EPILOGUE
Court Gentry reunited with Zoya Zakharova in Dresden, Germany, the day after the assassination in the UAE. Of course the murder of the brand-new ruler of Dubai was all over the news, all over the world. Many were suggesting there was infighting in the royal house of Dubai, but it was all speculation at this point.
He’d taken a room next to Zoya’s, whose room was next to Dr. Kaya’s, whose room was next to Zack Hightower’s. The plan was for them all to stay here for a couple more days for Zack to get his strength back, and then the three Poison Apple agents would fly home on a commercial aircraft.
Dr. Kaya had been treating Court as well as Zack, and she pronounced his infection all but healed. She’d given him a few months of oral antibiotics, and told him he was far enough along in his treatment that he wouldn’t need any more IVs.
Azra would soon go back to Berlin; she would tell officials there that the dead Russian outside her apartment had been a stranger who had followed her home from the hospital needing some sort of treatment, and another Russian had arrived moments later and killed him. She’d fled the city in fear, but had finally returned to the city she loved and the work she was born to do.
It was a story that was so much simpler than the reality that they all agreed the police would buy it.
Court was having fun. He didn’t travel in packs as a rule, but he liked the company of all these people, Zoya most of all, and he found himself thinking about a future when there might be more of this, and less splattering of people’s heads across artwork and rolling dead bodies out of windows to scare away Russian hit teams.
He enjoyed contemplating a more peaceful existence, even if it was just a dream.
The four of them had just eaten room service together in Zoya’s room when the Signal app on Court’s phone beeped. He answered it, heading back into his room to do so.
“Yeah?”
“Violator? It’s Matt.”
“Hey, boss. What’s up?”
“Good work yesterday.”
Court could discern a problem in the DDO’s voice, so he answered with a questioning tone. “Thank you?”
There was an uncomfortable pause before he spoke again. “But . . . even though you did everything right, everything I asked, I do have to ask one more favor from you.” He sighed. “It’s a big one.”
Court was about to get yet another mission. He was sad about the prospect of leaving the others and going off alone, but he hid it, not wanting Hanley to know that he was going soft. “Sure, boss. I’m good to go.”
“That’s just it. I need you to . . . I need you to go.”
“What do you mean?”
“I need you to run.”
“Run?”
“I’m sorry, son. The director uncovered bits of my operation into al-Habsi, he demoted me, and then al-Habsi was assassinated. The Gray Man is the only one who will be associated with that targeted killing, and since I’m the one who wanted him dead, that implicates me in your actions. You are a live grenade, Violator, and I can’t get caught handling you.”
“Because it would hurt your career?” Court said it with derision.
“My career is toast already. No, it would hurt the Agency if it came out I’d been running you. We’ve done so much good, throwing it away by having it revealed the DDO hired the assassin of the ruler of Dubai as a contract asset . . . Holy shit, Court. Do you know what that would do?”
Court lay back on his bed, stared at the ceiling. “So, you are saying that I’m an enemy of the state. Again.”
“I will find some way to run interference for you here. But . . . yeah. The Agency will be back on you, hard, after the al-Habsi hit. Everybody will. Lay low. This is all going to be okay in time.”
“How much time?”
“I won’t lie to you.”
“Why not? You do it every day.”
Hanley sniffed. “I don’t know, Violator. I’ve got my own problems around the office right now. I’ll do what I can to fix this, but I’ll need power to do so, and power is something I’m a little light on right now.”
“Right.”
“You do and do for your country, and your country always finds a way to shit on you.”
Court’s jaw muscles flexed. “Honestly, Matt, I’m used to it.”
“Look, I’ve got to go. I have to pack my bags for New Guinea.” He paused. “The fuck does one pack for New Guinea?”
Court answered distractedly. “It was hot as balls last time I was there. Pack shorts.” Then he added, “And a gun. The streets can be iffy.”
“Thanks, son. This isn’t the end, Violator. I’ll make my way back up, and I’ll get you out of your purgatory.”
“But in the meantime . . .”
Hanley said, “But in the meantime . . . run.”
Court hung up the phone. Looked to the wall of Zoya’s room. He heard laughter, and he sighed.
Inna Sorokina left the offices of Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, at one p.m., in possession, finally, of the one thing she had come home to Moscow to find. She walked through the rain in Lubyanka Square, hailed a taxi, and asked the driver to take her to her flat in Patriarch Ponds.
