Firebreak

5

"Cosmopolitan Beverages."

"Viktor Charov, please," Parker said. "I'm sorry, what?" 'Viktor Charov."

"No, sir, I'm sorry, there's no one here by that name." "Oh, is he in Moscow?"

"No, sir, we don't— What was that name again?" 'Viktor Charov," Parker said. "He's a purchasing agent with your outfit. He isn't there?" "Hold, please."

Parker held. Traffic was light going by the gas station, the same one where he'd talked with Elkins. He hadn't been to the house yet, see what was going on there. Claire had moved to a hotel in New York, planned to do some shopping; he'd call her later, after he knew what was going on. "Ms. Bursar."

"Hello," Parker said. "I'm looking for Viktor Charov."

"Would you spell that name?"

He did, with the k, and Ms. Bursar said, 'There's no one by that name employed here."

"I'm sure he is," Parker said. "He travels back and forth to Moscow for you people."

"Sir, I am the firm's accountant," Ms. Bursar said. "I write the salary checks, and I have never written a check for anyone named Viktor Charov."

"Well, I got a bum steer then," Parker said. "Sorry about that."

'There are a number of other beverage importers in this area," Ms. Bursar pointed out. "Perhaps he's with one of them."

"Could be," Parker said, and hung up, and went back to the Lexus.

A no-show job, to cover Charov's travels between the two countries and explain his income. Somebody connected with Cosmopolitan was mobbed-up in some way, and could insert this ringer into the company without its accountant knowing he was there.

Which was why, though his "employer" was in a town next to the harbor of New York, Charov's American base had been Chicago. That was much more central for somebody whose actual work might take him anywhere in the country.

For years the hit men came from Italy, know-nothing rural toughs called zips, who spoke no English, came in only to do the job and collect their low pay, and then flew back out again. But that system soon began to break down. Some of the zips refused to go home, some of them got caught and didn't know how to take care of themselves inside the American system, some of them had loyalties in Europe that conflicted with their one-time-only employers in the United States.

It's still better, all in all, to have a contract killer whose home base is far away, in some other land. But it pays to have somebody reliable, educated, useful over the long term. Viktor Charov could come and go as he pleased, cloaked by his 'job" at Cosmopolitan Beverages. He could take on whatever private work he wanted, and from time to time the people who'd given him his cover would ask him to do a little something for them.

But the mob wasn't behind the run at Parker. That had been a civilian, that nervous voice on the answering machine in Chicago. It was one of his independent contractor jobs that had run out Charov's string.

No one had been in the house. Parker went through it, slowly, room by room, and all the little signals he'd set there were unsprung.

The civilian employer of Charov would react slowly to the Russian's disappearance. There was time to see if the Montana job was worth the effort. Time to find out what those two names in Cyrillic looked like when they were at home.

Parker phoned the hotel in Manhattan, but Claire was out, as he'd expected. He left a message: "See you in a week or two."