"Yep," I said as I started counting windows again.

Chapter 76.

Several hours later, coming on seven that evening, after Putin was in for the night upstairs at the Waldorf, we were downstairs in a back room off its ornate lobby, in one of its conference rooms.

The beautiful varnished boardroom table we were sitting at was done up with the Waldorf's signature A1 high style. There were sumptuous flower arrangements running down the middle of the table, and tissues in intricately carved decorative boxes. At each of the twenty or so seats were china coffee cups and water bottles and crystal water gla.s.ses set up on little doilies.

We were there to have our own little international summit between us and Putin's Russian security forces.

"This spread is fit for a king, isn't it, Paul?" I said to Agent Ernenwein as a pleasant middle-aged waitress filled my coffee cup for the third time. "So this is what it feels like to be a central banker. I must say, I'm impressed."

"Now, Mike, it's not fair to denigrate the wizards behind the curtain," Paul said. "They deserve every luxury we can provide for them. Do you actually think it's easy to conjure up trillions of dollars of global debt with a wave of your manicured fingers over a keyboard?"

I was still chuckling when the Russian security guys came in. There were six of them-six big thick-necked guys in tailored suits. Think Brute Squad by way of Savile Row.

"Enough of your lies," the lead brute, a pale bald guy, said without preamble or sitting down. "Why do you think that Putin is out to kill your president? Do you think we are so stupid that we cannot see that this is some plot you have set up to discredit him? You wish for a premise for war? Yes? Of course you do. For without Russia, the US can just take whatever it pleases, such as Iraq. You will find very painfully we are not the Iraqis, I a.s.sure you. Russia will defy you, then defeat you faster than you will believe."

After ten seconds of unbelievably dead silence following this verbal crowbar to the back of the head, I stood, holding a crystal water gla.s.s aloft.

"Hi. My name is Mike. Welcome to America," I said. "Please sit down so we can discuss how to be friends with one another."

"You stupid American," baldy said. "If anything happens to our president, you will not be laughing, I can a.s.sure you. The joke will be on you and the smoldering little of what's left of your decadent country."

"Did somebody wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or what?" I whispered a little too loudly to Paul.

"Please, gentlemen. There's no need to speak in such a way," said Agent Margaret Foley, giving me a look like she wanted to turn me into something smoldering. "As you may have heard, Mr. Stasevich, our president was almost shot."

"And we have very good reason," Paul jumped in, "to believe that the shooter was hired by someone in Russia. But we have never stated that we thought it was your president. Not once. So I don't know where you're getting that from."

"Would any of these reasons have something to do with one of our agricultural attaches, who seems to be missing?" Stasevich inquired with a roll of his eyes. "Tell us, how long did it take for your CIA interrogators to waterboard this false information out of him that we are involved?"

"Enough, please, gentlemen," said Agent Foley. "These outrageous accusations get us nowhere. As with all visiting dignitaries, we will be doing everything we can to ensure your leader's protection while he is in our country."

"And to imply that we are not is a flat-out insult," Paul said, feisty now.

"Please accept our deepest apologies," said Stasevich. "And listen to me very closely. We deny any and all involvement. And to show you that our only wish is for global stability, like a true partner of all nations, our president is willing to appear with your president out in front of the UN as the dignitaries arrive. Vladimir Putin is willing to put himself in the line of fire."

"I will pa.s.s along your generous offer to the president," said Agent Foley. "Thank you for meeting with us."

"It's just like I told you," I said to Paul as the Russkies left. "The Brit can shoot the nose hair out of a flying mosquito at four thousand yards. This is it. When Vlad and the president are out in front of the UN, waving to the crowd, that's when the shooting will happen."

Paul shook his head, then let out a breath.

"I don't know, Mike. Maybe these guys are on the level. They look genuinely p.i.s.sed off."

"Which means what? They're not involved? Putin's not involved?"

Paul shook his head again, then shrugged.

