From Russia Without Love

by Stephen Templin

  He’d only walked partway into the adjoining car when Hannah entered the doors at the opposite end. She seemed okay, so Chris turned around and returned to his seat beside Sonny.

  Soon, Hannah joined them.

  “Well?” Sonny asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I can’t find a trace of him. There were some private compartments I couldn’t search, and I didn’t examine every inch of the train, of course, so it’s possible he’s here, and I missed him. I don’t know.”

  Soon, the English countryside gave way to small towns then big cities, bigger and bigger until they started blending together, and it became difficult to tell where one city ended and the next began.

  “We need to find a nice hotel close to UKP headquarters,” Hannah said. “Not only for us, but Xander wouldn’t stay in anything less than five-star himself. We need some idea of where he could be hiding out.”

  Chris nodded and called around for reservations.

  “There’s an international financial symposium in town, and most of the hotels are already booked,” he reported afterward, “but the Grosvenor House still has vacancies. I reserved two rooms. The hotel also happens to be within a five-minute walk of the US embassy.”

  “We can use a taxi,” Hannah said. “But rather than go directly to our destination, I think we need to plan an SDR. Maybe take the cab to a different hotel, go inside to shake off any surveillance, and take another taxi to our actual destination. After checking in, we’ll do another SDR, leaving the hotel and pay a visit to the London CIA Chief at the embassy to solicit support.”

  “You’re the SDR expert,” Chris said, referring to Hannah’s Agency expertise in Surveillance Detection Routes.

  “Works for me,” Sonny said.

  The bilingual conductor announced they were arriving in London then, and the train came to a stop at Saint Pancras International Station. Because Chris still had no idea where Xander was, he was hyper-alert. After stepping off the Eurostar, they found a black cab with an illuminated yellow sign on the hood that read TAXI.

  Chris didn’t see anyone following them, but something deep down in his bones told him something bad was about to happen.

  10

  _______

  Still unable to shake his unease, Chris discreetly inspected his surroundings. Because their actual destination was southwest, he had the driver take them in the opposite direction, northeast to Nags Head Towne Centre. Chris paid the driver, and then he and his teammates hopped out and melted into the crowd, exited the other side of the shopping center, found another taxi, and told him the route they wanted to take to their hotel. An added benefit of using a second taxi was that the first driver didn’t know their final destination, and the second driver wouldn’t know where they started.

  The driver took them past the London Zoo, Regent’s Park, and the Sherlock Holmes Museum before riding along Park Lane, where they entered through black wrought iron gates and stopped in front of the Grosvenor House, which stood seven stories tall, one of the sky-kissing hotels in London.

  They went through the revolving doors and entered the lobby. “See anyone?” Chris asked.

  Hannah shook her head. “We’re still clean.”

  “Saw some dudes in need of serious dental work,” Sonny said.

  They checked in at the front desk and went up to their rooms—Chris and Sonny in one and Hannah next door, both their windows overlooking Hyde Park. Chris drew his pistol and press-checked it, finding a cartridge ready in the chamber. He looked in the closet and behind the shower curtain, but no one was there waiting for him. The room was clear.

  He ejected the magazine from his pistol and pressed on the top round. It hardly moved, indicating that the cartridges were packed in tight and the magazine was full. After reinserting the magazine into his pistol, he examined the extra magazines on his belt, and they were maxed out, too. Unable to figure out the source of his paranoia, he dismissed it.

  An hour later, they entered the US embassy. Sonny stayed in the reception area while Chris and Hannah entered the Agency chief of station’s office. It was a spacious room for a London office, and the station chief sat in a high-backed leather chair behind a grand wooden desk.

  “Leave the talking to me,” Hannah whispered to Chris. “I just need you with me for moral support.”

  “Do you know the chief?” Chris asked.

  “Afraid so,” she said with a slight tremble in her voice.

  The station chief looked up from his desk. “What do you want?” he snapped.

