CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

 

 

 

From his office at Interpol headquarters, Nick Dial growled into his cell phone. “Ivan Volkov? You’re fucking around with Ivan Volkov? Do you have a death wish?”

“Not really,” Payne said from the outdoor table on the stern of the moving yacht. Spread out in front of him were several takeout containers, filled with an assortment of food: a cheeseburger with fries, pasta salad, fruit salad, and a stack of pancakes. As Jarkko piloted the craft into deeper water and away from other boats, Payne grabbed some fries and dipped them in ketchup. “But you know damn well I’m not going to back down from a challenge.”

“A challenge?” Dial blurted as he stood from behind his desk. “You call going up against one of the most powerful criminals in Russia a challenge?”

“Yep,” he said as he chewed quietly. “Why? What would you call it?”

“A death wish!”

Dial took a deep breath as he stomped across his floor to his office door and shut it for privacy. He had spent half the night trying to come up with information about the Russian attack in Malta, only to have news about its mastermind handed to him by Payne.

Not that he was upset about the call itself.

The truth was he was thrilled that Payne had kept his word and had phoned the minute he had come up with news about the gunmen. Dial’s frustration stemmed from the slow trickle of data that had come from I-24/7, which was the global police communications system that Interpol used to connect law enforcement officers in all of its member countries. Unfortunately, the system was completely reliant on the National Central Bureaus and police departments around the globe. Until information was added to the appropriate databases, Dial couldn’t access it on the network. And since the secretary general had banned Dial from investigative work, all he could do was sit on his ass in France while his friends’ lives were in danger in Malta.

For a man like Dial, that was hard to handle.

“Listen, Jon, and listen good. Even though Russia is one of Interpol’s member countries, I cannot help you or DJ if you go to Moscow to take on Volkov. My fancy title doesn’t mean shit to the Politsiya. Their entire police force operates under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, and they barely tolerate our presence. I can’t even imagine how the Minister would react to a phone call from me—a fuckin’ American—but you better believe it wouldn’t help your cause in a Russian prison or my chance of continued employment at Interpol.”

“On the bright side, you’ve been looking for a change.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Jon. I’m not in the mood.”

“Would your mood improve if I helped you clear a murder case?”

“Good Lord,” Dial said as he started to pace his office. “Who’d you kill now?”

Payne laughed as the yacht slowed to a stop. “Not me. Volkov.”

Dial stopped. “It might.”

“Does the name Sergei Bobrinsky mean anything to you?”

“Bobrinsky?” he said as he tried to think. Thousands of murders happened every day in his member countries, so the odds of him knowing a single name were pretty slim. But for some reason, that particular name had made his radar. “Where did he die?”

“Estonia,” Payne said as he continued to eat.

“Tallinn!” Dial blurted. “He died in the tower in Tallinn!”

Payne wiped his mouth with a napkin. “That’s the guy.”

Dial sat in his office chair and reached for his computer mouse. “I’m gonna put you on speakerphone, if that’s okay with you.”

“Only if I can do the same with you.”

“Honestly, I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Don’t worry,” Payne said, realizing Dial’s job was on the line. “No one is around. I’m merely trying to eat.”

Dial smiled as he clicked through files. “When aren’t you trying to eat?”

Payne laughed. “Good point.”

“In that case, go ahead. But if I hear mooing sounds and gunshots in the background, I’m gonna bust you for animal cruelty.”

Payne picked up his cheeseburger, completely unaffected by the comment. “Speaking of which, how long would you put someone away for killing an albino tiger?”

“Excuse me?”

“Asking for a friend.”

“A long, long time.”

“Good. I’ll let him know.”

Dial stared at his computer screen. While Payne was rambling, Dial had pulled up the case files from the Bobrinsky murder on the I-24/7 network. “If it’s okay with you, can we get back to Estonia? As far as I can tell, it’s an open investigation. How do you know it was Volkov?”

“Is this off the record?”

Dial laughed. “Of course this is off the record! I’m the head of the entire division, and I’m hiding in my office like a teenager—a teenager with chest pains and ulcers.”

“Just making sure,” Payne said as he reached for the pancakes. “Wait. Are you serious about the health shit, or were you just busting my balls?”

“A little of both. Anytime you call, I feel my blood pressure going up.”

“That’s better than your dick going up.”

Dial laughed. “Touché.”

“Anyway,” Payne said, “I got the intel from Jarkko, who got it from one of his business associates in Russia. It turns out that Bobrinsky was the one who jumpstarted our treasure hunt when he gave Jarkko a collection of Russian documents as payment for services rendered. Unfortunately, Bobrinsky owed Volkov a substantial debt, which is likely the reason that he came after Jarkko at the library. We think it was to make a point about priorities. If you owe money to Volkov, you better pay him first or everyone—including family—gets punished.”

Dial listened as he scanned one of the reports on his screen. “Makes sense to me, and it fits the evidence found at the scene. Bobrinsky was carrying three fake Estonian passports. Very high quality. The type a desperate man would buy to smuggle his family out of Russia. Truth be told, I’m not quite sure why he would stay so close to home. If I owed money to Volkov, I would move to a different hemisphere to protect my family, but that’s just me. Maybe Bobrinsky had contacts in Tallinn who were going to help him from there.”

Payne shrugged. He had no clue. He wasn’t the type to run. “I’ve been to Tallinn more than once for business conferences. It’s a thriving, high-tech city with tons of cameras. There has to be surveillance footage of Volkov and his goons.”

Dial shook his head. “The murders took place in Old Town, which is the medieval part of Tallinn. There are cameras there, but not nearly as many as the bustling downtown. According to this report, there was a Wi-Fi blackout in the area at the time, so there’s no footage of the murder. However, the cameras conveniently came back on after the bodies were found.”

Thanks to his work at Payne Industries, Payne knew that Tallinn had a free, citywide Wi-Fi network that would ping the moment he landed at the airport. The city also had some of the best high-tech wizards on the planet. If someone had managed to hack their network—much like the network in Valletta had been hacked at the time of the gunfight—then they were extremely talented, the type of hackers who could potentially mess with a presidential election.

“If it’s okay with you,” Payne said, “I’d love to share this information with Randy Raskin. Maybe there’s something he can do to recover some footage.”

Dial nodded. “That’s fine with me. Anything to keep him from messing with my phone. I can’t get his ding-a-ling out of my mind.”

Payne laughed. “You may want to rephrase that.”

“Shit. You know what I meant.”

“Wait until I tell DJ.”

“Please don’t.”

“No worries. This call never happened.”

“What call?” Dial said with a smile. “Seriously, though, thanks for the intel. I’ll let you know if I learn anything else about Volkov.”

Payne nodded. “I appreciate it. And I’ll obviously do the same.”