Morosov hated surveillance. Always had, always would. He was not a patient man. The prospect of having to wait all night to lay eyes on the man calling himself Gregory Abimbola vexed him almost beyond measure.
It shouldn’t have been this way, he thought, gritting his teeth in frustration. But nothing, absolutely nothing, in the previous twelve hours had gone as planned.
He’d spent the night holed up in the faded magnificence of the Omni William Penn hotel, his sleep shallow and easily interrupted due to jet lag. He’d risen the next morning utterly unrefreshed, and well aware that the slightest setback would blacken his mood irreversibly.
The setbacks weren’t long in coming. An apologetic text from Dianna informed him that she was too sick to work that day, and that she wasn’t checking messages. So his overnight voicemail asking her to arrange a rental car for him was still sitting in her inbox. And then it turned out that finding a rental car with the heavily tinted windows he wanted was not as easy as he’d thought. It was beyond the ability of the various sales clerks he tangled with on the phone; interactions that had not been helped by their apparent inability to understand his accent.
‘We don’t keep information about tinted windows,’ had been a typical response.
‘Is easy. Go outside. You check. Come back. Tell me, yes?’
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, sir.’
By the time he’d secured a suitable car, a Hyundai sedan completely devoid of character, it was already mid-morning. Morosov had then driven to Calderhill Academy, but his attempts at reconnaissance had been stymied by geography and chaos. The school, he discovered, had three entrances, a main one at the front and two at the back. Opting for the main entrance as the most likely place to pick up his target, Morosov had been unable to find a good vantage point. Parking directly across the street was illegal, and the closest he could manage was over a hundred meters distant. The telephoto lens on his camera made short work of the gap, but the angle was bad. And when school let out a little after three o’clock, the mass comings and goings of parents, children and their attendant vehicles made it impossible for Morosov to cover everybody. If the man Morosov believed was calling himself Greg Abimbola had left school by way of Calderhill Academy’s broad front steps, then he, Mikhail Sergeevich Morosov, had missed him.
Morosov had then driven along snow-choked streets to Parkside Hill, hoping to acquire the target at his home. He soon discovered that Parkside Hill – like every other street in Pittsburgh, it seemed – was an actual hill, and a ferociously steep one at that. Patches of cobbled brick bled red through slushy ruts in the road as he urged his reluctant car forward. The street serpentined as it went, leaving only a limited number of spots with a good view of number 236, all of which were occupied.
Afraid that his quarry might spot him if he kept passing by looking for a parking space, Morosov returned only intermittently. It was almost eight p.m. before he finally found what he was looking for, a stretch of curb perhaps thirty meters from the front door to the building, a shabby row house long since converted into apartments. If Greg Abimbola had settled in for the night, Morosov had no chance of picking him up before morning. He settled deeper into his seat, scratching irritably at the back of his neck, and waited. Flurries of snow continued to come down, forcing him to use the windshield wipers to clear a view. With the engine silent, the interior of the car quickly chilled to freezing. Morosov didn’t mind. He liked the cold. A refreshing change from London’s insipid winters. He stared out into the snowflaked night, letting his mind drift.
Termites.
Greedy, unseen fuckers, gnawing and gnawing away until the chair had lost its integrity. Any other fucking chair and none of it would have happened. But they’d tied the man calling himself Gregory Abimbola to a chair eaten hollow by the little bastards. It had collapsed, catching everybody by surprise except the man himself. He remembered the giant African moth swinging around the bare, overhead light; the burning smell of spilled acid; and Polukhin’s face, comical in its dropped jaw amazement, the last thing he saw before a hastily swung chair leg had smashed into his temple. The termites had left enough wood to knock him out cold. By the time he came to, the bastard negr was disappearing into the harbor, and from there into thin fucking air so far as GRU was concerned. Target presumed dead. Case closed. And a giant blot on his record.
Not Polukhin’s, though. His boss, whose connections had protected him, simply climbed higher and higher in the organization. Not that Morosov minded – much. Polukhin was good for business. Had set him up in his security consultancy, ready to be called upon when needed.
Bright headlights were sweeping up the street from behind him, the glare bouncing off the wing mirror of his car. Moments later the vehicle responsible had slipped smoothly past. A Mini Cooper, absurdly tiny compared with the giant American automobiles jammed nose to tail against the winding curb.
And British.
Morosov sat upright in his seat. Reached for his camera.
The Mini Cooper was slowing down, looking for somewhere to park. It passed the entrance to 236 and then, tiny as it was, it backed into a space its neighbors could not even imagine fitting into. The engine died, the lights vanished.
An elegant silhouette emerged onto the sidewalk, backlit by a distant streetlight.
It’s him! Traitorous black bastard.
Morosov pulled the camera to his face, focusing on the figure walking toward him. Optimized as it now was for night shooting, the SLR had no trouble picking out the monkey’s familiar, ridiculously handsome features. With a start of surprise he noticed the eye patch and grinned, remembering how the fucker had screamed when the first searing drops had hit his face.
Not so good looking now, are you?
He pressed the shutter, a whispered click-click-click as it stored irrefutable proof that the negr was alive.
The target had reached the entrance to his building, was fishing in his pockets, presumably for a key.
Goosebumps prickled on the back of Morosov’s neck.
The shit was taking far too long. And he was standing at an angle to the front door. Enough so that he could see Morosov’s vehicle without appearing to turn his head.
Moving very slowly, so as not to draw attention to himself, Morosov laid down the camera, moved his finger over the rental car’s ignition button.
Hands thrust into the pockets of his coat, the target was moving away from his front door, strolling casually along the sidewalk in Morosov’s direction. Morosov’s breath moved quickly through a suddenly dry throat. This was America. It was entirely possible the negr was armed.
Morosov pushed on the ignition button. The car’s engine rumbled into life. He turned on the indicators as if everything was normal, and pulled gently out into the street, careful to turn his head away as he passed through the monkey’s one-eyed gaze. Within seconds, the cobbled contours of Parkside Hill moved him out of sight. Dimly lit buildings loomed above him on either side, the cracked wood of their windowsills freighted with snow.
‘Zhizn’ ebet meya!’ he roared, pounding the rental’s dash in frustration.
The traitorous fuck knew he was being watched.