17. Dmitri
DMITRI
Work pulls me from the north wing.
The estate is moving in ten directions at once.
Abramov has the freight strike under internal review.
Petrov has finance men tracking fake clearance codes through vendor accounts.
Leonid comes from the legal corridor with his glasses sliding down his nose, a bundle of affidavits and customs notices under one arm, and the face of a man ready to threaten half of Riga before lunch.
He pushes his glasses back up with one finger and keeps walking.
I sign two route freezes, approve one recovery team, and deny Petrov’s request to pressure Anton Valev, the owner of the Riga bonded warehouse. Morozov wants us angry and careless. Maksim wants proof clean enough for other men to trust when the questions start. I want both, so I choose proof first.
Ilya calls from the road a little before noon. His face fills the wall screen in my downstairs office, with gray winter behind him and a map clipped to the dash. The feed shakes once as his vehicle takes a bad stretch of road, then steadies.
“We found a support van,” he says.
“And?”
“It’s linked to Riga. Same rear-door dent from the Riga warehouse camera. Wrong plates at the border. The plates are burned off now, the inside is wiped, and the driver is gone.”
“Where did it turn up?” I keep my eyes on the screen.
“Old tire depot off the east bypass. Moscow side. It moved through a contractor lane after the Riga hit.”
A crease pulls between my brows.
Ilya notices. “Yes. The depot sits near the same service-road network as your parents’ file.”
Five years ago, after the fire, I learned every road near my family’s house. I learned which cameras missed the side lanes, where snow could cover tire marks, and how a car could leave through the old brickworks road before police reached the house.
“I’m coming,” I say.
I close the feed and stand. Petrov’s route notes sit open on the desk. The Riga strike is marked in red.
Morozov paid a clerk. He forged the clearance. He used a humanitarian label, moved the fuel, and left stolen proof pointing back at Volkov.
Now he’s putting his trail where we’ll see it and waiting for us to move too fast.
On my way out, I stop by Abramov’s office. The door is open, the screens are active, and his chair is empty. Two analysts work at the long side table with headsets on.
I send Abramov one line.
Old road lead tied to Riga support vehicle. Keep the asset under glass.
I don’t wait for the answer.
Dima brings the car to the service entrance before it fully stops. He is inner circle, steady under pressure, and loyal without needing to prove it. His deputy, Roman, takes the front passenger seat. His coat is open enough to reach the gun under his arm. I get into the back.
The lead car carries two of Ilya’s road men in plain coats and dirty plates, with one rifle broken down under the rear seat and another tucked behind the panel.
Dima keeps our car in the middle. The rear car carries three men, one medic bag, one long case, and enough ammunition to finish trouble on the road.
Moscow opens around us in winter layers. Estate walls give way to factories, storage yards, snow-streaked loading docks, and men smoking under corrugated awnings. Dima drives without rushing, and I watch the city turn into service roads and freight yards.
Ilya’s voice comes through the secure channel.
“Lead car, right in three hundred meters. Camera dead on the corner.”
The lead sedan turns first, and Dima follows after six seconds. Behind us, the rear car keeps the lane until a delivery truck blocks the camera angle, then slides in after us.
Ilya continues. “Depot is behind the tire yard. Most of it is fenced in. The north gate doesn’t open anymore, and the east fence has been cut and patched twice. Current entry is through the old service door.”
“Any watchers?”
“We’ve got eyes on the roof across the lane and another man at the yard office. No fresh tails yet.” Ilya taps his earpiece and glances at another monitor before returning his attention to the screen.
Dima glances at the rearview. “Blue sedan has been with us since the fuel station.”
“I see it.” Roman looks into the side mirror. “Give it a minute.”
The sedan holds two cars back, dull paint, clean windshield, driver with both hands visible, passenger staring forward. Maybe civilian. Maybe hired.
In this work, maybe is enough.
“Lead car,” I say. “Separate him.”
The lead sedan misses the next turn on purpose and slows behind a bus. Dima takes the turn late. The blue sedan has to choose between staying with the lead car or following us.
It follows.
Roman gives a humorless smile. “There he is.”
Dima takes the next left late, hard enough for the tires to spit slush against the curb. The rear car blocks the lane behind us, and the lead car cuts across the blue sedan’s nose at the next intersection. Three cars close the street like a fist.
The blue sedan stops. One of our men gets out with his hands empty and his coat buttoned. Another opens the passenger door from the outside. The man inside raises both palms, then lowers one slowly when he sees who has him.
I leave them to question him.
