Life surged in Raphael’s veins. The night sparkled around him, and air filled his body as he breathed.
In only a few minutes, it was over.
Magnus stretched one of his arms. “Wasn’t even sporting.”
Raphael signaled the Ilyin Bratva’s men with his radio.
They climbed into the cabs of the trucks and drove into the night. The red lights on the backs of the trucks faded away in the dark.
Magnus bumped his shoulder against Raphael’s in a bro-hug after a successful operation. “See you next time.”
As he blended into the dark, Raphael felt paper rustle in his pocket after another expert bump-pass.
Magnus would find a flash drive in his pocket because bump-passes can go both ways.
Raphael grinned as he walked to his rendezvous point for pick-up.
The night seemed more beautiful, and he could hardly wait to get back to Flicka. His skin craved her, and his flesh hungered for her taste and touch.
Magnus's Note
Raphael Mirabaud
I knew the Rogues hadn’t signed up for this.
When Raphael returned to the Mirabaud estate after stealing the guns, he excused himself from Flicka—who had been pacing and was relieved to see him—to the bathroom, locked the door, and examined the paper that Magnus had passed to him.
The note was a quarter of a sheet of paper so as not to make a noticeable lump in his utility pocket after the bump-pass, and it read, Rogues are suspicious that you are compromised with this operation. They didn’t sign up to be Russian guards bought by crimelords. Not sure how much longer I can hold onto this.
Raphael sucked a deep breath and sighed.
Hopefully, when Magnus saw the reams of scanned pages and electronic copies of Geneva Trust’s data on the flash drive, he would change his mind about whose side Raphael was on.
Raphael flushed the note down the toilet and went back to the living room, grabbed his wife, and dragged the giggling woman to bed like the adrenaline-drunk caveman he was.
More Instructions
Raphael Mirabaud
I knew what the shipment would be.
I just had to hear it from him
before I burned it all down and put us all in danger.
The next meeting with Piotr Ilyin was scheduled for after lunch in a park instead of his usual restaurant. Good to know that Piotr wasn’t stupid.
Raphael flipped his overcoat’s collar up to cover the back of his neck and tucked the lapels more closely under his chin. The wind cut through his coat. Frozen air skimmed over Lake Geneva, and blowing ice settled on the city. His thin leather gloves barely slowed the cold’s sharp bite.
Being outside for any length of time in this abominable weather was suspicious. Meeting in a nearly deserted park in early December was suspicious. Rogue Security needed to teach these amateurs some basic tradecraft.
Of course, Raphael wasn’t going to volunteer help to the Ilyin Bratva. If the police caught Piotr, then he got caught. That would be one of the better outcomes of this situation.
The park wasn’t entirely uninhabited. A few pedestrians hurried along the frozen sidewalks amongst the skeletal trees that shivered in the wind.
Not many.
Not enough for cover.
Half of them were probably Ilyin’s men.
Up ahead on the sidewalk, Piotr Ilyin was walking toward them, his head down against the wind and his hands tucked deeply in the pockets of his long, black coat. The wind sharpened, and Piotr grabbed his dark fedora, pressing it more firmly on his head.
When the two groups met, Piotr looked around. “No Valerian today?”
“It’s cold,” Raphael said.
“This would be a nice fall day in Moscow,” Piotr said, grinning and rubbing his hands together. “You haven’t done away with him, have you?”
Raphael didn’t move his face. “Now why would I do that?”
Piotr laughed. “I like you, Raphael Mirabaud. You have a Russian sense of humor now. You’re funnier than you were as a teenager. You understand our traditions, and that is invaluable to us.”
He shrugged. Yes, his sense of humor had darkened since he was a youth who thought organized crime was a lark. “Do you have something for me?”
“There will be another shipment coming in that you need to take control of.”
“I don’t think the smash-and-grab will work again. They’ll be smarter.”
“It’s not guns this time, my friend, and we don’t have to steal this one. This transport is addressed to us, so there will be no competition for it. I have fifteen Russian girls coming in from Veliky Novgorod for sale.”
The ice that blasted through Raphael had nothing to do with the weather.
He didn’t so much as blink. “How old are they?”
“That shouldn’t matter to you.”
“I have to identify them. We wouldn’t want to call attention to ourselves by grabbing a group of Catholic schoolgirls who rode the wrong bus.”
“Ah, pragmatic. I like that. Between the ages of eight and fourteen, depending on what their buyers want them for.”
Horror.
That’s what their buyers wanted them for, utter horror. Buying a girl for a night or so was easy. You didn’t have to leave home or spend vast amounts for that. There were even phone apps to have one delivered.
But an untraceable girl without a name, without anyone who would come looking for her?
Most of them wouldn’t live a year. Some wouldn’t survive the weekend. All of them would eventually be just another unidentified body or an unmarked grave.
That’s what had broken him last time: that children were being knowingly sold for sadistic abuse and murder. He’d been only a few years older than they were. He hadn’t even had to look into their eyes. The minute he’d understood what they were doing and what his father was complicit in, he’d started planning how to go to the police to save them.
