On the inside, Driver couldn’t settle. On the outside, she was serene. Smiling and laughing at all the right times at Yedmenov’s bad jokes.
He and Baptiste had been talking for a while. In that time, Yedmenov’s personal bodyguard had disappeared from the room. He now reappeared in the doorway, talking to another of the security team manning the door to Yedmenov’s private quarters. He was a bull of a man she’d noticed stalking the floor of the club looking for women. The bigger of the two men nodded and the pair of them stepped into the room. He approached the sofas, a black laptop under an arm.
He stooped and whispered into Yedmenov’s ear. The Russian took the laptop and set it down on the table. He opened it up and looked at the screen a moment, still chuckling at an old tale from the past. ‘Okay, enough reminiscing,’ he said, as the laughter died. ‘Shall we get down to business?’
‘Of course,’ Baptiste said, shifting forward on the sofa.
Yedmenov paused and looked up at Driver. ‘What was your name again, my lovely?’
‘Monica,’ Driver replied.
‘I meant your surname,’ Yedmenov said.
‘Miller,’ Driver said.
‘Miller, huh?’ Yedmenov stroked his chin and gazed at the laptop screen. ‘Because it says Driver, here… Samantha Driver.’
Baptiste glanced towards Driver.
‘Uh, Driver’s my ex-husband’s name. And Monica’s my middle name. What are you looking at?’
‘Oh, just a routine background check,’ Yedmenov said. ‘It says here you used to be CIA. Or are you divorced from the Agency now, too?’
‘Separated,’ Driver replied, keeping her cool.
Yedmenov levelled a stare at Baptiste. ‘Curious that you wouldn’t mention something like that, Yuri.’
Baptiste hesitated.
Yedmenov turned to Driver. ‘You know why your government pays me so much money to sell their arms, Samantha?’
‘Because you’re the best at what you do?’
‘Because I’m intelligent,’ Yedmenov elaborated, tapping on the keyboard. ‘You know the best kind of intelligence?’
Driver shrugged.
‘Counter-intelligence,’ he continued, spinning the laptop around.
Driver watched a close-circuit video of all of them waiting in line outside the nightclub. Small white squares danced on their features, joined by dots. The facial recognition patterns splintered off into mugshots and bios of Driver, Pope and Wells, with Lim and Rios listed as unknowns.
‘I have a man in Bratislava who can put a name to a face in sixty seconds,’ Yedmenov continued. ‘I have your CIA to thank for the technology.’
The Russian reached over the laptop and hit a key. A live feed of the basement appeared on screen. Pope and Wells were kneeling against a wall at gunpoint, while Lim and Rios stood taped to a pillar in a basement room.
‘Who are the women?’ Yedmenov asked, rising to his feet. ‘Hookers you paid to distract my men?’
‘Oleksandr,’ Baptiste said, ‘there’s been some kind of mistake—’
‘I don’t know why you’re here, Yuri, but I’m sure we’ll find out.’
Driver checked her watch. Yedmenov noticed. ‘I’m sorry, dear. But whatever plans you had for tonight, I’m afraid you’ll have to cancel them.’
Yedmenov signalled his men. They pulled her and Baptiste to their feet, searching them again for concealed weapons. This time, Driver received the full pat-down, her handbag tossed away. Viktoria picked it up off the floor and held it against her dress. She appeared to approve.
‘Sergei and Slavan will accompany us down,’ Yedmenov said, strolling out of the room.
Driver and Baptiste followed with discreet pistols in the small of their backs. They took the elevator down as far as club level and stepped into the corridor.
‘We’ll have to take the stairs, I’m afraid,’ continued Yedmenov. ‘The service elevator’s occupied.’
They wound their way down a fire exit staircase, bass pulsing through the walls like the beat of Driver’s heart. They came to a cold, dark corridor lit every ten yards. The hard soles of dress shoes and heels clapped in marching unison. The corridor took them past the open door of the service elevator, wedged open by a trio of dead men in suits.
Driver ran the numbers. It meant Yedmenov only had five of his personal team left, including Sergei and Slavan. She stepped over the fast-cooling limbs of the dead as they continued towards the light at the end of the corridor.
The basement was high and wide, lit by fluorescent lights suspended from the ceiling. Driver sized up the room, the one in the video, with Lim and Rios bound together and Pope and Wells facing the wall at gunpoint.
