Page 55 of Secret Weapon

“I don’t know either.Anyhow, there was a bear.”

“A bear?”

“Da, a bear and a survival exercise.The general used to toss us into the taiga a hundred miles from the base and let us find our way home.It was okay.At least we were doing our own thing out there rather than being ordered around.”She smiled a tiny smile.“Three was definitely doing his own thing.One time, his canopy got tangled in a tree, and we had to cut him down.Dasha said we should have left him there, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.”

“You weren’t fond of Three?”

“Three—Pavel—was an asshole.But that day in the forest, we carried on walking, and then we found the bear.Only a baby, with its leg crushed in a trap.Judging by the damage, it must have been there for days, and Vik put it out of its misery.Said that the innocent deserved a quick death.And then Dasha asked, ‘What about the guilty?’and he just smiled.”

Ana shuddered, which meant that smile must’ve been fucking creepy.

“So he didn’t share Zacharov’s sadistic streak, then?”

“You misunderstand the general.He wasn’t a sadist.He was a power-hungry control freak.And yes, Vik did share his win-at-all-costs mentality, but to what extent, I can’t say.Do you want to hear the end of the story?”

“There’s more?”

“Where animal traps are concerned, there are always more.Why set one when you can set twenty, especially if you’re a lazy son of a bitch who doesn’t check them every day?I wanted to close them all so no more animals could get caught.Dasha wanted to gather them up and hide them.Two wanted to leave them as they were because who cared about a few animals?He died a month later.I didn’t lose sleep over it.”

“Proof that karma exists.What did Vik want to do?”

“He wanted tomovethe traps.We spent an hour combing the forest, and then we reset every trap we could find in a circle around the dead bear.”

“Surely they could still trap stray animals?He realised that?”

“Every war has collateral damage,” Ana mimicked in a deep voice.“It wasn’t ideal, but the general encouraged us to think long-term.”

“Then let’s hope the plan worked, eh?”

“It did.The trapper made it to the hospital, but gangrene set in and he died a week later.The story made the local news.”

Ana’s story told me that Vik had been a leader.A sneaky, ruthless leader, but perhaps there had been an ounce of humanity hidden within his core.

“Darya said there were four of you left at most.The two of you, Vik, and possibly Ilya.Who’s Ilya?”

“In the asshole stakes, Pavel would have taken silver while Ilya got the gold.”Ana swallowed another mouthful of vodka.“I don’t give a damn that Pavel’s dead, but Rad and Art were okay.”

“Was Ilya good at his job?”

“We were all good at our jobs.”

Okay, that had been a dumb question.In light of my upcoming bar date with Nico, I decided to change the subject.

“Any idea why Darya’s so touchy about Belinsky?”

“Do I know for certain?No.But I can take a good guess.”

“Which is?”

“Years ago, maybe fifteen years, an oligarch named Lev Belinsky made it onto Zacharov’s shitlist.The job was assigned to me, and I studied the file, but at the last minute, I got sent to the UK to silence a double agent who was considering talking.But Lev Belinsky wound up dead anyway, so I imagine the file got passed to Dasha.”

“You think Lev and Nico are related?”

“Lev had a son named Nikolai.”

I didn’t need to ask whether Nico and Nikolai were the same man.Nine’s behaviour had already given me my answer.It was likely the two of them had met before they moved to Baldwin’s Shore, although having interacted with the woman in two totally different personas, I figured it was also a good bet that Nico wouldn’t recognise her, at least without a nudge in the right direction.

Well, he wouldn’t be getting that nudge from me.Nine had been reasonably friendly tonight, and I was beginning to warm to her.

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