BARCELONA, SPAIN
Getting into Ryan’s apartment cost Bykov a hundred euros, but it was worth it. The Guatemalan maid cleaned several Airbnbs in the Barceloneta neighborhood. He had bribed her before for just fifty, but she got smart and decided he could afford double. She also threw in a quick roll in the sheets of the place she was cleaning when he came to pick up the keys, and that alone was worth the hundred. Besides, it was Guzmán’s money, not his. So really, it was a freebie for him.
Ryan’s apartment building had its own front door lock, and then the third-floor apartment had yet another keyed lock. Bykov could have picked them both but it was daylight and the cops in the city were on edge with the rumor of another mass protest in the afternoon. More than three hundred thousand people were expected to rally at the old post office across from the marina where the big, multimillion-dollar yachts were crowded into their berths.
Besides the blue-and-white Mossos d’Esquadra cars cruising the neighborhood, a storefront police station was just around the corner with a couple of official Vespas parked out front.
Bykov slipped a white paper mask over his face and pulled on a black Nike ball cap as he charged up the narrow, twisting marble staircase, two steps at a time. This was a working-class neighborhood so nobody should be home. If there were other Airbnbs in the building he might bump into a curious tourist and he didn’t want to reveal his face or he’d have to kill them and dispose of the body.
A real pain the ass.
It was easier to wear a mask.
More important, if Ryan was some kind of an agent or operator, he might have a camera planted in his place for security. It would be a disaster if Ryan uncovered his identity—the opposite result of what Bykov was attempting today.
Standing in the postage-stamp-size hallway next to the shoulder-wide miniature elevator, Bykov got to work. The heavy door lock chunked open with a twist of the big brass skeleton key and Bykov slipped in, pushing open the thick wooden door with his big hands gloved in latex.
Inside, he glanced around the small kitchen and living area on the bottom floor of the two-story unit. His practiced eyes searched for any small portable video cameras that might have planted but he saw nothing.
Bykov checked his watch. His hired lookout had eyes on Ryan, who was with the CNI agent at a restaurant in the Jewish Quarter. He was instructed to call Bykov as soon as Ryan left. Even if Ryan grabbed a taxi it would take him at least twenty minutes to get back here, and closer to thirty if he walked. That was more than enough time to get the job done. He set the alarm on his watch for twenty minutes and got to work.
The kitchen counter was within arm’s reach of the front door. Ryan kept a clean place. A few dishes, glasses, and cups were washed and neatly stacked on the counter. Too bad. Those would have been a good source for the DNA samples and fingerprints he was looking for.
However, it was doubtful Ryan did a thorough cleaning of the kitchen, and the stainless-steel faucet would still be covered in fingerprints. He removed a latent-fingerprint-lifting sheet from his coat pocket, peeled off the protective paper, and pressed it against the knobs, but the decorative plastic surfaces were too uneven to pick anything up. He crumpled up that film sheet and stuck it into his back pocket, then pulled out a fresh one and pressed it against the smooth stainless steel of the long spout. He pulled it off and examined it. There were fragments of prints, at best. Nothing usable. Damn it.
He saw a closed laptop on the small kitchen table. Unless Ryan was OCD, he wouldn’t have cleaned the keyboard. That was the jackpot he was looking for.
If Ryan was an operator, there was every chance his laptop was designed to engage the onboard camera and record whoever was using it. The only problem with that kind of security system was that it depended on a total idiot to open the laptop all the way—and Bykov was no idiot.
The Russian mercenary lifted the laptop lid just enough to be able to access the keyboard, but not enough to take the laptop out of sleep mode and activate the camera. He was also careful not to move the device at all, or anything else in the apartment, for that matter, since Ryan might have used some kind of security app like Photo Trap, which overlaid “before” photos with a live photo of any object to determine if it had been moved. Bykov used Photo Trap himself when he traveled.
He gently swabbed the keyboard with three different swabs, then placed them in a plastic ziplock bag for storage. He then removed a latent-fingerprint-lifting sheet from his coat pocket, peeled off the protective paper, and carefully placed the film on the laptop surface on either side of the touch pad, then removed it. He grinned beneath his mask when he saw several partial whorls, most likely from the palms.
He stored that one away and placed two more lifting sheets across the bottom row of keys—the space bar, control, option, command, and arrow keys—then pressed the laptop lid down to put pressure on the lifting sheet. After carefully raising the lid a minimal distance again, he gently peeled away the lifting sheets and inspected them as well. He even captured a few partials on the lid itself.
Success.
Bykov headed upstairs toward the bathroom. There were plenty of places to check for more fingerprints, including the toilet’s flush handle and the fixtures on the bathroom sink and in the shower. But it was Ryan’s DNA he was looking for now.
Despite his personal distaste, he also gathered up the spent tissues in the wastebasket, pubic hairs in the shower, and bits of hair from Ryan’s electric razor—also a fingerprint source—hoping for any DNA samples he could find. Most security agencies kept DNA files of POIs. Maybe this Ryan character’s snot was on record somewhere his people could access. If nothing else, his people had access to several commercial ancestry DNA sites. It was hard for him to believe that people actually paid to give up their DNA and other important personal information to complete strangers, many of whom sold that information to interested parties.
The last thing Bykov did was plant a couple of voice-activated listening devices. Each was the size of a one-euro coin and had a twenty-hour battery life. He could record anything he heard with his receiver while listening live. Chances are they would yield nothing and it would require him to break into the apartment again to retrieve them. All that meant was spending another hundred euros of Guzmán’s money and thirty minutes of pleasure with the Guatemalan woman.
He was willing to make that sacrifice.
Bykov’s watch alarm signaled at exactly twenty minutes. He did another quick survey of the place to make sure he hadn’t disturbed anything and then checked the small hallway through the door peephole to make sure no one was outside. Satisfied, he exited the apartment, pocketing his gloves and mask before he hit the street in case a policeman happened to be driving past.
There wasn’t one. It was a clean op.
Or so he thought.