Page 19 of The Pakhan's Bride
The part that impresses me most is the subtlety. No violence, unless you count the violence done to truth. Every move is deniable, every connection plausible. The European Union investigates a bribery scandal. the next week, half the evidence is missing, and the only witness has been promoted to a sinecure in The Hague.
I spend nights at the table, hands folded, watching the data update in real time.
Tonight, Antonov brings me a fresh batch. He sets it down, opens to the first page, and steps back.
"Summary?" I ask.
He clears his throat. "They're running three parallel networks. First, the diplomatic channel—consular staff, immunity, direct-to-embassy transport. Second, the business channel—shell corporations, offshore accounts, trade missions. Third, the civil network—NGOs, church groups, cultural exchanges."
I nod. "Overlap?"
"Significant. They use the same people for all three."
"Exposure?"
He hesitates. "Minimal. They only burn the pawns."
I flip through the file. Every page is a sin against the natural order. A Ukrainian priest with six different aliases, each tied to a bank account in Cyprus. A Lithuanian journalist who "dies" in a car crash and resurfaces in Estonia as a government advisor. A German MP's son, married off to a Baranov cousin, then groomed for party leadership. The connections are not linear. They are fractal, spiraling outward, impossible to predict.
Orlov chimes in, voice dry. "There's another layer."
"Show me."
He gestures to the screen. "Legal infrastructure. The Baranovs are embedding their own in the courts, the notaries, the registrar offices. Any time a passport is questioned, someone in the bureaucracy smooths it over. Any time a marriage is flagged, it's ratified by an official who owes them."
"How deep?"
"Half the Balkans. A quarter of the Baltics. France is clean, but only because they haven't started there yet."
I lean back. "What about the security services?"
Sokolov answers this time. "They pay well. And they're patient. The highest infiltration is in the countries nobody cares about. But it's enough to build a base."
I stare at the maps. In every city, a red dot. Each dot, a cell. Each cell, a hand on the wheel.
"Who's running the field?"
Orlov shrugs. "No direct trace. Orders come through intermediaries. The only constant is the Baranov name."
I watch the dots pulse on the screen, a virus in the body politic. There is an elegance to it. But I hate elegance that isn't mine.
"Have we pulled any live assets?" I ask.
Antonov sighs. "Three. All local fixers. None would talk."
"Make them talk or finish them."
He nods, leaves the room.
I page through the last intake, a thumb drive. The encryption on the drive is next-level. Triple-stacked, salted hashes, the works. But I know the pattern. Baranov always liked to think he was smarter than the men who hunted him. The interface is slow, but after thirty minutes, it yields. The root folder has one file.PROJECT ZOYA.
I read the name once, twice. The file is a text document, plus three image attachments. I open the text first. At the top, a table of dates and locations. Some are familiar—Paris, Prague, Istanbul. Some are odd—Casablanca, Vancouver, Dubai. Each entry is linked to a code. Cross-referenced to an operations index… each date is a meeting, each code a set of players.
Below, there's a block of legalese. Marriage protocols, with references to international law. Immunity for spouses, transfer of citizenship, recognition of children, asset consolidation plans. A list of financial institutions that have already signed off on the arrangements.
There's a breakdown of the Baranov holdings—offshores, gold reserves, real estate, art. Valued in the billions. The entire apparatus is designed to be portable, to survive any regime change. The only catch—it all gets transferred with the signature on a marriage certificate.
Then the last section, a one-page psychological profile of the subject.
