Chapter 4: What Sokolov Didn't Know
The stop was a parking garage on Atlantic Avenue.
Marco was already there when they arrived, standing beside a black car with his collar up and his expression set in the particular way it got when he had already decided something was a bad idea and had accepted he couldn't stop it.
He looked at Luca getting out of the sedan — hospital bracelet still on his wrist, bandage visible at the collar of the jacket someone had brought him — and said nothing for a moment.
Then: "You look terrible."
"Thank you."
"I mean it medically."
"I know." Luca walked toward him.
"What else do we have on the warehouse?"
Marco fell into step beside him.
"Greenpoint is active.
Three vehicles in the last two hours.
Maspeth is quiet."
"Too quiet?"
"Possibly."
"Sokolov wouldn't use Greenpoint for this.
Too many of his own people watching."
"Agreed."
"Maspeth."
"That's my read."
Luca stopped walking.
He turned to face Marco directly.
"I need you to take six men to Maspeth.
Quietly.
No approach until I give the signal."
Marco studied him.
"And if you can't give the signal?"
"Then use your judgment."
"My judgment says this entire plan is going to hjt your heart condition at a very inconvenient moment."
"Your judgment is probably correct."
Marco looked at him for a long moment.
In twelve years, there had been maybe four conversations between them that felt like this one.
The kind where both men understood that the next few hours would either resolve everything or end something permanently.
"She's three years old," Marco said quietly.
"Yes."
"And she had the bear."
Luca's jaw moved.
"Yes."
Marco nodded once.
Then turned to the men behind him and began giving quiet instructions.
Luca used the next four minutes to make two calls.
The first was to his attorney, a careful man named Ferretti who asked no questions and recorded everything.
The second was to a federal contact he had cultivated for six years and never used.
He used it now.
He spoke for ninety seconds.
The contact asked three questions.
Luca answered two of them.
Then he got back in the car.
The Red Hook waterfront at that hour was all shadow and salt air and the distant sound of container ships.
The loading dock Sokolov had chosen was a long concrete platform jutting over dark water, lit by two floodlights that turned everything beneath them pale and flat.
Viktor Sokolov was already there.
He was sixty-one, thick through the chest, with close-cropped silver hair and the kind of stillness that came from having made irreversible decisions so many times that urgency had simply stopped being useful to him.
He stood at the edge of the dock with his hands in his coat pockets and watched Luca approach without moving.
Two men stood behind him.
Luca counted them once and looked away.
He stopped ten feet from Sokolov.
"You came alone," Sokolov said.
His English was precise.
Accented but careful.
"I came."
Sokolov looked at the hospital bracelet.
At the way Luca held his left arm slightly away from his body.
"You're in worse shape than I expected."
"Where is she?"
"Safe."
"That's not an answer."
Sokolov tilted his head slightly.
"You want to know something interesting, Bellini?
I've been watching you for two years.
Your operation.
Your territory.
Your habits." A pause.
"I never knew about the child."
Luca said nothing.
"I found out four days ago." Sokolov's voice was almost conversational.
"The same night my man put a bullet in your shoulder.
Coincidence.
One of my people saw the woman and the little girl and ran the name.
It took less than an hour."
"What do you want?"
"Red Hook."
"No."
Sokolov smiled.
It didn't reach his eyes.
"You haven't heard the terms."
"I don't need to.
The answer is no."
"The child is three years old." Sokolov let that sit for a moment.
"I'm told she's been asking for her mother since they picked her up.
She has a stuffed bear.
She won't let go of it." He paused.
"I'm not a man who h*rms children, Bellini.
But I am a man who understands leverage."
Luca's hands were still at his sides.
He kept them there.
"Give me Red Hook," Sokolov said, "and the girl goes home tonight.
You have my word."
"Your word." Luca looked at him.
"You att@cked my car on a public street.
My driver d*ed."
"That was business."
"My driver had a daughter too." Luca's voice didn't rise.
"She's eleven."
Something shifted in Sokolov's expression.
Not guilt.
Something more calculating than that.
"Red Hook," he said again.
"That's all."
"No," Luca said.
"But I'll tell you what I'll give you."
Sokolov waited.
"I'll give you the name of the man inside your organization who has been feeding information to the Marchetti family for the past fourteen months."
The dock went very quiet.
One of Sokolov's men shifted his weight.
Sokolov didn't move.
"You're lying," he said.
"His name is Dmitri Volkov.
He's been your logistics coordinator in Brooklyn for three years.
He's been paid through a shell account in Cyprus." Luca reached into his jacket with his right hand, slowly, and produced a folded piece of paper.
He held it out.
"Account numbers.
Transfer dates.
The last communication was eleven days ago."
Sokolov didn't take the paper.
But his eyes went to it.
"How long have you had this?" he said.
"Long enough."
"Why didn't you use it before?"
"Because I didn't need to before."
Sokolov looked at him.
Really looked at him.
The calculation behind his eyes was almost visible.
"You came here with a piece of paper," he said slowly, "and you think that's enough to walk out with the child."
"No," Luca said.
"I came here with a piece of paper and a conversation I had forty minutes ago with a federal contact who is currently very interested in your Greenpoint warehouse."
The two men behind Sokolov looked at each other.
Sokolov's hands came out of his pockets.
"You made a federal call." His voice had changed.
Still controlled.
But different.
"Tonight.
Before this meeting."
"Yes."
"That's a threat."
"It's a fact." Luca held his gaze.
"The call has already been made.
What happens next depends entirely on what you do in the next five minutes."
Sokolov stared at him.
Then he reached into his own jacket and produced a phone.
He made a single call.
Said four words in Russian.
Ended it.
He looked back at Luca.
"Maspeth," he said.
"Your people can pick her up."
Luca's phone buzzed in his pocket.
Marco's signal.
Confirmation.
"The paper," Sokolov said.
Luca set it on the concrete between them.
He didn't hand it over.
He set it down and stepped back.
Sokolov looked at it.
Then at Luca.
"This isn't finished," he said.
"No," Luca agreed.
"But tonight it is."
He turned and walked back toward the car.
His shoulder was screaming.
His heart monitor, had it still been attached, would have been making sounds that alarmed people.
He didn't stop walking until he reached the car door.
Then his phone rang.
Marco's number.
He answered.
"She's here," Marco said.
His voice was rough in a way Luca had never heard before.
"She's safe.
She's asking for her mother."
Luca put one hand on the roof of the car.
"And the bear?"
A pause.
"Still with her," Marco said.
"She wouldn't put it down."
May you like
Luca closed his eyes for exactly three seconds.
Then he opened them, got in the car, and said: "Take me to her."
