were called at the time. They are still around, but go by Vilayat Dagestan now. We kicked their asses back then; they still haven’t recovered.”
“A lucky mortar round did him in?”
“Why are you asking all this? Yes, of course, as I told you at the time.” He looked away again, shut his eyes for a moment. “Please, Feo was my best friend, and your papa. Let’s not dredge up such painful memories.”
“They aren’t that painful, Vladi. Papa and I have something in common. Everyone thinks he’s dead, too, but he’s not, is he?”
The short man squinted through his glasses, a dumbfounded look on his face. “Sto?” What? “Don’t be ridiculous, of course he is.”
Zoya just stared him down.
“My darling, what is going on? Why would you think—”
“I’ve seen the pictures purporting to show his body. Classified photos from GRU. But he was alive when the photos were taken. They were staged.”
“I was there, Zoya!”
“I saw you in the photos, so I know you were there. And that means you are lying about what happened, and that is why I am here.”
“Look—”
She interrupted him. “Look at these.” She pulled down her sports bra to reveal the top of her breasts. “They are faint, but they are there. They’re called stress hives. I get them when I’m anxious. I always have gotten them, since I was a kid. Right here.”
This was a lot for Belyakov to process, she could see in his eyes. He stared at her upper chest, right into her cleavage. Zoya did seem to have several very light but unmistakable pink splotches there.
She continued, “In my line of work, of course, anxiety is something I learn to manage, but I’ve never been able to fake out the hives. If it’s a stressful enough situation, they will appear.”
“But what does that have to do with—”
“My father had the exact same condition. Higher on his neck, on the side, but just as noticeable as on me. When he would have a bad day at work my mother would say to my brother and me that if Papa had the red rash on his neck, we should leave him alone and wait for him to come to us.”
Belyakov waved her statement away with his hand. “I was on the scene within moments after the mortar round hit. If you say I was in the photo, then you see. It had just happened. Perhaps the hives stay on the body after death. You haven’t died before, so you don’t know.”
“The rash disappears when the stress is relieved, within seconds. Nothing relieves stress quite like death, Vladi. He was alive in the photos, and anxious, which I can believe if he had to feign his own death in the middle of a combat zone.”
“But—”
“And the other body next to him, that man was dead. His blood had congealed, not much, but a little. He might have been dead thirty minutes, an hour at most, but I’ve seen a lot of bodies, Vladi, and there is no way both men were killed by the same mortar round.”
“This is all fantasy, my darling. I understand why you want it to be true . . . but it simply is not true.”
Zoya pressed the knife tighter against his throat. But this did not change his story. “Feo is dead. Your papa is gone, darling. Kill me, too, if you must, but that won’t bring your dear father back to life.”
Zoya leaned closer to the older man now, right in his ear. “I always liked you, but even as a little girl, I knew you were his bitch. Did whatever he told you to do. After he was declared dead, you left GRU and went into the oil business. Made billions. That only happens with state approval. The Kremlin set you up here in London, and there must be a reason why they did that. I never put it together until I saw you in the picture and realized my father was alive. You are still connected to him somehow, still connected to the Kremlin, and London holds the key.”
“Crazy talk. Asinine. We Russians leave Russia and come here when we have the means to do so because the Kremlin wants to take our riches from us. This is the only place we can protect them from the greedy Siloviki who run the Rodina.”
Zoya shook her head with certainty. “I’ve been following your career since you left military intelligence. No way you’re working against the Kremlin. You were