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Sergei

The man sitting in front of me in the interrogation room was named Boris Sarkisian. He was forty-two and part of the Petrosyan transport crew. He had a wife in Montreal he hadn’t seen in fourteen months, a son in school under her maiden name, and seventy-six thousand dollars in gambling debt to a bookmaker who worked for Levon Petrosyan.

None of that mattered as much as the photograph of Alessia and me lying between us, the one he’d been found holding no less than an hour ago.

Sarkisian’s navy coat had been taken from him. Without it, he looked smaller than he had across the street from the armorer, though his body still carried the dense, compact strength of a man accustomed to moving crates no customs officer was permitted to inspect. His right arm had been secured against his chest after my team forced his shoulder into the alley wall and dislocated it. It had since been reset. The injury was probably pretty painful, but not permanent.

His future comfort level all depended on how the next few minutes went, though.

I stood across from him and placed both hands on the table. “Who gave you the photograph?” I began.

He stared at the wall over my shoulder. “I found it.”

“Where?”

“On the street.”

I waited.

Silence made inexperienced men nervous. They filled it with nonsense because they mistook the absence of a question for an opportunity to regain control. More experienced men understood silence was pressure. They prepared for the next threat, the next blow, the moment the man across from them revealed whether he was patient or merely pretending to be.

Sarkisian lasted eleven seconds.

“I don’t know who printed it,” he said. “It came with the instructions.”

“Was it from Levon?”

His eyes shifted. It was only a small movement, but it was enough.

“Partly from Levon then,” I said.

His mouth tightened.

I leaned back. “Levon wants Alessia. The second part was someone else’s orders, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Levon knows you’ve been taken,” I explained his situation to him quietly. “He also knows you failed. Men like him do not send rescue teams for failed spotters. They erase them before someone else can ask useful questions.”

“You think your family is different?”

“Yes.”

The certainty in my answer irritated him. It showed all over his face.

Good.

“My family does not pretend disposable men are brothers,” I continued. “You tell me what you know, and you leave this room alive. You lie again, and I give Levon enough time to decide you have already talked before I release you.”

His eyes narrowed. “He’ll kill me either way.”

“Probably.”

“That’s your offer?”

“My offer is the chance to choose which enemy you face.”

He looked down at the photograph, and for the first time, fear reached his face without disguise.