“I’m going to kill you,” Viktor said, his voice as even as it would be if he were telling someone he was going to take them to lunch.
As Viktor kept his attention on Ania, stalking toward her like an animal about to pounce its hobbled prey, Mark charged at him. He drove Viktor back into a urinal, and Mark felt the man’s spine pound into a metal pipe sticking out from the flushing valve.
Viktor screamed in pain, and Mark continued his assault by driving a series of punches into Viktor’s stomach.
Viktor, though, was quick to recover. He grabbed Mark by his shoulders and drove his knee into Mark’s midsection so hard that it felt like Mark was going to cough up his kidneys. Viktor lowered an elbow into the back of Mark’s head, and he saw stars right before Viktor sent him sailing toward the other side of the room; there, he crashed into a mirror, shattering it to pieces. His right arm immediately gushed blood.
Mark felt his vision darkening as he came close to losing consciousness. Viktor must have counted him out, because as Mark’s vision came back into focus he saw the man bending down, about to grab Mark’s gun. Just as he was about to lace his fingers around the butt, Ania rushed forward and delivered a perfect kick right into Viktor’s head, drilling it against the wall. The blow dented the wall, and Viktor looked ready to collapse when Ania grabbed his head and, unsatisfied by the damage she’d already done, smashed it again and again and again.
“WHY?” Ania screamed as she assaulted her former partner. “Why were we there? Who put us there?!”
With the fourth blow of Viktor’s head against the wall, which was crumbling into powder, Ania relented. She let Viktor drop to the ground, and Mark was certain he was dead. Ania, though, wasn’t done. She straddled Viktor, pinning him down at his shoulders.
“Tell me now, Viktor, and I’ll let you live. What was that mission really all about? Tell me.”
Viktor gargled, choking on his own blood. Ania didn’t care.
“Talk,” Ania demanded.
Viktor’s voice came out distant and disoriented. It was almost like someone else was talking. Mark crawled his way forward, positioning himself to hear the words as clearly as possible.
“The oligarch … Vishny,” Viktor hazily said. “He’s dead.”
“So. What?” Ania screeched.
“He’s been dead … dead for years. Gregori.… it’s all Gregori. Him and his man in the U.S., they have been using … using Vishny’s identity for profit for years, and no one knows. And now … and now…”
Ania shook Viktor’s head, keeping him conscious. “And now what?”
“Their biggest plan. They made … millions … and the software … the software…”
Viktor was fading, barely holding on.
“That’s all this was—money?!” she screamed in Viktor’s face. “That’s what I gave my life for?!”
“Not yet you haven’t,” Viktor grumbled.
Mark, so focused on Viktor’s confession, hadn’t noticed. Ania, focused on her grief and rage, certainly hadn’t, either. But at some point, Viktor had managed to grab Mark’s gun. He found the strength to raise his arm just high enough to blast a bullet into Ania’s side.
The sound of the gun firing ripped through the bathroom, echoing off the walls—and the inside of Mark’s head—like they were in an underground cavern. Slowly, Ania’s body slumped off Viktor’s, and the huge Russian spy, somehow, started pulling himself off the floor.
“NO!” Mark screamed as he saw Ania’s unmoving body. He rushed toward Viktor, grabbing hold of his hand and pushing it toward the ceiling just as he fired off another bullet. Mark tried to overpower Viktor by driving him back against the wall, but even in his weakened state he was still a powerhouse. Viktor, yelling in pain and rage, lifted his leg and kicked Mark just below his sternum. The blow sent Mark tumbling backward, and just as he planted his feet, Viktor was there to plow his fist into Mark’s face. The blow felt like it shattered Mark’s cheek, and it spun him around and down.
“I told you I’d kill you both, you stupid American dog,” Viktor said. Mark could feel the barrel of the gun right at the back of his head. His life was about to end by way of a bullet ripping through his skull, and it would have ended if he hadn’t realized that his hand was bleeding. Mark looked down and saw that his left palm had been cut by a shard of glass from the mirror. And the shard was still in his grasp.
