Private Moscow (Private 15)

My satellite phone buzzed and I pulled it from my pocket and answered.

“Jack, it’s me,” Justine said. “We heard what happened. Are you OK?”

“I’m fine,” I assured her. “You seen the stories about Private?”

“Yes,” she said. “People are just waking up here, so …”

“It’s going to travel further,” I finished her hanging sentence.

“Probably,” she replied. “Our client list makes us newsworthy, and even if the allegations aren’t true, they’re sensational, which is what counts nowadays.”

I couldn’t let anonymous lies threaten everything I’d built.

“Talk to Rafael. See what he can do to shut this story down,” I suggested. The First Amendment protected free speech, but there might be something Private New York’s attorney could do to stop the spread of fake news. “And ask Mo-bot to check the server logs of Otkrov’s blog. See if she can find out who published the article.”

“Will do,” Justine said. “We got a hit on the driver who threw himself off the roof of the Beekman Hotel. His name was Major Ivan Shulgin. He’s a former officer with the First Guards Tank Army. I’ve emailed you his details. His service record fits the profile of an SVR asset.”

“Thanks,” I replied, grateful for our first solid lead.

“Are you sure you’re OK, Jack?” Justine asked. “These are serious people.”

“I’m safe,” I assured her. “I’m with Leonid and Dinara.”

“Dinara?” she asked.

Was that jealousy in her voice?

“Yeah,” I replied. “We’re with friends.”

“Make sure you come home in one piece, Jack,” Justine said. “I’ll do my best,” I replied. “I’ll be in touch,” I added, before hanging up.

“Everything OK?” Dinara asked.

“Looks like the guy from the hotel was SVR,” I replied.

I considered the revelation in light of everything that had happened. If our information was correct, I’d fought and chased a highly trained Russian intelligence operative.

“I think we need to know why we were hired to investigate the death of a customer-service supervisor,” I said. “My guess is our client knew Yana Petrova was Otkrov. I want to find out how he came by that information and what he knows about her killer. I want to meet Maxim Yenen.”

CHAPTER 50

“LET’S ARRANGE THE meeting from the car,” Leonid said, getting to his feet. “We also have some other business we need to attend to.”

Dinara was bemused until he added, “Murder. Abduction.”

She rose hurriedly. “Of course.”

In the turmoil of their arrest and securing Jack Morgan’s release from police custody, Dinara realized they’d done nothing more about the previous morning’s shooting and attempted kidnapping, other than giving statements to the police, explaining how Leonid’s car came to be riddled with bullets and stuck on a highway.

“I would like to pay our friends at Grom Boxing a visit,” Leonid said.

“I’ll come with you,” Jack said.

Leonid hesitated. “These men don’t take well to outsiders.”

“Doesn’t sound like they took too well to you either,” Jack shot back.

Dinara’s limited dealings with the owner of Private simply hadn’t prepared her for the sheer presence of the man. He wasn’t particularly tall or broad, but there was a quiet assuredness about him, as though he could handle anything the world threw at him. There was no sense of him being a stranger in a foreign land. He was taking everything in his stride and behaving with the confidence of a local investigator. Dinara wondered just what it took to shake Jack Morgan.