"Maybe not. Maybe it's one of the oligarchs who want to take Buckland out. Heck, maybe the oligarchs want to take Putin himself out. Every time you think you're getting a bead on this, something new pops up that makes it impossible to say what the h.e.l.l is going on."

"It's like those Russian dolls. What are they called?" I said.

"Matryoshkas," said Paul, nodding.

"Exactly, Paul. You nailed it. From day one, this whole case has been one big mind-s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g matryoshka. The doll within the doll within the doll."

Chapter 77.

The British a.s.sa.s.sin thumbed away his well-cleaned dessert plate, took out his blue pack of Gitanes, and lit one for himself and his wife off the linen-draped table's candle.

What a meal! he thought as he flicked ash onto his coffee saucer and blew smoke up toward the ceiling.

There had been beef tongue carpaccio, roasted quail, risotto with shaved pecorino, smoked eel on black truffle toast, jowl of pork. Each dish perfectly cooked and washed down with bottle after bottle of 2007 Francois Lamarche La Grande Rue.

He'd caught the foodie bug back when he was a teenager and worked in kitchens all over London. He'd actually been a line chef at Le Gavroche for three months, as a fill-in, and was prepping at the Fat Duck, in Bray, when he got his call from the marines.

When this was over, first order of celebration was going to be eating their way across the continent, starting in France, he thought as he looked out the window beside him at the city lights. He glanced over at his s.e.xy wife and pictured them cruising through Burgundy's quiet villages in something unconscionable, like an Aston Vantage or a Bentley Continental GT, her blond hair flying as they ripped around the vineyards and hills and gravel bends.

"Everything okay?" asked Jill, the Culinary Inst.i.tutetrained chef and apartment owner as she came in to clear the plates.

They had jumped with both feet when they saw the Asian thirtysomething's ad on an underground dining website for a farm-to-table, cooked-to-perfection gourmet feast. They were actually seated in the gla.s.sed-in balcony of her twentieth-floor apartment in a high-rise in northern Manhattan, of all places.

It couldn't have worked out better. With the shooting still fresh in the news, they had to stay out of the public eye until the job was over.

"Perfect, really," said the a.s.sa.s.sin's wife. "How rude of us. We forgot to ask if it is okay to smoke. It's been ages since I actually had a postmeal smoke at the table."

Jill, who'd already been paid the fee of eight hundred dollars in cash, smiled.

"Please-you're my guests. Mi casa es su casa," she said as she left with the plates.

He was stubbing out the Gitane in the gla.s.s ashtray Jill had brought them when his disposable phone rang.

"Are you this stupid?" was the first question he was asked by the client's electronically disguised voice when he answered the phone in the bathroom.

"It's fine," he said.

"It's not fine. You shot a cop and a spook. The spook's at death's door."

"That's the way the cookie crumbles," the British a.s.sa.s.sin said. "Playing for keeps isn't for the squeamish. Have you the final route? I've been waiting."

"I just sent it to your e-mail."

"I see it," the British a.s.sa.s.sin said, looking at his smartphone. "No changes, then?"

"No. They're going with the original route. It's a lock."

"Good, then. I'll expect the last of it by close of business tomorrow."

"Close of business?" the client said. "That's not in the contract. The second after he's confirmed dead, the escrow will be released to you. Be it an hour later or a year. That's the deal. Killing him. That's the important part here. Finishing the job."

"No problem," the British a.s.sa.s.sin said with a yawn as he looked at himself in the mirror.

"So you're good to go now, right? You don't have to deal with Levkov anymore, do you?"

"No, I haven't spoken to him since I started dealing with you."

"Good. We can start the housecleaning on our end, then, tonight."

"Whatever you need to do," said the Brit. "That's none of my concern."

"Get some sleep. The weather looks good tomorrow. Crisp and clear."

"I like the sound of that," the British a.s.sa.s.sin said, thumbing the cheap phone off.

Chapter 78.

After he buzzed the Chinese food guy out, Pavel Levkov carefully arrayed his dinner of beef with broccoli, fried wontons, and egg drop soup on his cleared desk.