  Chris and Hannah approached his desk. “We tracked a Russian spy,” Hannah said, “Xander Metaxas, code-named Lullaby, here to London, and we could use some support in finding him, sir. Help from both the Agency and the local British authorities.”

  He didn’t offer them a seat. “If you tracked a Russian spy here, then you should already know where he is. You do not need my help finding him.”

  “We lost him as we were entering the country. We think he might be targeting the headquarters of United Kingdom Petroleum,” she said.

  “You have a lot of nerve setting foot back here in London. After all that happened last time.” He lowered his head and examined the paperwork on his desk.

  Hannah stared at him.

  The chief raised his head from his paperwork. “Why are you still here?”

  “We’ve spent days working this case, and I’d appreciate it if you could take a moment to discuss supporting us,” Hannah blurted in frustration.

  “Yes. I have taken a moment to discuss this with you.” He lowered his gaze back to his paperwork.

  Chris didn’t like the way he was treating Hannah, but he held his tongue to give her space to do her job. If suffering this bureaucratic fool led to support for the mission, Chris was willing to forego expressing his displeasure.

  “We have to get Lullaby,” she said.

  The chief looked up from his desk again, and his brow furrowed. “The last time you were in London, were you not told to cease and desist? More than once?”

  “Yes, sir. But I’m here because this man killed the son-in-law of the White House Chief of Staff. I’m here to stop him before he does more damage.”

  “How do you know the man who killed the White House Chief of Staff’s son-in-law is Lullaby?”

  “We have a voice-recognition match between the killer and Lullaby,” Hannah said.

  “And what is the reliability of your voice recognition match?” he asked.

  “About seventy-five percent. You and I both know nothing is ever one hundred percent.”

  “Last time you were here, you pissed off Scotland Yard, MI6, and a whole host of other alphabet soup agencies. Now you are persona non grata. I do not need drama around here. Not your kind of drama. You can make out a report for the police.”

  Hannah’s jaw dropped slightly, but then it tightened. “Are you serious?”

  “The receptionist can give you directions to the police station.” His eyes returned to the papers on his desk.

  “Your job is to gather intelligence,” Hannah said.

  The chief’s eyes rose before his head did, and his tone became heavier. “Be careful, Officer Andrade. Do not say something you will regret.”

  Chris had had enough of this guy and his attitude. “How can you gather intelligence while you’re sitting on your ass?”

  The chief turned his gaze to Chris and picked up a stack of papers on his desk. “This is intelligence, officially provided to me by my MI6 liaison at Vauxhall Cross, and I will not have either of you disrupt the relationships I have cultivated here.”

  “These relationships were cultivated years before you took your post,” Hannah said, raising her voice. “That intelligence in your hand is carefully filtered horse piss.”

  “We have an official agreement in place not to conduct espionage in the UK, and the UK does not conduct espionage in the US,” the chief said.

  “When it’s convenient for the British,” she said. “We may hav
e similar interests, but we are not identical. They spy on our country just like we spy on theirs.”

  “Are you going to leave here on your own, or do I need to call the RSO to escort you out?” the chief asked.

  “You’re nearing retirement, right?” Hannah asked, narrowing her eyes. “I know you spent most of your time in Langley, but you get paid more for working overseas, and your retirement pay is based off your last three years of service. So you thought you’d come over here to London to coast through those last three years.”

  “So?” the chief asked.

  Chris took a step forward. “I think what she’s trying to say is that for most of your career you’ve been hiding in Langley where it’s safe, riding on the coattails of officers like Hannah, who have been out in the field risking their lives doing the real work. Now that you’re nearing the end of your career, you come out to one of the safer stations like London to boost your final retirement pay. The shitty irony of it all is that when a real officer like Hannah asks a desk jockey like you to do your job for once in your lifetime, you can’t be bothered to help her!”