To hell with people if they wanted to buy a fake designer watch or purse rather than shell out thousands for the real thing. They were getting what they paid for. Ditto with drugs. If people wanted drugs, he would hand them over. Take them. Give up your money.
But selling children for murder should be everyone’s sharp, dark line, and Raphael had set himself on fire rather than cross it.
He said, “I assume I’ll have some sort of paperwork for them.”
“Of course. Each of them will come with two passports with different names on them. Most of their buyers live outside the Schengen area, so they’ll need passports and visas and such to take them wherever they want to use them. We don’t want the same name entering and leaving the area. Too traceable.”
“So we’ll have the passports,” Raphael said, to confirm.
“Of course. Wouldn’t want them to get the idea of running off.”
Raphael twisted the corners of his mouth until they were curved up. “Good.”
Piotr Ilyin’s smile broadened. “I have seen your attempt at a loyalty pledge, but actions speak louder than words. That last shipment of girls fifteen years ago cost me millions that your family had to pay back. The good will of the clients was harder to recoup. I will not have a traitor in my ranks. We’ll have no more of this running off with the merchandise and disappearing, will we? If that were to happen again, bad things might happen to those two pretty blondes of yours.”
“You don’t have to spell it out,” Raphael said, letting a distasteful sneer thin his voice. “I was a child. Children do stupid things.”
“I don’t think you were ever a child, Raphael Mirabaud.”
“I guess we’ll see then, won’t we? Once this operation is complete, there will be no return to the other side of the line for me. I’ll be complicit. I’ll be just as guilty as anyone else in your organization. That’s as good as enthusiasm, isn’t it?”
“Certainly,” Piotr Ilyin said. “That’s how I started. Past complicity in criminal offenses is as good of a reason as any.”
/>
More Messages
Flicka von Hannover
I couldn’t set this one on fire.
Flicka strolled around the park, watching Alina out of the corner of her eye to make sure she didn’t take a tumble or wasn’t mistreated by the other children. Alina was savvy, though. Other kids didn’t mistreat her. If anything, she was the bellwether sheep that the other children followed around the playground, especially now that she was babbling French more fluently.
The Russian guards were becoming more comfortable with the park now that they’d been coming for several weeks without incident. Flicka smiled serenely as she snapped her shiny Hannover armor shut around herself and watched for any little opening where she might grab Alina and bolt.
The guards weren’t that lax, unfortunately, even when they were stomping their feet and blowing into their hands against the cold.
She was becoming desperate, though. Raphael was quietly more distressed every day. Valerian seemed angrier at supper in the evenings, though it was hard to tell with him. His smile at Sophie’s conversation seemed more strained, and he spoke less, even aiming fewer veiled threats at Raphael.
Which meant Raphael must already know all the threats.
More people were walking in the park on that wintry day than on previous days that week. The weather had been stormy, lately, and this was the first crisp, sunny day.
Flicka’s long-taught sense of situational awareness noted the odd increase of people, but they seemed to be a cross-section of Swiss society that didn’t set off alarm bells. Older men and women, at least as far as she could see under the mufflers and hats, shuffled along the salted sidewalks, and people in suits paired with long, formal coats walked briskly like they had somewhere to go and were taking a shortcut through the park.
As she was strolling along the sidewalk, her eyes on Alina to make sure that she wasn’t taking off her mittens again, a man bumped her, apologized, and was on his way. Flicka recovered her balance and looked around.
The Russian guards had jumped when it happened.
One was holding Alina in his arms. Alina’s pale green eyes were wide above her blue muffler, but she wasn’t crying.
Two others stood beside Alina’s captor, facing away.
Three more burly Russian guards had triangulated Flicka in case this was an escape attempt. She waved them off and continued walking, her head held high.
The man holding Alina gently set her on her feet and straightened her hat, pulling it down to protect her ears before he let her run off and rejoin the other children.
Flicka walked casually around the playground, greeting and talking with the other nannies and grandparents, and gave no indication that the man who had bumped her had shoved something into her coat pocket.
She felt it with her gloves, cupping her hand around it to hide its outline and weight.
It was a flat tile, thinner and longer than a deck of cards.
A cell phone.
In the car, she slipped it out of her coat pocket and into her boot, really glad she was wearing ankle-high boots that day. Knee-length would have been too difficult. Anything lower wouldn’t have hidden it.
At the Mirabaud estate, she went into a bathroom and powered it on.
A text flashed on the screen.
If you’re being held against your will, call or text me. I will send everything that Monaco has to rescue you. The army. The Secret Service. Everything. I will do everything to bring you home. Keep this phone with you. We can track it. ~Pierre
There was only one contact in the phone: Pierre Monaco.
That bastard must have a secret phone line as well as a secret email account.
Damn it, she’d been hoping for a gun or something else, not an invitation to sexual and reproductive slavery from her ex-husband.
And yet, if it would save Alina’s life—
Flicka frowned and considered the phone, heavy in her hand.
