Her observations had confirmed her opinion that if the Raspberry Pi worked as Doc swore it would, it should be a relatively simple job. The museum complex was spread out over a number of buildings, there was road access from all sides of the complex, and, although there were two outside guards patrolling the parking lots, the museum relied extensively on each building’s internal security plus the local police for protection.
The night was as dark as pitch and bitterly cold. Snow fell at a steady clip and was starting to accumulate in grassy areas such as the small park across the street. She strode along the wide avenue that was Ulitsa Kremlevskaya, her head down, taking care to blend with the rest of the foot traffic on the sidewalk. On her left was Taynitskaya Tower and coming up on her right was one of the two bridges that crossed the Moskva River in this area. The river glinted inky black beneath the streetlights. The Seven Sisters—Stalin-era skyscrapers that formed an arc around the city center—loomed in the distance like monstrous bats with dozens of golden eyes. There was no moon, no stars; the cloud cover was too dense. But the city itself, as it always was at night, was alight. Bars and shops and restaurants were open, drawing people in, disgorging others. The sounds of traffic, muted laughter and voices, doors opening and closing, footsteps, combined to create a steady drone in her ears. The air smelled of snow.
Bundled up in a hooded brown puffy coat that covered her from the top of her head to her knees, with a dark green knit scarf wound around her neck and the lower half of her face for both protection from the cold and concealment, Bianca could still feel the bite of the wind. She had on dark green knit gloves, medium-heeled boots, jeans, a sweater. She’d had to tuck her tortoiseshell glasses into her pocket: the cold made them fog up. But she wore her brown wig, the length of it twisted into a messy bun and tucked inside her hood, and she was confident that the most eagle-eyed observer would not be able to identify her.
Which was why the prickly feeling that was starting to creep across the back of her neck was so disturbing.
Until now, even in the midst of so many people, she’d felt alone.
She no longer did.
It was as if she could feel the weight of invisible eyes on her back. The idea that she was being watched, followed, took possession of her mind, making her heart beat faster, her breathing quicken. In the windows she passed, in the shiny surfaces of the cars driving by, she checked for a tail. She couldn’t spot one.
She kept her pace steady.
There were pedestrians behind her. Men in tall Russian hats, heavy overcoats. Women wrapped up in fur. Groups and singles. Going into restaurants and bars. Hurrying home.
No one looked suspicious. No one seemed to be paying her any attention.
Never look back.
She didn’t. She looked for a taxi instead.
The creeping sensation intensified.
Her shoulder muscles tensed. Her stomach fluttered.
It was possible that she was being paranoid. That the gaze she was sensing belonged to a lusty Russian with an eye for a pretty woman. The ticktock urgency of the Darjeeling Brothers’ contract was always at the back of her mind. Add to that what had happened in Macau, and it was understandable if she saw assassins around every corner.
She walked downhill, past a photo gallery with a few people inside and large pictures of beautiful Russian women in the window. Next up was a gift shop, and she was just thinking that her best bet might be to go inside and watch for a tail through the window when she spotted, at the red light getting ready to drive through the next intersection, what she sought: a taxi.
It was an official one with the taxi lights on top, not a private car, and it was only about two hundred yards away. She picked up her pace, striding toward it, hoping to leave whoever was watching her, or her imagination plus the heebie-jeebies, behind.
There were fewer pedestrians in front of her now as the little shops and cafés gave way to a closed department store. A glance in its darkened window revealed that there were no longer as many people behind her.
Wait, stop—that tall man in the ushanka, fur earflap hat, with the scarf wound round his lower face—had he been behind her before?
Before she could decide, the light changed. The first cars in line started to move through the intersection, and she knew she had to hurry or lose the chance.
She started to run.
“Taksi!” she cried, holding up a hand as the taxi moved into the intersection. “Taksi!”
It hesitated. She thought the driver saw her—
A blur of movement to her left. Multiple screeching brakes. Horns blaring. A thump.
A dark blue Lada sedan hurtled across two lanes of traffic to explode onto the sidewalk in front of her, cutting her off, making her jump backward with a cry.
27
People on the sidewalk screamed and dived out of the way as the Lada slammed to a stop. Still recovering her balance, still getting oriented as to what was happening, Bianca gaped as its doors opened and two men jumped out.
They had guns.
They aimed at her.
A hit. The realization burst upon her in all its icy horror as another car—a white panel van—screeched to a stop at the curb. A sliding door in its side opened. More men armed with more guns jumped out.
More screams as bystanders scattered.
Bianca’s heart gave a great leap. She could stand and fight with the best of them, but the odds were not in her favor. She turned to run—
She didn’t even have time for a single bound in the opposite direction before a third vehicle plowed onto the sidewalk behind her. Two more men, two more guns, leaped out.
Trapped.
Oh, God, they had her penned in. Looking desperately around, she confirmed that there was no way out. She was armed herself, with multiple weapons, including a switchblade in her pocket. Her own gun pendant was zipped inside her coat. Even if she could get it out in time, it held a single shot. There were seven, no, eight, of them now, to her one.
