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A black van with blacked out windows pulled up in front of the drycleaners.
The two officers at the front door were told to go back to the station. At the corner, they met the officer who had been watching the back door. The three of them piled into the white plumber's van on the other side of the street and one of them started the motor. They stayed only long enough to see the bodies being carried out of the apartment.
Inside the SUV, one of the men lifted the crooked sunglasses from the unconscious woman's face.
"Bloody hideous."
"Have some respect."
"Not half as hideous as this." The sheet wrapped around Nikolai's naked body was pulled open, revealing stars, words, the Virgin Mary with the Christ child in her arms.
"Freak."
"This is a man dedicated to his work, lads."
"Fucking freak."
The Inspector turned around in the passenger seat. "Leave the prisoners alone," he said gruffly. It was bad enough being kept out of the loop by MI6, but to have to put up with this lot's disrespect was too much.
At least he'd re-established his authority enough to be present for the extraction, even if he wasn't entirely in charge.
It made sense to do it like this, in a way. If Kirill's boys were also watching Nikolai and decided to intervene, or if Nikolai were to wake up, the Inspector was much safer behind a wall of special agents than he would have been behind his own officers. These agents were hard men. Not as hard as the man wrapped in the sheet - it would take several of them to subdue a fully alert and angry Nikolai - but regular cops wouldn't last nearly as long. He felt almost safe.
He would never really be safe. Not as long as everything remained so bloody tentative.
He'd been infuriated to discover that MI6 had been planning on taking Luzhin in all along. Nikolai was his catch, and no bloody spymasters were going to take him away, at least not until the Inspector had at least had a shot at debriefing him. That shot was af oregone conclusion. MI6 may have had the authority to take him in, but not the means to make him talk. That was where the Inspector had the upper hand.
He was quite sure that Nikolai would not respond to MI6 at all. He would stare and smirk, and maybe hurt a few agents, but he would never talk to them. Not even if they tortured him. He would demand to see the Inspector. That is the only thing he would ever say to them. He would demand the Inspector.
Nikolai was not an ordinary undercover operative. He was not doing this for England. He was not doing this for the money. He had no sense of discipline or hierarchy, not on this side of the law. He knew only personal loyalty. That was the way of his kind.
The Inspector only hoped that loyalty would remain intact after Nikolai woke up and realized he had been brought in from the cold.
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