Chapter 81 Viktor Cornered

Chapter 81 Viktor Cornered
By five o'clock the coalition was inside the compound walls.

Nico told us in pieces the way information came through on the radio, fragments and confirmations building a picture that assembled itself like a map being drawn in real time. Northern approach team through the back gate. Eastern coalition closing the perimeter from the right. Viktor's internal forces caught between two fronts they had not anticipated because they had been watching the wrong approach for forty minutes while the right one walked in behind them.

The radio had been going almost constantly since four fifteen and the kitchen had taken on the particular atmosphere of a room where people were waiting for something they could not see but could feel getting closer with every passing update.

Elena stood at the counter doing something she had already done twice without seeming to notice.

I sat at the table with my hands around a cup I had stopped drinking from an hour ago.

Nico came in from the corridor at five twenty with his face carrying something that looked almost like relief except that relief would have been premature and Nico was not a man who allowed himself premature things.

"Viktor's allied families are pulling out," he said.

I looked up at him. "Which ones."

"All of them," he said. "The eastern bloc pulled their men off his perimeter an hour ago. The southern contacts stopped responding to his calls at four. The third family sent word directly to Dante's coalition that they were withdrawing support entirely." He paused. "When Viktor's people started peeling away the ones who stayed understood they were standing alone and made their decisions accordingly."

"He has nobody left," I said.

"He has the men still inside the compound," Nico said. "And there are fewer of those than there were this morning."

Elena turned from the counter and looked at Nico steadily. "And Viktor himself," she said. "Where is he."

Nico pulled a chair out from the table and sat down which he almost never did in the kitchen because sitting down meant the update was longer than a quick relay and required the weight of a chair under it.

"His vehicle was picked up on the compound's rear service road at four forty," he said. "He tried to get out through the northern exit while the eastern perimeter was drawing attention. The northern approach team was still positioned on the service road."

"He drove into them," I said.

"Yes," Nico said.

"So he turned around," I said.

"Yes," he said. "He went back into the compound and his people sealed the gates behind him and he has been inside ever since."

Elena sat down at the table.

I looked at the window and the garden and the ordinary evening light doing its slow work across the rose beds and thought about Viktor inside his walls with no allies and no exit and thirty years of patience arriving at this specific Tuesday afternoon in a locked compound with Dante's coalition on every side.

"He is going to try to negotiate," I said.

"He already tried," Nico said. "An hour ago. He sent a message through one of his remaining men offering Dante the eastern territory in exchange for safe passage out of the country."

I looked at Nico. "What did Dante say."

Nico looked at the table for a moment in the way he looked at things he found either difficult or interesting and was deciding which.

"Dante did not respond," he said. "He read the message and handed it back to the courier and returned to his position."

Elena made a sound that might have been satisfaction.

I understood it completely.

Viktor had built his entire campaign on the idea that everyone had a price and every situation had a negotiable exit. He had waited thirty years because he believed patience was a strategy and strategy always found its opening. He had looked at Dante Marchetti and seen a man with something to lose and had decided that something to lose was the same as something to negotiate with.

He had been wrong about that from the beginning.

The radio crackled.

A voice that was not Dante came through it. One of the senior coalition leads reporting that the compound outer perimeter was fully secured and the inner gate was the last position between the coalition and Viktor's location inside the building.

Nico looked at the radio.

Then he looked at me.

Then he pressed the call button and asked for Dante's position.

The answer came back in Dante's voice.

Four words.

Taking point on entry.

Nico set the radio down on the table very carefully.

Elena looked at it.

I looked at Nico.

"He is going in himself," I said.

"Yes," Nico said.

"Against the advice of everyone," I said.

"The senior coalition lead told him three times that it was unnecessary," Nico said. "That they had sufficient personnel to handle the entry without him at the front of it."

"And Dante said," I said.

Nico looked at me with the expression of a man who had known Dante Marchetti for eight years and had long since arrived at a place of complete unsurprised understanding about the things he did and the reasons he did not explain them.

"Dante said nothing," he said. "He put his radio in his jacket and walked to the gate."

The kitchen was very quiet.

Elena folded her hands on the table.

I looked at the garden one more time and then I looked at the ceiling and then I looked at the kitchen table and thought about a man walking toward a gate with nothing explained because nothing needed explaining because everyone who had been following him for years already understood.

This ending belonged to him.

It had always belonged to him.

He did not explain why.

He did not need to.