“Are you saying she covered it up?” Lonnegan asked. “That’s some serious shit.”

“Thing is,” Ray said, “we just don’t know. Apparently the only one in the precinct who felt strongly enough about it to buck her was Detective Black. We had our suspicions”—he glanced at the Angel—“but we knew that Black had to get solid dope on her if we had a hope in hell in making anything stick—”

“And then he blew it all up in our faces,” Lonnegan said. “That snot-nosed, jumped-up patrolman who got his detective badge way too early.”

“Favors?” Ray asked.

Lonnegan shrugged. “No one knows for sure. He’s not particularly popular around the station. He never really talks about it, but his dad was once the captain here—”

“John Francis X. Black,” Ray exclaimed. “Found dead in his office under mysterious circumstances on Wild Card Day 1986, wasn’t it?”

“Right.”

Ray whistled lowly. “Chri—ah, cripes. Talk about the good old days. I was here for that shit. Aces murdered. The Great And Powerful Turtle sunk in the East River. Aces High demolished. Armageddon threatened. Old dude found stuck halfway through a brick wall.” He shook his head. “No wonder the death of a police captain almost went unnoticed.”

“Water under the bridge,” Lonnegan said. “We’ve got our own problems to worry about. Our own missing captain to find.”

“Well,” Ray said, “all the signs point in the same direction, no?”

The others sighed, shook their heads with weariness, or rubbed tired eyes. It was Lonnegan who said it aloud.

“The Russian Mafia.”

Ray smiled, almost happily.

“So what more do we know about Talas, Ink?” she asked her aide.

Ink, wearing her usual short-sleeved blouse and Dockers, shook her head and ran her fingers through spikes of black hair. Ink was Korean, though she’d been raised as an adopted child in the States, and as usual, her skin was liberally covered with the tattoos that had given the woman her sobriquet. The wild card had given her the ability to control the appearance of those tattoos with exceptional detail and versatility. Today, the tattoos were echoing the reports she was handling, with text slowly scrolling down her arms like a fleshy marquee.

Ink had been with the Committee for only a few months now, and Barbara already wondered how she’d managed before. Ink had also become a semi-confidante for Barbara; there was something about the young woman: a carefully concealed vulnerability that drew Barbara to her.

“I can’t tell you, Mizz B.” Barbara had quickly given up any hope of convincing Ink to call her “ma’am” or “Ms. Baden,” as did most of the staff. Ink’s competence as Barbara’s chief of staff more than made up for her casual attitude. “I’ve called the people who sent in the last three reports, and I’m sure they all believe they’re telling me the truth, but they’re also all telling me different and contradictory things: food riots, some kind of student uprising, an attempted military coup. I don’t think anyone knows what’s actually going on. But it’s clear enough that there’s something awry in Kazakhstan, and specifically around Talas. Whatever the trouble is, it is growing. Fast.”