Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2) (46 page)

“No,” she said.  “I’m telling you they’ve known where he is every moment for the last six months, up to and including tonight, and they let him carry on with his business.”  Dominika raised her wineglass to take a sip.  “Up to and including what he did to
Vasilisa Rubashkin.”  She downed her second glass of wine in two seconds.

Rideau blinked a few times, and shook her head in disbelief.  “I can’t…I won’t believe that.  Dominika—”

“I know how it sounds, but believe me, it’s true.”

“Why would they do that, Dominika?  That makes no sense.  I’m sorry, I’m not calling you a liar, I just…I don’t know how this could be possible.”

The FSB woman sat her wineglass down, pinched the base of it between thumb and forefinger, and spun it slowly around for a moment.  “Have you ever been to Coventry, Aurélie?”

Rideau
thought that was a strange question.  “Once.  Years ago.  Why?”

“Did you get to see any of the sites?  Saint
Michael’s Cathedral?  The Herbert Art Gallery?”

She nodded.  “I saw the cathedral, sure.”

Dominika smiled briefly.  Smiles looked strange on her face; they didn’t belong on a surface so sad.  “So much of that city has been rebuilt, you know.  A great deal of it was utterly destroyed by the German Air Force on November 14, 1940.  Four thousand homes were obliterated and eight hundred people killed in one day.  It could have all been avoided, of course, because Winston Churchill had access to a powerful intelligence source, someone deeply embedded in German command, and because of this source’s information they had finally deciphered the German code.”  She smiled sardonically, which looked even stranger.  “Churchill could’ve saved all those people by answering the German air raid.  He had plenty of time to do it, but he didn’t.  And do you know why?”  Of course Rideau knew why, but she allowed Dominika to go on.  “Because he would’ve shown his hand.  If Churchill had prevented the air raid, the Germans would’ve known that the British had cracked their code and they would’ve changed it immediately, and no more valuable intelligence would have been gained through that source.”  She added, “Churchill let the city of Coventry burn rather than compromise a decisive source of intelligence.”

Silence
between them.  A kind of pall had fallen over the table.  Outside, flecks of snow smacked up against the window.  Somewhere far off, some animal gave off a mournful howl. 

Dominika accepted a refill of wine, and thanked the waiter.  “But that was war,” Rideau said.  “That was a World War.  There was far more at stake and
those kinds of difficult decisions needed to be made.  They always do in war.  If what you’re saying about FSB is true, it’s completely different.”

“No, it’s not.  Not to them.  To them,
it’s an invasion.  To them, the
vory
have been invading for almost a hundred years.  The Mafia here have taken over low-level police agencies and even many high-ranking politicians.  The way FSB looks at it, they’ve been fighting a war for over a hundred years, since the
vory
formed in Stalin’s
Gulag
, a war they’ve tried to keep out of the media and international news outlets.”

“
But if they had done that, if they had allowed others
in
, they could’ve gotten help from a variety of professional agencies.”

Dominika sighed.  “That isn’t our way
, Aurélie.  We don’t want anyone to think we’re weak, and we don’t want them to think we need their help.  So, we go it alone.  And right now, the Director and Deputy Director of FSB, as well as the Prime Minister himself, have all agreed that, for the time being, certain allowances are to be made.  Non-comply is issued on anything that might allow more than two agencies to zero in on someone they feel—”

“But Shcherbakov isn’t just anyone, he’s a
monster
!” Rideau hissed.  “And Vasilisa Rubashkin was an innocent woman!”

“So were the eight hundred people of Coventry,” said Dominika.  “But they are the disposable ones.  Worth losing if you can get
the bigger fish.”

“What bigger fish is there than Yuri Shcherbakov?”

“The heads of the Ankundinov and the Zverev families.  They stay mobile, sometimes live outside of the country, and right now the only way to track their movements and prove that they’re involved in mass criminal conspiracies is by using the code, using
Fenya
, and following it as it continues to evolve.”  She added, “It will be vital when one day they are all brought before a court of law, and made to answer for their crimes.  It is the only way to decode their messages and the orders that the Mafia leaders dispense.”

Rideau leaned back in her seat, shocked to her core.  “They couldn’t have
at least
warned
her?  They couldn’t have moved Rubashkin to—”

“They tried.  She didn’t accept their advice or their warnings.  If they had forced her to go, if government vehicles had
shown up at her apartment and forced her to leave, the
vory
would have known for sure that FSB knew they were targeting her next, and that their code had been broken.  Not only would they have changed it, but our two embedded operatives might’ve been killed.  Everything would have been lost.”  Dominika shrugged.  “Rubashkin was only a small witness, important enough that she could’ve taken down one or two
vory
, but not nearly important enough to bring down the families with her testimony alone.  Therefore, FSB did not see her as a particularly high priority.”

The room seemed darker.  Outside, the wind had picked up
again.  Aurélie Rideau could scarcely believe what she was hearing.  She’d worked in policing long enough that she knew sometimes things like this happened, that sometimes small sacrifices—
very small
—were made in order to catch the bigger game, but not an assassination.  Never an assassination.  One might let a drug deal slide over here, or even a small business get burned over there,
if
you knew the owner was insured, and
if
you knew no one was in the building, and
if
the stakes were high enough.  But no life could be sacrificed.  Not ever.

The waiter came by, dropping off their main dishes.

“Thank you, and could we have the check, please?  I may have to leave a bit prematurely.”

The two women ate in silence, while Rideau ruminated.

