I
got back to the Conrad just after four
A
.
M
. If I was lucky, I’d get three hours of sleep. I snuck into our room, making as little noise as possible, which was difficult considering I was dragging all of our luggage from the other hotel. I saw Jennifer’s slumbering form and paused. When she didn’t move, I sat down and booted up my laptop, the soft glow filling the room. I pulled up the files Kurt had sent me dealing with how important the thumb drive recovery was and saw what I had hoped I would. A connection that might get me an ally in Aaron.
I shut down the laptop, shucked everything but my underwear and T-shirt, and crawled into bed. As I was pulling the covers over me, I felt the mattress tremble, as if someone were lightly tapping it. I stopped all movement, and heard Jennifer weeping.
The sound ripped a piece of my soul out. I pulled her close and whispered soothing nothings in her ear. Telling her everything was going to be better tomorrow.
Not believing a word of what I was saying, but hoping she did.
U
sman Akinbo awoke forty-five minutes before the
Fajr
—dawn prayer. For a moment he was disoriented, unsure of where he was. The small mosque inside the Grand Bazaar was still silent and cloaked in darkness, but the pungent smell of spice brought back his location. He sat up and looked at the time on his phone. The new “operational” phone, as it were.
He’d almost tossed it away as swiftly as he had the other cell. The one he’d used to call his spiritual advisor and read the message he’d been given. If he had any doubts about the abilities of the Great Satan’s magical capacity to track him through technology, they were now banished forever. That one call had brought a world of hurt, and he was convinced that any electronic item in his possession was begging to become traitorous.
After the shooting, he’d run in a blind panic, convinced the Americans were on his heels like a djinn from hell. He’d run to the first hiding spot he could think of—the small mosque at the corner of the Grand Bazaar. He’d begged the imam to let him stay, and the man had agreed, building a pallet on the floor out of prayer rugs and blankets.
After the imam had left, Akinbo had smashed the first cell into bits, ensuring nothing was serviceable. He was about to do the same to the second when it had rung. He’d considered letting it ring out, then decided to connect. On the other end was the man he knew as Jarilo.
Refusing to answer any questions about what had occurred or how they were going to proceed, Jarilo had simply asked if Akinbo had the money he’d been given on his person. When Akinbo had said yes, he’d told him to forget about his belongings in the hotel and to purchase a train ticket to Berlin, Germany. Just like that. As if he were asking Akinbo to purchase a bottle of water in the bazaar.
The truth was that Akinbo had no idea how to even
begin
researching how to purchase a train ticket to Berlin. Yes, he’d traveled quite a bit as a child, but he’d always been handed his means of transportation. It wasn’t like he’d set up his own family vacations.
On top of that, he was getting beyond annoyed at how the Russians treated him, like something subhuman. It was the very reason he despised the West to begin with, their obsession with material things and disregard for the purity of life. Because he came from a poor area, full of poverty, they assumed he was less than them. The truth was he was much, much more. It wasn’t like this mission—conceived and run by them—had so far been anywhere close to smooth. He was sure he could do better. Something he would show them.
For now, he decided to continue on. To see what Berlin held. He sat in the dark and waited for the sunrise prayers. Waiting for the imam, so that he could ask for help getting a train ticket to Berlin.
• • •
Yuri’s head slipped off his hand and cracked into the side of the van, snapping him brutally awake. He rubbed his crown and cursed, aggravated at the lack of sleep. He put his eye to the scope, tracking the exit down the street. It was still too early for anyone to use it, but he had nothing else to do for the moment. Unlike last night.
Problems had piled on like a school of piranhas, feeding on the flesh of his mission, and he had done what he could to mitigate the damage. He’d passed Mishka’s information to the Bulgarian embassy through Vlad, letting them deal with his death as an unfortunate terrorist act, and had finally located Akinbo in the Grand Bazaar mosque, getting him moving to Berlin as Vlad had demanded. The one thing he regretted was not being able to do anything for Dmitri. The man had been with him for years, and now would be completely abandoned, as he had no diplomatic cover. He would end up in a pauper’s grave somewhere on the Turkish peninsula.
The thought incensed him. Especially because the female who’d killed Dmitri had escaped. Not once, but twice. He prayed he would get a chance to even the score. He would make the death personal. And painful.
After covering his team’s tracks as best he could, he’d begun a cursory Internet reconnaissance of the Basilica Cistern, preparing for the Israeli mission. He’d been at it for all of fifteen minutes when he’d decided to get some much-needed sleep. No sooner had his head hit the pillow when Vlad had called and told him the trigger was met.
