“And it wasn’t an accident?” Natalie added.
“No. She brought a pack of mercenaries with her and the shooter had a clear line. They were after Wolfgang, and they wanted to take him out first so he couldn’t talk.”
“Excellent,” Mary Alice said briskly. “That means he knows something worth telling.”
“Exactly,” I replied, pouring a cup of coffee from the dregs of the old pot.
“But he just said he didn’t,” Akiko pointed out.
Helen gave her a kind look. “No, dear. He doesn’tthinkhe does. And that’s a different thing altogether.”
“So what now?” Akiko asked.
It was Natalie who answered. “Now we get to practice our interrogation skills.”
And she looked a little too pleased at the prospect.
“Do you travel with a torture kit?” Mary Alice asked pleasantly.
“No, but it would be easy enough to put one together out of random things lying around. The kitchen is full of useful tools.”
“Like what?” Akiko demanded. I hoped for Mary Alice’s sake she wasn’t taking notes.
Natalie shrugged. “Off the top of my head? Meat mallet, corkscrew, cheese wire. You can do some pretty messed-up shit with a melon baller, come to think of it.”
“Natalie,” Mary Alice cut in sharply. “We are not going to torture an innocent man for information.”
Nat rolled her eyes. “Of course not. We’re just going to make himthinkwe are.”
“Hold off on the psy ops,” I told her. “I think this is a flies-and-honey situation. He’s still in shock from being shot. Any more pressure and he may crack entirely.”
Just then Taverner emerged from the kitchen.
“How’s our guest?” I asked him.
“Much calmer now. In fact, he remembered that Galina told him she was taking over for her brother on a very important deal, something about Montenegro. She was getting ready to travel.”
I remembered what Grigory had drunkenly sniveled about not trusting Montenegrins. “Anything else?”
He shrugged. “Apparently she was involved in the deal from the start. Lots of meetings and phone calls with someone.He said it was Pasha’s baby, but since his death, she has to finish it. Galina never told Wolfie details, but she used the phrase ‘pick up,’ so something must be changing hands.”
“Is she collecting it personally?” Helen asked.
Taverner nodded. “She gave Wolfie the impression she was more upset about traveling to the Balkans again than she was about her brother dying. He said she seemed nervous about it.”
“If Galina is so secretive, how does Wolfie know so much about the deal?” Mary Alice asked.
“They had tickets to the opera—Don Giovanniin Paris—but she had to cancel. Reading between the lines, he threw a bit of a strop and she had to explain why it was necessary for her to be away.”
I gave him a tip of an imaginary hat. “Good job getting that much out of him.”
“Nothing to it,” he said. “He seemed inclined to talk. I do have one question. What’s a ‘stern brunch daddy’?”
Natalie gave a short howl of laughter and Taverner looked at me in puzzlement.
“It means I think I know why he and Galina aren’t lovers,” I told him with a grin.
He might have been past sixty and a career assassin who practiced naked tai chi in the garden, but he blushed forty shades of red. “Well, it’s nice to be appreciated,” he murmured. He turned to head back to the kitchen but stopped, fishing in the pocket of his apron. “Oh, I almost forgot. I had him jot down Galina’s email address and a few other details. Hope it helps.”