“Beth McAlister,” one of the men who’d been in the first car yelled. In English. Her last remaining doubt was thus erased: they knew—kinda, sorta—who she was. Although if they were calling out her name, they must be checking for a reaction, which meant they must have at least a sliver of doubt.
“Nyet,” she cried, whipping back around to face the man who had spoken, telling him in her next breath that he had the wrong person. “U tebya nepravil’nyy chelovek!”
Fat chance that was going to work.
“It’s her all right,” one of the others shouted. Their voices were American. CIA kill team? No time to speculate. The man who’d yelled her name was already in firing stance.
His weapon was a Glock 22 with a suppressor. The suppressor told her that he was a pro, and that he didn’t want obvious gunfire that must immediately bring the Russians, the police, the FSB, hotfooting it to the scene.
He aimed at her chest. Her widening eyes zeroed in on his gloved finger as it tightened on the trigger.
In a microsecond of comprehension, she understood that they meant to kill her and whisk her body away in the van.
She went cold, professional, fearless. Her goal was to survive, to escape.
Her hand shot for her pocket, for her knife.
He pulled the trigger. The mouth of the pistol jerked.
She did the only thing she could do: leaped toward him as he fired, diving low, flying under the bullet. Her single thought was to take him out, run away.
Pfft: a deadly whisper more galvanizing than the loudest scream passed over her back.
Jarring impact: her shoulder with his knees. He yelled as she hit him, took him to the ground.
Pfft. Pfft. Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.
An explosion of bullets, of men yelling, of screams and the sounds of people fleeing as she scrambled up his stunned-inert body.
The man beneath her recovered before she could incapacitate him, cursed, bucked, fought.
She drove her knife into his shooting arm even as he tried to get his gun between them, sliced savagely sideways, took out his biceps.
He screamed. His gun somersaulted away.
Pfft. Pfft. Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.
Cringing in expectation of taking a bullet to the back at any second, she chopped her would-be murderer in the throat with the side of her hand. In her peripheral vision, she saw her attackers either fall bleeding to the ground or take cover, saw their weapons turning not on her but on—
“Sylvia.”
Oh, God, she knew that voice: Mickey.
Snatching her knife out of the now-unconscious man she straddled, Bianca swiped the blade across his coat to clean it and leaped to her feet. Instantly she found her wrist being grabbed and her person being hauled along behind Mickey, in a long gray overcoat and, yes, the Russian earflap hat she’d seen reflected in the window, as he bolted past the Lada.
“Come on,” he barked as she registered his presence with a shocked glance, as people scattered screaming around them, as she instinctively looked back.
Tradecraft had her registering five attackers down, three unaccounted for.
Three too many.
“Move your ass.” He snapped shots off behind them as she got with the program and they ran for their lives.
Pfft. Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.
His weapon was sound suppressed, too.
Pfft. Pfft. Smack. Smack. Smack.
Ah, there the survivors were: the smacks were return fire hitting the Lada.
“What are you doing here?” Bianca gasped it out as she raced beside him to the intersection where she’d seen the taxi, closing her knife and dropping it back into her pocket as she went.
“Vacation.”
Despite everything, that response almost made her smile.
He also pocketed his gun, the better to blend in, she knew. Dozens of others fled the violence as well so that the two of them were absorbed into the midst of the panicking crowd. At the intersection she let him steer her to the right past a few more startled pedestrians and ran with him down a block that was less trafficked than the busy thoroughfare they’d left behind.
Sirens sounded in the distance. A few people started to run toward, rather than away, from the scene.
Mickey pulled her after him into a cobblestoned alley. Snow fell heavily now, hitting her face like wet, cold kisses, limiting her vision as well as, hopefully, the vision of anyone who might be giving chase. The ancient stones were slick beneath her feet. She slipped and slid in shoes that were never meant for a race over such a surface as they dashed down the alley. His grip shifted so that he was holding her hand, glove to glove, steadying her as they went. Their pace didn’t slacken as they turned down a second alley and then a third. He seemed to know where he was going: the alleys grew more deserted and narrower and darker with every turn.
Until headlights appeared at the mouth of the alley they were in, she’d been thinking they’d shaken off any possible pursuit. But the headlights moving slowly toward them, bright in the darkness, raking the cobblestones and the uneven brick walls of the buildings on either side, got her heart thundering again: were these her attackers, or at least what was left of them, on the move and hunting for them?
The possibility made her stomach knot and her mouth go dry.
She tugged urgently on their joined hands. “Car’s coming. We need to get off the street.”
“I see it.”
He whisked her around a corner and then jerked her into a recessed doorway so that whoever was in the car wouldn’t see them if they should look down this passage as they drove past. As she came up against him, chest to chest, he drew his gun and held it down to his side in readiness.
