A FEW HOURS LATER, I was sitting in a gravel lot two miles off the North Satellite terminal of Sea-Tac airport. The lot was empty, waiting for a construction project that might never come. Reuben’s BMW was about the only thing in a hundred yards, any direction. The BMW, and me, and Reuben, still in the trunk.
He had made a lot of noise for the first half hour after I’d stopped. Threats and promises and pleas like a playlist on repeat. I heard him continually trying the interior trunk release, which I had broken before closing him in. When his raving stopped amusing me, I told him that if he said another word I would run a hose from the exhaust pipe into the trunk and let the carbon monoxide calm him down. He held his tongue for another hour, when he’d asked for water. My answer was to start the engine and rev it once. There was no more chatter after that.
I had not minded the wait. I spent most of the time in the driver’s seat, slipping in and out of sleep. The pain of my burned wrists, and too many contusions to count, kicked rapid eye movement in the ass every time it got near. Finally I was rested enough to get out and walk around the parking lot. The cold felt good. A few laps and my steps were a lot more reliable than when I started.
Around six in the morning my phone rang. I told an unfamiliar male voice at the other end where I was. He hung up without another word.
Twenty minutes after, two black limousines pulled into the lot. I stood beside the open BMW. My Glock was visible in the front of my waistband. The dead Kasym’s FNP was at the small of my back.
The limousines stopped abreast of each other, twenty feet in front of the BMW. Two large men in rumpled dark suits and white shirts with no ties got out of the front of the left limo. Another similarly dressed man got out of the driver’s seat of the second car. They all left their doors open.
The men looked around the lot. Looked at me.
“Throw the gun away,” said the one who had been driving the second car. He had a heavy Eastern Bloc accent.
I smiled and shook my head.
Couldn’t really blame them for being cautious. Besides the hardware, I was filthy and scarred and looked like a rabid dog who would enjoy passing along the sickness.
I heard the whir of a window rolling down. The man who’d spoken to me leaned in to hold a conversation in very quiet Russian. The other two men and I watched one another.
Finally the driver opened the back door of the limousine, and Lev Kuznetsov stepped out.
There was no question he was Reuben’s father. Same height, stretched much thinner and slightly stooped on Lev, and the same big forehead. Where Reuben was balding, Lev was completely hairless. His eyebrows were so pale as to be invisible. Lev was older than I’d imagined. He must have been near fifty when Reuben had been born. He wore a black double-breasted suit with wide lapels and a tie the color of late-summer corn. His black knee-length coat might have been sable. If so, it had cost more than his son’s Beemer.
Most of all, Lev looked immaculate, despite the long flights. Maybe that was the secret to power. Kings stayed elegant while soldiers got dirty.
If my gun caused him any concern, he didn’t deign to show it. He walked up to stand ten feet from me.
“You are Shaw,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Willard has said that my son has caused you troubles.” Lev’s accent was very thick and he spoke crisply, as if testing the proper pronunciation.
“Not just me.” And I was sure that by now, it wasn’t only Willard who had fed Lev information about what had happened in Seattle. The old king may know more about Reuben’s schemes than I did.
“I am here,” Lev said. Meaning, Hand him over.
I nodded and didn’t say anything.
“Yes. The deal. Willard said of your concerns, your—” He made a please-fill-in-the-blank gesture.
“Conditions.”
Lev nodded shortly. “I would like to hear these from you. Your words.”
His voice was spiced with anger. I knew I was following a new map through a minefield. You trust that the path is safe. But not one hundred percent. Lev Kuznetsov had avoided a very bad situation, by luck rather than by his own intrigues. He might feel indebted, and pissed off about that unfamiliar emotion. He might be offended that I had laid a hand on his son, no matter what the cause. Ego was unpredictable.
“I’ll give you Reuben, relatively intact,” I said. “You get to stop a coup. Reuben will know all the Bratva captains who were ready to back him. In return, your Brotherhood forgets about me and my people. And I get your promise that Reuben won’t ever be a threat.”
“That condition, I can give the promise. Your people?”
“Reuben tried to kill my woman, and my friend.”
Lev made a small hum of acknowledgment. “And you have him alive.”
“Because he’s worth something.”
“Not money?”
“Not money.”
Lev nodded. “You are not fearing, meeting me—us—like this?” He dipped his head toward the empty lot.
“Willard respects you,” I said.
Lev made that same little hum. He looked over the hillside that bordered the lot, still grassy and lush even in winter. A moment passed as he thought about whatever he was thinking about. I didn’t have to think. My options were very limited, if this went sour. But I was willing to bet large.
“Willard has talked of you with the same regard,” Lev said. “This deal can happen.”
I leaned into the BMW’s driver’s side and popped the trunk.
I had expected Reuben to call out once he knew his father was near. He had not. When I saw him in the trunk, matted with stink and trickles of crusted blood on his face, I understood why. His eyes had the bright, unadulterated terror of a child who is certain that the boogeyman lives in his closet. And who has just seen the closet door move.
The two men from the other limo hustled Reuben almost gently into the backseat. One sat next to him. The other waited by the driver’s door.
Lev had not looked directly at his son during the whole exchange.
“I will have some—adjustments—to make,” he said. “There will be opportunities. We would welcome a man who earns respect.”
“No. Thank you.”
He nodded and walked back to the limousine. His driver held the door for him and they all got in their cars and drove away, headed back toward the airport. By this time his private plane would be refueled and checked and ready to return to Siberia.
A few minutes passed. I sat on the hood, taking deep breaths.
Willard finished walking down the hillside and crossed the wide parking lot to meet me. He wore a trenchcoat over his suit, and the coat and his pants were wet where he’d been lying in the grass. The Merkel .30-06 with its telescopic sight was slung over his shoulder. It looked like a BB gun in his hands.
“Everything good?” he asked.
“I don’t think Lev and I will be sharing vodka shots soon, but yeah.”
He put the rifle into the BMW’s open trunk and shut it.
If I had drawn the Glock, the plan was that I would start shooting Lev’s men working from my right inward. Willard would start with the men to my left. I didn’t plan beyond that. My odds of survival wouldn’t rate it.
“Thanks,” I said.
Willard shrugged. “It took a lot for you to trust me.”
While I had been negotiating with Lev Kuzetnov, I had also been very aware that Willard could have changed his allegiance just by changing his aim by about half a degree.
“Don’t suppose Elana would have forgiven me,” Willard said.
“Your niece isn’t someone to piss off. When Kend and Trudy were killed, she went hunting for the murderers herself.”
Willard showed surprise about as much as he showed any other emotion. His eyebrow twitched. “To kill them?”
“She loved Kend. And she’s got a lot of steel. When things got very bad with Reuben, she didn’t crack.”
He took a long inhale. “I’ll be damned.”
“Won’t we all.”
He looked over Reuben’s BMW. “Nice ride. Is it yours now?”
“I miss my truck. If you can fit into it, I’ll give you a lift back to your car.”
He managed, with his head denting the roof fabric and his shoulder pressing me off center from the steering wheel.