Traitor, Again
Raphael Mirabaud
Angels, archangels, Raphael,
and Dieter Schwarz.
Later in the afternoon after the meeting, Raphael sat in his office with the door locked, video-conferencing with his old friend Basch Favre, formerly Wachtmeister Favre of ARD-10 and now Colonel of Police for the Canton of Geneva.
A headset pinched Raphael’s ears. Anyone listening at the door wouldn’t be able to hear Basch’s voice. He held Bastien’s burner phone in his hand, streaming the video conference through software that he’d downloaded from a thoroughly disreputable source supplied by his Rogue hacker, Blaise Lyon.
Basch Favre was wearing the dark uniform of the Geneva Cantonal Police with its shiny ribbons and badges. A steaming cup of coffee sat at his elbow on his wide, pristine desk. Basch was still keeping his office military-style orderly. Behind Basch, the certificates and commendations were nailed to the wall in matching black frames, square to each other and the corners of the room, as regimented as a military parade.
Raphael also had a cup of coffee on his desk, steaming the afternoon sunlight that glared in the window behind him.
On the tiny screen, Basch stared at the piece of paper in his hands, glanced up at Raphael through the camera, and looked back down at the paper. He was breathing hard, like someone had punched him in the chest. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing.”
Raphael shrugged.
He’d wrestled with himself the whole time he’d been in Geneva about going to the police and revealing himself. The danger to Flicka and Alina from him not going to the police finally outweighed the danger of him calling them. With Piotr’s instructions concerning the “shipment” of children, he couldn’t wait any longer. When Raphael refused to go through with it, Piotr Ilyin would kill all three of them.
That might even be one of Piotr’s plans.
Plan A: the shipment of girls is fulfilled. Money is deposited in the Bratva’s accounts at Geneva Trust.
Plan B: Raphael Mirabaud is proven to be the traitor in the organization. He is executed, together with his wife and child, as a warning to those who would double-cross the Ilyin Bratva.
Either plan would be an acceptable endpoint.
Carl von Clausewitz would have approved.
Basch’s brown eyes flicked from the paper to Raphael’s face and back again. “We were in ARD-10 together.”
“Yes, I was there,” Raphael whispered, his tone turning dry. He’d thought it would go better than this.
“For years. I knew you for years. I scraped you off the floor and poured you into your bed in the barracks more than once. We were deployed on God-only-knows how many missions together.”
“Felt like forever.”
Basch stared at the paper, breathing hard. “You never said a damn word.”
“Obviously not.”
Basch looked up at him through the screens, letting the paper fall to the desk. “You’re the Archangel source.”
Raphael shrugged. During their first phone call, he’d recited a secret code from many years ago to confirm his identity. This was all recapitulation.
Basch shook his head. “I didn’t even know that Archangel was one source until I was promoted to major. Below major, no one is sure whether you exist or that the information came from wiretaps or microphones planted somewhere. You’re like a ghost. You’re a legend. You’re the most closely guarded secret in the police force. I wrote a report on the Archangel raids during my officer exams, and I wasn’t sure a person was the source, let alone you, Dieter.”
Dieter. The name felt like a ghost haunting him.
Raphael shrugged. “I’m still alive, so people must have kept their mouths shut.”
“The Archangel raids were so many years ago. We’re the same age. How old were you while you were an informant?”
“Sixteen for the most part. I was resettled a few months after I turned seventeen.”
“You knew that much about the Ilyin Bratva when you were sixteen years old. That’s insane. It was never even whis
pered that the Archangel source was a kid.”
“Part of the misdirection, I imagine,” Raphael said.
Basch stared at him through the screen. “And now you’re back.”
Raphael leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his desk and whispering into the microphone near his mouth. “That’s the longer story.”
“And you’re working with the Ilyin Bratva again.”
He nodded. “Reluctantly.”
“I can’t believe they didn’t shoot you on sight.”
“Yet.”
“Yet,” Basch echoed, picking up the sheet of paper again.
“Valerian Mirabaud is holding my wife and child. I need to get them out. There’s a situation in a few days where everything will break open again, just like last time. I need the safety of my wife and child to be your first priority.”
Basch squinted at him. “Why would the head of Geneva Trust have your family? They’re obviously dirty, but none of the board was implicated during the Archangel raids.”
Raphael took a deep breath and let it out, stalling for these last few seconds of anonymity. “Because Valerian Mirabaud is my father.”
On the tiny phone screen, Basch reared back. “What!”
“I’m Raphael Mirabaud.”
“Oh, my God. Raphael disappeared the night of the Archangel raids. The official report says that he’s presumed dead.”
“I was resettled with the name Dieter Schwarz.”
Basch’s eyes widened further. “That’s how they got the Archangel code name. Raphael, an archangel.”
“Basch, I don’t have time to hash this out with you right now. People are watching me. I will text locations to you for the next shipment, but I need you to secure my wife and child first. If you don’t, Piotr Ilyin will execute them to make a statement, at the very least. It will probably be worse than that.”
At Midnight (Runaway Princess: Flicka, Book 4) Page 19
