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“I already miss your good sense.” Vera fixes the buttons I’ve fastened in the wrong holes. “That happened quickly.”

I kiss her forehead.

“Keep yourself safe.”

Vera glances toward Misha’s door. “Come back in one piece.”

The security staircase descends to the lower level through a series of guarded doors. White lights shine along the concrete passage, and the air smells of cold stone, cigarette smoke, and the coffee someone has carried downstairs.

Dima waits at the final door with blood dried across his cuff.

“He gave us another name ten minutes ago,” he says, opening it. “Dmitri hasn’t touched him for nine.”

“A personal record.”

“He’s growing soft.”

Belov sits beneath a bare light in the interrogation room. One eye has swollen shut, and dried blood covers his lower lip. His wrists are locked into separate steel cuffs bolted to the table, leaving his fingers exposed. Fresh gauze circles his forearm beneath his torn shirt.

Dr. Grachev treated him and the other injured prisoners before clearing them for questioning. Maksim wouldn’t let Dmitri begin while any of them were in danger of bleeding out.

Dmitri stands across from Belov with his sleeves rolled past his elbows. A chair lies on its side near the drain, and Belov’s expensive jacket has been folded neatly over its back.

“Comfortable?” I ask as I enter.

Belov lifts his good eye. “You should be upstairs celebrating.”

“I was.”

His gaze drops briefly toward my shirt. “You came quickly.”

“You said someone else had access to Misha’s file.”

“Chernov and Rudenko?” I ask Dmitri.

“Separate cells,” he says. “They can’t see or hear each other. My men have told them enough to make each one think the others have started talking.”

Belov spits onto the floor.

Dmitri strikes him across the mouth. “Do that again, and you’ll clean it with your tongue.”

Dima and I exchange a look.

Dima stays in the interrogation room with Dmitri and Belov, standing near the door with his arms folded.

I enter the adjoining observation room. Maksim watches Belov through the one-way glass. Abramov stands beside him with a list of the overnight arrests, while Leonid and Petrov work at a narrow table beneath the security screens. Kirill smokes near the extractor vent as Yuri searches the files recovered from Belov’s depot.

I join them and place both hands on the table.

“How many handlers?” I ask.

“Seven confirmed,” Abramov says, running his finger down the list. “The two Belov named earlier are in the holding cells. Four were taken from their homes, and one was caught trying to burn claim papers in his office.”

“Registrars?”

“Two in custody. Nina is checking every filing they touched.”

Petrov looks down at the files. “They stole medicine, hid wounded men under false names, moved bodies, paid people off, and kept the same routes running for years.”