in her eyes catches like a struck match.
“Don’t touch my friend,” she says and gives my phone back.
“She’s your contact.” I pocket my phone and turn toward the library door.
“You don’t get to use my contact.” Her voice rises behind me, rough with anger.
I stop with my hand near the handle. “No. I protect the contact.”
She rushes ahead and plants herself between me and the door. Her dark eyes lock on mine, pupils wide with apprehension and furious with reckless bravery. Something old and hungry moves in my chest, and I put it down before it shows.
“You turn people into case files and call it protection,” she protests.
“I keep people on the map.”
“Yes, where you can reach them.” Her mouth twists around the words.
That cuts closer than she knows. I move her hand away from the handle. It takes surprisingly little effort.
“Tomorrow,” I say, “if Maksim approves, you get paper copies or a locked terminal under supervision.”
She laughs once, thin and bitter. “A leash with a keyboard. Fancy.”
“It’s more than you had an hour ago.”
She wants to refuse me, but Patrick left rot in the system, and she knows a locked machine still has seams. I leave the library with Cara’s face snagged behind my eyes.
She heard the man in Boston breathe something close to Patrick’s name, and every part of her pulled tight before she could cover it. I don’t know what she hides behind Kathryn Walsh, but I know the shape of a leak.
Abramov’s office sits behind the security floor. Glass walls cover two sides, and the third is blind. Feeds run across the inner wall, with two deputies working outside his door. He looks up before I knock because the camera outside has already told him I’m coming.
I step inside and close the door. “Evan Mercer. Kathryn Walsh’s boyfriend. Boston. Finance operations, last known.”
Abramov pulls a secure terminal toward him, and the screen wakes under his thumbprint. “Connection to O’Connell?”
“That’s what you are going to find.”
His fingers move over the keys, and Evan’s name enters the system. Abramov is careful because careful men live longer in this house.
“I want his work history, money, debts, social circle, drinking spots, Patrick O’Connell, and anyone who has paid him or leaned on him for what he hears at Kathryn Walsh’s kitchen table,” I say.
Abramov glances up. “How deep?”
“Deep enough that he stops looking harmless.”
He nods once, and the order moves from his terminal to two internal desks outside his office.
No one repeats names near Abramov’s office. Abramov runs his office the way Maksim runs the estate, with locked files, closed doors, and no loose talk in the halls.
“Yuri is already inside the comms bay,” Abramov says. “He found something in the charity invoices.”
Yuri Sokol sits at the communication bay with a mug of dead coffee and eyes red from screens. Late thirties, narrow face, fast hands, bad posture. He wears thin glasses with chromatic lenses that catch every monitor glow.
“You look cheerful,” I say.
Yuri is brilliant with Volkov systems and useless with people unless they come with passwords.
“I saw your mood coming on the cameras and accepted my death,” he says without looking up.
Then he notices Abramov behind me and straightens by half an inch. “Respectfully.”
Two guards stand by the door. Nobody talks unless the work needs words.
Yuri turns a monitor toward me. “Patrick didn’t break in clean. He used old permissions. He had account pieces, old vendor IDs, and clearance notes. Those things were useless alone, but someone matched them with current routes.”
“Show me.”
A cluster opens across the screen. “Riga bonded warehouse lane. Two medical fronts rerouted through Saint Agnes Relief and a pharmacy distributor that doesn’t move medicine.”
He scrolls, then brings up a spreadsheet with three highlighted rows. “This one matters. Fake charity invoices piggybacked on the Sokolov Children’s Fund header, but the payment address changed after upload.”
My hand tightens on the chair back. Yuri feels it first. His fingers pause over the keyboard, and Abramov’s gaze shifts from the screen to my hand. No one says Elena’s name.
Yuri keeps going, which proves he has more sense than posture. “The fund name was left visible to contaminate Elena, but separated enough to deny direct theft. Fast glance, Elena’s foundation looks dirty. Deep audit, Volkov controls look compromised. Either read weakens the house.”
Morozov likes pressure points. First fire. Then family. Now Elena’s name, and Cara’s. The bastard has learned nothing except where to press harder.