“Good-bye, Mark Strain,” Viktor said, but before he could pull the trigger, Mark sprang to his feet and plunged the dagger of glass directly into Viktor’s throat.
Blood erupted from the wound, and Viktor started to gag. He dropped the gun and, in a daze, covered his throat with both hands. But it was no use. Viktor was bleeding out, rapidly, and there was nothing he could do but fall to his knees and then the floor. His body convulsed once, twice, and then he was dead.
Mark rushed to Ania. He propped her up and brushed her hair from her eyes.
“No, no, no,” Mark whispered as he desperately tried to think of some way to save Ania, who, despite everything, he thought of as his friend. “Please, Ania, please. Talk to me. Tell me how to make this okay.”
Ania opened her eyes, but just barely. “I’m sorry, Mark,” she gasped, barely audible. “I wanted … wanted to help you. I swear. I…”
“I know, I know,” Mark assured her. He looked at her side and saw that her shirt was covered in blood; a puddle of crimson had pooled on the ground next to her. Mark knew she didn’t have much time, but he had to try.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and thought to call 911, but he didn’t know who to dial for an emergency in Russia.
“Ania, who do I call? How do I get help?”
“Go,” Ania murmured. “It’s too late … for me.”
Hot tears ran down Mark’s face, and they ran down hers as well. “I can’t leave you, Ania. I can’t.”
“They’re coming … be here … soon,” she said, and groaned in pain. “Go. Get Gregori for me. For us both.”
Mark nodded and wiped away his tears. “I promise, Ania. I promise.”
She closed her eyes, and Mark was certain she would never reopen them.
He twisted the dead bolt and threw open the door. People were gathered around the bathroom, and when they caught sight of Mark, their expressions shifted from curiosity to terror. Mark paid them no mind, running straight through them all, rushing for the lobby’s exit.
23
Of all the skills the assassin had learned over the years, the most valuable had to be her ability to effectively infiltrate the minds of her targets. It was one thing to follow the bread crumbs every target left leading to their whereabouts, it was another thing altogether to understand why they were going there.
The assassin considered this as she sat in her car, across the street from the Hotel National. Tracking Mark here was easy enough. It was just a matter of knowing what Mark wanted, and that was obvious: a reunion with his wife, Sarah. A noble pursuit, but wanting things made you vulnerable. Always. They made you predictable, they made you sloppy. And Mark was no exception.
The assassin was certain that no official agency would be monitoring Sarah’s social media accounts. They didn’t have the acuteness of mind to think outside the box and consider Facebook and Twitter viable means of communication. But the assassin knew better. When Mark sent Sarah a thinly coded message using an obviously fake name, the assassin was there, watching their conversation in real time. Tracking the origin point of Mark’s communication came within a minute’s time, and the assassin was at the internet café thirty minutes later. She knew Mark would be long gone, but that wasn’t important. She was closing the gap between herself and Mark; and the sooner she could discover where Mark was going next, the sooner she could become his shadow. And that’s when her real work would begin.
A security camera at the internet café was just one of those lucky breaks, and the assassin was grateful for the help now and then. Positioned in the rear corner of the café, it overlooked
the entire cramped space—which meant it undoubtedly captured Mark’s brief visit. The café’s clerk tried to get tough with the assassin, refusing her permission to see the closed-circuit footage, but a couple of broken fingers changed his mind. The assassin didn’t know what she was looking for, but she had conditioned herself to be thorough in all things; chance wasn’t a game she liked to play in this business.
She was pleasantly surprised that her tenacity paid off. On the black-and-white footage, the assassin watched as Mark met his accomplice—Ania, the Russian spy gone rogue—at the front door. They discussed something, and then Ania directed his attention to the television.
The assassin zoomed in on the screen, the image it projected getting grainier with each magnification. Before it turned into a pixilated smear, she deciphered it, and she knew exactly why it had caught Mark’s eye: It was Ania’s comrade, Viktor, being photographed at an event at the Hotel National. And it was live.
