What will I do at home, without you, Lada?
Maybe he’d travel. Maybe he’d join one of those singles groups that took trips around the world. He’d stand on cruise ships in white loafers with dark socks and shorts and put on weight, telling everyone he should have retired years earlier.
He chuckled at the thought of what Lada would say to such a ridiculous suggestion.
You, stand on a cruise ship deck for days? You can’t sit still for a minute. You’d lose your mind.
The Pit Stop had kept the repair shop’s rolling, multiplaned glass door, and it had been rolled up so customers could sit outside at sidewalk tables, though apparently not to converse. Most had their heads down, their fingers rapidly punching their phone keys. Arkhip never understood such behavior. Why get together only to talk on your phone to someone else?
The young didn’t yet understand time was precious. They thought time unlimited and themselves immortal. So had Arkhip, until it wasn’t. Until his Lada wasn’t.
Love is lost on youth.
Adrian sat at a table in the back corner. Arkhip would have preferred to save his money and not order anything, but he felt self-conscious walking past the counter without ordering. The rich aroma of coffee and the different tea blends, lemon and peppermint, filled the air. A young woman lifted her head as he approached, but she didn’t greet him or even smile.
He smiled at her anyway. “Chamomile tea,” he said. If he drank caffeinated tea or coffee at this hour, he would be awake all night—which he often was anyway.
“For here or to go?”
“I’m here. Am I not?” he said. She looked confused. He pointed. “I’ll be at the table in the corner, sitting with the gentleman wearing glasses.”
She rolled her eyes and pointed to a sign hanging above the counter. Arkhip looked up to read it: “Pick Up.” “We don’t deliver,” she said.
“Then I suppose I’ll wait.” A moment later, after charging him far too much for tea, the woman handed him an oversized porcelain mug, and Arkhip carefully made his way to where Adrian sat waiting. Adrian was often melodramatic, but he had good instincts and Arkhip had come to trust him as one of the still-honest members of the Moscow police department.
Arkhip set his mug on the table and carefully sat so as not to spill the contents. “How have you been?” he said to Adrian.
“I’ve been better.”
“You have been busy?”
“We are always busy, Arkhip. We are always backed up with DNA analysis.”
“So then, to what do I owe this pleasure?”
Adrian leaned forward. “Your fingerprint in the case you pulled. You know the victim is Eldar Velikaya.”
“I assure you I am aware,” Arkhip said, hoping this wasn’t the reason Adrian requested the meeting.
Adrian sat back. He looked hurt. Arkhip knew better. Adrian held information to play the role of investigator to as large an audience as possible, in this case only one, but still a performance.
“But I certainly don’t have all the information,” Arkhip added. “There have been some strange developments.”
“They are about to get more strange.” Adrian glanced to his left, then his right, though no one sat at the tables beside them. “I pulled the police report. That report indicates the fingerprints came from a beer bottle and were most likely left by a man who entered the bar and sat in a booth near the front. Facial recognition cameras identified the man as Charles Wilson, a British industrialist.”
“I had not yet heard the name, but the details are accurate.”
“Then something is seriously wrong . . . perhaps purposefully.”
“What do you mean?” Arkhip asked, though “seriously wrong” would certainly fit with the evidence to date.
Adrian turned and pulled a sheet of paper from a briefcase beside his chair. He slid the paper facedown across the table while looking behind Arkhip at the others in the café. “Be discreet,” he whispered.
Adrian was laying it on thick. “I will. I assure you.”
Arkhip took the paper and discreetly turned it over. He stared at the face of a Black man. He read the vitals. Charles William Jenkins: 1.96 meters; 104 kilograms.
American.
Central Intelligence Agency officer.
“This is the fingerprint match?” Arkhip asked.
Adrian nodded his head.
“Are you certain?”
“More than sixteen matching points of identification,” Adrian said. “Without doubt.”
Arkhip sat back. He would have thought it a mistake, but too many other things—the missing facial recognition video, the doctored medical examiner’s report, and the two eyewitnesses now dead—indicated this was no mistake. And that made it truly of interest. Arkhip had wondered why someone who had never been inside the Yakimanka Bar picked it that night. Now he wondered if the choice wasn’t a coincidence at all.