Page 46

46

JOAO

T he padrino doesn’t officially support our attempt to take Dachev out, but he still lends us his private plane. We land in a small airfield the next day, half an hour inland, and drive to our destination.

Varna is a coastal town on the Black Sea, and during warmer months, it’s probably filled with tourists. Not so in December. It’s not empty by any means—it’s still Bulgaria’s third largest city—but the beach is deserted, and all the restaurants along the boardwalk are closed for the season.

Dachev set his mistress up in a seaside villa about a mile north of the main boardwalk. We drive by to scout the location, and the security is as lax as Valentina promised. No armed men patrolling the streets, no guard dogs, just one bored-looking security guard who appears to be half-asleep.

No one is patrolling the perimeter, and there are no cameras mounted on the streetlight posts to monitor who’s coming and going.

“Could it really be this easy?” Stefi marvels.

“Maybe,” I say, though I’m as skeptical as Stefi. “From everything I’ve heard about him, Dachev is a deeply private man who stays hidden by keeping a very low profile. Armed guards would be out of character for him.”

She chews on her lower lip. “I don’t know. . . Eight years of searching, and it’s down to this? All you have to do is break in and shoot Dachev? Something doesn’t feel quite right.”

I don’t have a good feeling about this either. I’m never anxious about a job, but I’m anxious today, nervous and twitchy. Then again, that could just be because my wife is here. I know that she’s more than capable of taking care of herself, but that has never stopped me from worrying about her.

“Most of my jobs for the padrino have been easy,” I say to reassure her. “Unlike Henrik, he doesn’t cheap out on intel and operational support.” It’s almost dusk, almost time to take out Dachev. “You’ve got the spare license plates?” I’m asking the question more from nerves than anything else. Stefi’s not going to miss any of the details.

“Yes.” She opens a map on her phone and zooms in on the street parallel to the villa. “This is where I’ll be parked,” she says. “It’s a straight shot to the highway from here and then to the airport.”

“Got it.” The spot she’s picked is the logical place to park. We discussed it on the flight over and drove by earlier to make sure Google Maps wasn’t putting us in the middle of a swamp. She’s repeating herself because she’s nervous, too.

“This is going to be straightforward,” I tell her. But I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince.

Her, or myself.

Shockingly, it really does appear to be easy. I disarm Elena Alexandra’s security guard, break into the house, and find a very naked Pavel Dachev in bed with Elena. They’re engaged in some very vigorous lovemaking using the fruit bowl next to them as props. (Don’t ask: it involves multiple bananas.)

I point my gun at them, and Elena screams. She’s not a part of this, so I throw a plastic zip tie in her direction. “Put those on,” I order. “Arms in front of you. Tighten them with your mouth. And not a word. I don’t want to kill you, but if you scream, I will.”

Pavel tries to fumble under his pillow for a weapon, and I shoot him in the hand. “The next shot will be to your head,” I tell him calmly.

“Who are you?” he demands shakily, staring down at the shattered bloody mass that was his hand. “What do you want? You don’t have to hurt us. If it’s money, I can?—”

“It’s not money,” I reply. Stefi has both audio and visual access to this conversation through the camera I’ve pinned to my shirt. “Before you die, I want you to know why. Eight years ago, you tracked my wife down in Istanbul. She was visibly pregnant, but you didn’t give a fuck. You fought with her and pushed her to the ground, and because of what you did, she lost our baby.” I raise my gun to his head. “This is for Stefania and for Christopher.”

“Stefania, Henrik’s little runaway in Istanbul?” Something flickers in his eyes—fear? —and a muscle ticks in his jaw. “Why would you kill me? I let her live.”

In my ear, I hear Stefi’s harsh intake of breath. “Explain,” I snap. “Quickly.”

“I could have told Bach she was still alive, but I didn’t. Instead, I told him I killed her. That’s the only reason she’s still alive.”

I roll my eyes. “You told him she was dead and then collected the bounty on her, and you’re trying to frame that as an act of altruism? I don’t think so.”

My finger starts to squeeze the trigger.

“Not just that,” Dachev yelps. “Who do you think fed Rachid the information he gave her? That was me. Every piece of intel that she got came from me. Vannier, Benita, Warren, Medina, Bates, Rodriguez. She wouldn’t have been able to kill any of them without my help.”

“You’re talking about Q?”

“Was that what he was calling himself?” he asks with contempt, forgetting for a moment that my gun is pointed at his head. “If that idiot hadn’t died in September. . .”

I go still. “Q is dead? When? How?”