The assassin had no doubt where Mark had rushed to next.
Sirens were already blaring by the time the assassin arrived. She parked at a safe distance from the hotel and switched on her police scanner. When she heard that a man and a woman had been murdered in the men’s restroom, the assassin speculated on the possibilities. At first, she figured Viktor had killed both Mark and Ania when they had tried to get the jump on him, wanting what, the assassin couldn’t say. But Mark had survived. He was, to say the least, one of her more unusual targets. But what had he wanted from Viktor? That detail—and others like it—gnawed at her. She didn’t like messy jobs. And she didn’t like being misled by her employers, either.
None of this assignment sat well with her. She could understand the Americans wanting Mark dead. If the official line was true—and the more the assassin pursued and watched Mark, the more she doubted the validity of that allegation—Mark was a spy who could possess dangerous or damning information. It made sense to ship him out and silence him, permanently, far from domestic shores. But if that was accurate, if Mark was a Russian spy, why would the Russians also want him dead? The assassin had no tolerance for being manipulated and lied to; it was bad for business, bad for her reputation, and dangerous for everyone involved. Particuarly herself. While she never demanded full disclosure from her clients, she also didn’t appreciate being thrust into volatile situations. And this situation, which now likely included at least two dead Russian spies, was getting more and more volatile by the minute.
As the flashing blue lights of the emergency vehicles surrounding the Hotel National cast a dizzying display over the entire scene, the assassin tried to understand Mark’s purpose. He couldn’t have come here just to murder Viktor. It was hasty and sloppy, and he’d gain nothing but quenching some primal thirst for revenge. No, that couldn’t be it. As evidenced by Mark’s desperate pleas outside the American embassy, he was a man on the run. A man searching for something that was simpler than revenge.
Mark wanted the truth—and so did the assassin.
The assassin reached into her pocket, pulling out her vibrating phone. The caller’s number was blocked, as expected, but the assassin knew who it was.
“Yes?” the assassin asked as she put the phone to her ear.
“Why is the job not complete?”
“I’m pursuing the target now,” she replied. “This case requires … more delicacy than expected.”
“We don’t take well to excuses, I’ll remind you.”
“And I don’t take well to being lied to,” the assassin snapped back.
There was a moment of silence. She didn’t need to say anything else; she wasn’t the one who was trying to deliver a message of urgency, and if her client didn’t like the way she did business, that was just too bad.
“You listen to me, woman,” a voice said—a new voice, one with a Texas twang. “We hired you for a purpose, and your job isn’t to question the delicacies of said purpose. Your job is to produce results or get flayed alive. Understood?”
The assassin took a deep breath. She could have reminded this man what, exactly, her profession was, and how easily she could train her crosshairs on whoever was on the other end of this conversation. But she had no interest in trading threats. Instead, she allowed herself a few more deep, calming breaths, said she’d be in touch, and then she ended the call.
Somebody on the American side, she concluded, had fucked up. And they were desperate to clean up the mess. A mess the Russians had no use for.
Mark was caught in the middle of this international spat, one the assassin couldn’t determine the size or shape of. And she didn’t need to. Only Mark was relevant. Mark and what he wanted: answers. A way to exonerate himself.
The area just outside the hotel was crammed with police, emergency responders, and hotel staff. Everyone was trying to look useful, which reduced them to idle mulling, occasionally directing onlookers away from the scene. The assassin wasn’t focused on them, nor was she even looking for Mark. She already knew where he was; she had spotted him parked across the street from the hotel within ten minutes of her arrival. Mark was watching—he was waiting. The assassin did the same, trying to survey the world through his eyes. Whatever he’d wanted from Viktor he must not have gotten it. If he had, odds are that Viktor wouldn’t be dead, and Mark certainly wouldn’t be lingering around the scene of the crime. So, Mark had to go higher up the ladder to get what he wanted.
Gregori Dayenko.