True to his word, Vlad had no pinpoint location. Whoever his source was had only managed to signal that the Israelis had triggered, and would be attempting to retrieve the electronic archive on the thumb drive.
Now forced to study for real, he’d spent the remainder of the night planning his attack.
The Basilica Cistern was, at the end of the day, nothing more than an underground aquatic tank. Used in the sixth century to provide water to the ruling elites, it was lost in time for a thousand years. After it had been rediscovered, it had remained a source of Turkish pride and now stood as an ancient wonder for tourists to see. Yuri didn’t give a load of crap about any of that, and skipped through webpage after webpage on its history, looking for something specific he could use to accomplish his mission. He finally found it on a tour-guide website: The Basilica had a separate entrance and exit.
To tour it—or to retrieve the thumb drive—one would enter at one location, go underground, and exit at a separate location. Which was all he would need to execute.
He’d placed one of his men, Kristov, at the entrance, giving him a photograph of the Israeli agent he’d taken in Bulgaria. The man would wait until he spotted the target, then alert Yuri. He, in turn, would wait until the Israeli appeared at the exit.
Then kill him.
That had been the hardest decision to make. Should he attack up close? Or have Kristov interdict under the ground, in the Cistern? Or should he attempt a follow once he exited, taking him at a place of his choosing?
He decided to split the difference. Trying to take down a trained Israeli agent in close quarters would be hard. Especially one who was on an active mission. Kristov would be lucky to simply remain undetected, much less able to close the distance for an interdiction inside the Cistern. Compounded with that was the lack of precise location of the thumb drive, and thus a lack of precision on when to attack.
But allowing the Israeli to leave and tracking him had its own risks. The man might never go to a good location for interdiction. They would be at his mercy. Worst case, he exited the Cistern and was picked up on the street in a vehicle, lost for good.
Yuri had decided to take him just as he exited. For one, they would know he had the drive. For another, with the weapon he had in mind, they could reach out and touch the Israeli without risk, dropping him to the ground.
Kristov, instead of following behind the Israeli to the underground, would simply move around the block and lock down the exit after the Israeli went below. When the agent was hit, he would retrieve the thumb drive.
Yuri had contacted Vlad at the crack of dawn, asking for two things. Within an hour, he had both. Now, at eight thirty in the morning, he was sitting in the back of a nondescript panel van, which was his first request.
Dinged and dented, the paint scraped, it had one back window shattered. In its place was a section of tinted plastic sheeting haphazardly taped around the gaping wound of missing glass. To anyone looking, it appeared to be a sad reminder of someone’s bad luck.
To Yuri, the van had become a mobile sniper’s nest. From the outside, the opaque plastic blocked the view of the interior. From Yuri’s perspective, he could see out just fine, and the sheet would allow a bullet to pass through it without altering its trajectory. Something he would need to utilize for his second request.
Sitting on a makeshift bench rest was a VSS Vintorez suppressed sniper rifle. Based on the AS Val suppressed assault rifle, it fired a unique 9 x 39 subsonic round, basically a necked-up AK-47 cartridge.
With an integral suppressor, the weapon was nearly silent, and very deadly. Its only drawback was its limited range, as the heavier bullet and subsonic characteristics gave it a ballistic arch of someone throwing a bowling ball. It shouldn’t matter here, though. It was only a hundred meters to the exit—a known range he had already dialed into his optics.
He’d parked the van early, before the city began to move, getting a spot down the street from the Cistern. From his scope, he could see the stairwell leading up, and there was nowhere for the people leaving to go but left or right. The street he was parked on—the same one running by the exit—had a railing preventing people from crossing at the Cistern exit, thus the target would either be moving toward him or directly away. Neither direction would hamper the shot like lateral movement would.
He looked at his watch and saw it was just past nine
A
.
M
.
Any minute now.
He was sure the Israeli would enter early, before the massive crowds of tourists began beating down the door to see the Cistern.
He put his eye to the scope again and watched as a man set up a small vending booth right outside the exit, laying out a display of what looked like bracelets. He fiddled with the rest, moving the natural point of aim a smidge until it was settled over the skull of the vendor. The man never felt the death tracking him. Would never know how fragile his life was. The thought reminded Yuri of why he was the better hunter. The stronger predator.
He leaned back, satisfied, when his earpiece chirped. “Jarilo, I’m in position, and I have no one resembling the target photo.”
