He reached out with the makeup sponge and Petrekova nodded her consent. Something said on the television caught his attention. He slid back his chair and stepped into the front room. A reporter for the state media spoke of the shooting in the Yakimanka Bar, then put a picture up of the punk. Eldar Velikaya.
“Velikaya is the only child of Yekaterina Velikaya, long considered the head of the most powerful crime family in Moscow.”
Jenkins felt his stomach drop. In his mind he saw and heard the prostitute. What have you done?
“Russia’s Investigative Committee said the police are searching for this man.” Charles Wilson’s passport photograph appeared on the television along with his name, height in meters, and weight in kilograms. “Charles Wilson is a British industrialist who entered the country through customs at Sheremetyevo Airport yesterday evening. The Investigative Committee said facial recognition cameras identified Wilson at the airport and again entering the Yakimanka Bar. Wilson checked out of the Hotel Imperial in the Yakimanka District sometime after the shooting, and his current whereabouts are unknown. The Investigative Committee said Wilson is a person of interest wanted in connection with the shooting. Anyone with information on Wilson or his whereabouts should call the number at the bottom of your screen.”
The reporter moved on to another story.
What have you done?
Jenkins now understood the prostitute’s fear. This was going to complicate things, though he was not yet certain how. Charles Wilson no longer existed and never would again. He needed to take matters one at a time.
He turned back to the kitchen. Petrekova stood in the doorframe between the two rooms, watching him with an inquisitive look. He did not have time to explain, and there was no reason for Petrekova to know. They had work to do. He directed her back to the kitchen and sat beside her at the table, moving his chair close to apply the makeup as he had been taught at the Langley disguise division. As he did, Petrekova stared beyond him, with the same fearful look as the prostitute.
What have you done?
20
Lubyanka Building
Moscow, Russia
Ilia Egorov had stared at his computer screen for the better part of an hour.
“They say that can cause you to go blind,” a colleague had said on his way out the door. “Among other things.”
Egorov smiled, but he was in no mood for jokes. He faced a dilemma. Adrian Zima had been his friend for twenty years; they had forged a friendship as students at the University of Moscow studying criminology and science. They each wanted to work in law enforcement. Zima found his joy working behind the scenes, finding clues in the tiniest corners of a crime scene that could break a case wide open. Zima had always related his work to solving a puzzle.
Egorov liked the criminal sciences, but he didn’t aspire to be a lab rat. He wanted to get outdoors, where the action happened. He didn’t want to be hunting criminals through microscopes and spectrograms; he wanted to be chasing them down in fast cars. While Zima had remained at the Criminal Investigation Department, Egorov became an FSB officer. Being a federal employee certainly had its advantages, but Egorov soon learned the days of chasing down criminals in cars were quickly coming to an end. Now, most everything was done with computers and cameras. FSB officers were on their way to becoming the geeks Egorov had sought to avoid.
Egorov was currently sitting on a ticking time bomb, though, and it had been Zima who triggered the fuse. Zima had called and asked Egorov to run a name for him in the FSB database, a name that had come up from a latent fingerprint at a crime scene in the Yakimanka District, but for which the ministry did not have a match. Egorov and Zima had done favors for one another in the past, and Zima had let slip that the print could be related to the shooting of Eldar Velikaya. The death of the son of Moscow’s largest crime family was big news.
The fingerprint had turned out to be even bigger news.
It was not every day you learned that one of the most sought-after men in FSB history was back in Moscow. Charles Jenkins was an international criminal. The Kremlin had put out a red notice and alerted Britain’s National Crime Agency that Jenkins was wanted in Russia to stand trial on numerous criminal charges. Finding his fingerprint was like finding a gold nugget in a mountain stream. Extremely rare and extremely valuable—if Egorov played it correctly. Possessing information of this import could distinguish Egorov and help him to move up the FSB ladder, maybe into the counterintelligence unit.
He risked a lifelong friendship perhaps, but then, Zima didn’t have to know he’d breached their confidence. And if Zima found out . . . well, Egorov could say simply he was only doing his duty. For the Kremlin and for Russia.