I school my expression. Maybe they don’t care, or maybe they assume I don’t understand them. But I learned Russian from my grandfather. I might have earned some respect from these guys with that skill, but Rust warned me years ago that it was a good secret to keep under wraps.
I spend the rest of the meal listening quietly while Andrei, Rust, and Vlad pepper casual conversation with hidden messages in both English and Russian. Comments about a contact in Israel. A shipyard, and a person who is willing to help them “cut through the red tape.” Someone on the receiving dock that had to be “managed.” Nothing that a clueless person would pick up on or become suspicious of.
All things that are making me insanely curious.
Even dressed in an Armani suit and sipping a cognac, I feel like a ten-year-old boy at a table of grown men talking about the stock market right now. Rust should have filled me in before bringing me here. There’s no doubt, by the way both Andrei and Vlad watch me, that this meeting is as much about me being weighed and measured as it is a business planning discussion. I can’t be sure what they’ll decide. Perhaps that I need to be drawn and quartered.
After another hour of witnessing Andrei and Vlad be dicks to the wait staff and toss cutting remarks about Americans as a whole, Vlad drops a pile of cash—just like Viktor, these guys are all about no paper trails—to cover the bill, and Andrei turns to me. “So your uncle says that you’re ambitious.”
There’s no room for doubt. “I am.”
A crooked smile touches Andrei’s lips, one that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I hope so.”
Chapter 6
CLARA
Bill taps candid shots of two stony faces up on the whiteboard with his chopsticks, the container of pad thai resting in his palm likely cold by now. “Andrei Bragin. Flew in from St. Petersburg two days ago. Staying with his son, Vladimir, who has permanent resident status after marrying his American-born trophy wife. They’ve just finished eating dinner at Corleone’s with 12 and 24. Our informant couldn’t catch anything useful. They’d switch to Russian every time she was near, unless they were insulting her.” He adds with a smirk, “Douchebag sent his lamb back. Twice.”
Everyone shares a collective groan, drowning out the buzz of the sports reel on the TV. It’s rather ingenious, having a female C.I. planted in a restaurant that many high-level criminals would frequent. She’s worked there for years, feeding random bits of intel whenever the Feds tap her on the shoulder.
My eyes drift over the four guys sitting around the board in our makeshift “safe house”—Bill’s garage in a Portland suburb, and by all rights a man cave. I’m used to these kinds of nights back home, getting together with my coworkers for a few drinks and to blow off some steam where we can all be ourselves.
But aside from Warner, I don’t know these guys very well. I feel like I need to. They’re part of my cover team. The guys who take care of me—who gather information and relay it to Sinclair and me, who make sure my condo’s gas and maintenance bills are paid and that I get anything I ask for to help with my case. The guys who are going to keep me alive through all of this.
We don’t meet like this often. In fact, we don’t ever meet like this, relying mainly on phone calls. But now it seems that our case has found its legs and is about to take off running. We need to be ready to chase after it.
“What do we have on them?” Franky, the lanky agent sitting in the corner of the faded beige couch, asks. He has ten years of experience on a federal auto theft task force, so he’s a great addition to the group.
“They’re definitely part of an organized family based out of St. Petersburg, with reach across most of the country. Both clean on the books. Off the books, there are some weak links to smuggling gold and diamonds. Nothing solid so far. Vlad’s got a mansion out in Burlingame. Nice area.”
That name rings a bell from the case files. “Didn’t 24’s business partner live out that way?” I ask Bill. From what Warner’s told me, Bill’s been doing cover detail on this case since the beginning.
“Viktor Petrova, yeah. He and Vlad used to golf together occasionally,” Bill confirms, his bottle of beer finding a nice resting place on his small, protruding belly. He’s got the typical over-forty cop body—still strong but padded.
Viktor. Another Russian mobster. Another dead end in the Fed’s attempts to break into this car theft ring, based on what I’ve read. Originally they tried getting in through Viktor’s trophy wife, planting an agent in college to befriend her. Then the wife disappeared without a trace, without a missing person’s report, without anything. A C.I. confirmed the official rumor was that she abandoned Viktor in the middle of the night. They assume she’s in a shallow grave somewhere, but they had no reason to show up at the doorstep asking questions. It was too risky to the investigation. Nothing’s been done to locate her since. It’s another detail of this case nagging at me.
Then the Feds moved on to a female C.I. who had some pillow-talk connections to Viktor. It may have worked, but he went and got himself killed.
“Alright. While Clara’s working over 12, let’s see what we can dig up on these guys. Franky, Rix—” Warner looks at the fourth guy, an agent well into his thirties who could pass for a twenty-year-old common thief with his baby face and a pair of worn jeans hanging from his hips. “Keep your ear to the street; look for any orders dropping.” Though this network of thieves and wheelmen normally sticks to their group of criminals, Rix has managed to form a friendship with one of them. After four months of throwing darts and drinking beers with the lowlife at a local dive, dropping hints here and there, the guy finally asked Rix to help him on a job. Rix—having all the knowledge and car theft gadgets, courtesy of the FBI—has impressed him with how proficient he is. Now Rix is just biding his time until word spreads and the fence seeks him out for orders. Asking for them would speed things up, but then Rix would get slapped with an entrapment claim and all his intel would be inadmissible. It’s a slow process, but it’s another way into this ring, and we have to try every possible angle if we’re going to get anywhere.