FIFTY-THREE

The three Russians in the safe house at the lake had been awake for hours, mostly drinking tea and perusing the news. Inna made breakfast for them all; it was something to keep her mind off the fact that Moscow hadn’t contacted them again after Maksim’s distress call the evening before.

Anya was on her laptop, waiting for a response to the query of the face she’d sent to Moscow over a dozen hours earlier.

Maksim, for his part, was in pain—his ribs and arm and hip throbbed. All his body parts functioned, some with more difficulty than others, so he still didn’t think he’d broken any bones, but deep purple bruising covered a large portion of his torso and arms, and he didn’t expect the pain to go away anytime soon.

Today Maksim seemed as sullen and moody as ever. He just sat on the back deck overlooking the water, smoked, and looked out over the lake. The bottle he’d walked in with the night before was on the kitchen counter, as yet untouched for the day, but Inna expected that to change soon.

At ten fifteen a.m., Inna opened the door to the deck. “Why haven’t they responded?”

Maksim just shrugged.

“It’s been ten . . . no, twelve hours. They should have at least communicated the exfiltration plan.”

“Nobody has called. What do you want me to do about it?”

“Call them back, or I will.”

The Russian man turned to his subordinate. “No, you won’t.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“It’s fine. We’re fine. We’ll be okay.”

“Tell Semyon that, Maksim.”

The assassin glared at her, and he was about to respond when Anya Bolichova leapt up from the sofa in the living room and opened the back door. “Both of you! Get in here!”

The other two did, then looked to her in surprise. She was the quietest, meekest, of the team. She never spoke with such authority.

“What is it?” Inna said.

Anya stared at her screen. “Der’mo!” And then she spoke more soflty. “I . . . I don’t believe it.”

“Well, we’re here. Are you going to talk?” Maksim asked, crushing out his cigarette in an ashtray on the coffee table.

She looked away from them, outside the window of the lake house, then back down to her computer.

“I heard . . .” Her voice quivered a little. “I heard from headquarters. About the man in Sirena’s hotel room. They got a hit on his face.”

Sorokina instantly sat down. She knew from Bolichova’s countenance that this was going to be important. Maksim, on the other hand, lifted his bottle with the arm that wasn’t banged up, bit the lid off with his teeth, and spit it on the floor.

Before taking a drink he said, “Who was that bastard, then?”

“The same man was photographed two years ago. Near St. Petersburg. He was inside the home of Gregor Sidorenko.”

“The mafioso?” Sorokina said. “Two years ago? Was this before or after Sidorenko’s death?”

Bolichova hesitated again.

Maksim swigged the whiskey now; Inna couldn’t tell for certain if he even cared, though he was the one who had demanded the unknown man be identified.

When Bolichova didn’t respond to Inna’s question, she posed it again. “Anya. Was the man photographed in the house before or after the assassination of Gregor Sidorenko?”

Anya’s eyes flicked away from the screen and towards Sorokina. “It was . . . during the assassination.”

Maksim’s eyes narrowed now, and he slowly lowered the bottle in his hand. “Wasn’t Sidorenko supposedly killed by . . .”

His voice trailed off.

Sorokina had all the gravity in her own voice now that Anya possessed. “Da. Anya is saying that the person who you fought against yesterday . . . was the Gray Man.”

Maksim sat slowly on one of the sofas, brought the whiskey to his mouth just as slowly, and then took another single long gulp. When he lowered the bottle away, he looked down at it in his hand, then back to Sorokina. “He’s not real. The Gray Man is just a fantasy.”

“Is Semyon’s death a fantasy? You said yourself you’d never seen anything like this man.”

Bolichova sat back down at her laptop. “His name is Courtland Gentry. He is American. A private, freelance assassin.”

Inna answered with one distracted word. “Kiev.”

Anya said, “Nyet. Kiev was not the Gray Man. It was ten, twenty men. America’s Delta Force, something like—”

Inna shook her head. “It was one man. It was the Gray Man. I didn’t believe it then, but I believe it now.”

It was quiet for a moment other than another gulp of bourbon that went down Akulov’s gullet.

Inna turned to him. “Am I going to have to shoot that bottle out of your hand?”

He took it from his mouth. “I don’t believe any of this.”

She said, “Maksim. I told you Sirena would be working with someone else. I told you she was a formidable foe. I did not know how correct I was about both points.”

Maksim said nothing, so Sorokina stood. “I’m calling headquarters back. They will send another team, or two teams, or five damn teams. They will take care of it. We are in no condition—”

Maksim Akulov flung the bottle hard across the room; it hit the stone fireplace and shattered into a thousand shards, and brown liquid shot in all directions three meters away.

“Nobody is calling anyone! We have this situation under control!”

Inna shut her eyes a moment. “In what way are we exerting control?”

“Anya,” Maksim said. “Go take a walk.”

Bolichova didn’t have to be told twice. She slipped her pistol into her jeans and under her blouse, pulled her mobile off the table, and left the lake house, heading out towards the long driveway.

As soon as the door latched behind her, Inna said, “I am calling it in. I have to. At the very least, we need a replacement for Pervak. And sooner or later, Sem is going to be tied to the Bratvas, and the killings at the hotel and in the Tiergarten. They need to know what’s coming their way.”

“I will contact headquarters,” Maksim said.

She cocked her head. “Again, you mean. You called them last night, right?”

He just shrugged and looked out the window.

“You didn’t even call, did you?”

With a second shrug, he said, “I wanted positive ID on the man I faced before I decided if I was going to leave Berlin.”

Inna closed her eyes. “The man who bested you yesterday. You want to stay here so that he kills you tomorrow. Is that it?”

“Nyet. I was given a mission, and that mission is the only thing that matters.”

“Because that mission is what will lead you back to the Gray Man.”

He moved closer to Inna. Leaned closer still, his breath hot and rank in her face. “I will call Moscow, right now. I’ll say I want a stand-in for our dearly departed colleague, and I will say that we are on mission and fully capable.”

“Why? Why does he matter? Why does she matter?”

“Inna, don’t you see it?”

“See what?”

“This is the ending I’ve been dreaming of. I didn’t care about killing some stupid SVR bitch who pissed off the wrong people at Yasenevo. Who fucking cares? But now? Now I have something to live for.”

“Wow,” Inna said. “Even when sober, you don’t make any sense. This is something to live for, but it’s the ending you wanted?”

“I will kill Sirena, and I will kill the world’s most revered assassin, and I will go out on top.”

Sorokina thought she understood. She said, “Go out?”

“I’ll put a bullet in my brain, blast myself all over the bodies of my last, and greatest, victims.”

She sighed. She wanted to tell him he needed a fast ride in the back of a van back to Mental Hospital Number 14. But she knew when to challenge him, and she knew when to back off. This was not a fight she would win. She could only do her best to steer her assassin back on track.

“Can you fight him? Like that?” She motioned to his shirtless body, covered in welts.

“I hurt him worse than he hurt me. Now that I know who he is, I will be ready to finish the job.” He stood now, wincing with the motion. “When Anya gets back, she needs to work to get us a new fix on Zakharova. We find her, we find him, and I will defeat them both. In the meantime, I’ll report in, and I’ll start to heal from yesterday. I’ll be ready.”

He pulled out his phone. His decision had been made, and Inna would go along.

But she was more certain than ever that Maksim Akulov would end up getting her killed.