Then I turned to Peshkov. He sat frozen, gripping the arms of his chair. I told him I knew his role in the scheme, that I had evidence tying him to Volkov, to Sychev, and to the whole network.
That the evidence would go where it needed to go the moment I decided the time had come. Peshkov went pale as paper and asked the only question that mattered. “What do you want?”
I answered. Volkov would get real prison time. Not probation. Not house arrest.
Real time in a standard penal colony. Not a protected facility for former cops, but general population. You will make that happen.
Peshkov started objecting, saying it was impossible, that the system didn’t work that way, that former officers were always sent to special housing. I took out my phone and showed him one photograph. It was of him, in a compromising situation known only to me and two other people.
I had kept that photograph for three years, the way a card player keeps an ace hidden up his sleeve until the right moment. The moment had come. Peshkov looked at the picture, and his face went from pale to gray.
He nodded. Slowly, heavily, like a man signing his own sentence but understanding the alternative would be worse. I put my phone away, turned, and walked out of the office without saying goodbye and without looking back.
On the front steps, I stopped for a second and took in the evening air. It smelled of wet earth, rust, and freedom. Not my freedom. My daughter’s freedom, as she slept in her room, not knowing that her father had just made the move that decided the whole game.
The queen had stepped into position. All that remained was checkmate. Volkov’s trial took place three months later.
For three months I didn’t sleep well a single night, because I knew the system could fail at any point. The system isn’t a machine. It’s a living thing made up of people, and every one of those people has his own interests. Any one of them could have gotten scared, changed course, or sold out to the other side.
But I controlled the process at every stage. Like a conductor controls an orchestra, where each musician plays his own part without hearing the whole piece, and only the conductor knows how the separate notes become a symphony. The investigation moved quickly, because there was enough material for ten cases like this.
The Internal Affairs colonel did his job flawlessly. His people pulled the detention logs for the previous six months and found twelve girls Volkov and his group had dragged into the station. Nine of them agreed to testify. Nine girls who had stayed silent for half a year out of fear and shame suddenly found their voices because they learned they were not alone, that the system had finally turned toward them, and that there was a force behind them that would not let them be crushed…
