map ornamentTHIRTY-ONE

Anya Bolichova disengaged the electronic lock with her handheld computer, then quickly pulled the wires out of the latch. Semyon stood over her and moved past her to enter the room.

He instantly brought a device to his eye that he could look through, and he began walking the suite, focusing on all the places cameras were usually secreted by professionals. The computer on the small device checked for reflections coming off the lenses of cameras, even ones no larger than a few millimeters, while at the same time searching for radio frequency transmissions given off by most remote cameras.

While he searched, Anya Bolichova took photos inside the living room, the bedroom, and the bathroom, and then she moved a chair over to the door to the suite. She climbed on top of it, pulled out a tiny pinhole camera with a fish-eye lens, and affixed it by pressing the removable epoxy on the back of the device to the wall.

The cams didn’t have microphones; that would entail a much larger device, and keeping these cams hidden from a woman trained to look for them meant using the smallest devices for the job. They just needed to know she was in her room, and she was alone. This was an assassination, not a surveillance operation.

In her earpiece she heard Inna’s voice. “Survey One is operational. Image nominal.”

“Roger,” she whispered back, and then, “Hallway still clear?”

“Da.”

Semyon finished his scan, finding nothing out of the ordinary in the suite, shortly before Anya placed the second camera low in the corner by the window in the bedroom. Neither of the operatives opened Zakharova’s luggage, looked through drawers or closets, or touched any of her belongings, knowing full well that their target had all the training she needed to detect any sort of intrusion or insult to her things. A single strand of hair tied between two zippers on her suitcase, a hairbrush oddly askew next to other items left orderly, furniture slightly moved that a less-than-careful infiltrator would feel the need to put back in place.

Zoya might not have cams set up in her place, but she sure as hell would know someone had paid her a visit if Bolichova and Pervak weren’t extra careful.

Six minutes after leaving suite 405, the two Russians returned to 401. Inna had been watching hotel cameras the entire time, even the ones in the lobby, with the worry that Zoya might be making an early return from her workday.

Soon, though, the team began talking about a plan of attack. Normally Maksim would be involved, but Inna was the intel officer, so this part of the mission was usually hers to run as she saw fit.

“Semyon, we need a room service attendant’s uniform and a cart. We will have it ready for Maksim.”

“Remember,” Pervak replied, “HQ wants you to give her a chance to surrender herself first.”

“I’ll look for an opportunity to confront her. With luck I can speak with her tonight.” She thought a moment. “She will refuse to return to Russia, of course. After that, we’ll need to act quickly. If I can do that, Maksim can do his work tomorrow morning.”

Bolichova looked at the time on the laptop, then said, “So about fourteen hours to find Maksim and sober him up.”

Semyon Pervak ran his fingers through his white hair. “We’ve done it in half the time, haven’t we?”

“True,” Sorokina agreed. “But he’s sunken lower than ever now.”

Court Gentry had rented a silver BMW G 310 GS motorcycle, and although by the time he returned to Sasani’s neighborhood the painter’s truck had left, he caught a glimpse of it far ahead of him in traffic as he raced towards the Adlon Kempinski. He’d hoped to see it stop in front of the hotel, but he had been in the process of making a U-turn near the Brandenburg Gate when a bus cut off his view of the hotel’s entrance. As soon as the bus rolled out of the way, the blue truck was pulling off from the canopied entrance of the hotel, and Court assumed Zoya had been delivered back to her suite by members of her surveillance team.

This all happened just after two p.m., and Court wondered why she wrapped up surveillance of her target so early, but it was good news for him. He knew she was using the cover identity Stephanie Arthur, and she was in suite 405, so all he had to do now, he told himself, was keep his eyes open for Russian assassins in the area.

This wasn’t technically true, of course. He motored his BMW past the U.S. embassy, directly next door to the Adlon Kempinski, and he knew he had to keep away from the array of cameras on the grounds of the building. He wore a black motorcycle helmet, so he knew he was safe for now, but he also knew he’d have to find a place to conduct a longer-term surveillance operation.

There were no two ways about it. Since Court had no idea if Russian hit men were already in the Adlon, he knew at some point he’d have to go in himself.

Which meant part of this afternoon would be spent racing through a clothing store and grabbing shit that looked like it would fit in inside one of the nicest hotels in Europe.

Court groaned in his helmet at the prospect of spending this kind of time away from his coverage of her, but good cover was crucial to his tradecraft, and more crucial now than ever. Remaining covert wasn’t just for his own safety; it was also for Zoya’s.

Keith “Hades” Hulett and his team tracked down the silver BMW bike, having been told by a contact at the SIA that the motorcycle and driver had been picked up on a camera just outside Hellman Mens Wear on Kurfürstendamm.

He didn’t know much about facial recognition, but he was surprised this supposedly badass killer had managed to get himself fixed three different times today, and he wondered if either Tarik had access to connections in the German government, or the SIA was simply that good.

