Page 13 of Captured By the Pakhan

"You want a locked door," he says, "between you and the thing you are paid to stand in front of?"

Point taken.

"Fair."

He resumes walking pointing as we go. "That’s my study. You don’t open that door. Office, same thing. Basement, same. Everything else, you may go, I don’t care."

"That's three doors. Last night's tour was implied to be more comprehensive."

"Last night you were in a hostage in a shed."

"It had a toilet.” I point out.

Something happens in the vicinity of his jaw that might, in a more generous man, have been the beginning of an expression. But it doesn't survive long.

"Cameras," he says, resuming the tour. "Forty-one inside, and more outside. There are no blind corners in this house, don't even bother looking for them."

“How many outside?”

“What makes you think I’d tell you?”

So that mean’s a lot. Noted.

He turns and starts back down the corridor forcing me to keep moving to keep up. "The east door and the utility door open only from the inside. The gate needs a code and has a retnal scanner. There is no vehicle on this property with a key left in it. And your phone is in a drawer in Moscow – more or less."

"Where are the dogs?"

That gets me a genuine pause. Half a second if that, but I saw it.

"Kennel on the east side of the property," he says. "How did you know?"

"The wind last night, I could smell them from the cabin. Also there's a chewed lead on a hook by the boot room, it's too heavy for anything under ninety pounds." I shrug. "Two I’d guess from the chew patterns on the lead."

Andrei looks at me for slightly longer than is comfortable, and almost smiles.

"Three," he corrects.

"Then one of them's new."

"One of them is new." He confirms and he starts walking again. "You will be four steps behind me or I will be four steps behind you for ninety days. Choose which you prefer, it makes no difference to me."

"You're going to follow me around the house?"

"I am going to follow you everywhere."

"For the entire three months?"

"Yes."

"That's a hell of a use of a senior man." I keep my tone light, because I'm about to ask the question I've been building the whole tour toward and I don't want him to see it coming. "Which raises a question I've been pondering. You're the best hand on this property. You've clearly been with him a long time. So why aren't you the kid's bodyguard?"

He stops.

And this time the pause isn't half a second. It's four, five, standing in a corridor with his back half-turned to me, and I can see the exact moment he decides not to hit me with the truth.

"I can't," he says in a low voice. Then he walks on.

I let it go. For now.