THE BARBECUE WAS WINDING DOWN when Andrei Volovoi’s phone began to ring. Instinctively, he stiffened in his seat, scanned the backyard as, in her lawn chair beside him, Veronika giggled.
“What kind of ringtone is that, Uncle Andrei?” she said as the phone continued to ring in his pocket. “It sounds like your phone is from 1980.”
Volovoi smiled back at his niece. “It’s a genuine antique, Veronika,” he told her. “I bought it when I was your age.”
He excused himself from the table, stood, and wandered into his sister’s backyard, where darkness had fallen fully and mosquitoes swarmed. He removed the phone from his pocket, a cheap, corner-store throwaway, and checked the number on the screen. Bogdan Urzica, one of his drivers. He would be calling from the road, probably Minnesota.
Volovoi glanced back at the table, made sure none of his family could overhear. Then he answered the phone. “Bogdan.”
“We have a problem, Andrei.”
Even from fifteen hundred miles away, Bogdan Urzica’s voice made Volovoi nervous. The driver and his partner, the idiot Nikolai Kirilenko, were at this moment delivering another cargo of Volovoi’s women to their buyers. Any problem Bogdan might have was bound to be serious.
Volovoi retreated farther into the backyard. Watched his sister gather his two nieces, Veronika and little Adriana, and herd them toward the house. In the distance, Volovoi could hear traffic on Ocean Parkway, happy laughter, the sounds of another Brighton Beach summer night. Inside, though, he felt cold, despite the humid air. He turned away from the house and spoke quietly into his phone. “What kind of problem?”
“A girl escaped the box,” Bogdan told him, “in northern Minnesota, just now. There is a dead man. A police officer. We had no choice.”
Volovoi closed his eyes. He trusted Bogdan Urzica. If the man was not a friend, he was a good acquaintance anyway. He was a hard worker. He was cautious. He avoided problems. He was a man Andrei Volovoi could respect. If Bogdan Urzica had killed a police officer, he’d had a good reason to do so.
Still, the thought made Volovoi’s stomach churn.
“We are safe,” Bogdan told him. “We escaped with the rest of the cargo. If you have no hesitations, Nikolai and I will continue our deliveries.”
Volovoi forced himself to exhale. Relax. It was not the first time a girl had escaped from the box. It was not the first time the drivers had been forced to kill someone.
In any case, the girl probably didn’t speak English. Most of them didn’t, but they still bought the dream that Volovoi’s pickers sold them. A new life in America. Supermodel. Actress. Fame and fortune.
Hell, Volovoi thought, any woman dumb enough to fall for the trap deserves the box and whatever comes after. Generally, though, he tried not to think about the women. He was too busy keeping his business afloat.
Bogdan Urzica cleared his throat. “Boss?”
It was troublesome that a girl had escaped. It was bad, very bad, that a police officer was dead. But these things happened when you made your living selling women. There were always going to be risks, no matter how fervently you fought to contain them. No matter how often you tried to preach prudence.
This was not a disaster, Volovoi decided. Therefore, there was no reason to mention it to the Dragon.
He crossed the backyard to where Veronika watched him from the doorway, her blond hair falling in ringlets across her face. Volovoi waved at her, watched her face light up as she smiled back at him. He exhaled again, felt the tightness in his chest dissipate.
“Everything will be fine,” he told Bogdan Urzica. “Carry on with your deliveries as planned.”