ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
THURSDAY, 7:48 A.M. MOSCOW STANDARD TIME (12:48 A.M. EST)
Motherfucker, Jessica thought. The Deputy Director of the CIA was really messing with her this time.
She sat at a musty café on a dank side street off Nevsky Prospekt drinking bitter watery coffee and reading the morning Izvestia newspaper. The coffee was supposed to help wake her up after the sleepless last leg of her trip. A little caffeine to keep her sharp after the long flights and identity changes at stopovers in Paris and Dubai and Istanbul. But this coffee was dishwater.
She lifted the cup to force down another gulp, casting her eyes toward the alley and the back door to the nightclub. The Kitty Kat Klub was closed at this hour, but there were three beefy men in cheap suits standing stiffly at the door, trying to stay out of a light rain. She noted multiple security cameras monitoring the door and at the entrance to the dead-end alley. Motherfucker.
Her mission was to convince the Bear that she was Queen Sheba—a superefficient contract assassin who was a creation of U.S. intelligence—and receive her next target. She had flown all this way, gone through all this effort, in order to discover the Bear’s next move. Was his network expanding into lethal new businesses? Were they merely a criminal enterprise or was he connected into the FSB, the Russian security service? Into the Kremlin? What was the Bear’s game?
Jessica was under strict orders not to kill the Bear. But first she had to find him.
A few hours earlier Jessica had landed at the St. Petersburg airport under cover as a United Nations official. Jessica had to admit that was a nice touch from the CIA station in Turkey. The UN passport ensured that a young black woman could enter Russia without too much hassle. She had already ditched that identity, along with any potential tails from Russian intelligence, by changing taxis and sneaking out through the back of the city’s early-morning meat market. Now she was casing the nightclub, downstairs from where the CIA believed the Bear ran his operation. She just needed to get inside and upstairs.
This wasn’t how Jessica normally operated. For a sensitive mission like this, she would have insisted on her own team constructing everything from scratch. Purple Cell should have originated the backstory, created her persona, run surveillance on the targets, determined her infiltration routes, mapped the risk contingencies, and simulated the exfiltration plans. It should have been her operation from start to finish.
Instead the Deputy Director had forced her into some half-baked story about a Russian-speaking Somali contract killer. The whole plan rested on the Bear believing Jessica’s identity that she barely believed herself. Her proof would be her demeanor, her confidence, and one special little gift. It was anything but a normal operation. Motherfucker.
A shiny jet-black Land Rover pulled up to the club and one of the guards opened the back door. A pale bald man in a snug dark suit got out and quickly disappeared inside. She downed the coffee, threw a hundred-ruble note on the table, and strode across the street.
“Pardon me, is this the way to the Church on Spilled Blood?” she asked in flawless Russian to the tallest of the security men at the back door to the Kitty Kat Klub.
“Spilled Blood? Why would a pretty girl like you want to go to a place like that?” he asked, looking her up and down.
“It is beautiful, no?”
“The church is beautiful, but why would a girl like you go there when there are so many more”—he paused—“exciting things to do in Saint Petersburg?”
“Like what?” Jessica straightened her shoulders and playfully tilted her head to the side. “Where can I find some real fun?” she said innocently, taking another step toward them.
“You are in the wrong part of the city,” another said brusquely. “You are lost.”
“Lost?” she asked, moving closer.
The third, shorter man flanked to one side, the three goons now surrounding her in a tight circle.
“How did we ever find an African princess who speaks beautiful Russian?” the first one said. “Are you a student in Moscow?”
“Not a student,” she said.
“A dancer?”
Jessica was close enough she could smell cigarettes on his breath. “Not a dancer.” She held out her palms. “Can’t you tell what I am from these?”
The thug winced in confusion. “A girl . . .”
Jessica slowly closed her hands into two tight fists.
One, she thought, looking out of the corner of her eye at the security camera trained on them. She counted two, using her peripheral vision to space the three men and judge the exact location and height of each. She sucked in a deep breath . . . three.
Her right fist collided with a bone-cracking snap on the chin of the tall man in front. As she drew back her right hand, she twirled and unleashed a sharp left, crushing the soft trachea of the second thug. As he grabbed his throat in agony and doubled over, Jessica released a back kick to the groin of the third man. A fierce uppercut to his nose sent the short one sprawling flat on his back. She spun and swept the leg of goon number two, then knocked him out cold with a quick snap punch to head.
She squared herself and faced the tallest goon, who was still dazed and trying to regain his balance. She snatched his wrist and violently twisted, spinning him around and dislocating his shoulder with a pop. Jessica grabbed the back of his head and held it up to the camera. A drip of blood oozed from his nostril.
A few seconds later the door buzzed and clicked open.
She released the man and surveyed the damage. Three down. Time to go to work.
“Not a girl. Not a princess,” Jessica told them. “I’m the queen.”
And then she stepped inside.