Scamming the Devil

CHAPTER TWENTY

IRINA VOLKOV

Two glasses of wine into the evening and I had mapped the entire room.

It was habit. The same thing I'd done in every café, every restaurant, every location I'd ever run a con in. Count the exits. Identify the variables. Know who's watching who and why. The skill had kept me alive for two years and it didn't switch off just because I wasn't running anything tonight.

Or so I told myself.

The truth was that the room was interesting. These people were interesting. The particular ecosystem of old money and new power and the careful performance of both. I recognized types I'd studied, had impersonated versions of, had extracted money from in one form or another over twenty-two months.

I circled the room twice while Nikolai handled a conversation with a broad man in a grey suit who seemed to be apologizing for something at length. Roman materialized at my elbow from nowhere, a glass of something sparkling in each hand, wearing an expression of total contentment.

"You look like you're casing the place," he said, handing me one of the glasses.

"Occupational habit."

"See anything interesting?"

"The man by the east window has been watching Alexei's table for forty minutes. He's not Morozov's people — wrong body language, too uncertain. He's watching them the way someone watches a problem they haven't decided how to solve yet." I sipped the drink. "Third table from the back, the woman in red has been feeding information to the man beside her all evening — little notes on her phone, angled so he can read them. They're not together romantically. Business, but not the kind anyone in this room would admit to."

Roman stared at me. "You got all that from walking around twice."

"I got all that from existing in rooms for twenty-four years." I glanced at him. "People aren't as subtle as they think."

He was quiet for a moment, that bright energy of his settling into something more thoughtful. "Does it ever get exhausting? Reading everyone all the time?"

The question caught me off guard. I turned it over for a moment before answering.

"Sometimes," I said. "Sometimes I'd like to sit in a room and just — not know things."

Roman nodded slowly. Then: "For what it's worth, I don't think Nikolai reads people the way you do. I think he reads 'situations.' Threat levels, variables, outcomes." He looked across the room to where his brother stood, still listening to the grey-suited man with the patience of someone who had learned to treat other people's anxiety as weather,present, temporary, not his problem. "You're the first person I've seen him actually 'watch.' Like he's trying to figure out how you work. Not what you're going to do. How you 'work.' "

I said nothing.

"That's different," Roman added. "For him, that's completely different."

"Roman."

"Yeah?"

"Stop."

He smiled into his glass. "Stopping."

.....................................................................................................................................................................

I found Nikolai at the edge of the room an hour later, away from the main crowd, standing at one of the tall windows that overlooked the river. He had a glass of whiskey and the expression of someone who had fulfilled their social obligations and was now waiting for permission to leave.

"Your friend in the grey suit looked devastated when you walked away," I said, coming to stand beside him.

"He wanted a favor. He's not getting it." He looked out at the river. "How are you finding it?"

"Loud. Expensive. Exactly what I said it would be." I looked out at the water too. The reflection of the lights made it look molten. "Alexei left an hour ago. Third table from the back — two of his people are still here. Watching."

"I know." He didn't look surprised. "They've been watching you specifically for the last thirty minutes."

I absorbed that. "And the man by the east window?"

He glanced at me. "You noticed him."

"He's been watching Alexei's table all evening. He's not Morozov's."

A pause. Something shifted in Nikolai's expression — that particular quality of reassessment that I was learning to recognize. "No. He's not." He turned to look at me properly. "Who do you think he is?"

"Someone with a problem related to Morozov that he hasn't decided how to act on." I met his gaze. "Could be useful. Or could be a setup — someone Alexei planted to look like a disaffected party, to see if you'd make contact."

Nikolai was quiet for a moment. Then: "Which do you think it is?"

"I don't know yet. I'd need to talk to him."

Another pause. Longer this time.

"No," he said.

"Nikolai—"

"Not tonight. Not without preparation." His voice wasn't harsh, just final. "If he's genuine, he'll find a way to make contact through channels. If he's Alexei's, approaching him tonight tells Morozov exactly how we gather intelligence." He looked back at the river. "You see things quickly. That's valuable. But seeing quickly and moving quickly aren't the same thing."

I wanted to argue. But he wasn't wrong.

"Fine," I said.

We stood in silence for a moment. The party moved and glittered behind us, and the river moved darkly below, and the space between us had that quality again — the one I couldn't name, the one that had been getting heavier since the gun range.

"Why did you really bring me tonight?" I asked. I kept my voice neutral, like it was a professional question.

He was quiet for long enough that I thought he might not answer.

"Because you've been inside four walls for two weeks," he said finally. "And I thought—" He stopped. Started again. "I thought you deserved to see the city."

I turned to look at him. He was still looking at the river.

I thought you deserved to see the city.

Not 'I needed you here.' Not 'you're a useful asset.' Not any of the dozen practical justifications he could have reached for.

I didn't know what to do with that. So I looked back at the river too, and we stood there together in the loud, glittering room that neither of us particularly wanted to be in, and I let the silence stay.

"We should go," he said eventually.

"Yes," I agreed.

Neither of us moved for another minute.

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The car was waiting. Moscow had gotten colder while we were inside, the kind of sharp autumn cold that arrived without warning and meant it. I didn't have a coat — I hadn't thought about a coat — and the green dress was not built for Russian October.

I didn't say anything about it.

I didn't have to. Nikolai's jacket settled over my shoulders before I'd finished registering the cold, and he was already opening the car door, and I stood there for one second with the warmth of his jacket and the smell of him — cedar and something darker, expensive and particular — and told myself very firmly that it meant nothing.

It was cold. He had a jacket. Straightforward.

I got in the car.

He got in after me. The door closed. The city moved past the windows again, amber and dark, and I had his jacket around my shoulders and we didn't speak for most of the drive and I looked out the window and thought about Alexei's face when he'd said 'you know how this ends' and the way Nikolai had said 'yes, I do' and what exactly each of them had meant by it.

"The man from the window," I said, when we were ten minutes from the compound.

"Mm."

"His name is on the venue's guest list. I photographed it when we arrived." I held up my small clutch. "I had Roman pocket a program for me."

Nikolai turned to look at me.

"I thought I said not tonight," he said, carefully.

"You said don't approach him. I didn't approach him." I met his gaze. "I just have his name."

The silence lasted four seconds.

"Show me," he said.

I opened the clutch and retrieved the folded program, found the page, and held it out.

He read the name. Something crossed his face — there and gone, fast enough that I almost missed it. Almost.

"You know him," I said.

Nikolai folded the program precisely and put it in his breast pocket.

"Go to sleep when we get back," he said. His voice was even. Controlled. "Tomorrow's going to be a long day."

"Nikolai. You know him."

He looked at me, and his eyes in the dark of the car were unreadable and very still.

"Sleep, Irina," he said quietly.

The car pulled through the compound gates and I sat with his jacket around my shoulders and the certainty settling over me that the name on that program had just changed something — something significant, something that reached further back than Alexei and further back than me and that Nikolai wasn't going to tell me what it was tonight.

Maybe not for a long time.

But I'd seen his face. And I never forgot a face.