“Report after,” I say.
Dima drives on.
The tire depot sits behind a chain-link fence and a sign faded almost blank. Snow is piled in dirty ridges near the gate. Past it, the yard holds stacked tires, dead trucks, oil drums, and a low brick building with grimy windows.
Ilya stands near the old service door at the back corner of the building with two of his men. He has a tablet in one hand and a pistol under his coat.
He points toward the door. “This is how they came in.”
We enter through the service door and step into stale heat, rubber dust, and old oil. The concrete floor is marked with snowmelt and tire mud. Someone swept near the entrance, but the corners were left dirty.
Inside the rear bay, the van sits with its doors open, white paint dirty, plates gone, and burn marks around the brackets. The rear latch matches the still from Riga, dent and all. The interior has been stripped of loose trash, floor wiped, handles wiped, dash wiped.
Ilya walks beside me. “No prints on the front surfaces. We bagged fibers from the driver’s seat. Nothing useful yet.”
“Show me the route.”
Ilya lifts the tablet. “After the Riga hit, they split. One van went west toward the port roads as the obvious trail.”
He drags two fingers across the map and enlarges the east side of the route.
“The support van left through the contractor exit under a refrigeration service plate. We caught it twice on traffic cameras, lost it near the border, then found it again outside Pskov after the plates changed.”
He taps a point outside Moscow.
“The last confirmed camera puts it near this maintenance cut before it reaches Moscow.”
The line passes behind the old brickworks road near my family’s house. It’s a bad route unless someone already knows why it matters.
I crouch near the back step and lift the rubber mat with two fingers. Gray grit clings beneath it.
The grit beneath the mat doesn’t match Riga, the warehouse, or a salted winter road. It comes from the old brickworks route near my family’s house. I know it because my men found the same dull gray flecks in the wheel well of a car photographed after the fire.
Ilya watches my face. “Same source?”
“Same method.”
Roman comes in from the front of the van holding an evidence bag. Inside lies a metal contractor token stamped with half a company mark. The edge is scorched and the center is scraped, but the remaining letters are enough.
“Vostok Meridian,” he says.
Patrick’s archive had Vostok Meridian hidden under hotel fronts, renovation invoices, and fake contractor companies. The same contractor mark also appeared in my family-house file, under fire repairs and payments that disappeared into cash.
Now the same name is here again, on a van tied to the Riga attack.
For one second, I see my father’s study after the fire. Blackened beams. Melted glass. My mother’s scarf near the rear stairs. The house was burning while I was in Boston with Cara.
I force myself back to the van and hand the evidence bag back to Roman.
“Pull every Vostok Meridian site,” I tell Ilya. “Current and archived.”
Ilya types as I speak. “And the van?”
“Strip it for evidence. Leave enough for Maksim.”
Dima appears at the bay entrance. “Blue sedan was local muscle. Paid cash, told to follow the middle car until we reached industrial roads.”
“Who paid him?”
“He says he doesn’t know.”
I look at him.
Dima’s mouth barely moves. “He’ll remember.”
“No noise here.”
Dima nods. Ilya’s tablet pings, and he turns it toward me. “There’s an old Vostok Meridian office fourteen minutes from here. Closed on paper. Storage yard behind it. Same shell as the one in Patrick’s archive.”
“Brickworks road?” I ask.
“Same ownership trail.”
“Send it to Abramov,” I say. “Run it against the Boston relay chain and Oleg’s false clearances.”
“Yes, Boss,” Ilya says.
Roman stands with another bag. “Fiber caught under the rear latch. Dark wool. Expensive.”
“Bag it.”
A vehicle moves outside, tires crunching over frozen gravel. Every man in the bay reacts at once. Roman steps left, Dima moves behind the van, and Ilya’s nearest road man heads for the side door.
The lead car reports through the channel. “White pickup at the north gate. Two men. Yard clothes. Wrong boots.”
“Hold,” I say.
The pickup stops outside the fence. One man gets out and lights a cigarette. The other stays in the cab. Yard clothes, cheap hats, no gloves, boots clean enough to call them liars.
Ilya watches the exterior feed on his tablet. “They’re checking whether we found it.”
“Let them see enough.”
He glances at me. “You want them to leave?”
“I want them to report.”
The cigarette man stands by the fence for forty seconds. His head tilts once toward the rear bay, then toward the road. A small nod to the man in the cab follows. The pickup leaves.
Ilya sends a message with one hand. “Roof team has them.”
“No grab.”
“Understood.”