Avenue of Thieves

by Sean Black

  Lock sat back, enjoying the perfect family moment. He looked from Dimitri to Elizabeth and then to Anastasia, happy for them and relieved that they’d come through what they had.

  Bodyguarding rarely offered such clear moments, but when it did they were to be treasured. He excused himself and went to find Ty to share the news.

  58

  Dimitri woke to a chirp and the glow of his phone on the nightstand next to his bed. It was flashing with an incoming call. He looked at the time. A little after two in the morning. The number showed as withheld.

  Rubbing at his eyes, he looked over at Elizabeth, fast asleep next to him.

  He got out of bed, grabbed the phone and stumbled into the bathroom, keeping the light off so as not to wake his wife.

  “Yes, hello?”

  “If you want to talk to me, I’m outside. Down at your dock.”

  Even now, all these years later, he recognized the voice.

  “Unless, of course, you want to hide behind your wife’s skirt, or your bodyguards, like the coward I’ve always known you are. And don’t worry, I’m alone. You’ve made sure of that. You have five minutes.”

  “Wait,” he said, into the silence, but she was gone.

  He paced to the toilet and took a leak. His mouth was dry from the vodka and wine at dinner and his head was fuzzy from a joint he’d smoked out on the deck before he’d come to bed around midnight.

  He should inform his security and call the cops. He walked out of the bathroom and into his dressing room. He pulled on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, a hoodie, and threw on some deck shoes.

  He grabbed a step stool and used it to reach a safe he had installed above the top shelf. He pressed his index finger against it. It popped open. He reached in and pulled out his own personal protection weapon, a single stack Glock 43. It was ready to go, no round in the chamber but with a fresh magazine.

  Dimitri moved back through the bedroom as quietly as he could, not wanting to wake his wife. He walked down the hallway to the stairs, the gun tucked out of sight.

  As he reached the stairs, the control room door opened, and Lock appeared.

  “You okay?” he asked him.

  “Fine, Ryan, thank you. Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d get some air.”

  Lock eyed him, like maybe he didn’t buy it. Or maybe Dimitri was being paranoid. His heart was beating out of his chest. Part of him wanted to tell Lock about the phone call. And another part of him knew that if he did that Ninel would have been correct when she’d called him a coward.

  He would go downstairs, see if he could spot her and then decide. If he saw anyone else, or any sign she wasn’t alone, he would raise the alarm.

  “Good news about Anastasia. I told Ty―he was delighted,” said Lock.

  Dimitri turned back. “Thank you. She’s going to miss you guys.”

  “Okay, well, holler if you need me. I’ll cancel the alarm so you don’t set it off when you go outside but let me know when you come back so I can reset it.”

  “Will do. Thank you.”

  Dimitri kept going, moving down the stairs and walking to the rear of the house. He turned the key and opened the French windows. Sea fog obscured the dock and the Atlantic beyond. He stepped out onto the deck.

  This was crazy. For all he knew she could be at the side of the house, a gun aimed at him.

  A figure appeared down by the dock, the lower half of the body shrouded in fog. Ninel Tarasov. A spectral figure from his past made flesh. Until now she had been almost an abstract figure, even as she’d sown mayhem all around him.

  Now she was real again, and he couldn’t help but remember leaving her on the runway back in Moscow. What if the tables had been turned? Would he have sought revenge? He knew the answer. Of course he would.

  Down on the dock, she stood there, arms folded, apparently waiting for him to decide. He reached down, lifting the bottom of his hoodie and felt the Glock tucked in at his waist.

  He should go back inside. He should raise the alarm. No good could come of this.

  Dimitri knew all of those things. But, as at so many other points in his life, he ignored the voice of caution in his head, and headed down toward the dock.

  Lock watched as Dimitri stepped out onto the deck. He seemed to hesitate, as if he wasn’t sure where he wanted to go. Something was off. Lock had spent enough time around the man to know that. He’d been so happy at dinner, but when he’d met him in the hallway, it had seemed like the weight of the world was back on the Russian’s shoulders.

  He saw Dimitri reach down to his side. Lock tapped the camera controller, pulling back the video stream of what he’d just seen. He hit the freeze-frame button, stopping just before Dimitri’s hand moved, then placing it in slow motion.

  It was what he’d thought he’d seen, the grip of a Glock. Switching back, Lock saw Dimitri step out of the bottom of the frame, headed for the dock.

  His P226 already in its holster, Lock grabbed his radio from the desk and took off out of the control room.

  Dimitri stepped onto the dock, hand by his side, ready to draw the Glock. Ninel was standing almost at the very end, arms crossed. He couldn’t see anyone else with her.

  At first neither of them said anything. Finally, she tilted her head up toward the house. “It’s very nice,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  “I would ask you how you’ve been, but I already know.”

  “What do you want, Ninel?” he asked her.

  “What? Can’t two old friends catch up without one of them wanting something?”

  He laughed. “I always admired your sense of humor. It was very un-Soviet.”

  “I was sorry to hear about your daughter.”

