Uniformed officers exited their cars and took defensive positions. Arkhip held up his badge for all to see, though in the early morning light that was anything but a certainty.
“I am Arkhip Mishkin,” he shouted. “Senior investigator with the Ministry of Internal Affairs.”
As officers approached and handcuffed the man on the ground, police officers at the other end of the block removed three men from a Range Rover.
A uniformed officer approached Arkhip. “What do you have, Senior Investigator?”
The question surprised Arkhip. He had no idea how or why the other police cars had arrived. “What do you mean? What do you have, Officer?”
“We received an emergency call of armed men in the process of robbing a delivery driver. One man in a black Mercedes and three men in a Range Rover.”
“Who made the telephone call?”
“A woman.”
“What was her name?” Arkhip asked, thinking it Maria Kulikova.
“She wanted to remain anonymous. Why are you here? And how did you get here so fast?”
Arkhip wasn’t sure until the door to the apartment building opened and a tall man with a woman emerged. They looked at the scene, then hurried down the block away from him. They looked older, but Arkhip’s memory, well conditioned from his years of practice, was certain the man and woman were the same two people he had watched on the CCTV cameras, now in disguise. He took a step toward Jenkins and Kulikova, then reconsidered. He looked to the man he had in custody. He, too, stared at the couple. Arkhip looked to the three men down the block. Their gaze also fixed on the man and the woman hurrying past them.
The three men in the Range Rover were likely Yekaterina Velikaya’s men. The man in the Mercedes was more likely an FSB officer, or had been, given his familiarity with the arrest process. It raised still more pressing questions.
The FSB had sent just one officer for a man and a woman wanted so desperately?
The only logical explanation was, as Arkhip had suspected, to keep this matter quiet. If that were the case, were Arkhip to arrest Jenkins and bring him to Building 38, Petrovka Street, he doubted he would even have the chance to interrogate Jenkins about the fight in the alley that led to Eldar Velikaya’s death, and that was Arkhip’s only real concern. The FSB would snatch Jenkins, and Kulikova for that matter, before Arkhip ever had the chance to open his mouth. As for the presence of Velikaya’s three men in the Range Rover, it proved, once again, that there were more holes at Building 38, Petrovka Street, than a slice of Swiss cheese.
Arkhip would get no answers from the three men or the man he had arrested. They were sophisticated enough to know they didn’t have to answer his questions. The FSB would bail out the Mercedes driver, and Velikaya money would bail out the other three.
And Arkhip’s investigation would be screwed yet again, and he had already been sufficiently screwed this day, thank you very much. He might not get another chance at Jenkins, not if the FSB got a hold of him first.
What he needed was what Charles Jenkins and Maria Kulikova needed, why they had likely perpetrated this scenario. Arkhip needed time.
“Chief Investigator?”
Arkhip removed a business card from his coat pocket and handed it to the officer. He then removed his hat and his sport jacket, and he also handed them over. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Place my hat and jacket on my desk at Building 38, Petrovka.” He provided the man detailed instructions. “You can do this for me, yes?”
“I will take care of it, but—”
“Take the four men to Petrovka. Book them on suspicion of armed robbery and illegal possession of weapons. Keep this one separate from the other three.”
“What are you going to do?” the officer asked.
“I am a chief investigator,” Arkhip said. “I am going to do my job.”
34
Yaroslavsky Rail Terminal
Moscow, Russia
Jenkins and Kulikova kept to side streets and, when possible, alleys. They moved as quickly as they could without looking suspicious. Jenkins checked his watch. They had forty-five minutes to get to the train station and through security. Jenkins had been told that while the Yaroslavsky rail terminal had CCTV cameras, the Trans-Siberian trains did not. Just the same, once on board, he and Kulikova would need to stay within their cabin and mostly out of sight. The ticket purchased for them was for a family of four traveling to Vladivostok, the end of the line. Seven days. Jenkins didn’t expect to ever see the end of the line, however. He expected Lemore would somehow get word to him to get off at a designated location, where alternative travel arrangements were being made for them. How Jenkins was going to retrieve those messages with a water-damaged phone, he had no idea, but he’d solve one problem at a time.