"He is in the field, Aleksi."
"He gave me the intel. Why would he give me the intel and then sell it to Mr. K?"
"I don't know. That's why we're having this conversation." He picked up the teacup again. "He had a phone?"
"No."
"He had access to a phone?"
"No. Gregori has him under direct observation. The apartment doesn't have a landline. His insulin came through Collins. His clothes came through Gregori. The only people in the room with him have been me, Gregori, and Irina, and Irina doesn't speak English."
"So you have considered it."
"I considered it for about ninety seconds. Then I considered who else it could be and ranked them, and Fin came out at the bottom of the list because Fin had no fucking way to do it."
Nikita drank his tea. The room was quiet for a long time.
"Tell me about him."
"You've read the intake. You've read the brief I sent. You know what he —"
"Aleksi. Tell me about him."
I shut up. He waited. My head throbbed. Fucking hell. I'd rather have done another six rounds of Russian roulette in the warehouse. At least the gun was honest about what it was.
"Twenty-two. Edinburgh. Family of leatherworkers. The grandfather restored estate pieces; the father did bespoke goods. Father was killed about seven months ago by the same operation that took Fin. They needed the leatherwork. They got it out of the kid by killing his father in front of him, more or less, and then putting him on a plane to Ohio. The Italians ran him out of the East Side workroom for six months. He sewed for them. He's good. He was at the warehouse the night we hit it because they'd pulled him off the workroom to do a job they didn't want any of the women to do. They left him to die when they cleared out."
"And he's living in your apartment."
"I keep him in cuffs."
There was a beat of silence as he considered me. I should keep my mouth shut. I knew that. Men with nothing to say only let stupid shit fall out of their mouths, and Nikita was damn good at getting them to talk. Didn't stop me, though.
"He's working on Pop's jacket."
"Sacha's jacket?"
I nodded. "He identified the leather from across the table. The yuft. The birch oil. He smelled it. He knew the workshop. He laid out a conservation plan that —"
"Aleksi."
"— that combines bookbinding restoration with —"
"Aleksi."
I stopped.
"I'm not asking about the jacket."
"I know."
"Then stop telling me about the jacket."
Nikita stood up and walked to the cabinet on the side wall, pulling out the bottle of vodka he kept there, the good stuff withthe Cyrillic label that came in once a month from a guy who knew a guy. He poured two glasses and walked one back to me.
I frowned at the glass. "It's ten o'clock, Nikita."
"And you are hungover. Drink. It will help."