After an hour of waiting, the cagey FSB agent—a Cold War relic whom the assassin knew only by reputation—spun out of the Hotel National’s revolving door, a cigarette dangling from his lips. The hotel was undoubtedly a no-smoking venue, but Gregori wasn’t the type of man who obeyed frivolous rules. He was practically a legend of Russian espionage, and that went a long way in this country.
He shuffled away, not responding to a single person who spoke to him. He seemed to be in a daze, as far as the assassin could tell. Losing his own spies—although it had to have happened to him numerous times over the years—wasn’t likely something the old man took lightly.
He shuffled away from the scene, past the sirens, past the onlookers and the blockade, and into the passenger side of an enormous black SUV parked just a few cars ahead of the assassin’s. He had a driver, who most likely doubled as security. And there was probably at least one more guard in the back. After a few long moments, Gregori’s car started and U-turned away from the hotel. As expected, Mark followed right on his tail.
And the assassin, careful to keep some distance between them, pursued them both.
24
Sarah wished she had a gun.
Under normal circumstances, she would never feel threatened by Aaron. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Everything Jenna had shared, it was like watching a canvas get painted right before Sarah’s eyes. Brushstroke by brushstroke, the image began to take shape, moving from abstraction to something discernible. Something Sarah didn’t have to work to interpret. And it told her something loud and clear: Whoever set Mark up had to be someone close to him, and the plot against her husband was executed in exact accordance with the software contract he’d been brokering with the Pentagon.
Suddenly, Aaron seemed like less of a friend and more a threat. His motivations to bring her into his home less to protect her and more to keep a watchful eye on her. After all, who else knew what to do with this security software? And who was close enough to Mark to feed Vishny information that would position him to look like a Russian spy?
Sarah was on to Aaron, and as she charged the front steps leading to his house, she knew he had no idea that she’d put these pieces together. Or that she was going to confront him.
She jammed the key into the front door’s dead bolt, feeling the indignation of what it meant—a means not to let her in, but to keep her locked up. As she swung the front door open, she spotted Aaron immediately, pacing the living room with his iPad in his hands.
“Sarah,” he said. “Where’ve you been?”
S
arah didn’t bother answering. She didn’t say a single word. Instead, she rushed Aaron and threw a right hook across his face. The blow, which he wasn’t braced for in the least, knocked the iPad out of his hands and sent him falling backward.
“What the fu—” Aaron yelled, cupping his right jaw. Before he could finish, Sarah was on him, delivering her knee into his midsection and forcing the air out of his lungs. Even as Aaron heaved, Sarah didn’t relent. She grabbed hold of his sweatshirt with both hands and shoved him forward, sending him head over heels over the back of the couch. He crashed to the ground, smacking his head on the coffee table.
Sarah catapulted over the couch, reaching into her pocket to remove her pepper spray as she did. Aaron, struggling to get to his feet and catch his breath, wasn’t close to matching Sarah’s speed or her determination. Driving her knees into his shoulders, she pinned him to the ground and aimed the pepper spray directly at his face.
“Talk,” she demanded.
“I … I…,” Aaron gasped. “I … can’t…”
Sarah moved the canister closer to his eyes. “Find a way.”
Aaron swallowed three deep breaths, enough for him to get a few words out. “What the hell … why are you beating me up?”
“I know what you did, Aaron. I know you helped frame Mark to look like a Russian spy, and I know you have some sort of involvement with that dirty software he helped sell to the Pentagon.”
In the blink of an eye, Aaron’s face leapt from confusion to utter bafflement. He blinked hard and rattled his head from side to side; it took his mouth a few efforts—stops and starts, tripping over unintelligible garble—to even get a response out. “WHAT?!” Aaron yelled, after all the effort.
If this was an act, Sarah thought, it was a damn convincing one.
“You’re the only one who’s close enough to keep tabs on Mark and feed it to the Russians, and you have clear ties to whatever this software is and getting it implemented.”
The Throwaway Page 22
