Malenkov lit a cigarette, puffed, threw it away, lit a second one, all in less than two minutes. He wasn’t aware of it.
They hadn’t told him enough. It was their fault and that asshole Major’s, not his.
He was looking for November; it had nothing to do with some kind of goddam operation with Poles in Chicago. Now they told him. Why didn’t they tell him in the first place? Bureaucrats.
It was snowing hard. Just after dark. A single light was on in the house on Ellis Avenue.
Was the Pole there? Teresa Kolaki? Missing a day. Every code red in the embassy was working overtime. The operation in Chicago—whatever in the hell it was—was penetrated, at risk. And it turned out that it was all November again, all over again, messing up their arrangements.
“I thought I was supposed to confine myself—”
“Orders are changed,” the Major said on the phone. “Besides, you missed him.”
“I’m one man, Mikhail Korsoff, and I can scarcely—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. Why did you think it was going to be so easy to find him? Did we have a finger on this?”
The Major said nothing to that. It must have been the truth. Whatever was supposed to have happened, didn’t. It was a real mess all right. “At least see if you can get a line on him. See if Teresa is there in that house.”
“And do what?” asked Malenkov.
Kill them. Both of them. No exception. No one would be in the house but them. It was assured.
So he had waited a few hours for night. Night would be better. He couldn’t put it off any longer, though. He flicked his second cigarette into the snow. He pulled up his collar around his neck and ears. Snow flecked his brown hair. His eyes were wide, his face carved from granite.
He took the Uzi out of his pocket. He screwed a silencer into the barrel. He unsnapped the safety, removed the clip of ten cartridges, reinserted it with a snap.
He pushed open the gate past a snowy broken sculpture—what had it been before it was broken?—and climbed five steps. Direct, without subtlety. Always the best way. He felt the pistol in his coat, his hands around the wire stock.
He knocked. He waited. He knocked again.
The door opened on a chain.
A woman. An old woman. The one he would have to talk to. To find out what she knew about November. He considered the chain: thin, probably more for assurance than security. That was his experience with these chains. They made people behind the door feel better about opening it.
He hit the door hard and broke the chain, sending the old woman spinning back against the balustrade to a staircase leading upward.
She cried out. He turned, slammed the door, removed the weapon, snapped the safety, pointed it at her face.
“Where is Devereaux?”
She would have three seconds. He didn’t want to prolong this. Kill her and then upstairs to search the house for Teresa. If he found her, he killed her. Back in the car in two minutes.
Two. Three.
The blast shattered his eardrum. For a moment, he stared at his silencer. What was wrong?
Then he turned and saw the dark man in the corner of the room. With a gun. Without a silencer. Blood tasted salty on his lips. He was conscious, he knew he was awake, but he had the strange feeling his face was gone. The second shot caught him in the ribs, exploded his heart. The third was unnecessary.
The man in the corner still had a half-eaten apple in his left hand. Melvina held the balustrade and stared at the blood-stained body crumpled at her feet. She looked at the swarthy Italian emerging into the light of the hall. He looked down at the dead man. “I figure Dev knows what he’s saying.” The voice was a half-whisper, very hoarse. “He wants me, he got me. See? You didn’t think it was necessary I was here. Ain’t you glad now I came here like he wanted?”
But Melvina, though she did not cry, could not speak.