Dead Eye by Mark Greaney Read Free Book Online

girls and booze and often a little coke, and they had a hell of a time, but Sid did not partake. He wasn’t like them, and they weren’t like him.
    That was not to say he was bothered by the festivities. Much to the contrary, his boys could party at his place every night as far as he was concerned. He liked the fact that some fifty or sixty feared and loathed men, all of whom worked for him in one form or another, were here on the grounds. It made him feel safe, up on the fourth floor with only his extended family, his sister and her kids, and his cousins living up here with him. They avoided the freak show on the weekends as well, staying up here away from the skinheads.
    Despite the slight inconvenience, Sid knew that no one would dare attack him with a small army of soldiers at the ready—well, sort of ready—to respond to any threat.
    Sidorenko enjoyed spending his time at his desk counting his money. He had entered the underworld originally as an accountant for a large crime boss in the early nineties before taking over the reins of his own
Bratva
a few years later, and he still spent his days, or more precisely his nights, looking over the meticulously maintained ledgers of his various enterprises.
    He slurped a sip of his sugary-sweet tea, and then, with a reed-thin finger, he scanned down a printout ledger showing receipts from his prostitution and human trafficking concerns in the Czech Republic.
    The phone on his desk rang and he answered it, not surprised at all to receive a call at four in the morning, as he had employees all over the world who knew Sidorenko could be reached throughout the night St. Petersburg time.
    “What?” Sid asked distractedly, the index finger of his right hand still skimming a balance sheet stacked on hundreds of others.
    “Sir. Ivan at the north gate.”
    Sid’s finger stopped moving and his eyes narrowed with concern.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Probably nothing, sir. I almost did not call. But it is strange.”
    “Well
talk
, damn you!” Sid shouted as he stood from his chair. He was a paranoid man, and it was a short trip for him to switch from comfortable relaxation to shaking terror. He was well on his way from the former to the latter; only his security man’s indecision kept him from bolting the door and reaching for his shotgun.
    “Uh . . . A hang glider just crashed in the forest about twenty-five meters from the north wall. No one is with it.”
    Sid cocked his head, his birdlike features pinched tighter in confusion.
    “A hang glider?”
    Ivan said, “We have two men searching the larch to see if a body—”
    “It’s him!” Sid interrupted, his voice tight with tension. “It’s Gray. He’s here. Get everyone to the house! Send men to my office. A
lot
of men. Everyone else will search this building. You have to find him before he comes upstairs!”
    “Sir, he did not pass the gate. I would have seen him. He must still be out—”
    “Listen to me! He’s in the—”
    Sid stopped speaking when he heard it: the slow creaking of old hinges, the sound of the heavy door to the hallway opening. He could not see the door across the room, as the light from the fireplace did not reach more than fifteen feet past the front of his desk. Normally when the door opened he knew it instantly, as there was a light in the hallway, and a long shaft of light across the cold hardwood floor accompanied the creaking hinges.
    But not now. Clearly the hall light had been disabled.
    Panic washed over his body; his knees weakened. He fought a wave of nausea and then croaked softly into the phone, “Hurry.” He placed the handset back in the cradle with a trembling hand and sat back down.
    Sidorenko had thought of this moment for a long time. It was at the center of his every nightmare, true, but he had also taken the time when awake to put his mind to the situation. If, somehow, all his defensive measures came to nothing and it was down to Court and him, alone in a room