The door opens behind us, and one of Petrov’s men waits at the threshold until Abramov inclines his head. He crosses in, hands over a file, and leaves without adding a word. Petrov has already briefed me on the contents. I turn the first pages, confirm the markings, then pass the file to Abramov.
Abramov reads fast. His throat clears once. “Charity invoice groups tied to medical cargo,” he says. “Kiev, Riga, Smolensk. Someone was testing access in small steps. They were not pulling the full load yet.”
“Show me what you have,” I say.
Yuri clicks into another set of records. “They’re checking which doors open and which doors push back. Warehouse timing, customs delay, fuel stop, Blacklist handler query. Someone is testing us through paperwork.”
“Patrick?”
His name appears at every turn, like mold under paint.
“Patrick writes like a man who thinks templates make him invisible,” Yuri says. “This section is his. The current routing isn’t.”
I look at Abramov. “Who handles old clearances, minor corrections, boring amendments? Someone experienced. Someone forgettable.”
Abramov’s expression doesn’t change, but his eyes move to the screen.
Yuri turns in his chair with his chin propped in his palm, elbow braced on the desk. “You want a clerk with good access and no presence.”
“Self-effacing,” Abramov says.
“Useful with paperwork,” I add. “Ordinary face. Talkative enough to seem harmless. Not clever enough to design this alone.”
Yuri lowers his hand and types through a short list of names.
Most pass without interest, but one name stays on the screen beside clearance history, routine amendments, and old routing corrections.
Oleg Baranov has made himself ordinary enough to disappear if no one is looking for him.
I lean closer. “Pull everything he touched.”
Yuri exhales. “That’s a lot.”
“Then start with yesterday and work backward.”
His fingers hit the keys. “That sounds worse.”
“It is.”
On another screen, Kathryn Walsh opens as a new file. Beside it, Evan Mercer begins to build from banking records, consulting work, and a property-services company with a Boston office.
I look back at Cara’s suite feed on the corner monitor.
Yuri brings Oleg Baranov onto the main screen, and the man’s personnel file looks exactly as it should.
Boring job. Small salary. Ordinary family without any background names worth protecting.
His clearance is not high-level. It sits near daily work.
He can approve small fixes, push old forms, change route notes, and leave nothing big enough for anyone to notice.
“He can’t create offshore wallets,” Yuri says, echoing my thoughts. “He can’t touch Blacklist visibility or approve anything above standard clearance. His permissions are dull.”
I look at the approval trail. “Pull his after-hours activity.”
Yuri clicks through dates. “Take these three humanitarian shipments. Saint Agnes Relief, New Harbor Medical Aid, and a pharmacy distributor out of Riga. Oleg approved timing changes after normal review, and each date matches Patrick’s account movement within four hours.”
He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “There are others. Small, and similar.”
“How did he survive this long?” Abramov asks.
“He knows where no one looks,” I say, pulling a chair beside Yuri. “Underpaid men learn who ignores them. Resentful men remember it when someone offers cash.”
“Bring Petrov and Leonid,” I tell Abramov.
Abramov steps into his office doorway and gives the order through the secure desk. Petrov arrives first with two finance men at his back, and Leonid follows with a sealed folder pressed under one arm.
Maksim comes in last, and every man in the office sits straighter.
Petrov points at the dates Yuri has marked. “These three clearances match the wallet jumps. Patrick moved money, then Oleg adjusted cargo paperwork within the same window. The shipment records gave the money a cover story.”
Leonid opens his folder and sets the vendor papers on the table.
“New Harbor Medical Aid was made through a shell processor,” he says. “The same processor touched a Blacklist handler query. Different company names. Same filing pattern.”
Maksim looks at the papers. “Explain.”
Leonid taps one line. “The charity front and the Blacklist query used the same paperwork path.”
Yuri looks up from the screen. “Patrick used old account pieces, vendor names, and Blacklist words he had picked up somewhere. The system saw the right words and let the query pass.”
Maksim’s eyes move to Abramov. “Inside help?”
“Yes,” Leonid says. “Someone approved old forms, changed route notes, and made the cargo paperwork look normal around it.”
Abramov looks down at the page. “Oleg could do that.”
Maksim closes the file. “Find out if he did.”