Irritated, Yuri said, “Then why the fuck are you calling me?”
“Because I have the girl. The one who killed Dmitri. She’s in line with another man.”
J
ennifer let Retro buy the tickets and followed him down the steps into the cavern that was the Basilica Cistern. They were supposed to be a couple, but she wondered if anyone took notice of the difference in dress. He was wearing jeans, running shoes, and a long-sleeved shirt with an oversized collar, looking like he had just stepped out of a disco. It didn’t match her more contemporary style, and would have looked odd in America. Here, it probably didn’t matter.
Moving down the stairwell into the darkness, the air became noticeably cooler, smelling of damp stone.
Reaching the bottom, Jennifer surveyed the area to determine her ability to operate. She liked what she saw. The Basilica Cistern was basically a giant cavern, the roof held in place by dozens of columns, giving the appearance of a stone forest. Threaded throughout was a cement pathway built about a yard above the water, facilitating the tourist’s ability to explore the majority of the space. The lighting was a soft glow offered from a smattering of incandescent bulbs, giving the cathedral a flickering, Halloween crypt feel. The meager reflection off the black water reminded Jennifer of Gollum’s sanctuary in
The Hobbit
, making her wonder if the koi swimming in the darkness were blind.
According to the instructions, in the northeast corner were two blocks of stone carved into a likeness of the head of Medusa, both used as a base for columns supporting the ceiling. One was lying on its side, the other upside down, the Turks who had co-opted them when building the Cistern caring little for their Roman pedigree.
The path wound around them, with a small alcove behind to allow a larger group of tourists to view the heads. According to the pinpoint mechanic instructions, she was to find the head that was upside down, move around it to the alcove hidden in darkness, then run her hand along the lower railing. The thumb drive was supposedly there.
Standing on the entrance to the pathway, Retro said, “You want to execute now, or wait a little bit?”
She was surprised at the question, as she always was when one of the men deferred to her opinion, but the amazement was a little less each time it occurred. The decline saddened her, as it reminded her of an innocence she’d once held, now being chipped away a piece at a time. One day, she knew, the surprise would be gone, and she wondered what shell of a person would remain when that happened.
Last night had been a terrible reckoning. Decoy’s loss and the actions she’d had to take because of it ate into her like acid. She wondered if, instead of her becoming immune, the trauma was filling up and starting to overflow. That each action stayed with her forever, only to be buried by the next, until her soul was full. Pike’s comforting the night before had stopped the weeping and lulled her to sleep, but that had only allowed her dreams to haunt her from someplace rotten.
Perversely, she used this mission to tamp down her reaction to the last. Needing something else on which to focus her attention, she’d chosen to move further into the Taskforce embrace.
She considered Retro’s question and said, “I think we should wait a bit. I thought there would be a bigger rush.”
She’d wanted to get in early to beat whatever team or teams were also trying to get the thumb drive, but now she saw that the dearth of people was going to become a hindrance, not a help. The only thing on the pathway right now was a smattering of security guards. In order to access the alcove without looking suspicious, she needed a herd of wandering tourists to block her action.
Retro tossed his head to the right and said, “Let’s do a touristy thing and read a couple of placards. That’ll kill some time.”
Looking where he indicated, Jennifer saw a makeshift photography studio, with a rack of costumes to the left of the camera. Next to it was a sign of some kind, describing a piece of the Cistern. She nodded, and they meandered toward the edge of the platform, fending off the photographer trying to sell them a tourist photo, the Turkish version of the ghost town Western picture.
They read the plaque for a minute or two, and the tourist floodgates opened. A steady stream of people started to filter down, and now Jennifer became antsy, worrying about losing the thumb drive to the Israeli agent. She told Retro she wanted to execute. He nodded without judgment. Letting her run the ball.
They went down the pathway at an easy pace, not rushing or drawing attention. They followed a sign for the Medusa heads and separated from the main track, going down a narrow walkway that eventually ended in a short staircase. Rounding a corner, they finally saw the two Medusa heads. Jennifer identified the one that was upside down, then glanced behind it, seeing a security guard leaning against the railing.
Damn it.
Retro saw the problem and said, “We can’t stand here forever. After a couple of photos, it’s going to look weird.”
Before she could answer, her phone vibrated. She answered, looking at Retro, knowing if Pike was calling it wasn’t good.
He said, “The Israeli team is in line. They’ll be down in a matter of minutes.”
She said, “How do you know? Can you send me a picture for identification?”
“You don’t need one. It’s Shoshana.”