The driver asked for an address, and it took her a moment to remember it, so seldom was she home in Moscow.
As she rolled along she thought about the odyssey of the past few weeks. Not Berlin; she’d done her best to put Berlin out of her mind. But since Berlin she’d gone looking for answers. She’d been to the mafia, she’d been to the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, and no one had been able to help her. But for the last three days she’d been here, at the Lubyanka, reaching out to domestic intelligence.
She’d worked her way up the operational chain, demanding answers about Berlin, going over the same ground, again and again, only to be told she needed to speak with someone else.
But finally, today, it happened. The deputy director of Directorate S, the “Illegals” department, agreed to give her a one-on-one meeting, and before she left his office, she had what she needed.
She was handed a small scrap of paper, upon which was written a number for a secure messaging app, through which Russian foreign intelligence received the intelligence about the whereabouts of Zoya Zakharova in Berlin.
Someone on the other end of the number in her hand, she knew, was close enough to Zakharova, connected to her in some way, to where they had set her up to be assassinated.
It was someone from Shrike Group, she was certain, and she could only pray that someone was still in a position to locate Zoya, and that they still had a desire to see her die.
Sorokina worked on the text in her flat while sheets of rain battered the window. Due to the end-to-end encryption she had no idea where it was going, or what time it was in the location where it would be received. She guessed Berlin—Berlin had been the center of it, after all—but she could not be sure.
She didn’t know if she would get a response, but she decided she had to try. Someone had sent her and her team into a buzz saw by giving them Zakharova’s location, and she knew she owed it to the others to at least attempt to find out who had done it.
It took her a while to compose her text, but when it was finished, she felt satisfied.
Tell me where she is. I can get her. I will assemble a new team, a better team. Send me after her again. I know her, I know how she thinks. I will take charge. All I need is a fix on her position.
She looked the message over many times, thought of adding more, but left it alone. She hit send, and Signal began its encryption process. A second later the message was confirmed sent.
Inna Sorokina put her phone down, rubbed her face in her hands, and then gave out a tired little sigh.
This wasn’t over. She wanted Zakharova the way Maksim had wanted Gentry. The one difference being, Inna told herself, that she wasn’t crazy and impulsive. No, Inna saw herself as slow, methodical, and clever.
If she received a response with any hint on where Zakharova had gone to ground, then she would hire a trigger man herself, and then she would go and find her.
There was nothing more she could do but wait on a reply, so she went to bed at noon, picking up a bottle of vodka from a table on her way there.
Washington, D.C., woke to a late-summer storm. The skies were deep gray, and the rain had fallen steadily since the first dusty light of dawn. A woman walked through Dupont Circle under her umbrella at a brisk pace, with a purse and a yoga mat slung on her back and a purposeful look on her face.
It was just past six a.m., and this, along with the rain, meant there weren’t many people around yet today, but she followed a smattering of morning joggers and walkers on the sidewalk, stepped out over the gushing water in the gutter, and into the intersection of Massachusetts and Connecticut Avenues.
As she looked to make sure no traffic was coming, a phone chirped in her bag, barely audible under the rain on her umbrella.
She began crossing Connecticut as she reached in and pulled out her iPhone 12 with her free hand. But only when she looked at it did she realize the chirp had come from a different phone in her purse.
She slowed, stopped in the middle of the street. Only a honking car horn got her moving again.
The woman didn’t pull out her other phone until she made it to the sidewalk. Here she stopped, rummaged through her bag with one hand while she held her umbrella with the other. She fished out the iPhone 10. Opening the secure text messaging app on it, the only app installed, she saw that she had received a single secure text.
She fought to control her nerves, and then she read it. She read it again. Read it a third time. The woman bit her lip and looked off into space a moment in the early morning.
Weighing her options.
Seconds later she began walking again.
Suzanne Brewer stepped to the edge of the sidewalk, knelt down next to a storm grate with ankle-deep water gushing in at speed, and tossed the cell phone into it. The device disappeared instantly and, with it, any evidence that Brewer had been the one to tip off the Russian government to Zakharova’s activities in Germany.
Standing back up, Brewer began walking again at her regular pace, continuing towards the yoga studio in Georgetown.
Alone, through the storm.