Page 11 of The Mad Don
I nod.
He looks at me a moment longer.
“You did well last night, Yana. You were faster than they were. You called in before they had a chance to take you. That is the entire reason we are still standing here this morning.”
“Yes, Pakhan.”
“Go sleep. The doctor said you need it.”
“Yes, Pakhan.”
I stand. I go to the door.
“Yana.”
I turn.
He is at the window again, back to me, the morning light cutting hard across his shoulders.
“In two days,” he says, “we go to the meeting. You and me. We listen.”
“Yes, Pakhan.”
I close the door behind me. I walk back, thinking of the masked man. I do not know him. And yet there is a place behind mybreastbone where the memory of his eyes has lodged and will not move.
* * *
Kirill is in the passenger seat with his gloved hands resting on his knees and his eyes on the road ahead. There are two cars behind us.
The warehouse sits at the edge of a loading yard, back facing the water, the kind of building that has been many things over the years. I pull in and cut the engine. I get out and draw my weapon. Kirill goes around the front of the car, and the man steps out of the warehouse.
“We’ve been waiting,” he says. His eyes move to my gun. “If you’d hand that over —”
“Absolutely not,” I say.
“Yana.” Kirill’s voice. I look at him. He nods.
I hold out the gun.
“This is a dialogue,” the man says, taking it. “Nothing more. You have my word.” He steps back and gestures toward the door. “Come.”
Inside smells like old water. The space is large with industrial lighting that leaves the upper edges in shadow. And in a clearedarea, with his back to us, a man is shooting arrows at a paper target roughly twenty meters away.
“Don, they are here.”
TheDonhas a bow I recognize the make of, something custom by the look of it. He is wearing black trousers and a shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow. I find myself holding my breath without knowing why.
He turns, and our eyes meet. It’s Giorgio, and—I see on his collarbone the body of a snake in ink —he’s the man from the dock.He winks at me, and I look away.
It’s him; it’s been him all along. From the gallery to the container. No wonder he could replace our people without our knowledge. He was always close.
“Pavlovich.” He addresses Kirill directly, as if greeting someone at a dinner party. “It’s a genuine pleasure.”
Kirill shoots him.
He doesn’t flinch. The bullet hits the concrete floor two inches from his right foot, and the sound of it cracks through the warehouse and comes back at us from every wall.
He still has the bow in his hand. He looks down at the hole in the floor, then back up at Kirill and smiles.