He was in his office at the meat warehouse in Brooklyn now, where he'd just finished up the mountain of payroll and inventory paperwork that had piled up during his hospital stay and detention by the feds.

He was in an electric wheelchair, his kneecapped leg in a bulky aluminum and resin brace. The rented chair was costing him a fortune since he had a high-deductible plan, but he needed it, as walking was a no-no since the pain in his knee was unlike anything he'd ever felt. The doctors had told him it had something to do with all the bones in the knee that the American b.a.s.t.a.r.d's bullet had smashed to jelly.

All in all, he was lucky, he knew. He'd paid back all his debts and was out of all of it. Though he had been kneecapped, his duty as middleman between the British a.s.sa.s.sin and the Russian mobster had been completed.

A bullet to the knee and a couple of phone calls were actually a pretty fair price to pay to erase the ma.s.sive poker debt he had with the mobster. He'd run with the devil and was still alive. That was winning, in his book. It was time to retire now, sell his businesses, get out of New York altogether. Quit while he was ahead.

Meal over, he was dry-swallowing a Percocet when his new dog, a boxer-rottweiler mix he'd named Sweetie, began growling at the locked office door.

Immediately, he took his fully loaded and c.o.c.ked SIG Sauer P220 Match Elite .45 out of the knapsack on the side of the wheelchair. The dog began barking like mad a few seconds later, and then he smelled it. Smoke. As he watched, a wisp of it floated in under the door.

Then, over the dog's bark, he heard it. Out in the hallway, there was beeping from the ceiling smoke alarm.

Somebody had set his place on fire.

Gun in his right hand, he zipped the wheelchair over to the door and unlocked it and pulled it open. He coughed in the gray smoke that poured in as the dog shot out into the hall like a missile. Panicking, Pavel Levkov stared at the smoke, waiting to hear something. The dog barking, a struggle-anything. But even after a minute, he heard nothing.

He'd just made it out into the hall, braced leg first, when the shadow fell over him and something smashed into his outstretched knee.

It was an aluminum softball bat, he saw, as it smacked again, into his torso this time, sending the .45 flying away.

"I didn't talk, I swear," he said in Russian. "I did everything you said."

"We shall see about that," the Russian voice replied as he was lifted bodily out of the chair.

Chapter 79.

Five the next morning, I was in Yonkers, just over the border of the Bronx. On my right was the Hudson River, and on my left were the Metro-North train tracks, and in front of me, beside an old rusted-out Ford flatbed truck, was our Russian suspect, Pavel Levkov, lying facedown in the gravel, dead.

The Russian, who was in a leg brace from his kneecapping, had been shot in the back of the head a couple of times. His wrists and ankles were bound in wire hangers twisted together really tight with a pair of side cutters or something. It was a neat job. There was no blood at the scene, which probably meant he'd been dumped.

"Who found him?" said Paul as he came up along the railroad tracks with a couple of coffees.

"Guy walking his dog," I said. "Yonkers PD got him in a car back in the station lot. He's a local kid. Didn't see anyone."

There was a small stand of leafless trees beside the crime scene atop of which some crows were cawing up at the gray sky. I suddenly picked up a rock and chucked it at them, sending them flapping.

"Bird lover, I see," said Paul.

"No. A peace and quiet one," I said.

"You know," Paul said, "the old-timey houses back there and the water and trees here remind me of a sad book I once read. It's set in the thirties or something, and it's about an upstate New York Irish b.u.m who'd been a ballplayer and goes back to see his family in Albany for Thanksgiving."

"I remember. Nicholson played him in the depressing movie."

"Yeah, he did. What's the name of it?"

"Ironweed," I said. "Now how about our friend here. If our Russian buddy were a depressing novel, which one would he be, you think? War and Peace? Crime and Punishment?"

Paul looked at me pensively, then snapped his fingers.

"The Death of Ivan Ilyich," he said.

"You're good," I said. "So what does this mean, Paul? Levkov was the link to the Brit. The middleman. And now he's dead."