An unsavory thought.
“You own two strip clubs?”
“I own many.”
“From Russian intelligence to sleazy strip clubs. You’ve moved up in the world, Bore.”
“I am a richer man now.”
“You harass all your customers like this?”
“Customer? Not you—you are a snoop.”
“Oryol Financial Group. That your company?”
He looked impressed.
“Yes. It is my company. How do you know that?”
“I’ve got sources.”
He almost smiled.
“Touché, Mr. Lane.”
“A financial group and strip clubs. They don’t seem to match.”
“That is none of your concern.”
“So your strip clubs paid for this fancy yacht?”
“You like it. Yes? It is sleek and elegant. Built to the highest international standards. Very secure too. Motion sensors. Night-vision surveillance cameras. Well-armed guards.”
“Worried about somebody coming after you?”
“Do I look worried?”
“Not yet.”
Gleb glared at me. He folded his arms.
I folded mine too.
Two can play that game.
“Why are you looking for Kelly?” Boris said to me. “She is not your woman.”
“Not yours either.”
“You are wrong about that.”
“Sometimes I am. But not in this case.”
“You know nothing about it.”
“Then enlighten me.”
He folded his hands over his stomach and leaned back in his chair a little and chuckled.
“I like your style.”
“Thanks, Bore.”
“Kelly is what she is because of me. And what is she? She is a fantastic stripper. One of the best. She is a moneymaker. A cash cow. When she worked at Starbutts she brought in more customers than any of my other strippers. She packed the place. Two shows nightly. Three on weekends. We raked in the money.”
“And you take credit for her stripping skills?”
“I take all the credit. It was I who provided training for her. The best training available. Expensive training. She learned the art of stripping. How to do a sexy striptease. How to do lap dances. Pole dances. How to perform with a proper attitude. What clothes to wear.”
“Or not wear.”
“It was I who paid for her clothes. Her yoga classes. Her weight training. Skin products. Hair products. Makeup.”
“Kelly worked for you directly?”
“She dealt with my manager. He was her immediate boss. I never deal with the strippers myself. Unless there is a problem.”
“So you never actually met Kelly.”
“Not until this week.”
“Where is she?”
“Aboard this yacht.”
“I want to see her.”
“You cannot.”
“She’s pregnant.”
“I know.”
“She needs to get to Rochester. She was accepted to the University of Rochester School of Nursing. Her classes start soon. That’s why she stopped stripping. She’s moving on with her life. Stripping isn’t a part of it anymore.”
“Kelly will not be attending college this year.”
“That a fact?”
“Yes. I have other plans for her.”
“What plans?”
“I have invested time and money in her. I expect a return on my investment. She cannot just quit. Not after all I have done for her. She will continue working for me.”
“Forever?”
“No. Until she has paid off her debt.”
“And how long will that take?”
“That depends on what I decide to do with her. If she is cooperative, she can continue working at Starbutts. I imagine she will have to work there for at least two years before she can pay off her debt.”
“And if she isn’t cooperative?”
“I will send her to Russia.”
“To do what?”
“To become a prostitute. A high-end prostitute. In a year she can earn enough money to pay off her debt.”
I worked my jaw.
“You don’t own Kelly. This is America. Land of the free.”
“Kelly will be free when she pays off her debt.”
“How many other women have you forced into slavery?”
“Slavery. That is such a harsh term.”
“How many?”
“Never mind how many. That is none of your concern.”
“Kelly’s my concern. Her father’s dying in the hospital. I made him a promise. A promise to deliver Kelly to Rochester and help her find an apartment. I plan to keep my promise.”
“You will have to break your promise.”
“I’ll break something. But it won’t be my promise.”
“Is that a threat?”
“I prefer to think of it as a warning.”
Gleb glared at me again. His fists clenched. His knuckles turned white.
“A warning?” Boris said.
“Yeah,” I said. “A warning. Like when a tornado’s coming. The warning tells you to seek shelter. To lie flat on the ground and protect the back of your head with your arms. Warning’s are useful. They give you a chance to save your ass.”
I tossed the file onto the desk. It made a slapping sound.
Boris studied his fingernails. He studied them for a long time. Then he tapped his knuckles on the desk and looked up.
“We are done here, Mr. Lane. You will stay out of my business from now on. You will mind your own business. Are we clear on that?”
“Let me ask you a question.”
“Go ahead. Ask your question.”
“How much you figure Kelly owes you?”
He quoted a figure.
I whistled.
“Wow. That much?”
He nodded.
We sat for a moment. Then I spoke.
“Let me ask you another question.”
“Of course.”
“If I pay you that much money, will you let Kelly go free?”
I had no idea how I could possibly raise that much money. Maybe Blake had some saved up. Maybe together we could scrape up enough. We would do whatever it took.
