24. Dmitri
DMITRI
Patrick surfaces through an old channel. Not in person. Not through a clean sighting. Definitely not with my hands around his throat.
Abramov finds Patrick’s trail inside an old Vostok Meridian vendor account. The account was tied to hotel renovation work. It was supposed to be dead, but Patrick had used it to hide old records.
The account connects to three things.
First, Sable Crown Courier. It moved sealed paper packets between shell companies.
Second, a charity transfer memo was copied from Elena’s foundation papers without her approval.
Third, one fake aid name hidden in Patrick’s notes.
New Harbor Medical Aid.
We have seen that name before. Cara found the Boston clinic reference inside a New Harbor Medical Aid batch. New Harbor also sits in the middle of the old pattern. Patrick’s money trail, Oleg Baranov’s false clearances, and the Vostok Meridian shell Morozov keeps using to hide his work.
Abramov and I walk toward the comms center in the main estate building with two guards behind us and the corridor cleared ahead.
Cara follows.
I hear her before I look back. Her steps are uneven after the delivery yard injury, but she keeps walking anyway.
“Shouldn’t you be with Mikhail?” I ask without stopping.
Cara pulls her cardigan tighter around her body. “He’s sleepy, and Kathryn will put him to bed. I have work.”
I look back at her.
She already has her mouth ready for trouble. “What? I’m here to debug the thugware.”
Abramov makes a sound that may be a cough.
I keep walking. “Thugware doesn’t rhyme with anything useful.”
Cara comes up beside me. “It rhymes with nightmare if you bill hourly.”
I shake my head. There’s no beating Cara.
The comms center is awake when we arrive. Yuri has the screens open at the first console. Kirill cross-checks timestamps from Patrick’s archive against vendor payment windows. Secure phones blink across the table, and one call starts before the last one ends.
My secure phone sits near Mikhail’s red toy car.
He gave it to me after breakfast because, according to him, it was made to race and win, and I looked like I might need it. Cara sees the red car before she sees the screens. Surprise softens her face, then she looks at me.
She understands exactly why it is there.
Yuri points at his monitor. “The vendor account woke up less than an hour ago,” Yuri says. “It was supposed to be dead. Someone touched it.”
Abramov turns one screen toward us. “That account links to the delivery materials for tomorrow’s charity dinner.”
Cara stops in the doorway. “Which charity?”
I look at her. “You weren’t cleared to work.”
She doesn’t look away from the screen. “I wasn’t cleared to be kidnapped either.”
The line comes out tired, with none of her usual bite. That bothers me more than the disobedience. When Cara stops being scared, she becomes scary. I catch myself worrying about the woman limping into a comms center because work is the only thing keeping her upright.
Yuri brings up the guest file. “The invitation is clean. Elena’s office selected the charity for tomorrow night. Leonid vetted the representative. Abramov’s people cleared the guest.”
Cara steps closer. “Then where’s the breach?”
Kirill turns the next file toward us. “The guest is clean. The delivery channel is not.”
He taps the screen. “Someone used Oleg’s old service path to push dinner packets, sealed documents, and event materials into the house through Sable Crown Courier.”
Cara looks at him. “I thought Oleg was exposed.”
“He was,” Abramov says, tapping the folder. “Major routes were cut off. Smaller delivery access stayed open under watch.”
Cara’s eyes narrow. “You left him a path?”
Abramov doesn’t blink. “A watched one.”
I look at the screen. “And someone used it.”
Cara’s face changes as she follows the route. “Patrick isn’t trying to get on the guest list.”
“No,” I say.
Her eyes lift to mine. “He’s using the dinner packets to put a message at the table.”
Abramov reaches for the nearest secure phone. “We can cancel the delivery access.”
Cara looks back at the screen. “Let him think it still works.”
I don’t like that she’s right.
Maksim arrives before I can answer. Elena is at his side, and Leonid follows them with a slim folder. Dima comes in last and takes the rear wall. Every man in the comms center sits straighter. Cara stays where she is with one hand on the back of Yuri’s chair and her eyes on the charity file.