Either way, the American mercenary didn’t care. Killing a terrorist and executing a retributive strike on the bastard who’d killed one of Hulett’s men would make this day both a personal and a professional high point.

The two sedans parked in an hourly lot two blocks away from the last known location of their target, and then the men broke off into four teams of two, with three teams fanning out to check all the shops and eateries in the area, while Atlas and Mercury went hunting for the motorcycle to keep an eye on it in case Gentry tried to leave the scene.

They checked a couple of street-level lots before entering an underground parking garage a few blocks away from their target’s last known location.

On level P3 the two Americans found the silver BMW parked in a corner not far from the stairs, and though they were too far underground to get cell phone signal to notify Hades of their discovery, they’d expected this to happen, so they’d been given instructions to find a place to lie low and cut off any possible getaway for Gentry. The men decided to split up, with one moving just outside the stairwell door to wait in the dark, and the other positioning himself between a pair of compact cars parked directly next to the bike.

Once in position, both men opened their backpacks and pulled out Stribog SP9A1s, compact Slovakian-made 9-millimeter submachine guns. Each weapon had a silencer and a folding stock, and would be ideal for the close-in work needed to dispatch the man who killed Ronnie.

Once their safeties were off and their weapons were on their shoulders, all that was left to do was wait in the dusty garage.

Hades and Thor stepped into Hellman Mens Wear at 3:40 p.m., doing their best to look like casual shoppers. Men more highly trained in tradecraft might have known better than to enter the store itself; there was more chance of them compromising themselves to their target if they left the street and the crowds and began browsing the shop. But Hades told himself they were just going in to see if the man was still there, and if they identified him, they would leave and lie in wait outside.

They gave the sales floor a quick glance upon entering, then went over to a wall and began going through a rack of dress shirts. A clerk asked them if they needed help, speaking in English because the men didn’t look like they could possibly be anything else but American, but Hades sent him away.

They spent the next minute making their way slowly towards the back, glancing up from time to time to see if they saw their target, and then, without discussing it, the two men split up to check out the store more carefully. They worried he’d left the shop and headed somewhere else on Ku’damm, even though they could hear the two other teams reporting in one dry hole after another.

The men at street level had lost comms with Mercury and Atlas, but they attributed that to the fact that they’d most likely gone down into an underground garage.

Hades turned to look at a rack of merino wool sweaters while, just ten yards or so away, Thor checked out a pair of slacks on a mannequin.

Court Gentry stepped out of his dressing room with the dark blue suit and collared shirt he’d tried on in his arms, and he headed towards a rack of shoes. His plan was to grab a pair, check out, and then head back to his flat to change before racing back to the Adlon.

He was fighting off the exhaustion that seemed to increase every minute, but he told himself once he’d reconnoitered Zoya’s hotel he’d find some coffee and that would get him through the evening until he could make his way to Dr. Kaya.

He stepped back onto the sales floor of the clothing store, but before he made it halfway to the shoes, he stopped in his tracks, turned, and retreated back into the changing rooms.

He’d seen the two men, one from the back, one from the side. They were dressed casually, with both of their short-sleeved shirts untucked. The man who had his back to him had massive shoulders, and the one he’d seen from the side possessed bulging biceps and triceps that Court could discern from across the room.

This man wore a pair of sunglasses high on his head. Both men were bearded, and both men were what Court and people in his world referred to as FAMs.

Fighting-aged males.

They were American operators, this was obvious. And he had little doubt that they’d be armed.

Court stood in the dressing room, thought over his options.

He was of two minds. He needed the clothes he had chosen, otherwise he’d have a very difficult time tailing Zoya. But he also needed to get the fuck out of here, because these two dudes had come for him, he had no doubt in his mind.

He didn’t waste much time trying to figure out who the hell they were, who the hell had sent them, and how the hell he’d been discovered. None of that mattered at present. No, the only thing Court concerned himself with was how to get past these two, as well as any confederates they had outside.

And to make it out of here with the clothes.

He had two options. He could shoot it out with these two jacked-up shooters by the checkout desk, or he could shoplift.

Quickly he searched the clothing, looking for any sensor tags that would set the alarm off when he left. Finding none, he ripped off his T-shirt and jeans and changed into his new blue suit and white shirt. He didn’t have dress shoes, so he slipped his dark brown Merrells back on.

In seconds he stood in the threshold of the fitting room and looked back into the store. Both bearded men were there, facing away, so he took off at a run.

A sales representative for the store cried out at the customer as he rushed by, but made no attempt to stop him. As the man in the suit raced across the sales floor, shouldered into the glass door, and then stumbled out onto the street, the clerk just stood in the middle of the floor with his mouth agape.

The clerk then took a single step closer to the door, but only a step, because he was instantly waylaid by a large man who crashed into and then over him, desperately chasing after the fleeing shoplifter.

The young man pushed himself up to his knees, watched the second man slam open the door and run through it, then heard loud slapping footsteps behind him. He ducked down to the floor just as a third man passed, this one leaping over him, following the other two out onto the sunny street.