Boris laughed.
“Kelly is not for sale. You cannot buy her from me.”
As if he owned her.
“Why not?”
He shrugged.
“I do not owe you an explanation. I have a business to run. I run it the way I want to run it.”
“I could report you to the authorities.”
“You could.”
“What is to stop me?”
“Your desire to keep Kelly alive.”
“That a threat? Or just a warning?”
“Is there anything else? My time is very precious.”
“I want to see her.”
“You are wasting your breath.”
A pause.
“There’s nothing I can do to free Kelly?”
“Nothing.”
Bull. I’ll find a way.
Boris eyed the file on the desk. He picked it up. He opened it and started fingering through the contents.
“It is time for you to go back to shore now,” he said without looking up. “Stay out of my clubs. Stay out of my business.”
Gleb stepped toward me.
“Let’s go.”
I stood up from my chair and followed him out the door.
We went down the spiraling stairs. Then down the hallway. Then out on deck.
A waiting speedboat rumbled beside the yacht. Dmitry and Yury stood by the steering wheel. Kalashnikovs in hand. Bored expression on their faces. As if transporting captives were just a routine part of the job.
Gleb nodded toward the boat.
“Get in.”
I did.
Gleb remained on the yacht.
Moments later Dmitry twisted the throttle and we pull
ed away.
We didn’t get far.
“Wait,” Inna called from the deck of the yacht. “Father wants to speak to him again.”
CHAPTER 36
DMITRY SPUN THE speedboat around.
He pulled up alongside the yacht.
“Get out,” he told me.
Gleb and Inna led me back to Boris’s cabin.
I sat down in the same chair.
“Leave us,” Boris told Gleb and Inna.
When they had gone Boris held up the file.
“I read your service record again. Very impressive. You are very good at what you do.”
“Used to do. I’m retired now.”
“You caught an amazing number of fugitives. Hunted them down and brought them in.”
I shrugged.
“That was the job. I just did what I was supposed to do.”
“And you did that better than anybody else.”
“What’s your point?”
“I want you to do it for me.”
“Meaning what exactly?”
“I want you to find somebody for me. Find him and bring him back here to me.”
“Who?”
“A disloyal employee.”
“Don’t you have people who can do that for you?”
“They have tried.”
“They couldn’t find him?”
“No.”
“So you want me to do it.”
“Yes.”
We sat.
Seconds passed.
“What’s in it for me?”
“I will free Kelly if you bring him back to me.”
“How do I know you’ll keep your word?”
“Would you like it in writing?”
A rhetorical question.
We both knew the answer.
He folded his hands on the desk and leaned forward.
“Have we got a deal?”
I nodded.
He reached into his pocket and took out a flash drive. He set it on the desk. He slid it toward me.
“This contains information about the man you will find for me.”
I stood up from my chair and picked up the flash drive and pocketed it.
“No police involvement, Mr. Lane. Otherwise Kelly will die. Are we clear on that?”
“Crystal.”
“Good.”
“Before I do anything I need proof of life. I want to see Kelly.”
“Fair enough.”
CHAPTER 37
“KELLY IS IN here,” Gleb told me. “You get one minute with her.”
“A whole minute. How generous.”
The sarcasm was lost on him.
He opened the cabin door and I entered.
The door clicked shut behind me.
I had made some mistakes in my years with the U.S. Marshals Service. Regrettable mistakes. Mistakes that still haunt me.
That can happen when you fail to save somebody. Somebody who would have lived if you had made better decisions. Smarter decisions.
I had vowed to never let it happen again.
Those regrets played through my mind when I saw Kelly.
She ran up to me. We hugged.
“They treating you okay?”
She nodded.
“I’m going to get you out of here. Not today. But soon.”
“What happened to your head?”
“I slammed it against a boot. The boot doesn’t look so good either. I think I dented it.”
“How’s my father?”
“Hanging in there. You’ll see him soon. I promise.”
Tears filled her eyes. She cried. Her shoulders shook.
“I’ve got to go, Kelly. But I’ll be back.”
She knuckled her eyes.
We hugged again.
I left.
CHAPTER 38
THE SPEEDBOAT ROARED to life.
On the way back to shore I thought about Blake. Should I update him on his daughter’s situation? How would he react? He might panic and bring in the cops.
Boris had said no cops. Otherwise Kelly dies.
I decided not to involve Blake.
I would handle it myself.
Though I wanted to get Kelly back, I had reservations about delivering a man to Boris. Serious reservations. They gnawed at me.
The ride to shore took ten minutes.
When we got there Dmitry gave me my phone back.
My motorcycle still sat where I had left it. I mounted it and started the engine and peeled out of there.
CHAPTER 39
BACK IN MY RV I sat down at the dinette table and opened my laptop.