Maksim looks at her, then at me. “What did he touch?”
Abramov points to the main screen. “A dormant vendor account under Sable Crown Renovation woke up less than an hour ago,” he says. “My office flagged it because it used Oleg’s old service path.”
Yuri brings up the next file. “The account pushed a courier order through Sable Crown Courier. It’s tied to the same Vostok shell network.”
Abramov taps the route map. “The courier order is for tomorrow’s dinner materials.”
Yuri opens another file. “Berezka Print Services made the materials. Menus, dinner cards, table folders, place cards, guest packets. Hundreds of pieces.”
Cara looks at the screen. “So the delivery looks normal.”
“Yes,” Yuri says. “That’s the point.”
Maksim folds his hands. “Where is the message?”
Abramov points to the main screen. “The message itself isn’t marked. It could be inside any one of the dinner packets.”
Elena’s face clouds over. “So we don’t know which piece carries it.”
Elena looks at Maksim. “Then cancel the dinner.”
Maksim’s face hardens. “No.”
Elena’s eyes narrow. “Maksim.”
“No,” he says again. “We cancel, and every man in Moscow knows someone scared us inside our own house. We lose face, and Morozov wins before he sits down.”
Abramov’s deputy brings up a tablet. Abramov looks at it, and his face clears. “Berezka Print Services handles printed materials for Nadezhda Children’s Medical Fund.”
Leonid looks at the guest list. “Nadezhda’s medical supply contact is expected at tomorrow’s dinner.”
Elena looks up. “Lena Markovic?”
Abramov nods. “Medical supply consultant. Clean on paper.”
Elena looks genuinely surprised. “She works with the public side of many charities.”
Yuri opens the service record. “She’s cleared for the dinner, and one dinner packet is listed under her name.”
I turn toward Maksim. “We can watch the courier. Control the packets. Track the handoff.”
Cara answers before Maksim does. “If Patrick built this right, the handoff isn’t the whole message.”
Maksim studies her. “Say it clearly.”
Everyone looks at her.
Cara points at the charity name. “You want Patrick. This could bring him closer.”
“Explain,” Maksim says.
“Patrick would expect you to search ledgers, freeze accounts, chase couriers, and scare everyone off,” Cara says. “He wouldn’t expect someone to sit at dinner and listen.”
Dima shifts near the rear wall. “Listen for what?”
“The person who reacts wrongly,” Cara says.
Yuri frowns. “That’s not a technical category.”
“It should be,” Cara says. “Systems tell you what happened. People tell you why they thought they could get away with it.”
Elena’s face changes. Her foundation papers have already been copied once. Now the dinner under her roof is being used too.
“He wants a reaction,” Elena says, one hand tightening on the edge of the table.
Cara nods. “A bad one. One person says the message too easily. Someone corrects themselves, checks a phone, or overexplains the charity work.”
Her mouth tightens. She turns to Elena. “Add me to the dinner list.”
“No,” I say, stepping between her and the screen. “You aren’t bait.”
“Patrick is laying bait,” Cara says. “He wants someone in that room to hear the message and react.”
She looks back at the delivery file on the screen. The entry for Lena Markovic’s dinner packet sits in the middle of it. “I know how he builds traps like this.”
“He only needs someone in that room to notice you,” I say, lowering my voice. “If you react, they’ll know you understood him. If they connect you to Mikhail, Patrick gets another way in. And if you start a scene, Volkov has to move in front of everyone.”
“Then put Elena beside me, put your men around the exits, and let me listen.”
Elena turns to Maksim. “I’ll go with her.”
Maksim looks at Elena, then at Cara. “She attends.”
My hand curls into a fist. I tighten it until my palm hurts, then make myself let go.
Yuri’s monitor flashes.
Abramov leans in. “The courier has reached the estate service gate.”
The status changes.
Delivered.