He doesn’t look convinced, but he lets it go.
I call later that night. My old man picks up on the second ring, which tells me he’s been expecting this.
“Lev.” There’s no concern in his voice. He delivers my name like a line item on a ledger.
“I wanted to update you on the Taganskaya situation.”
“You mean the situation where my son was shot three times and failed to report it for nine days?”
“It happened fast,” I say. “I was losing blood. There was no time to call Gagarin. We went to the closest trauma center, because the other option was dying in the back seat.”
Silence.
“And after surgery?”
“I was on morphine and barely conscious for three days. After that, it was handled. I stayed quiet so it didn’t turn into a bigger problem.”
More silence. He’s doing the math, checking my story against what he already knows. I can feel where it doesn’t hold.
“Who shot you? Are they alive?”
“Petrov’s people. Two of them. I have names.”
“Give them to Frol.”
“I’d rather handle it.”
“You should have called.” He doesn’t specifywhoI should’ve called. Doesn’t have to. “Don’t let it happen again.”
He hangs up without saying goodbye. Standard. Vadim Morozov doesn’t waste words on pleasantries, not even with his sons. Especially not with the son he considers expendable.
I set the phone on the counter and exhale. He isn’t satisfied. He’ll file this away with every other thing I’ve done “wrong,” and sooner or later, he’ll demand answers I can’t give.
Frol will call within the hour. He always does after one of us talks to our father. We compare notes and try to figure out what he meant. My brother reads him better than I do. I read everyone else better than my brother.
Between us, we’ve stayed alive.
By 9 p.m., I’m in a black BMW registered under a fake name, sitting with the engine off, two blocks from Moscow General. Waiting for Polina’s shift to end.
Getting shot didn’t cure me of this habit.
The staff entrance opens onto a side street with parked cars and a few scraggly trees. A security guard sits in a booth by the gate, glued to his screen. Half the lot is empty.
She comes out at 9:24 in a navy coat. Her hair is down for once. Bag on one shoulder. Eyes on her phone while she walks.
It bugs the hell out of me. Anyone could be watching her.
Like the dark sedan across the street.
Two men are inside with the engine idling. I recognize the plates before the faces. My old man’s people.
Low-level surveillance. The kind he uses to track rivals and “persons of interest.” They’re watching Polina because she’s a Kozlov, not because they’ve tied her to me. I’ve seen them here before.
The driver smokes with the window cracked, an amateur move. A cigarette in a dark car is visible from blocks away, and an open window means their talk carries. They’re just bottom-rung guys, here to log her schedule, spot her patterns, and report back.
But routine surveillance becomes dangerous when the subject does things worth reporting. Like receives orchids from anonymous admirers. If these two dig deeper or ask the wrong nurse the right question, everything unravels.
I dial Ruslan.
