26
Lev
Tony is explaining the Batumi account structure, and I’m thinking about Polina’s mouth.
More specifically, I’m thinking about the way she convulsed in my arms when she came.
That was two days ago.
I’ve spent most of the time since in this conference room, sitting across from Tony and Boris and a rotating cast of men trying to decide whether I’m worth keeping alive. At least forty percent of my brain has been tied up in what happened in that gym.
Still, I answer Tony’s question. The Batumi account numbers are automatic. I built that myself, and pulling it up takes about as much effort as breathing. Useful for the current operation. Less useful for my concentration, since it keeps freeing up mental space I could be putting to better use.
Ruslan watches me from across the table, knows exactly where my attention has gone, and chooses, out of loyalty, to sayabsolutely nothing about it. I appreciate that more than I’ll ever tell him.
“We decoded something out of a relay station in Ryazan,” Tony states, setting his pen down. “Came in two nights ago.” He opens a new folder and pushes it across.
I read the first page. By the second, I know exactly what I’m looking at.
“He’s moving on all three territories simultaneously,” I realize aloud.
“Tver, Yaroslavl, the southern Moscow corridor.” Tony folds his hands on the table. “End of month. Twelve days.”
I set the folder down. My father has been building a coordinated three-front operation for weeks. The timeline isn’t a response to my defection. He may have accelerated it, but the structure was already in place before I walked through these gates. Looks like he’s done waiting to see if I’d come back and decided to move without me.
“The Tver operation,” Tony prompts. “How much do you know about the structure?”
“I designed it two years ago.” I push the folder back. “Entry points, timing windows, the chain of command between ground teams and the operational directors. He’s running my blueprint exactly.”
Tony looks up. “Which raises the question of why.”
“Yes,” I agree. “It does.”
Because my father knows I’m here. My guess is he figured out Polina is a Kozlov. Even if his network needed a few days toidentify her, they’ve had enough time by now. It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots. He knows I walked through Dmitri’s gates willingly and handed over everything I had. Running my blueprint after that should be the last thing he does.
“Or,” Boris says from the doorway, “he’s running it because he doesn’t care that you know. Because his timeline is aggressive enough that it doesn’t matter.”
Dmitri follows Boris in. Alexei comes last and takes up his usual position against the far wall, scowling in my direction. He does this every session—takes up space without ever fully entering the room.
Dmitri reads both pages without speaking. When he looks up, he addresses me. “Walk me through the Tver entry structure.”
I walk him through all of it—the three access points, the timing windows built around the security rotation, the staging site that exists in no official record because I made sure of it, and the two directors who coordinate with my father’s office, along with the specific couriers they use. Boris takes notes as I go. Tony checks something on his tablet and nods.
“If he knows you’re here,” Dmitri says, “and he’s running your blueprint anyway, what does that tell you about how much time he thinks we have?”
“That he doesn’t think we have enough. He knows what a counter-operation of this scale requires. He’s betting we’re not ready. And… he might be right.”
“He’s not right about the Tver entry points,” Boris states. “Not anymore.”
“You know how to take it apart?” Dmitri asks.
“Yes.”
“Then we use that.”
Alexei doesn’t move from the wall. “Or maybe this is exactly how you’d build a trap if you wanted us to walk straight into it.”
Tony keeps writing. “He’s had two weeks to put us in a bad position. He hasn’t. The Volga routes held up against eighteen months of port authority records. The Kazan floor plans matched our independent verification on all four levels.”