Until then, she hadn’t even questioned her blind trust in going with him. But huddled close to him in that small space, leaning against him as her heart pounded and she worked to catch her breath, she started to think. Forget that he had a gun in his hand and wasn’t pointing it at her. Forget the comfort of his arm around her and the solid strength of him against her. Forget the fact that she was attracted to him and that the electrical charge between them was strong enough to generate heat even in this icy weather. Forget too that she liked him, and that, for a few brief moments once, she’d thought she’d felt even more.
Remember that this was the second time that he’d shown up where she was and she’d wound up nearly getting shot.
“That was a CIA kill team,” she said. She was still wired from all the adrenaline, still breathing raggedly from their run, and her voice was fierce. “What, did you bring them? Are they with you?”
He looked down at her. His face was lean and handsome, his mouth hard. It was so dark that she could barely read his expression, but she was ready to swear that the surprise in his eyes was genuine.
“No.” It was a forceful denial. His arm that was around her dropped away. She got the impression that he’d only then realized where it was. “I just saved your life back there, in case you missed that.”
“Thanks, but I had it handled.” Maybe. Good as she was, the numbers had been eight on one. And she wasn’t bulletproof. She might not have survived.
He snorted. “Like hell you did.”
“I took that guy down. I had a decent chance.”
“You would have been shot.”
They both shut up as the headlights reached the entrance to the alley they were in. As the car drove slowly past, Bianca saw that it was a white van. The white van? It seemed likely.
“Shit,” he said, confirming her opinion.
“You have to be with them. It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise. They were there in Macau, too.” She started to step down, out of the doorway, with getting away from him the next item on her agenda. Now that the van was gone, she could. I’m out of here was on the tip of her tongue when she saw headlights at the very far end of the alley they were in: another car, coming slowly but surely toward them.
“Damn it,” she said, shrinking back.
“Damn it’s not good.” He looked out, saw what she’d seen, drew back.
“They’re searching for us,” she said.
“Looks like it. The good news is, there can’t be many of them left. If it is the CIA, they’ll search in a grid. It’s what they do. We need to stay where we are until they’ve passed. They’re not likely to spot us here. As long as they don’t, we’ll be fine.”
“Oh, as long as.” Her tone was caustic, but she stayed put: he was right.
“Just to test your theory, if I was with them, what’s stopping me from flagging them down right now and handing you over?”
“Besides the fact that I’d kill you before you could? I guess not much.”
“Beautiful, I’ve been watching you in action. A killer you’re not.”
Her gaze collided with his. “Try me.”
“That guy back there tried to blow you away. You slit his arm, not his throat.”
“Maybe I’m just choosy about who I’m willing to risk a murder rap for.”
“Yeah.” His tone was dry. “Which brings us to the question, what the hell did you do to get a CIA kill team after you?”
He didn’t deny that there was a CIA kill team hunting her, didn’t even question it, which spoke volumes. Bottom line: he knew it was true. His gun was out; her pitiful excuse for one was buried deep in zipped-up goose down. Reaching for the knife in her pocket, she took a step back from him and found herself up against the unyielding stone of the embrasure. He was right: she would have a hard time making herself kill him. But she could cut him in places that would definitely slow him down.
She said, “You’re with them. You have to be.”
“I fucking shot them. How with them could I be?”
“You work for Durand. For Interpol.”
“That’s not the CIA.”
“They cooperate.”
“I don’t.”
“How do I know that?”
“For starters, because I’m hiding in this doorway with you.”
Good point. Given that, she couldn’t quite figure out what his angle was.
She took a shot in the dark. “Think I don’t know a good cop, bad cop routine when I see one?”
He snorted. As a response, it was spontaneous, genuine, reassuring. “Think about it. I’ve had lots of chances. Have I tried to kill you yet?”
Hmm. Okay, then. Maybe she accepted that.
“You’ve tried to arrest me. Multiple times. Case in point, you handcuffed me to a rail.”
“Are you still harping on that? You threw me overboard. Did you know that those waters are notorious for being shark-infested? And, just to refresh your memory, you hit me over the head with something and knocked me out last time we met.”
“I didn’t.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, your friend did. Not very nice, that.”
“I hope you woke up with the mother of all headaches.”
“I did.”
“Good.”
“Just to set your mind at rest, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones.”
“Big of you.”
“At this point, I’d say we’re pretty much even. How about we agree to call a truce until we get you out of this?”
She made a scoffing sound. “Is that supposed to make me think you’re on my side now?”
“I am on your side, beautiful. My job is to bring in Thayer, not you. You just keep getting in my way. You I’d actually like to keep alive. So why don’t you try trusting me? Given all this—” his gesture encompassed their surroundings “—you could do worse.”
Her eyes narrowed at him. Darkness obscured the subtle nuances of his expression, but he sounded sincere.
Her chest grew tight. Her pulse took on a frantic rhythm.
She was at a crossroads. One that was literally life or death.
She could abandon the robbery, throw in her lot with him and trust him to help keep her safe.
The Moscow Deception--An International Spy Thriller Page 28
