FORTY-FIVE
In suite 401, Anya kept her eyes on the hidden cameras in Zakharova’s suite down the hall. “It looks like they’re fighting. Arguing about something.”
Inna posited the reasons for the fight. “Ennis found out about the guy Semyon killed. He wants to know why she was running an SDR last night. She’s angry because we are here, and she blames Ennis.” Then she looked back to Maksim and said a third time, “Abort. We stand down till he leaves.”
But Maksim shook his head. “Nyet. We’re going.”
Inna couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What’s wrong with you? You know our orders; it’s supposed to look like a—”
“A suicide? Da, it is.” He spun to the other three dramatically, a flourish of his hand like an actor on a stage. “A sad, sad course of events. Two work colleagues are meeting for an early morning of intimacy, a clandestine affair no one in their office can know about. An argument breaks out between them. Infidelity, jealousy, a refusal to leave another and commit, whoever knows with these things? It gets heated. She pulls a gun on him, emotional; she doesn’t mean it, but it makes her feel powerful to wave it around.”
Anya and Semyon stared in rapt attention. Inna looked at him, as well, but she was clearly unconvinced.
“The gun goes off. Mr. Ennis is killed. Zakharova is stunned by what she’s done, but ultimately resolute. The poor girl then turns the weapon on herself.”
Inna Sorokina blinked in surprise now. “You are saying a murder/suicide?”
Maksim nodded, a smile growing wider as he winked at Semyon, slapped him on the arm, and opened the door.
“That could work,” Inna said, but she said it to Maksim Akulov’s back, because he was already heading out the door with his cart full of food.
In suite 405, Ennis stood just inside the door and Zoya stood in the middle of the living room, her back to the open windows overlooking Unter den Linden. “I’m not leaving Berlin! I have a job to do for Shrike, and the killing of General Rajavi last night is only going to make Iranian operatives in the West more of a threat.”
“We are blown! I’m blown by the Germans, at the very least. But you, you are compromised to Germany and Russia. There is no job here for you to come back to. You are a complete liability for Shrike Group. You’re fired. I’m fired. We have got to get both our asses on the next train out of town.”
She shook her head. “You go wherever you want. I’m not—”
“This is bigger than you know. This is more dangerous than you know.”
“What are you talking about?”
Ennis seemed to weigh the option of saying more, before finally speaking. “The drone strike in Baghdad last night.”
“What about it?”
“There is an assumption that the Iranians will retaliate. But what if I told you the Iranians are being set up?”
“What do you mean?”
“For the last six months, Shrike has been creating a trail between Iranian intel officers at their Berlin embassy, a trail that links them to Quds Force operatives in Europe. A link that doesn’t exist.”
“What?”
“Miriam was tasked with finding the Quds operatives, learning their patterns, putting them under surveillance. But I . . . my team, we were tasked with taking Miriam’s intelligence and using it to plant physical evidence on the sleeper cell and on embassy intelligence staff here in the city. We created payment records, we’ve altered files in their systems. Our entire objective for the past six months has been to build linkage between the embassy and the sleepers. I thought we were just framing them to get Quds expelled and to get EU sanctions reinstated on Iran, but now I see the frame was so that the Iranian government would be tied to any attacks they carried out, even if the Iranian government didn’t order the attacks.”
Zoya nodded slowly. “Shrike Group, or its client, knew this was going to happen today.”
He nodded. “Bingo. The cells we’ve uncovered across Europe are sleepers. They are connected to Quds Force, but they are more or less deniable. If the group here planted a bomb in the Reichstag, Iran could simply say the cell went rogue. Disavow them completely. But if Shrike was able to convince Germany that the cell was getting its marching orders, its money, its materiel, directly from the Iranian embassy . . . I mean . . . shit.”
A knock at the door turned both their heads in that direction, just feet behind Ennis. Zoya kept her position, reached behind her back, and wrapped her hand around her pistol.
Ennis didn’t even look through the peephole before swiveling back to Zoya, his face panic-stricken. “It’s the BfV; I tried to run an SDR, but they might have picked me back up on the—”
Zoya said, “I ordered room service for me and the boys, but check it first.”
Ennis looked out the peephole and blew out a relieved sigh. “Thank God.”
By now Zoya had drawn her pistol; she held it behind her back, and she was heading for the door herself to check. She was halfway across the living room when Ennis reached for the latch.
