Micah parked the SUV next to a winter-bare hedge of sticks on the far side of the parking lot from the warehouse rented by the Novodevichy Cemetery organization. Kylie was sitting on the back seat floor with the comforter tented over her position with the iPad and her phone.
After the recent rainstorm, a chill had swept through the region, cooling even the temperate South of France to a wintry nip.
The second rented SUV parked next to his.
Blaze glanced through the windows between them with no expression on his face, just a solid, square jaw that was neither slack nor clenched, perhaps with a slight narrowing of his frost-blue eyes.
At precisely two minutes before ten o’clock, Micah buttoned his suit jacket over his stomach and walked toward the low building without a backward glance.
Pale gravel crunched under his shoes, but he kept his head up as if he were mildly interested in nothing.
Blaze and Twist followed Micah toward the door, their footsteps scratching on the rocky ground like talons on cement.
Micah raised his fist to knock at the solid-steel door, but the door was already swinging open. Warmer air rolled out, engulfing Micah’s face and carrying the dusty foulness of long-stored plastic breaking down into solvents and the decay of dead rodents. The speed that the stench overwhelmed the parking lot’s sunshine-baked earth was alarming.
Anatoly Ostrovsky stood inside, beckoning Micah and the others to enter. “Is good to see you. I am pleased to show you our accommodations for the art.”
Micah stepped in, shook Ostrovsky’s rough hand, and then gestured at Twist and Blaze. “Good to see you again, Anatoly. These are my friends, John and Tom.”
Why advertise, indeed.
After handshakes all around, Anatoly led the three of them through the warehouse, trailed by two unintroduced rough-hewn blocks of men who twitched at the buzz of a wasp up by the ceiling.
First corridor, five steps, turn head to the left.
Shrink-wrapped pallets filled the metal shelves of the sectioned-off area. A forklift whined as it drove down the broad aisle, looking for something to stick its prongs in and lift.
As planned, the three of them alternated peering between each stack of shelves or into corridors they passed so that two faces were always facing forward, certainly not surveilling, and one person was looking for Kylie’s family or some indication someone was being held prisoner.
Micah was also looking for unsecured computers.
Six steps, turn head to the right.
A shorter corridor than the one on the left, stacked shelves filled with plastic-mummified boxes on pallets, and a sheetrock wall where one shouldn’t be.
Micah coughed lightly and then sniffed, code for to the left, suspicious.
A few seconds later, Twist sneezed. Confirmation. Suspicious thing to the left.
They continued looking as they were led halfway into the warehouse and then turned to the right.
Blaze was looking up as if distracted by the utilitarian tube lighting above their heads and got ten feet farther down the central corridor before the goons behind them returned him, apologizing for his absentmindedness, to the herd.
When Micah glanced back at him, Blaze scratched his cheek. Saw nothing.
Micah’s watch buzzed on his left wrist. He checked it with a brief glance.
Car. 3 ppl. Going inside.
The lack of any other information told him that it was not three armed bodyguards sprinting inside with purpose, nor was it two prison guards dragging a prisoner out of the car.
Their little lookout was doing her job from the car, where she was hopefully safe. Excellent.
Anatoly Ostrovsky led the group, nattering on about his commitment to art conservation. Micah made sure to grunt encouraging sounds every now and then. Twist and Blaze walked in silence, watching.
Finally, they reached a locked door in a wall of hastily nailed-together drywall.
Ostrovsky made a big show of taking out his keys to unlock it. Micah paid ostentatious attention to Anatoly Ostrovsky while listening as carefully as possible to every scratch and wheeze of the air conditioning and people moving within the warehouse now that they’d stopped walking.
Ostrovsky put on a proper dog-and-pony show inside the vault room for Micah and his guys, extolling the climate control and security systems in the room and the warehouse.
Blaze and Twist examined the walls, nodding sagely, during the lecture.
Micah listened until Ostrovsky ran out of words and then said, “Show me more about your warehouse’s security system.”
After that, they got the grand tour, walking the perimeter of the building inside and out. Micah and the guys found two more locations of interest within the building and memorized the numbers Ostrovsky typed into the keypads.
Breaking in that night was going to be a cinch.
When they walked back inside the warehouse to an office area cross-hatched with cubicles, Anatoly Ostrovsky asked Micah, “So, everything is to your liking?”
Micah nodded and smiled. “You have an excellent set-up here, Anatoly. We can arrange payment and delivery of the painting as soon as possible.”
Ostrovsky grinned like a kid behind a pile of birthday presents. “Are you going to tell me what it is now?”
Micah leaned toward him, a prim smile curving his lips. “The Annunciation by Lorenzo di Credi.”
Ostrovsky’s grin stretched his face into a mass of pointy wrinkles. “Di Credi? And a religious subject? It is very nice. I am very happy with arrangement.”
“As am I, Anatoly.” Micah stuck out his hand to shake on it.
Out of the corner of his eye, Micah caught Twist and Blaze rolling their eyes and resuming their inspection of the warehouse with that night’s infiltration in mind.
Micah was still shaking hands with Anatoly when more footsteps rounded a corner. The more brittle taps of a woman’s footwear on the industrial tile beneath their feet registered before he turned around.
Ostrovsky looked at the woman behind Micah and grinned harder, releasing his hand. “Micah Shine, may I present my associate, Ms. Sofia Maximovna Melnik. She is especially interested in having Old Master painting.”
Beside him, Twist and Blaze looked at the new arrival, smiling and nodding in greeting.
Micah turned, careful to keep his face as blank as a primed canvas, even though he knew what he would see.
Melnik meant miller in Russian, as in someone who operates a mill and grinds grain into flour.
Miller.
Kylie Miller hadn’t picked her surname by accident or because it was similar to Merlino. It was the Anglicization of her mother’s maiden name.
Sofia Melnik looked precisely like the composite Micah had seen for a week with traces of her daughter around her straight nose and soft mouth, but he never would have imagined the bright blond hair Sofia had been hiding under all those scarves.
Too late, he slapped his hand over the bumblebee-sized drone hiding the pocket square of his suit jacket.
His watch buzzed again and again.