Storm Front

The moment the man looked toward his watch, Volkov reached down, grabbing the man’s chin and the back of his head simultaneously and giving them a violent, counterclockwise twist. For Volkov, it was like unscrewing the cap of a large tube of toothpaste. The man’s neck snapped easily. The crunching of vertebrae was the only sound it made. Volkov dragged the man off the chair, hauled him into a nearby closet, and left him there. Volkov was not absolutely certain the man was dead, but it didn’t matter: He was unconscious, and if he ever did awaken, it wasn’t as if he would be able to crawl out. Volkov would be long gone by then.

He went back to the room the man had been guarding and opened the door. Volkov walked fast, like a man who knew exactly what he was doing and why he was there.

Diamant was sitting at a desk, listening to Rachmaninoff. Volkov couldn’t help but silently approve of the choice and almost — almost — felt bad to kill a man of such surpassing good taste. The composer represented all that was great about the culture of Volkov’s motherland.

Diamant’s gaze lifted as Volkov drew near.

“Mr. Diamant, I’m Officer Gregor Volkov,” he said, not bothering to come up with a different name. At least it would help explain the Russian accent.

“What can I do for you, Officer?” Diamant asked. He looked weary, confused. This was to Volkov’s advantage. So was Volkov’s own obvious disfigurement. He saw Diamant fixate briefly on his eye patch and facial scars, but then Diamant quickly looked away. Like many people, Diamant was too polite to stare.

“We’ve set up our temporary morgue about a mile down the road,” he said. “We’ve got the first of the assailants down there now. It would help us a lot if you would come down and take a look at him.”

“But the inspector already showed me pictures. I told him: I don’t know any of them.”

“I’m aware of that,” Volkov lied smoothly. “But sometimes seeing a body in the flesh can change that. Maybe you’ll notice a tattoo that looks familiar.”

“Can’t… can’t it wait? I’m not sure I—”

“The inspector says time is important,” Volkov said. “Maybe you know the perps, maybe you don’t. To be honest, sir, I’m just trying to follow orders. And the inspector said to bring you down to the temporary morgue.”

Diamant shook his head but said, “Very well.”

The banker obediently followed Volkov out of the main house and into the driveway. This was the last part Volkov worried about — he had car keys in his pocket, but he didn’t know which vehicle they belonged to. He slid them out, pressed the unlock button on the key fob, and hoped it made something happen. He didn’t want to have to hit the alarm button.

After a brief delay, the lights on one of the patrol cars quickly flashed. Volkov allowed himself a quick, smug smile as he opened the back door for Diamant. Once inside, the man would have no way of escaping. Cop cars were good that way.

“I greatly appreciate your cooperation, sir,” Volkov said.

“Oh, and I must say, that’s a nice manicure you have.”

He closed the door. The fifth MonEx code would soon be his. Then he would hire a new team — which was never hard for a man with Volkov’s connections — and go after the final name on his list.

In some ways, it was the most important. It was the one in New York, after all.

It was to the consternation of the South African Police Service inspector approximately two hours later when someone finally realized that the young constable who had been sent to the northwest corner of the property had not reported back in some time.

The inspector tried to reach the constable on the radio and failed. Then someone noticed his patrol car was missing.

They put out a bulletin for the car, thinking it was a weird act of insubordination on the part of a young officer who had inexplicably bailed on an important crime scene. Didn’t he know better?

Then a member of Diamant’s security forces went to relieve the man standing guard outside of the banker’s office and found only an empty chair. He knocked on the door and got no answer. He went inside the office. Diamant was not there.

Nor was he in the bedroom. Nor the kitchen. Nor, seemingly, anywhere else inside the house or on the grounds.

The private security guard took the news of Diamant’s disappearance to the inspector, who was already trying to make sense of his officer going AWOL.

Sometime later, off a little-used road, the rear bumper of a police patrol car was spotted half-sunk in a swamp. Sometime after that, around sunrise, the officer’s body was encountered slumped against the tree trunk on Diamant’s property. The security guard with the snapped neck was found in the closet within the hour.

And then, the terrible discovery by a child on his way to school: a corpse that had been secured with police handcuffs to a jackalberry tree. The body was missing all the fingernails on its right hand. It was quickly identified as the body of Jeff Diamant of Standard Rand Bank.