“Wait, let me see,” she said, but Ennis ignored her and opened the door.
Maksim shoved the door in with a shoulder, knocking Ennis all the way to the floor as he did so. The assassin brought the suppressed pistol up to his eyes, aiming it straight at Zoya Zakharova. The attractive Russian woman had raised her own weapon simultaneously, and she now pointed it at Akulov.
Neither fired.
Maksim had an easy kill shot lined up on his target, but he knew she would likely pull her trigger in reflex if he hit her. It was a standoff, muted somewhat by the fact Maksim was considering shooting anyway, so eager was he to die.
But he didn’t press the trigger. This wouldn’t be the clean kill his nation needed.
The American man stood back up, positioned himself within arm’s reach of the Russian assassin’s pistol, but Maksim wasn’t worried about this. He was ready to move to the left towards the kitchen if the man made any muscle movement in his direction.
“What the fuck is going on?” Ennis said, his voice tinged with fear.
Maksim said nothing; he only held his weapon on his intended target, then took two steps back and shifted from a two-handed grip to a one-handed grip on his CZ. With his left hand he reached back behind him and unlatched the door. Semyon burst into the room, his own weapon’s silencer scanning the scene before locking onto Ennis. He held his weapon steady as he pulled the room service cart inside to get it out of the hall, rolling it into the center of the living room next to the sofa and feet in front of Zakharova. Then he went back and shut and chained the door with one hand while his still-steady weapon was centered between Ennis’s wide eyes.
Pervak looked at Zoya, then shifted his aim quickly to her.
Maksim smiled; he spoke calmly and confidently. “Are you going to shoot us both before we turn your pretty face into something ugly for the coroner to look at?”
Zoya lowered her pistol, then tossed it on the floor of the living room, next to the cart. She raised her hands.
“Very good.” Maksim spoke two words in Russian now. “Pristreli yego.”
Zoya understood, which meant she knew what was coming next. “Nyet!”
Semyon Pervak followed his leader’s orders to “shoot him,” shifting aim again, then firing once into Ric Ennis’s right temple from less than two meters’ distance. Ennis’s head snapped to the side, blood sprayed the wallpaper behind him, and the man’s dead body crumpled straight back over the sofa and down to the floor.
The bullet made a loud enough thump coming out of the pistol, but Maksim doubted, even in the next suite over, anyone would be able to identify the sound as having come from a firearm.
Still, he spoke into the earpiece, calling his team watching the cameras from the monitors back in 401. “Status?”
Inna replied. “The hallway is clear. Doors to 403 and 407 remain closed.”
“Ponial.” Understood. He turned his attention back to the woman.
“Now, Sirena. Let’s deal with you.”
Zoya looked down at Ric Ennis’s body, then back up to the brain matter streaming slowly down the wall. Finally she turned her attention again to the assassin in the room service attendant’s uniform. She forced her voice to remain calm as she spoke. In Russian she said, “You’re . . . Maksim.”
“Da,” he replied. “And you’re the traitor.”
“Tell yourself that if it helps you sleep.”
“Nothing helps me sleep, beautiful. Turn around,” he ordered.
Zoya’s back was to the open floor-to-ceiling window, and a concave metal railing a meter and a half in height just outside gave it the feel of a tiny balcony.
She did not turn around and face it, however.
She said, “You have a small pistol with a large silencer. You would have shot me between the eyes as soon as you came through the door if your rules of engagement allowed this. You have to make this look like I killed myself, don’t you?”
“Clever girl.”
“And how will you explain the extra body?” She motioned to Ennis, lying in a heap to Maksim’s right.
Maksim said, “I don’t have to. That’s the very awkward job of the surviving relatives of both yourself and Mr. Ennis. Honestly, I don’t envy them.”
Zoya took a slow breath, then lifted her chin. “You’ll need my help to make it look right.” She stared down the pistol. “Good luck with that.”
She was one hundred percent faking her self-assurance; she was terrified, and saw few, if any, options. But she needed to stall until she could find some sort of an opening, and while she and Maksim were talking, he wasn’t in the process of murdering her, so she wanted to keep this dialogue going until an opportunity presented itself.
A moment later, however, it seemed the stalling would be coming to an end.
Maksim spoke to his colleague standing closer to the kitchen. “I have a new idea. Toss her out the window.”
“Der’mo,” she said.