Chapter 36

Reykjavik, Iceland

8:00 pm GMT, 8:00 pm Local

Diana Petrie rarely handled clients personally; too much risk, putting an actual face and a voice to the Greenwich Global Group and the nonexistent hat company that served as its front. Negotiations generally were conducted online with what was called an onion router, cybercurrency, and extreme anonymity, deep beneath the scrutiny of intelligence agencies and enterprising hackers with malevolent intentions.

But Georgy Sokolov was no ordinary client. He was a repeat customer, having used the services of the G3 several times since his fortunes had shifted following the end of the Cold War. A former KGB officer whose work had covered all five sections of the Second Chief Directorate, he’d reinvented himself during the Yeltsin years and wrested control of several oil fields during the country’s transition from communist rule. Refineries and pipelines and trade deals followed, and over the next three decades his net worth had climbed to well over eleven figures and three commas, in U.S. dollars. He was one of those oligarchs who regularly was seated at the Russian president’s elbow during state dinners and ministry meetings, and a decade ago his American assets had been frozen by the then-president as part of wide-ranging sanctions put in place following the annexation of Crimea.

That had posed a bit of a personal hardship for almost a year, until the tragic death of the U.S. Commerce Secretary’s son quickly resulted in those sanctions being lifted. Sokolov then liquidated his real estate in New York and Palm Beach, and relocated his equity holdings to countries that were less prone to exerting financial pressure on foreign nationals.

The G3 had been involved with the direct resolution of that situation, and Petrie had warned Sokolov never to contact her personally again. There were proper channels for such dealings and, as with all its clients, she expected him to abide by the rules. They were there for a reason, foremost of which was protection and invisibility for all parties concerned. But, since he was Russian and rich and a former KGB thug, rules did not apply to him.

Sokolov had called this meeting yesterday, and he’d verbally beaten Petrie down until she reluctantly agreed to meet with him personally. Because of a pending assault charge stemming from an incident in Las Vegas, he dared not enter the U.S. under any of his four passports. Likewise, he chose not to conduct business via digital communications, even if they were encrypted and scrambled with foolproof proprietary software. The meeting had to be in person, which was why Petrie was seated at a table in a corner of the Loskins Bar in the Leif Erikson terminal at Iceland’s Keflavik International Airport.

She had touched down in Reykjavik twenty minutes ago, and the arrivals screen had told her Sokolov was going to be fifteen minutes late coming in from Latvia. They had mutually agreed on this location for their meet, and she was nursing a vodka with ice, both of which were in plentiful supply in this city just south of the Arctic Circle.

Sokolov had selected the island nation for its proximity to their respective continents. It was just a brief sit-down, no more than ten minutes, barely enough time to enjoy a quick drink and conclude a deal. The price he was willing to pay would make the journey worth her time, and he was prepared to add a hefty surcharge if she could expedite the assignment, same as last time, when the adventurous son of the Commerce Secretary had base-jumped off El Capitan in Yosemite and his chute inexplicably failed to open.

Sokolov approached the cocktail lounge from the gate where his Baltic Air flight had just pulled up. He was a large man, about six-feet-two, two hundred thirty pounds. A heavy coat was slung over his arm and a black fedora with white band was perched on his head. The G3 database listed him as sixty-six, born in Apraksin, a town not far from St. Petersburg. He had advanced degrees from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology State University, with a career track that took him to the Soviet Army and then to the Committee for State Security. Married with three children, although the computer had indicated that one of those children—his oldest son, and a senior engineer in his oil empire—had recently been killed during a private safari in Tanzania. Petrie had a strong suspicion that’s what this meeting was about.

Sokolov sat down at the corner table where Petrie was already seated, indicated to the cocktail server that he would have what she was having. Then they got right to it, no small talk, because the circumstance that had brought them together from far reaches of the globe was anything but small.

“I need sniper,” he said. Passable English, much better than her Russian, although she could get by if she was pressed to use it.

“Your son?” she asked. “Vasily?”

He nodded at her words, leaned forward to lower his already-hushed voice. “I make worth it,” he assured her.

“I know you will,” Petrie told him. “Why a sniper?”

“Is how he died. Eye for eye, measure for measure.”

“You know who it was who shot your son?” she asked.

“I have resources, too,” Sokolov replied with a wry grin. “I not know name, but know where he live. You have sniper?”

Of course, Petrie had a sniper, several of them, in fact. None of them came cheap, but no one did in this line of work. She ran through a short mental list of contractors who might fit the bill, a killer who could get into whatever country was involved, with the equipment required to take the shot, then exfiltrate immediately.

“What range?” she asked him.

“Mile, mile-and-a-half. Your choose.”

She didn’t ask, nor did he volunteer, why he wanted the shot taken from that distance. It was a difficult but not impossible feat. In fact, several years back a Canadian special forces marksman had killed an ISIS militant outside Mosul with a bullet fired over two miles away. Such perfection required not only the best rifle in the world, but an ability to correctly assess the wind, the light, the angle, the effect of gravity, even the curvature of the earth. The bullet had been airborne almost ten seconds before plunging into its target, but the marksman had pulled it off. He even got a medal for it—discretely.

The Canadian in question was not on the G3 payroll, despite several attempts to incentivize him. Killing an ISIS militant with a lust for beheading infidels was one thing, but murdering faceless persons just for a seven-figure payout apparently insulted his principles.

Petrie had several qualified shooters in mind but, as she took a healthy sip of vodka, she devised an alternate plan that no one ever need know about.

“It won’t be cheap,” she told the oligarch.

“Like I say, money not object. Motherfucker killed my son, he die.”

Petrie had learned years ago not to allow conscience, ethics, or morality affect the hard edges of her job. If a client was willing to pay top dollar for an assignment, her role was to facilitate its execution while maintaining a healthy distance between herself and the actual mission. In her mind she served as the means of destiny, or maybe even the hand of God, exacting infinitesimal changes in the fabric of history. And, over time, she’d convinced herself she was playing a fundamental, even indispensable, role in the historic course of the planet.

She forced Sokolov to sit impatiently while she mentally calculated the business aspects of the job—compensation, travel, incidentals, overhead—and then quoted him a price. He didn’t blink, even though it was twice what the mission should actually cost. She knew he was emotionally invested in the outcome, and it was best to hook him before a level head took over.

“Done,” he said, as he slid a thick envelope across the table. “Here is gift.”

Petrie didn’t open it, just slipped it into the Christian Louboutin purse that hung from the back of her chair. Then she said, “Always good to do business with you.”

“Da,” he replied as rose from the table. “I have plane to catch.”

“Have a good flight back,” she told him, and then he was gone.