Boris wanted to deal harshly with a disloyal employee. I could understand that. But he wanted the man bad enough to give up Kelly. Why? How disloyal had the man been? What had he done to deserve Boris’s wrath?
I plugged in the flash drive Boris had given me. It contained information about the disloyal employee. I opened a file and started reading:
Name: Sam Battles.
Occupation: Explosives expert.
Training: Graduate of Naval School Explosive Ordnance Disposal (NAVSCOLEOD).
Experience: Former Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Sergeant with two years’ civilian experience in explosive detection and disposal tactics. Three years’ experience as an explosives trainer to U.S. forces and foreign troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Technical skills in diagnostic equipment and robotic operation and forensic techniques to identify and disable explosive threats.
Areas of expertise: Counter Radio-Controlled IED Electronic Warfare (CREW). Improvised Explosive Device (IED). Joint Asymmetric Threat Awareness and Counter (JATAC). Route Clearance Package (RCP). Unexploded Ordnance (UXO). Weapons Technical Intelligence (WTI). WTI Exploitation and Analysis Tool (WEAT).
I sipped my coffee and looked out the window.
An explosives expert. Somebody knowledgeable about bombs. How to make them. How to detect them. How to disarm them.
Boris had employed an explosives expert.
Why?
Explosives. Strip clubs. A financial group. What the hell was Boris up to?
A file on the flash drive contained several photos of Sam. I studied them.
A fortyish man. Hair like Einstein—an appropriate look for an explosives expert.
Sam Battles. An American. A former U.S. Army sergeant.
Why had he chosen to work for a Russian criminal? Not only that but a former GRU operative.
Why had Boris employed an American explosives expert instead of a Russian explosives expert? All of his guards were Russian. He seemed to prefer Russian employees. So why not a Russian explosives expert?
Something between Boris and Sam had gone wrong.
Something bad.
Bad enough that Boris wanted Sam found and delivered to him.
Delivered by me. Rip the delivery man.
When I Googled Sam’s last known address a map appeared. I clicked it. The map filled the screen. I clicked to see satellite imagery of the area. Then I looked at the street view.
The little house in Albany sat on a green lawn on a narrow street where other houses sat on green lawns. It didn’t look like the kind of house where an explosives expert would live. Not that I would know anything about that.
Boris’s people would have checked there. Apparently they hadn’t found Sam there. He must have anticipated their arrival.
No need for me to check there. Sam would still be gone from his house. He would be somewhere else. But where?
Wherever he had gone he would need a job. A job as an explosives expert. He could be working for a bomb squad or a construction company or a research lab.
Sam Battles. I Googled the name.
Too many hits.
I narrowed the search by typing his name and explosives into the search box.
Still too many hits.
I pinched my lower lip between finger and thumb.
Minutes passed.
No new ideas came to me.
I
stood up from the table and went to the Keurig coffee maker and made some more coffee. I sipped it while I made lunch. Lunch consisted of a Lean Cuisine and a Greek yogurt.
After lunch I took a long walk around the RV park and let my mind wander.
Come on, Rip. You can find Sam. You can find anybody. That’s what you’re good at.
True.
But . . .
Maybe that’s not what you should be doing. Maybe there’s a better way to free Kelly. Maybe there’s an option you haven’t thought of yet.
Like what?
I walked some more. And thought some more.
In my mind little construction workers in yellow hard hats set to work on building new ideas. Supply trucks arrived. Workers unloaded them. Then they removed debris and possible hazards from construction sites before they started building. The supervisor ran a tight ship. He expected his crew to work quickly and efficiently.
And they did.
It occurred to me that maybe I could organize a hostage extraction. Hire some mercenaries to storm Boris’s yacht and free Kelly.
I prefer to work alone but attempting the extraction by myself would be too risky. I would need help. Especially because of the nautical element.
The job wouldn’t be easy. The yacht was very secure. Motion sensors. Night-vision surveillance cameras. Well-armed guards.
The success rate for hostage extractions is low. Things often go wrong. People die. Hostages die.
Kelly could die.
I let that possibility simmer in my mind for a while.
Then I had second thoughts about the plan.
Finding Sam might be my best option after all. It presented no risk to Kelly. It wouldn’t get her killed.
But it might get Sam killed.
That possibility disturbed me. It filled me with guilt. I could be responsible for delivering a man to his death.
Not a good option.
None of my options were good.
I just had to pick the best one.
CHAPTER 40
AFTER MY WALK I phoned an old friend.
Wallace Stone works at the Pentagon. He is the top man in a certain division of military intelligence. Never mind which division.
In my years with the U.S. Marshals Service I had had the opportunity to work with many different people in many different fields. Mostly law enforcement. But sometimes the military.
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