96

South of Donetsk—twelve hours later

Tolevi sat in a small café and sipped his coffee. This was the worst cup yet.

You can make a fortune here! And you don’t even have to smuggle it in. Import from Indonesia through Brunei, roast it in one of those empty warehouses down in Berdyans’k.

Cha-ching, cha-ching. Let the cash registers flow.

The bell at the door rang, nearly in time with Tolevi’s mental notes. He looked up and saw Dan entering with the butcher’s brother. Both looked glum.

They glanced around the place for a moment, then came over to the table and sat.

“So?” asked Tolevi.

The butcher’s brother shook his head. “They don’t know.”

“We have to check the main municipal prison in the city,” Dan said. “They reopened it last month. It’s the logical place.”

“How do we do that?” asked Tolevi.

“I have friends,” said the brother. “I’ll know by the end of the week.”

“That’s too long,” said Tolevi. “We’re taking too much risk as it is.”

“It can’t go any faster.”

Tolevi glanced up at the waitress, who was coming over with menus. Dan waved her off, but the brother ordered ryba, fried fish.

“How do we speed it up?” Tolevi asked.

“Any other way is going to be too risky,” said Dan, shaking his head. “This guy isn’t worth it.”

“If he’s not worth it, then why are we here?” Tolevi answered.

He glanced at the brother. He was grimacing.

“I’m not saying we don’t get him out.” Dan backtracked. “I’m just saying we take our time. We have to get him out in one piece. If we rush, they’ll kill him.”

“And if we wait here too long, we get killed.”

 

Tolevi thought about Dan’s reaction as he drove back to the house where Chelsea and Bozzone were holed up. Dan had marked out the boundaries of the risks he was willing to take and trusted the brother more than Tolevi thought warranted. Risk assessment was a matter of perspective: Dan spent a lot of time in the country and could easily fit in, so he didn’t see waiting around as dangerous. Whereas Tolevi, who knew that the people he was with stood out like sore thumbs, saw far more danger in waiting.

Whose perspective was right?

Mine.

The whole mission was risky. That’s why they were willing to pay so much.

Too much?

The CIA had put an awful lot of energy into getting a rebel out of jail. Maybe he did have information on the Russian “volunteers,” but so what? Everybody in the world knew that the Russians were running things; why go to such lengths to prove it?

Of the five CIA officers who’d come with them, four were paramilitary people, covert agents trained in special operations. From what Tolevi gathered of their backgrounds, all but one were military, the one SEAL and two Rangers. The fourth spoke Russian as well as he did.

White was older than the others, by ten years. He hadn’t shared his background with Tolevi—he was way too gruff for that—but it was obvious from the way he carried himself that he was used to being in charge, and Johansen had been noticeably respectful. So figure him for a very senior guy.

It really doesn’t matter, does it? Just figure out where the hell he is . . .

Damn!

“I know where he is,” said Tolevi out loud. He reached for the GPS and zoomed out the map to get his bearings.

 

The house Chelsea and Bozzone were staying in was an old farmhouse, abandoned for some time. The floors were covered with dust. The few pieces of furniture in the front room—a pair of wooden kitchen tables and three chairs, one of them broken—were well worn and looked as if they dated from the early twentieth century. The mattresses upstairs were new, but they were the exceptions. There was no electricity, and the toilets had to be flushed with water from the jugs stacked along the walls.

Bored, Chelsea reached into her bag and pulled out the paperback of Sudoku puzzles, flipping to the back section where the hardest puzzles were. She’d done most of them on the plane, saving the last two.

They weren’t math problems per se, though there were mathematical equations you could use to describe the puzzle and its possible solutions:

“Still doing your puzzles?” asked Bozzone.

“I’d love to take a walk.”

“Too dangerous. We don’t want to be seen.”

“The nearest house is a mile away. No one can see us from the road.”

“Didn’t you have enough excitement on the water?”

“I sure puked enough.” Chelsea went back to the puzzle.

 

Tolevi recognized the road even before he saw the Russian military vehicle parked along the side.

There was no question of going inside—the Russian colonel would surely imprison him. But it was the most logical place for them to have brought the butcher.

The question was how to find out if he was there.

Has to be there. The brother would know if he was anywhere else.

Two Russian commandos were standing by the truck. Tolevi drove past, eyes on the road.

Has to be there, he thought. Now, how do I prove it?