A war
. 
They think of it as a war
. 
A slow-moving invasion, led by
vory
who encroach on their politics every year, slowly but surely taking them over
.  There would probably never be a
vor
as Prime Minister, because, like many syndicates, the
vory
preferred to be the power behind the throne.  So, how long would it be before the Prime Minister was surrounded by
vory
?

Portions of the Russian
Mafia had risen in prominence and power since the new millennium started off.  There was one leader that even the American FBI and CIA had admitted could probably influence the global economy with a single phone call.

Rideau had believed that recent movements by all police agencies around the world had stunted the growth of
criminal organizations, and she had felt proud to be a part of the engine driving those movements, but she’d just received a reality check.  After all the progress she’d made liaising with these people, they had gone out of their way to abrogate and undermine those helpful procedures that Interpol and others had brought into the mix.  And for what?  Because they wanted to do it
their
way, always
their
way.  Their stubbornness was still winning out.

“Why are you telling me this?” she finally asked.  “Why trust me with this information?”

“Because not all Russians are stubborn assholes,” Dominika said.  “Just like not all Muslims are terrorists and not all Christians believe in heaven.”

“But why me?  What can I possibly do with this information now, except go back to my superiors and piss them off with it?”

The waiter buzzed by, filled their wineglasses to the top, and dropped off the check in a little folding book.  Dominika took it at once and slipped her Visa inside.  “Can I get a box to take the rest of this home?”

“Of course,” he said.

When the waiter had disappeared, she looked at Rideau and said, “I invited you here without much hope that you would show up.  I didn’t exactly give you any reason to trust me.  Yet here you are.  I suppose you’re hoping to do more than just see what little Tattar and Blok are going to allow you to see.”

Rideau nodded.  “I came here to pick up the trail of Yuri Shcherbakov,” she said.  “He’s been running free too long, and nobody can touch him.”

“The Grey Wolf killed your colleague, did he not?  Detective-Inspector Dubois?”

She nodded again.  “Yes, he did.”

Dominika nodded.  “I thought I recalled hearing that through the grapevine.  Was he a close friend?”

Rideau shrugged.  “Not very close, but a friend.  And a good man.  A dedicated man.”

“That’s why I decided to say something to you, of all people.  Well, it was that, and the look on your face when you laid your eyes on Vasilisa Rubashkin.”  She took a sip of wine.  “Like me, you don’t care for Churchill’s strategies.  I think you probably feel there are other ways to win a war.”

The waiter returned with her Visa, a to-go box for her crab
and remaining oysters, and two copies of the receipt.  Dominika signed one copy and left it on the table.  She also scribbled something else on her copy of the receipt, and left it on the table also.  The leftover crab was easy to toss into her to-go box.  Then, checking her watch, she said, “I’d better get back.  They’ll want me to talk to Chelyabinsk Police about the non-comply, and to make sure that any detectives in Moscow Police also understand that a non-comply has been issued.”

Dominika stepped out of the booth, and held her hand out to Rideau.  “It was good to meet you.”

“I’m still not sure what you expect me to do with this information.”

“You don’t have to go any further than this,
Aurélie.  I know that you have a wife to think of, but if you’re really thinking about making a difference, here’s your chance.”

“My chance for what?”

“Check the receipt before you leave.  Make sure I left a tip.”  She picked up her to-go box and turned to leave, and Rideau noticed she was wearing the same long coat as before.  However, across from Rideau, where Dominika had been sitting, there was another long coat, this one was dark red.

“Wait.  You forgot your other coat.”

Dominika must have heard her, because the chatter in the restaurant wasn’t at all loud.  Yet still, she left the restaurant without a glance back. 

Rideau looked at the coat, then reached forward and lifted the receipt.  Dominika had indeed left a tip.  Flipping it over, she found writing on the back:
Grand Hotel Vidgof
. 
Room 533
. 
Take the coat
. 
Inside the right pocket
. 
It’s yours
. 
You may need it
. 
Good luck
.

It took a moment to absorb that.  What exactly was Dominika doing here?

Rideau’s mind raced with so many questions.  First of all, hadn’t Tattar said he’d set her up with a room at the Grand Hotel Vidgof? 
Yes, he said it was room 412
. 
I remember that specifically
.  So then why had Dominika written Room 533?  What was she…?

Then, like tumbles in a lock, gateways in her mind slowly began to open to a possibility.  It didn’t seem feasible at first, and so she dismissed it outright, moving along to other theories.  But slowly, the notion returned.  It gnawed at her, and she at it.  She couldn’t stop picking at it
like a scab.  It was like a tongue touching an empty socket where a tooth had been.  It demanded her attention.

No
, she thought.  Rideau’s mind once more rejected the notion, but the notion just wouldn’t die.  It came back unbidden, as relentless as disease. 
No
. 
No, it can’t be
. 
They wouldn’t do that
.  Her heart started racing, and, despite the cold, she started sweating. 
FSB set me up in a room in the same hotel as the Grey Wolf?
  No, she wouldn’t believe it.  She couldn’t.  Because if they had done that…

If they did that, then they knowingly put me right beside him
. 
And that can’t be just mere coincidence
.  Interpol didn’t believe in coincidences.  They called it a convergence.

Aurélie
Rideau suddenly had to contend with the fact that she had been set up for assassination, handed over to the Grey Wolf on a platter.  He had killed Vasilisa Rubashkin, target number one, and now…now they were just going to
feed him
his second meal.