Chapter 4

"How could we lose him?" Brandt asked rhetorically, turning for another circle in the rather spacious two-room apartment they used as a base of operations. It had taken them no five minutes to rejoin Luther here, who had already started reviewing the video footage.

Benji was standing at the desk behind Luther. He shrugged. "I don't know. One moment he was there, the next he wasn't. He could have gone anywhere."

"There were no camera's on that street, so I can't tell you where he went," Luther said, typing on his keyboard. "What I can tell you is that his name is Andrey Vanselov. Nineteen years old. Convicted for pickpocketing and shoplifting a few times, now working for Rodya Polzin and clean record ever since."

Interested, Brandt turned and came over to look over his shoulder. But although they had everything they could possibly know on Andrey Vanselov, there was so little information on him they basically had nothing. Vanselov obviously had been a petty thief, but nothing more. "So, what about the other guy?"

Luther nodded and flicked through the images he had ripped from the security camera footage, but every time all they could see was a bunch of long, dark hair. He shook his head. "It's hard to get a good image of him, because in the wheelchair he's so much smaller than anyone else. And he's good. He knew exactly where the cameras are and how to keep his face away from them."

Benji watched as a small version of himself scrambled to his feet on the computer screen. It looked almost comical, when a fitting version of Brandt fell right in front of him. They both came back to their feet and headed into the crowd. The black-haired man looked after them for a moment, then robbed back to his wheelchair. He managed to turn it back right side up and scramble onto it, then disappeared in the crowd. Benji was still uneasy that they attacked a disabled guy, but the way he had fought back made him feel a little better.

"He's a professional," Brandt agreed. "Or was, at any rate. The way he took Benji down, that wasn't just luck. And the fact that he had backup suggests he's well prepared."

"Which doesn't help us at all," Luther explained. "There's about 150 people working for Polzin, officially. I'm sure that he has a lot more unofficial associates. Most of them are ex-convicts or ex-military, at least those we have files on, and whoever he is, I'm pretty sure he's not one of those."

"How so?" Benji asked, slightly surprised.

Luther grimaced. "I cross-referenced what I could find on Polzin's employees and associates with their medical records."

"So basically we got nothing," Brandt summed up, but Luther interrupted him.

"Actually I might have something," the techie said cautiously. Tapping a few keys, Luther ran the video back to where Brandt had run into the courier.

The analyst still couldn't couldn't believe that he actually had had the bag with the papers, just to be taken down in the next moment. But there Luther was right, he really was good. The move the man had used was a plain old judo trick, adapted, but still quite recognizable and expertly executed. Brandt's arm still hurt from the fall. Rubbing his shoulder, Brandt focused back on the display. Luther was zooming in on the papers that were spilled on the floor.

"There," Luther said. The blurry picture was getting more grainy, but the writing on the papers was clearing up. "The angle is kind of crappy, and some are covered by others, but I think we can get a few details out of this."

"OK, that's our best lead for now. Benji can..." Brandt broke off, when he realized the Brit was no longer standing behind him. "Benji?"

"Sorry," Benji replied, halfway into the other room. "I just got to check something out real quick."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"Sergey? Telephone!" Ivan's voice was echoing through the huge hall from the spot where he was standing near the public phone that hung on the wall next to the door.

A little surprised, Sergey interrupted his work and made his way through the rows of work-desks, wondering who would call him here. Not that it was impossible to find out he was here, but there were not all that many people who cared about him and all of them worked in the same place as he.

Taking a deep breath, he answered: "Da?"

"Ethan?" a curious and inquisitive, yet careful voice asked.

With everything he might have expected, he surely hadn't thought of this, and it struck him like lightning, setting his thoughts racing. Had he been a less self-composed person, he might have dropped the receiver with surprise. Still it took him a full second, until in the back of his head, he found what he was looking for. He couldn't quite hide his surprise to the man on the other end. "Benji?"

"Well, yes," Benji replied, a slight hint of relief in his voice, but before he could go on, Ethan interrupted him.

"How did you find me?" He was whispering, trying to keep his voice down. Not that anyone would have been able to do anything with his conversation, but there were enough curious ears in Rodya's employment and if anyone caught up any snippets of what he said now, it might lead to awkward questions.

"Now, there was a name in those papers. And there's not a lot of Serbian ex-convicts with the name of Sergey Kovac living in St. Petersburg," Benji said dryly, and before he was interrupted again, he hastily came to the reason he was calling. "Now, listen. We need your help."

"My help?" Ethan stammered, slowly comprehending what was going on. Then he noticed he had automatically responded in English and quickly switched back to Russian. "Why me? What for? And who is 'we'?"

"Me, Luther, Brandt.," Benji said, slightly impatient. "But that's not important. See, I know that you're working for Rodya Polzin, and I know you've been researching Gregorio Kostas. And we've got a missing agent who's probably in one of Kostas' shipments, but since your little helper got away with those papers yesterday, we got no idea where she is, and that's where we need your help."

"Alright," Ethan said, but then cut off when he heard someone approaching him. It was one of Kostas' guys, one of those he didn't know, who was more or less 'posted' in the packaging facility to keep an eye on things. He walked past him and out for a smoke, but he left the door open, most likely on purpose. Ethan didn't want to close the door, which might look too suspicious. But he also couldn't talk openly now, so he changed his plan. "Sweetheart, look, I've got to go back to work now."

"Sweetheart? Well, I'm flattered, but..." Benji started, quite surprised and a little taken aback, before he realized what was going on. "Oh, you can't talk right now. Okay. But could you at least tell me something?"

"I know, darling, but I'll meet you right after work," Ethan said in his sweetest honey-voice. The smoking guy outside rolled his eyes and looked away. "I'll be there at five, at the café, near the river. The one where we met last time?"

Benji battered his memory, until he found the one possible location. "Alright. The café. At five. Anything else?"

"Love you, honey," Ethan said with a sugar-coated voice and hung up, leaving a slightly speechless Benji on the other end.