“I need to know of a way into Konstantin Obelensky’s compound,” Levin says flatly. “To the point enough for you?”
For what feels like almost a full minute, Yusov just gapes at Levin, as if he’d suggested any number of outlandish things. “After everything you’ve done,” he says finally, slowly, as if talking to a small child, “thisis how you want to go out? Suicide by Obelensky?”
“No. But he has something I want back.” Levin nods toward me. “More specifically, somethinghewants back. And I intend to see that he gets it.”
“Hmm.” Yusov narrows his eyes. “Something, or someone? It, orher?”
Levin says nothing, and Yusov chuckles wryly. “Never change, Volkov.”
He glances towards me, still chuckling. “One of the hardest, bloodiest men I’ve ever met–but put a damsel in distress in his path, and he’ll break the world and risk his own balls to save her. It’s a hell of a thing to make your personality, I’ll say that for sure.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Levin growls. “There’s a payday in it for you, Yusov, and you don’t even have to help rescue the girl yourself. Just give me a path in, averifiablygood one, and I’ll make sure whatever debts you have are cleared up, with a little left over so you can start stacking them up again.” He pauses. “Andreyev is bankrolling this. It’s a secret, which means if I hear it from anywhere else, or there’s any blowback from it, I’ll know it was you who opened your mouth. And then there won’t be any teeth left in it when I finish.Ponimayu?”
Yusov nods. “Crystal.” He shakes his head. “I’m not sure what you want is possible, Volkov. I’ll want something for my time, regardless. Just getting near the Obelensky compound, just asking those questions, is dangerous. Doyouunderstand?”
“Of course.” Levin pulls out a phone, taps a few buttons, and extends it to Yusov. “Put in your account number.”
Yusov does as he’s told, and Levin takes the phone back. “There,” he says after a moment. “Three hundred-fifty thousand rubles, to start. I think that’s your time well compensated.”
The other man’s eyes bug out of his head slightly, and Levin smirks. “We’ll be at this hotel,” he says, slipping a business card out of his pocket and passing it to Yusov. “My burner number is on the back. Anyone other than you calls me on it, I lose the phone, and my friend and I disappear–as do you.”
“I got it,” Yusov says crossly, pocketing the card. “Now get the fuck out,da?Before the guys downstairs start asking questions.”
“Fair enough.” Levin opens the door, letting Yusov walk out first before we follow.
Neither he nor I say a word until we’re back in the car and driving back into Moscow proper. I glance over at him, feeling a sense of unease settling in my gut. “You think he’ll be any help?”
“Now that I gave him a taste of what’s in it for him, more than likely,” Levin says coolly. “What I wired to him was more than he’d probably see in half a year from the jobs he does now. For a man like Yusov, with expensive addictions, the payout will be worth the risk to his life.”
“And you feel good using him like that?” I narrow my eyes at Levin. “Exploiting his weaknesses? Putting his life on the line?”
“He’s done the same and much worse,” Levin says flatly, turning towards the hotel. “You’ll have to take off those rose-colored glasses, Max, if you want to save Sasha. In fact, if you want either of you to survive what’s coming, the future you have after this, just go ahead and smash them while you’re at it.” He drives into the garage, putting the car in park, and turns to face me. In the dim light, his face looks harder-edged than normal, craggy and almost tired, as if he’s remembering deeds past that he’d rather not.
“Yusov is not a good man,” Levin says finally. “I use him in this way because it makes the way forward safer for you and me, the possibility of rescue higher for Sasha. Those are the lives I care about–mine, yours, and hers. That is how it is in this world. Some lives are worth more than others. I know that’s a hard pill for you to swallow, Max. But do it anyway, and then take another, or I can’t help you here.”
The words stay with me through the remainder of the day, until I meet Levin downstairs in the hotel restaurant for dinner. He’s already sitting in a dark wood-and-leather booth when I walk in, a glass of vodka in front of him as he looks at the menu.
“Get what you want,” he says as I sit down, pushing menus towards me. “We’re eating and drinking on Viktor’s dime, so don’t hold back.”
“Any other leads?” I ask without preamble, scanning the drink menu. “Anything else that can help us?”
“Not much.” Levin takes a sip of his vodka. “I confirmed that Sasha’s mother is dead–suspiciously, although she was in poor mental health and the circumstances of her death could be explained away. Interestingly enough, her husband–the man that she and Obelensky cuckolded all those years ago–died not long after. Suicide was the official cause of death–a broken heart–although no one can remember them having a particularly happy marriage.”
“So Obelensky is cleaning up. Erasing all the evidence of the past, including Sasha, so nothing stands in his way.”
Levin nods. “He has a daughter,” he adds thoughtfully, as the waiter brings me a whiskey that I ordered, neat. “Sasha’s half-sister. If I could get to her–”
“No.” I shake my head. “That’s too far. And I know you, Levin. You’re not going to torture a woman.”
“Sometimes the threat is enough. No actual torture needed.”
“You know a daughter of Obelensky’s–a true daughter, one raised in his orbit, won’t be that soft. And neither is he. He’d need to start seeing fingers in boxes before he broke, if he did at all.”
“See?” Levin tips his glass toward me. “You’re better at this than you think.”
“Not because I want to be.”
“The result is the same.” Levin drains his vodka and motions for another, putting in an order for dinner as well when the waiter comes. “Eat, Max,” he says insistently. “You won’t be any good to Sasha starving to death. You told Liam as much when it was him that we were doing this for.”