Page 91 of Captured By the Pakhan

"He hasn't charged her," I say.

"He hasn't charged her."

"He hasn't booked her, or moved her to a facility, or put her in front of a magistrate, or generated one single piece of paper."

"No."

"Then he isn't arresting her," I say. "He is finding out what she knows."

"Yes."

"And when he has it?"

Yeremey doesn't answer, which is his answer.

I stand up, which hurts a great deal.

"How many men can you have in Washington by midnight tomorrow?"

"Ilya—"

"How many?"

"Nineteen," Yeremey says. "And I want it noted that I have spent four hours on the approach to that house and my professional assessment is that there is no version of it. It is a federal street. There is a protective detail, there are government cameras, there are two men inside who are not detail, and there is no angle, no vehicle route, and no way out afterward." He closes the laptop. "This isn't the casino, where you were warned and went anyway. This is worse. If you go into that house you won't come out of it, and neither will she, and Sergei will have lost both of you inside a fortnight."

"Understood."

"That isn't the same as heard."

"No," I agree. "It isn't."

I go to the window.

Nineteen men, a federal street, and a woman in a basement being asked questions by a man who has already killed two of mine on a Thursday.

"Then we will not go in through the street," I say. "Get me the plans of that house. Every renovation, every permit, every contractor who has invoiced that address in twenty years — and Yeremey, get me the utilities. Water, gas, and whatever they did to it in the eighties, because a building in Georgetown that old has been opened up four times and somebody has drawings of all of it in a filing cabinet."

Yeremey looks at me.

Then, for the first time in six days, something moves in his face that isn't exhaustion.

"Now that," he says, "is the man I have worked for for eleven years."

Chapter 24

Raven

Georgetown, Day Three

Ihave been in this room for something like sixty hours, and I have counted every one of them.

It's a basement, and it's a good one — meaning old, meaning brick, meaning somebody's wine cellar in 1911 and somebody's storage in 1978 and now a room with a mattress and a bucket and a door that opens outward with the hinges on the far side.

No window. One bulb in a cage. Two zip ties, wrists, front, which is sloppy of them, and I have not done a single thing about it because the moment I do they'll know and they'll put them behind me, and I would rather have my hands in front of me when it matters than free now.

Sixty hours, and they have asked me eleven questions.

That's the wrong part. Eleven questions in sixty hours, all of them from a man who comes down twice a day and sits on a crate, all of them about the same four things: where is the house, how many men, what is the name of the man at the top, and what is the boy's name.