  She sounded strangely sincere. It could have come off like a threat, or gloating, but he detected neither of those in her tone. “She’s in remission.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Listen, I can’t stay down here too long. Why don’t you and I go for a little jaunt on my boat?” he said, looking down at the deck boat. “Catch up properly without any worries about someone listening in.”

  He’d thought it through on the way down here. There was no way he was allowing her to leave alive. She was way too dangerous and she knew far too much. And experience told him he couldn’t count on the Kremlin getting rid of her.

  Some things were better handled directly, and this was one of them. He couldn’t shoot her. Even with all of his money he doubted he would get away with cold-blooded murder. Back home in Russia maybe, but not here.

  He would take her out and he would force her off the boat and she would drown. It would be hard to prove anything. He could claim it was an accident.

  “A late-night boat trip?” said Ninel. “Why not?”

  Lock stood on the dock with Ty and McLennan and looked at the lapping water where Dimitri’s deck boat was usually tied up. McLennan raised his flashlight, the beam pushed back by the sea fog.

  “He can’t have gone far,” said Ty. “When did you see him walking down here?”

  “Five minutes,” said Lock. “Six tops.”

  “We can take this one,” said McLennan pointing a toe at the small engine-propelled wooden runabout tied up on the other side of the dock.

  “You know how to use it?” Lock asked him.

  “Yeah, I’ve had the family out on it before,” said McLennan.

  “Ty, you good to hold the fort here?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  “Good,” said Lock. “Call local law enforcement and the Coast Guard and shut the place down until they get here.”

  Dimitri let the boat drift, the current taking it out. Ninel on a bench seat, one hand dangling over the edge.

  “You know, I had no choice back in Moscow. If I’d delayed the flight we both would have been arrested,” he said, studying her.

  He knew she was armed. There was no way she would have confronted him if she wasn’t. But she had yet to produce her weapon. He had studied the folds of
her jacket and the area around her waist and come to the conclusion that whatever gun she was carrying was similarly compact to his, and secreted either at her ankle, or more likely in the small of her back.

  All he had to do was make sure to keep a close eye on her hands. As soon as she reached down or around, he would do what he had to, although he was hoping he wouldn’t have to shoot her.

  “And what about after I was arrested?” she asked him.

  “What about it? I paid for a lawyer.”

  “As if a lawyer was going to help me. You knew I’d never be allowed to get off.”

  “So what would you have had me do?”

  “What we always did,” said Ninel. “Pay someone. Give someone money to look the other way while I got out. Bribe someone to drive me to a border. There were a thousand ways I could have escaped. If you’d helped me.”

  She was right. He knew it. He could have done more. But the truth was that, with each day he had spent in New York, the country he’d fled had seemed more and more like a part of his past he was eager to forget. That also went for Ninel.

  There had been enough questions to face in America without getting further dragged into the mire back home. The Americans had been willing to accept him as a businessman, a thrusting young entrepreneur, someone who’d fought the old hated system of Communism. Ninel, with all her baggage, didn’t fit into that image.

  “And what now?” he said. “What do you want?”

  “I did want you dead. But now I need you alive so you can help me. Repay your debt to me, Dimitri. Make up for all the years I lost when you left.”

  Dimitri took his time thinking it over.

  “Okay,” he said. “I can do that. But first I need you to show me some trust.”

  “Of course.”

  He produced his Glock and leveled it at her.

  “I need to trust you, but you point a gun at me? That’s a nice kind of trust. I thought it was a two-way street.”

  “Give me your gun,” he said. “Then we can talk.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Fine.”

  The runabout boat eased slowly through the water. The fog made seeing anything at further than a few hundred yards close to impossible, but the ocean was as smooth as it got.

  Lock stood at the bow and arced a high-beam marine searchlight back and forth. There was no sign of the deck boat. “Maybe we should head out a little further,” he suggested.

  They had stayed close to shore, sweeping up and down in either direction, setting out to the east then passing the dock again as they came back west.

  “Okay,” said McLennan, opening up the throttle.

  Lock stayed where he was, sweeping the searchlight beam against open water that revealed nothing.

  Dimitri turned Ninel’s gun over in his hand. As he suspected she’d hidden it in the small of her back.

  The boat was still drifting, moving into a channel close to where the current would take someone out into the Atlantic.

  The water was cold. Not so cold that you would freeze to death. But it didn’t need to be. Fatigue would take care of anyone unfortunate enough to end up outside the boat.

  Turning over her gun in his hand, he drew his arm back and threw it overboard. The splash barely registered over the sound of the boat’s engine.

  “Here’s my proposal,” he said. “I can’t be seen to be bringing a fugitive to shore on my boat.”

  “So drop me off.”

  “That’s what I’m doing,” he said.

  She looked around, incredulous. “Here?”

  “Yes,” said Dimitri. “Here. You can’t see for the fog, but we’re not that far out. Maybe a half-mile. Probably less. Nothing for a strong swimmer. The tide will be in our favor.”

  He reached down, opened a bench seat, and pulled out an orange life preserver. He threw it to her.

  She eyed him, seemingly unsure whether to believe his story or not.

  “Aren’t there sharks in these waters?” she said.

  “Don’t worry. They’d never eat one of their own,” said Dimitri.

  “And once I get back to shore. Then what?” she said.