  The chief sat open-mouthed for a moment before he closed his lips. “Are either of you carrying weapons? Because you’re not authorized to be carrying weapons here. And Andrade, I have already told you that your London privileges expired. A long time ago. You have twenty-four hours to leave London.”

  Hannah pulled out a piece of paper and thrust it in front of the chief. “This is a Flash Precedence message from Langley, directing my team to kill or capture Xander Metaxas. Either you are in support of this mission or you are against it.”

  The chief’s expression went blank, as if he’d been on the receiving end of a stun grenade. He held out his hand. “Let me look at that.”

  Hannah gave him the paper, and the chief carefully read it. “This better not be a forgery.”

  “It isn’t a forgery,” Hannah snapped.

  The chief stared at the paper before he let out a long sigh. “The British authorities are not going to allow you to operate here, not even in an advisory capacity. The best I can do is to report to MI6 that I have received reliable information that this Xander Metaxas, code-named Lullaby, is preparing an attack on UKP. I will look the other way while you conduct your operation here in London, but I cannot provide you support. If you are caught, I will deny any knowledge of this conversation and I will tell the British authorities you are a rogue officer.”

  “You do that,” Hannah said. She turned to Chris. “Come on. This is going nowhere. He’s more useless than the chair he clings to.” She marched out of the chief’s office with Chris at her side.

  11

  _______

  Chris, Hannah, and Sonny returned to Chris and Sonny’s room in the Grosvenor Hotel. “What happened the last time you were in London that pissed everyone off so much?” Chris asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she grumbled.

  They sat down with Sonny at the small table in the room, and he tapped his fingers on the surface. “What do we do if Xander or one of his goons tosses a grenade in here? Is one of us going to jump on it and save the others? We really need an SOP for this.”

  It was a legitimate question, one Chris had answered with his former Teammates. Every SEAL was different, but each member of the Team needed to know how they would react to such a threat.

  “I’ll jump on it,” Sonny said nonchalantly.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Chris said.

  “I’ve got no wife and kids,” Sonny said. “Nobody depends on me.”

  “I’ve got no dependents, either,” Chris said, “but I’m not jumping on a live grenade. I’ll throw it back to where it came from. Or in a safe direction.”

  “And what if it blows up in your hand before you throw it?” Sonny asked. “Then we all die. Total waste. Better to lose one of us than the whole team. I’ll jump on it.”

  Chris looked at Hannah.

  “I’m the same as Chris on this one,” she said. “I’ll try to get rid of it, but I won’t do a suicide leap.”

  “So if either of you get to the explosive first,” he summarized, “you’ll chuck it. If I get to it first, I’m going to jump on it. That’s our SOP.”

  Chris was impressed with Sonny—there wasn’t even a hint of bitterness or sarcasm in his voice—and he was a little embarrassed, too, but at least he was honest. When Chris was in his early twenties, he made his first deployment to Iraq. He was part of an overwatch when a terrorist lobbed a grenade into their sniper hide. One of his Teammates jumped on the grenade just before it exploded, saving the guys but killing himself. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

  Sonny was that man.

  Chris and Hannah nodded in agreement. He cleared his throat, the dryness of it uncomfortable. “Man, I could go for some cold water.”

  Sonny turned to Chris. “Me, too. Get us some ice, bitch.”

  Chris stayed seated. “I was going to, but since you put it that way, I’m thinking warm water would taste better.”

  “So sensitive.” Sonny forced a smile. “Okay. Do you think you could get us some ice? Please?”

  Chris chuckled. “Yeah. I think I could do that.” He stood, picked up the ice bucket, and headed out.

  He walked down the hall looking for an ice machine but found none, so he headed downstairs to try the floor below. He spotted it, filled the bucket, and then exited the floor.

  As he headed back upstairs, he saw the young woman with the easy-going smile and light-brown hair: Xander’s daughter, Evelina. He wanted to slip out of the hallway to remain covert, but he was between floors. There was no immediate exit, and she’d already spotted him.

