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Rather than answer her question, Sinaver looked at Vadisk and switched to Ukrainian. They had a short exchange that rapidly grew tense. Dahlia shot a quick look at Montana, who met her gaze for only a second before looking back at his phone.
“Vadisk, can you please translate?”
Sinaver said something more with a small smirk. Vadisk’s expression was scarily bland as he turned to her.
“Minister Abduramanov was asking why you chose me, a club bouncer from Kyiv, to be your guide and translator.”
Dahlia looked at Sinaver. “He was recommended by a friend who also travels extensively, and I thought it was a good fit, since Vadisk has family from Krym.” She carefully used the same term he had, rather than Crimea.
Sinaver shot Vadisk a cold look, and Dahlia’s heart was back to racing.
“I found it!” Montana shouted, breaking the tension, his smile a little too wide. “Sorry, my photos are a mess. I took so many when we went to Buran-Kaya, it took me forever to find it.” He jumped to his feet, leaning across the desk and shoving his phone in Sinaver’s face as Vadisk quickly translated.
The older man leaned back and frowned, taking Montana’s phone in both hands and resting them on the desk. His expression softened as he looked at the screen. “My mother was a beautiful woman.”
Dahlia noted the tense shift and watched Montana out of the corner of her eye. He slouched into the chair once Sinaver handed the phone back, and after a minute, he shoved his phone into his right pocket. That was the signal.
Time to go.
She asked a few more bland questions, then finished by asking Sinaver for recommendations of anyone else she should speak to who was affected by the resort closure, or generally affected by the tourism industry.
Two hours after they’d walked in, they walked back out, and the same van with a different driver took them to the resort.
They didn’t speak until they were inside the villa, and Montana had done a sweep to see if anyone had installed surveillance devices while they were gone. Now that they knew exactly what Montana could do, Vadisk didn’t do his own sweep, leaving it to the tech expert.
“We’re good,” Montana said, dropping onto a couch.
“Don’t say anything yet. I need to call my admiral.”
“Why?” Montana asked.
“Because I want to know if Sinaver’s mother is still alive.”
“Ah, you caught that too?” Dahlia asked, then looked at Montana. “He changed tenses.”
“I want to know where the mother is, dead or alive.” Vadisk stood, taking several steps away and placing the call. Dahlia got a drink, half listening to see if she could pick out words while Vadisk spoke Ukrainian to his admiral.
She and Montana needed to learn Ukrainian so they could talk to him in his first language.
And…well, if she was being honest with herself, she wanted to know what Nikolett and Vadisk were saying to each other. The way he talked about his admiral, the way he admired her and seemed willing to do anything for her was…concerning.
Dahlia did an internal eye roll because the concerns were hers and they were based solely on jealousy.
So yeah. She wanted to learn Ukrainian so she could spy on her husband and Nikolett, who was apparently the patron saint of fucking Hungary.
Dahlia passed Vadisk a glass when he rejoined her on the couch.
“She’s working on it.” He leaned forward, looking eagerly at Montana. “Did you get it?”
Montana grinned. “Yes. His phone is mirroring to mine. It’s input only. I can’t place a call or send a message and route it through his phone, but I can see what he’s doing, including who he calls.”
Vadisk nodded. “Whoever he’s getting his information about us from, he’s either calling them or talking to them in person. Anything else, anything electronic, Ottoman would have found it.”
“We’ll see the call but won’t be able to hear it, right?” Dahlia asked.
“Not with mirroring.” Montana tapped his phone. “But I also installed a recording app that will record all phone calls.”
“And he won’t see the app?” Vadisk looked worried.