  “Contact me. Use a different name obviously. Say you’re a reporter from the Washington Post. I can arrange things from there.”

  “Money?”

  “Money. A new identity. Whatever you need.”

  “You must think I’m stupid. I go in that water, and I’ll never come out again. And if by some miracle I did survive, you’re not going to help me, you’re going to bury me.”

  She started to walk toward him. He held the pistol grip tight, his finger on the trigger.

  “Don’t make me do this, Ninel.”

  “You just don’t want a body with bullet holes washing up, do you?”

  She kept coming forward, slowly but inexorably.

  “I’m giving you a chance. Take it,” he said, raising the gun up high.

  Elizabeth Semenov paced the kitchen.

  “Where the hell is he?”

  “We think he went out on his boat,” said Ty. “He went down to the dock and it’s gone.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “Ryan and Neil are out looking for him now. I’ve contacted the Coast Guard and the Southampton PD are on their way now. I don’t mean to pry, Mrs. Semenov, but did you guys argue?”

  “No, I was fast asleep. But I can make a decent stab at why he’s done a disappearing act.”

  “You can?” said Ty.

  “It’s probably something to do with a woman. That’s usually the reason for him disappearing on me when he should be home.”

  Lock was up near the bow, McLennan at the stern. They were out in deep water now. The fog had lifted a little, but the swell of the ocean had picked up.

  “You hear that?” said Lock.

  McLennan listened. “Nope.”

  “Cut the engine, would you?”

  “Okay,” said McLennan. “But it’s on you if we can’t get it restarted. This thing is a piece of junk, and it’s not really a boat that should be out this far.”

  With the engine noise going, Lock listened to see if he could hear what he’d thought had been someone shouting.

  Nothing.

  He looked down the boat to McLennan. “I don’t hear anything,” said McLennan.

  “There. You hear that?” said Lock.

  It was muffled, distant, but it was a human voice. Maybe the Coast Guard, maybe Dimitri, but someone was out there.

  It came again. It sounded like “Help,” but Lock couldn’t be certain. “Over there somewhere,” he said pointing to the starboard side.

  “Okay, let’s go see,” said McLennan, the engine sputtering a couple of times before it kicked back into gear.

  They moved slowly through the fog. The voice came again. A little louder. It sounded to Lock like a woman’s voice, but he couldn’t be certain. He sat at the side of the stern and scoured the water. Then he saw it, a flash of orange that rose on a swell and disappeared.

  “Over there,” said Lock. “Someone’s in the water.”

  “Dimitri?”

  “I don’t know. Sounded like a woman.”

  McLennan maneuvered the boat around, circling the person in the water, and coming up behind them. Lock leaned over the edge, ready to grab them and haul them up, not sure he could do it without capsizing their craft.

  As they closed in, the shape in the water took form. They were floating, head tilting back. McLennan steered them in close. Lock reached down. He’d been right. It was a woman.

  “Here, give me your hand.”

  As he leaned out, and the woman reached up to grab him, he saw blood on the back of her head.

  He turned back to McLennan. “I’m going to need some help here.”

  McLennan let the engine idle, walked down to Lock, and together they managed to haul her over the side and into the boat.

  The two men looked at each other, both recognizing her in the same instant.

  59
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  With a barely conscious Ninel propped up close to the stern, Lock huddled down near the bow with McLennan as he piloted the small boat back to the shore. A wind had picked up from the south-west and the water was choppier.

  It looked like Ninel had taken one hell of a whack to the back of her head before she’d gone into the water. Lock had searched her for weapons and found nothing. He’d given her his jacket in an attempt to keep her warm. They’d asked her what she was doing drifting out into the Atlantic, and about Dimitri, only to be met with stony silence.

  Hardly surprising, given what Lock knew of her. She would tell them only what she decided to. Right now that was nothing.

  “How far out are we?” Lock asked McLennan.

  “Twenty minutes. Maybe a half-hour. I tell you what, Ryan, she was lucky we found her when we did. That tide was taking her right out.”

  Lock took in the trembling figure at the stern. “I’m not sure she feels all that lucky.”

  McLennan straightened up. “Okay, let me put it another way. She’s lucky you were in the boat with me. I might have left her. In fact, there’s no might about it, I would have.”

  Lock didn’t feel the need to ask why. Ninel had been behind the death of a number of McLennan’s colleagues.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” said Lock.

  “You wanna bet?” said McLennan, coming off as deadly serious.

  “There are rules of engagement,” said Lock. “We both know that.”

  “Yeah, well, you didn’t watch some of your best mates drown in front of you.”It was an emotion Lock was familiar with. It was understandable. Human. But it didn’t change the fact that when they’d found Ninel in the water she wasn’t offering any threat. They would take her back in, hand her over and let the justice system deal with her.

  If Dimitri was correct, and the Russians wanted her dead, Lock very much doubted she would make it to trial. The Kremlin had a long reach and a jail, even a women’s facility in New York, was a very easy place to organize an assassination.

  Lock checked his phone for a signal. A single tiny bar showed at the top of the screen. They must have been closer to land than McLennan’s estimation, or maybe there was a cell tower on the water’s edge.