Yedmenov stopped and turned to face her. ‘Let me guess. This is one of those inter-agency operations. And you hauled poor old Yuri here out of his Parisian jail cell to set up a sting.’
Driver closed her eyes and sighed. ‘You got us.’
‘Except…’ Yedmenov paced around in a circle. ‘Any indictment of me would implicate the very people who pay your salary… No, you must be here for something else.’ Yedmenov looked around the faces in the room. ‘What was the plan?’ he continued. ‘Record the meeting? Blackmail me into dropping my percentage?’ Yedmenov stepped forward. He stared hard into Driver’s eyes and checked her ears. ‘I don’t see a listening device.’ He stepped back. Tapped his chin. His eyes lit up. ‘Aha, I’ve got it. You brought in one of those insect drones. A fly on the wall…’
Driver maintained her silence, letting Yedmenov jump to his own conclusions.
He looked around the basement, to the walls, the ceiling. ‘So let me see if I’ve got this right,’ he said. ‘Old Yuri is the connection, you’re the distraction. The Neanderthals by the wall are the backup. And the hookers are here to distract my men, in case you need to make a fast exit.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘The plan doesn’t seem to have worked out too well, does it?’
‘Shouldn’t you be looking for that fly on the wall?’ Driver asked.
‘No rush,’ Yedmenov replied. ‘I’ll have my man in Bratislava track the recording and erase it. Or else I’ll pay whoever I have to, to make it go away. Of course, I’ll then have to raise my levy on exports to compensate myself.’ Yedmenov circled Driver and Baptiste with hands in pockets. ‘I’m sure your people in Washington and Whitehall will bitch and whine. But they’ll ultimately pay up as they always do.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m guessing this little mission of yours hasn’t come from the top?’
‘Not exactly,’ Driver said.
Yedmenov laughed. ‘Then you really are fucked.’
‘Enough bullshit,’ Baptiste said. ‘What are you going to do with us?’
‘What do you think, boys?’ Yedmenov asked his men.
Sergei shrugged, ‘The docks?’
‘Incinerator?’ Slavan suggested.
‘Whatever it is, can you get on with it?’ Pope asked. ‘My knees are bloody killing me.’
Pope caught a rifle butt between the shoulder blades.
‘Incinerator it is,’ Yedmenov said, strolling over to a steel door built into the wall.
He held a hand to a fingerprint scanner. The door unlocked and slid open to reveal a rack of Heckler & Koch rifles. He plucked one from the rack and looked it over.
‘The new HK433. Sample shipment from Germany. I’ve been meaning to try them out. Now who’s first?’ Yedmenov looked around the basement. ‘I think we’ll start with… Yuri, you’ve always been a good sport.’
Baptiste shot a nervous glance at Driver. Slavan pulled him aside and shoved him against a wall peppered with old bullet holes.
‘Come on, Oleksandr,’ Baptiste pleaded. ‘I thought we were friends.’
‘So did I,’ Yedmenov said, stuffing lime-green plugs in either ear.
Baptiste glanced again at Driver. She shot a look at Lim. Lim angled her wrist to look at her watch.
‘Entering my kingdom unarmed,’ Yedmenov tutted, planting his feet and raising the rifle. ‘You should have known better.’
‘Who said we came in unarmed?’ Driver said, stalling for time.
Yedmenov hesitated a moment, confused.
Looking at her watch, Lim counted down from three on the fingers of her right hand.
Three, two, one…
A coughing sound. Another, and another. Yedmenov’s men choking. Slavan, a man with his gun on the girls and the two men guarding Wells and Pope went red in the face, foaming at the mouth. In unison, they collapsed to the floor. As the last one fell, Pope spun and caught his weapon. Sergei reached for his sidearm, but Pope let off a round. Sergei held a hand to his heart, blood pouring out between his fingers. He staggered and fell like a giant Redwood. Yedmenov spun with the rifle. But Wells was up, a sidearm pulled from one of the collapsed men and the Russian in his sights. Yedmenov dropped the rifle as Driver breathed a sigh of relief. It was close. Too close. But they had him.
Baptiste grabbed Yedmenov from behind in a sleeper hold. ‘I got you, Oleksandr,’ he said in his ear.