“Rachid Nenne died from a heart attack at the tail end of September. Why do you care?”

Because Stefi was talking to Q in October.

All along, I’ve been wondering who Q was working for and who he betrayed Stefi to. But it looks like I’ve been asking the wrong question.

I should have been asking who Q was.

Because the person who gave Zaworski’s location to Stefi wasn’t Rachid Nenne.

No.

Someone figured out that Nenne was Stefi’s source for intel.

They killed him, and they took his place.

They led my wife into a trap.

Who?

Who is behind all of this?

“Did anyone know about Nenne?” I demand. “Did anyone know you were feeding him information?”

“Nobody. A boy walked in on me once when I was talking to Rachid, but he was just a kid.”

Ice drenches my spine. “What boy?”

His eyes slide away from me, and a prickle of unease creeps up my neck. “Ewan Wagner,” he replies. “One of Henrik’s trainees. The last one left.”

Everything falls into place with a click. “You idiot,” I say, forcing the words past the lump in my throat. “People in Bach’s network mysteriously start to die. Henrik’s trainee walks in on you feeding information about your rivals to Nenne, and a few months later, Bach conveniently dies in a car accident, and you didn’t think anything of it?”

Realization hits his eyes. “No,” he says. “It can’t be. Bach is still alive?”

“Of course he is.” Stefi doesn’t say a word. She’s got to be as shocked as I am. “He knew you were betraying him, but he didn’t know who was taking out his network.”

Not until Poland. As soon as we were made at Zaworski’s party, he knew who we were. He must have lost track of us in the farmhouse, but he picked up the trail again in Nuremberg. He wouldn’t have been able to touch us in Venice, but he didn’t have to.

All he had to do was sit back and wait for us to take Dachev out.

My mouth goes dry with fear. I tap my earpiece furiously, my voice urgent. “Stef, get out of there. It’s a trap. Can you hear me? Bach’s still alive.”

I look down at the scum on the bed, and my finger tightens on the trigger. Dachev lets out a terrified whimper. It’s finally sinking in that death is staring him in the face. He cradles his shattered hand and looks up at me, desperation written all over him. “I have information,” he forces out through stiff lips. “Information I want to trade for my life.”

He’s already told me about Q, already revealed enough for me to work out that Henrik is still alive. “After what you did, what do you think you can tell me will pay for your life?”

“The boy,” he replies, his eyes glued to my trigger finger. “Do you know who he is?”

“Get to the point before I lose what little patience I have,” I snap.

“He’s seven and a half years old.” He wets his lip with his tongue. “Seven and a half years ago, I went back to kill Stefania, but I found her in a hospital in the middle of giving birth.”

Ice drenches my spine. I’m on the verge of figuring it all out, and it’s all pointing to one inescapable, terrifying conclusion. “What did you do, Dachev?” I ask, my voice trembling.

“I bribed a nurse to swap her baby with a dead one,” he says.

No. It can’t be. He has to be lying. The air feels too thin, like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room. My hand trembles, and for a second, I can’t breathe. No. This can’t be true. It can’t. The timeline rushes through my mind—a frantic, disjointed calculation. Seven and a half years. It matches up. And why would Dachev lie about this? He’s hoping this information will buy him his life.

Stefi mourned her son for years. She was so fragile after his death that she tried to kill herself. All so this man could do what? Make a few thousand euros selling a child to Bach? I think about her grief, the grief she’s been carrying inside her chest for almost the last decade, and fury fills me, threatening to burn me from the inside out.

Dachev looks up at me. “I put him in an orphanage until he was old enough, and on his fifth birthday, I gave him to Bach. He’s still with him. Stefania’s son isn’t dead. He’s very much alive.”

My mind explodes with rage. Ewan, that child with the too-thin frame, the little boy who held a machine gun in his hands and rained destruction down on us, is our son. I feel like I’m drowning, and I can’t even imagine what Stefi’s feeling right now. Everything we’ve known and believed is being reshaped by this revelation, and it’s too much. My anger builds to a crescendo and shatters outward. I shoot Dachev between the eyes, a quick death he does not deserve.

His mistress lets out a terrified whimper, but I don’t care; I barely register it. I have more urgent matters on my mind. I’m tapping my earpiece urgently. “Stef, did you hear all that? The child with Bach, that’s our son. That’s Christopher.”

A chuckle fills my ear. “Your wife is otherwise occupied, Signor Carvalho,” Henrik Bach says. “If you ever want to see her alive again, come to the dock. Alone. Look for a boat called The Good Fortune.”

Then the line goes dead.