The screen shows a message from Grigor, one of our digital operatives who monitors communications in and around venues we use for sensitive meetings. The message is three lines long, and each one makes the warm whiskey in my stomach go cold.
He’s given us intercepted data fragments matching details from Bugrov meetings at Echelon. There are times, names, room selections, and security staffing levels transmitted to address linked to Karpov financial network. The source is internal to venue.
I read it twice. “How accurate is this?”
“Accurate enough that I ran a preliminary check while you were upstairs.” Viktor pulls up a second screen on his phone. “The data fragments go back at least six weeks. Somebody inside Echelon has been transmitting meeting details to Karpov with enough precision that they’re either in the room during our conversations or recording them.”
“Recording.” I don’t need to think about it. Karpov wouldn’t trust a human source inside the club when technology is cheaper and more reliable. “He’s using recording devices in the rooms.”
Viktor nods. “That’s my read.”
I look across the club toward Dominic’s office. The door is closed, and the light underneath it tells me he’s inside. “Pull the room maintenance logs for every VIP suite. I want access history, technical service records, and any modifications to audiovisual equipment in the last three months.”
Viktor already has his tablet out. “I’ll have Grigor run the access logs remotely. He can pull the maintenance history from Echelon’s management system if I give him Dominic’s network credentials.”
“You have Dominic’s network credentials?”
“I’ve had them since our second visit.” Viktor doesn’t look up from his tablet. “I cloned his admin login the night he left his tablet unlocked on the bar.”
That’s Viktor. He prepares for betrayals I haven’t imagined yet, and he does it without being asked.
Within twenty minutes, the picture comes together. Grigor’s analysis of the maintenance logs shows three of the fourVIP suites had unauthorized technical modifications within the last two months. Miniature recording devices were installed during routine maintenance windows, embedded in the ceiling ventilation panels where they wouldn’t be visible during casual inspection. The installations coincide exactly with a cleaning crew rotation that Dominic personally authorized, replacing the regular crew with a contracted team that worked two shifts and never returned.
Viktor reads the analysis over my shoulder. “The contracted crew was hired through a staffing agency in Hialeah that Grigor linked to one of Karpov’s shell companies. Dominic didn’t even bother using a clean intermediary.”
“He didn’t think he needed to.” This took time and confidence that nobody was watching. He brought in outside contractors under the cover of a routine cleaning rotation and installed surveillance equipment in rooms where I held private meetings. He was wrong about the watching part.
The devices captured audio from every private room meeting held during that period, including two of mine. The recordings were transmitted to a cloud server accessible through an encrypted link, and Grigor has already traced partial access to an IP address associated with Karpov’s shipping brokerage in Fort Lauderdale.
“How much did Karpov get from the two meetings of ours?” I keep my voice even, but Viktor hears the edge underneath.
“Enough.” Viktor scrolls through the file. “Lenkov’s name, the Bahamian routing changes, your directive to monitor Meridian Freight, and that I cloned Dominic’s admin credentials. If Karpov is smart, and he is, he now knows we were already watching Dominic before tonight.”
That changes the timeline. Karpov won’t wait for more recordings. He’ll move on whatever intelligence he already has, which means every decision I made in those rooms is now compromised.
Dominic sold recordings of my meetings to Damir Karpov, and he did it while shaking my hand, adjusting his watch, and performing the role of grateful subordinate every Thursday night.
I stand, and Viktor stands with me. We don’t need to discuss what happens next. Seventeen years of working together means certain conversations happen in silence, and this is one of them.
Dominic’s office is at the end of a service corridor behind the bar, past the kitchen entrance, and through a fire door the staff uses as a smoking exit. The corridor is empty. The music from the main floor is muffled here, reduced to bass and percussion that I feel through the floor more than hear. A dishwasher clatters somewhere in the kitchen, and a line cook shouts an order in Spanish that echoes off the tile walls.
I pass the door to the private room where I was inside Aurora thirty minutes ago. The thought arrives uninvited and unwelcome, because what I’m about to do in the next five minutes will put her at risk in ways I haven’t thought through, and I’m going to do it anyway because Dominic’s betrayal can’t survive the night.
I open the office door without knocking.
Dominic is sitting at his desk reviewing receipts on a laptop. He looks up with the reflexive smile he uses for anyone who walks through his door, and the smile freezes when he sees Viktor close the door behind us and stand in front of it.
“Adrian.” He recovers fast. He stands, adjusts his jacket, and comes around the desk with his hands open and his palms turned upward in a gesture he probably thinks looks cooperative. “I didn’t know you were still here. Is everything all right with the room?”
“Sit down, Dominic.”
He sits. The smile is gone. He reads the situation in the same two seconds it takes Viktor to lock the door, and the color drains from his face one shade at a time. He looks at Viktor standing against the door, then back at me, and plants both hands flat on the desk.
I put my phone on his desk with the screen showing Grigor’s analysis. “Explain this.”
He reads through the data, and his face shifts from confusion to recognition to panic. He opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again. “That’s... Adrian, I don’t know what…”
“Those are three recording devices in three VIP suites, installed during a maintenance rotation you authorized personally. The resulting audio from private meetings was transmitted to a server with access traced to Karpov’s network.” Anger is wasteful. Anger gives Dominic room to maneuver, play the victim, and stall. I give him nothing except the facts and the silence that follows them. “How long have you been selling my conversations to Damir Karpov?”