  Shit!

  She smiled. “What a surprise!” Evelina seemed to jump up and down without leaving the stairs.

  Although he wished he could disappear, he acted as if he was happy to see her. “Yes, quite!”

  She stepped down the stairs, moving closer. “We were lucky to find a hotel. I told Animus there were nice ones farther out, but he insisted on this area. This was the only one that still had vacancies.”

  Chris had already assumed she was with Animus, but now she’d confirmed it. He was happy to have found Animus, but she would soon tell him about this encounter, and he would alert Xander they were closing in on him.

  “Are you here for the international symposium?” she asked. “They said that’s why most of the hotels were booked.”

  “Work,” he said.

  She took a step down, closer to him. “Are you alone?” she whispered, her voice smoldering.

  He didn’t want to give away the presence of Hannah and Sonny. “Right now I am,” he said, leaving wiggle room to change his story later. But now he had to figure a way to keep her from alerting Animus.

  “Can we go to your room?” she asked softly, almost nervously, as if she were at the top of a high dive preparing to take her first plunge.

  He knew she was playing him. She probably played Michael Winthrop, too. Chris’s head spun faster and faster, spinning out of control. Feeling off-balance, he shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  Evelina hesitated. “I know we hardly know each other.” She dropped her bucket, and it bounced to Chris’s step before rolling behind him. Her hand caressed the front of her skirt, her fingers moving down below her waist. As her hand stroked her thigh, her wrist pulled up the lower hem of her skirt.

  Right here? In the stairway?

  This was getting out of control. He could knock her unconscious here, but then he’d have to drag her back to his room and someone might see them. It would be better to invite her to his room and wrap her up there. “On second thought, going to my room sounds like a great idea,” he said.

  When he saw she had something in her hand, he couldn’t mentally process what was happening. He felt like he was outside of his body watching himself as she drew a Walther PPK .380 from a thigh holster.

  Without think
ing, his shooting hand had already clawed his shirt up his right hip, and the web of his hand closed high on the pistol grip. His adrenaline jacked through his arteries, accelerating his thoughts so fast the rest of the world seemed to decelerate.

  As she brought her weapon up, she kept it close to her body so he couldn’t bat it away.

  Although he knew this might be his last gunfight, he focused on popping his pistol out of the holster. When the muzzle broke free, he rotated it until his hand, wrist, and arm came into alignment. Close enough to feel her breath, there was no need to aim—no time. Just squeeze.

  Her eyes widened and her mouth twisted, as if surprised at how quickly and brutally the first shot had struck her gut. And she had no time to react to the second shot. As she stood frozen on the step above him, Chris brought his muzzle up and squeezed again, sending a final round up through her lower jaw, through the roof of her mouth, and into her brain. She fell forward, almost as if she were still alive and expecting him to catch her, but he sidestepped, letting her drop. He turned and saw her body strike the steps with a thump before sliding to a stop, making a part of Chris cringe.

  The surprise, speed, and violence of the moment astonished his thought processes, almost paralyzing him, and his hearing had become fuzzy. It might’ve been the effects of the adrenaline, but adrenaline usually had the opposite effect on him, making his hearing keen. The more likely source of his hearing loss was the mind-joggling noise of shooting in the narrow confines of the stairwell. At least the deafness was temporary.

  The stairs below were covered with sparkling ice cubes, and two gray buckets lay at the landing. The adrenaline dump had helped him focus on survival, but the same adrenaline seemed to have shut out most everything else. Gradually, the pinhole of his senses expanded. There was a mess to clean up, and he’d made a lot of noise. His fingerprints were on the ice bucket, which was now missing from his room, and there was a dead body on the stairs. He had to get out of the immediate vicinity before someone identified him, or worse, the police arrived. But first he needed to search her for intel. Doing so, he discovered a cell phone in her jacket and pocketed it.