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The Bratva’s Secret Heir

Page 129

by Leona White

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Yuri and Kirill sit before a row of screens wearing headsets as they trace the credential used to access the estate archive and the north-gate blackout. Petrov checks six months of payments made to the plumbing company that entered the estate fourteen days ago. Beside him, Leonid reads the company’s registration papers and checks the names of its owners.

Abramov stands near the estate map and listens to guards report which rooms and people they’ve searched. He lowers the radio from his mouth when he sees me.

“We’re looking for the printer used to make Misha’s photograph.”

I nod.

At some point, I take a cigarette from Kirill’s packet and light it. It burns between my fingers.

Mrs. Wentworth enters with a brown coffee pot and seven cups.

“Black coffee,” she says as she sets them on the table. Her eyes move over my shirt and pause at the uneven buttons before returning to my face. “I left crackers as well.”

She closes the door quietly behind her.

Kirill enlarges the courtyard photograph on the center screen. The picture was taken at two seventeen three days ago, after Abramov sealed the estate.

Kirill uses his dying cigarette to light another, then crushes the first into the ashtray. Smoke hangs above the black screens and mixes with the smell of the coffee Mrs. Wentworth brought down.

Dmitri stands behind him with his arms folded. “Tell me how the bastard got the picture out.”

“The camera used a cellular connection,” Kirill says. “It uploaded the pictures to a server in Warsaw.”

Abramov turns from the estate map. “Explain.”

“The camera sent its pictures to the outside server. Someone opened them there. They used another connection to send orders to the phone inside.”

“You checked the accounts?” I ask.

“I did,” Kirill says. “Naturally, the accounts were opened under stolen identities and linked to prepaid numbers.” He blows smoke away from the screen.

“What about the devices used during the attack?” I ask.

Dmitri points to a second evidence bag at the far end of the table. A transmitter with cut wires sits inside it. “Abramov’s men found that in the medical-bay wall.”

“It stayed there for fourteen days,” Dmitri says.

Yuri opens three pictures on the next screen. The first shows the camera from the courtyard drain. The second shows the fake temperature monitor from the sealed medical bin. The third shows the transmitter from the medical-bay wall.

I look at each device. “Start with the west wing.”

“The fake medical order got two men and their equipment past the outer guards,” Kirill says. “The fake monitor copied a guard’s door pass.”

“And the transmitter sent the copied pass to the inner door,” I say, putting my cigarette in the ashtray.

“Yes. The door accepted the pass and opened without an alarm.”

“Once the door opened, two more men came in through the service hall,” Abramov continues. “The fifth entered through the pool passage after the cameras went dark.”

Dmitri looks toward the holding-room feed. “Was he the one Sergei took alive?”

“We don’t know yet.”

Dmitri reaches around Kirill, takes his coffee, and drinks from it.

Kirill looks away from the screen at the empty space beside his hand. “That was mine.”