Rob had marked the man when he emerged from the building, looking innocent and harmless.
Emil Yankov himself. A name hundreds of times more famous than his nearly unknown face. Almost Jorge’s exact opposite in that way, since nobody new Jorge Royo was an agent.
Notes in Constanz’s office had indicated that he had a full process in place now for the Imperial agent when a new chapter arrived. Make eleven copies instead of the ten they used to. Constanz couldn’t trust a temp, but he’d hired one to free up space for his own staff, so they printed out a copy for Yankov, three-hole punched it for the man’s binder that he would bring, and then contacted him to pick it up.
Rob grinned at the foolishness of any agent having a pattern so predictable. Apparently, it had never dawned on the Grand Old Man of Imperial Intelligence that he might be prey, here on Borlait.
Someone that old had to be close to retirement from Imperial Intelligence. And he was nobody Rob would have known on a sidewalk, but that wasn’t important. He’d gotten some fantastic pictures of the man, with his carefully trimmed white beard and cute hat. One of them had been a telephoto where Yankov had almost seemed to be staring into the lens, except that his eyes were elsewhere.
Everyone would have excellent images with which to identify the man, although there was a chance that this was some other agent who fit Yankov’s profile and was using his name in public; but Rob felt like this was really the old ghost of St. Legier himself, finally in daylight.
Either way, Miguel would either know the fellow, or be able to flood his picture everywhere and utterly blow him for future undercover operations.
Not that this fellow was being particularly undercover here. Nope, right out in the open. Not a care in the world. That fit stories Rob had heard about Yankov. Biggest elephant in the area, stomping right down the middle of the trail because nobody hunted monsters that big.
Except that everybody was food for somebody. Jorge had reinforced that lesson many times. Legends spoke of a tribe of tiny folk, back in the prehistoric era on Earth, who dug their pits right in the middle of a game trail and covered it over with grass and leaves, for somebody so big to walk along and fall in, at which point it either broke its neck, or snapped a leg and was trapped.
They’d sit above and pelt it with spears, then eat it when it finally died.
And even the ones that died of old age eventually got eaten by ants.
Nobody escapes.
So Rob watched an enemy agent of unknown provenance that might be the top agent in Fribourg walk into a coffee and donut shop like a man without a care in the world. From across the street and down a bit, Rob had a lucky view as Yankov got himself into line with locals.
Yesterday, Rob had found a similar sort of place while tracking the agent they were still calling Helen for now, pending positive identification as Carlota. Rob’s gut told him that it was her.
Weird and random luck, but in this game you manufactured your fortune. He’d brought Mac, and told her to indulge in the fantasies of rage and recrimination that Carlota had spoken about in her introduction and first chapter. That both women might have ended up close enough together to seduce each other just meant that she’d pulled it off, a stunning coup that she could use on whoever replaced Miguel when he finally retired.
Keep her in the field. Carlota Rojas had shown that she was still good. And lucky. Mac was the same, and probably smarter and more dangerous, if she chose to go out in a similar blaze of glory.
Except that Mac was appreciated, both for her brains as well as her body. He owed Jorge a bottle of thirty-year scotch at some point for boxing his ears about noticing how sexy a woman could be after thirty, let alone forty.
Roxy liked to occasionally play the sexpot, just because so many people had their own fantasies about the elusive Mrs. Jones, once the most beautiful woman in the galaxy and still in anybody’s top ten, having retired from the action roles that required an expert stunt double to become even more of a thespian. And win more awards.
Age was an enemy you could never beat. Only hold at bay for a time. But even then it snuck up and bit you when you weren’t looking. He’d be thirty soon, and most folks approached that number with some sort of finally-growing-up mental reset. Mac was over fifty, and still turned heads when she wanted to.
And when she didn’t. He’d seen her bleary-eyed wuth bed-head, first thing in the morning.
Still a completely lustworthy babe.
Rob put away his camera, stashing it in a pocket. He’d settled on an electronic one today, rather than bringing long glass. These pics didn’t need to be museum quality. Just enough to nail somebody. And Emil Yankov really had been the one who walked out of that office. He was as nailed as Rob could get.
One of the legends in this game. Jorge Royo, if the actor had taken the first offer and gone inside the Service, rather than maintaining a complete side lifestyle as an agent while making movies, playing golf, and competing in tanning competitions.
Rob decided that he wanted to see what kind of a man Yankov was up close, this Imperial Intelligence hotshot. Someone they’d sent from St. Legier itself, to participate in the chase, if not one of the coordinators.
Rob didn’t have a team, beyond those two, dangerous women. He’d stack them up against whoever Fribourg had dispatched. Or the locals who were almost blunderingly bad.
He’d wondered at first why she had chosen Borlait as the spot for her game. There were better places to hide. Planets with a billion souls to slide sideways into.
After a month here, he understood. Salonnia was run by the Syndicates, ancient oligarchies that had turned themselves into criminal organizations by keeping a thumb on the cops and politicians. If you could get your own folks out of trouble for smuggling and such, while making everyone else pay, you came out ahead.
Salonnia had never impressed him. Borlait was run by competing teams of criminals, each backing a different one of the major or minor resorts like pearls on a string around Bennan. They didn’t want laws enforced. So you had a planetary government that was largely absent, and geared towards protecting tourists and employees from predators, because you needed both to have a successful economy.
Past that, just about anything went, and the undercover agents and cops Rob had seen locally were a joke.
Except Emil Yankov himself was apparently here, so Fribourg had understood that they would need serious firepower. And sent it.
He didn’t want to bump the man, but Rob found that he wanted to know the fellow closer. Or at closer range, which was the same thing.
Crossing the street, he made his way to the front of the coffee shop for a donut.