Private Moscow (Private 15)

“We have to go after them,” Dinara heard one of them say.

“Are you crazy?” the other replied. “The cops are almost here. Help get the guys into the truck.”

The speaker withdrew from sight, and a moment later, so did his gun-toting companion.

Dinara took the opportunity to catch her breath.

“How?” she asked between lungfuls of freezing air.

Leonid opened his jacket and pulled his shirt apart to reveal a concealed layer of body armor.

“Some call it paranoia,” he said. “I call it common sense.”

Dinara stared at him in awe.

“Come on,” he said. “We’d better get moving, or we’ll be late.”

He ran into the trees, and a moment later a bemused but jubilant Dinara followed.

CHAPTER 41

IN THE END, I managed a couple of hours’ sleep on the plane, but by the time I arrived, my eyes were gritty and my body ached with the ground-in fati

gue that was commonplace after transatlantic flights. But no matter how rough I felt, I knew I didn’t look as bad as my two employees. I’d hired Dinara Orlova because she was highly experienced and extremely intelligent. Every time I’d met her she’d been exceptionally composed and immaculately presented. But right now her long dark hair was lank and matted, and her normally flawless skin was scratched and marked by dirt. Her trousers and coat were soaked with ugly stains. Her companion, Leonid Boykov, a grizzled former cop who oozed roguish charm, looked even worse.

I crossed the Sheremetyevo arrivals hall, which was busy with the early-morning crowds associated with the arrival of a flurry of transatlantic red-eye flights. As Dinara and Leonid came to meet me, I noticed the former Moscow cop was scanning the terminal nervously.

“Thanks for coming,” I said, shaking Dinara’s hand.

“Good to see you, Mr. Morgan,” she replied in English. “I’m sorry for our condition. We just escaped an abduction attempt.”

“Abduction for you,” Leonid said. “Murder for me.”

The former cop had been Dinara’s hire and I didn’t know him well enough to be certain he wasn’t joking. I glanced at Dinara, who confirmed the statement with an emphatic nod.

“What the hell happened?” I asked. “Where’s the car?”

“About seven kilometers that way,” Leonid replied. “Blocking a major exit on the highway.”

Dinara frowned at him. “We need to take a taxi.”

She ushered me toward one of the doors, and I glanced at Leonid, who was looking from wall to wall, like a bird of prey. As I studied him, I finally registered the holes in his jacket.

“Are those—”

“Yes,” he cut me off. “Bullets. Three of them.”

“We were lucky,” Dinara said.

“A bulletproof vest is not luck,” Leonid responded. “It is the correct preparation.”

Struggling to get my head around the news, I steered them away from the doors to a quiet part of the arrivals hall where we wouldn’t be overheard.

“You’d better tell me what’s going on,” I said.

With the occasional interjection from Leonid, Dinara briefed me on the death of Yana Petrova, their meeting with the Kremlin-connected oligarch Maxim Yenen, and the discovery of Yana’s second life as the conspiracy blogger Otkrov. Then they told me about Grom Boxing and Dinara’s belief that one of their assailants was a boxer she’d seen at the gym the previous night. After months in the wilderness, it sounded as though Private Moscow had finally scored a truly challenging case.

“And why are you here?” Leonid asked when Dinara had finished.