Chương 13
“Go with Mr. Han. Drive away from the hospital. Give the coat to Luis. Tell him to upload the card contents using the instructions I’ll send.”
“You are going into the hospital.”
“I have to get Marco out.”
Marco stepped from behind Viktor.
Rosa stared at him.
Her hand rose.
Marco did not flinch.
She slapped him once.
The sound carried across the yard.
Then she pulled him into her arms.
Marco bent over her, shaking.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I know.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
“I thought I could fix it.”
“That is always when you make it worse.”
She held him another second, then pushed him away.
Clara said, “Marco goes with you.”
“No,” Marco replied.
“Yes.”
“I know the tunnel.”
“You were blindfolded.”
“I counted turns.”
Viktor looked at him. “How many?”
“Three left, one right, long slope, two metal doors, then stairs.”
“That matches the old plans,” Viktor said.
Clara glared at him.
Marco wiped his nose with his sleeve. “I started this.”
“You did not start a criminal organization.”
“I gave them the schedule.”
“And you will answer for that after we survive.”
Rosa’s expression tightened.
“Answer how?”
“The police will ask.”
“You will not give them your brother.”
“He gave them me.”
Marco looked down.
Clara immediately regretted it, but the words could not be returned.
Rosa stared at her with hurt and anger.
The ordinary family wound opened inside the larger danger. For a moment Clara was not holding a ledger or standing beside armed men. She was the daughter who had paid bills, missed sleep, and grown tired of being the reliable one. Marco was the son who received forgiveness because everyone feared what would happen if he did not.
Then a police cruiser turned onto the river road.
Viktor said, “Decide now.”
Clara gave Rosa the clean phone and dictated the code from Aleksandr’s letter. She told her to call Luis, then the named journalist, then the federal defender. She made Rosa repeat the instructions.
Rosa hated every second of it.
At last she climbed into the bakery van with Mr. Han and his nephew.
Marco remained.
Clara did not order him again.
The van left through the cut fence as police vehicles entered the opposite side of the block.
Viktor, Clara, and Marco returned to the basement.
Bell was unconscious but breathing. The wounded man had dragged himself near the stairwell. Viktor moved his weapon out of reach and left the emergency call phone beside him.
The tunnel entrance opened behind the boilers.
Its concrete passage sloped downward beneath old pipes. Emergency bulbs cast weak circles every thirty feet. Water covered the floor to Clara’s ankles.
Marco led.
“Three left turns,” he whispered.
“You said you were blindfolded,” Clara replied.
“You can feel turns in a car.”
“We are walking.”
“They moved us on a utility cart.”
At the first intersection, fresh tire marks cut through the water.
Marco had told the truth.
The tunnel narrowed after the second turn. Clara’s shoulder brushed damp walls. Somewhere above them, sirens multiplied around the laundry.
Viktor stopped at a steel door and listened.
Voices sounded beyond it.
One belonged to Ivan.
Another belonged to a man Clara had not heard before.
“You have nothing without the ledger,” the unknown man said.
“I have Aleksandr.”
“My father stopped being an asset when he betrayed me.”
Mikhail.
Viktor’s expression changed at the voice. Not fear exactly. Recognition of old gravity.
Ivan replied, “You came in person.”
“I came to watch you discover the difference between leverage and inconvenience.”
A muffled blow followed.
Clara moved closer to the door.
Viktor caught her shoulder and shook his head.
Mikhail continued. “Bell has not answered.”
“He has the suitcase.”
“If Bell had opened it, he would have called three buyers before calling me.”
“He may be dead.”
“Then you have failed twice.”
Aleksandr’s voice entered, rough but steady.
“You mistake cruelty for discipline, Mikhail. You always have.”
Silence followed.
When Mikhail spoke again, his voice was quieter.
“You taught me both.”
The words did not sound theatrical. They sounded practiced through years of private arguments.
Viktor pointed to a maintenance ladder leading upward.
Marco whispered, “The stairs to Saint Anne’s.”
They climbed.
The ladder opened behind a rusted service panel in the hospital basement. The corridor beyond was lined with abandoned gurneys and mold-blackened ceiling tiles. Portable lights glowed at the far end.
Viktor motioned for Marco to remain behind the panel.
Marco ignored him and climbed out.
Clara followed before Viktor could send her back.
They moved through the corridor toward an old radiology suite. Voices came from inside.
Viktor looked through a crack in the door.
He held up four fingers.
Four armed men besides Ivan and Mikhail.
Too many.
Clara touched the ledger beneath her apron.
“The release deadline,” she whispered. “We use it.”
Viktor shook his head. “They will take the book.”
“Let them think that solves it.”
She stepped into the doorway.
“Eleven thirty-eight,” she said.
Every weapon in the room turned toward her.
The radiology suite had been stripped of equipment. Aleksandr sat in a wheelchair beneath a hanging work light, wrists tied to the arms. Ivan stood behind him. Four men guarded the walls.
Mikhail Petrov faced Clara.
He was younger than she expected, perhaps forty-five, with his father’s dark eyes and none of his restraint. His charcoal suit fit perfectly. A wedding ring remained on his hand, though Clara knew from Bell’s conversations at the diner that Mikhail’s wife lived in Europe with their children.
Viktor entered behind Clara, pistol low.
Mikhail smiled.
“Viktor.”
“Mikhail.”
“You look tired.”
“I am.”
“Loyalty does that when it becomes unfashionable.”
Clara took out the ledger.
All attention shifted to it.
“You have twenty-two minutes,” she said.
Mikhail studied her.
“For what?”
“At noon, every page goes to journalists, lawyers, and investigators.”
Ivan’s face tightened.
Mikhail did not look at him.
May you like
“Is that true?” he asked Aleksandr.
The old man’s mouth was swollen.
