AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You know his work. He’s one of the most sought-after killers for hire in the world, perhaps second only to the one they call the Gray Man.”
Zoya didn’t miss a beat. “You buy into the Gray Man story? Sorry, Dyadya Slava, but I don’t believe in ghosts.”
The man smiled. “I know people. In Moscow, in Murmansk, in Kiev. People who believe, because they were there when he was there, and they saw his wrath. Lancer is not the Gray Man, but he is a capable operator. He was responsible for the events in Utrecht last year. The killings in Bucharest a few years back.”
Zoya raised an eyebrow. She knew the incidents he was referring to. “You’re really not selling me on this mission by telling me that.”
He smiled a tired smile. “I’m torn being here. I love you, Zoyusha, always have, and I worry about sending you into this.” He finished the remainder of the drink he’d been ignoring for the past ten minutes. “But this is too important. Forget about Russia. I need you. The world needs you.”
She looked away for a moment, lost in thought.
Genrich used the opportunity to ask her a question. “Who was the man with the beard?”
Zoya took another sip and looked his way. “Just some guy I met down in Honduras. We’re traveling together.” She shrugged. “For a while. We’ll grow bored of each other soon enough.”
“You could be back with him the day after tomorrow. One day for threat assessment, to plan the exfiltration, and then a few hours operational.” He added, “You are the most beautiful woman in the world. This man will wait for you, I promise.”
Zoya drank in silence a moment, then asked, “How can I reach you?”
“Reach me? You have to go with me to Mexico. Now. I don’t have time for you to think—”
“Tonight. I’ll call you back tonight. If I go, I’ll be there before dawn to work up a threat assessment and an operational plan.”
Reluctantly, Genrich reached into his pocket. “I’m heading back to Mexico City immediately. I’ll fly commercial, leave my aircraft here at the capital for you.” Pushing a business card across the table, he said, “If you turn me down tonight, I’m going to have to try to do it myself.”
“Slava, that’s nuts. You’re seventy years old.”
“I can’t hire anyone the man will trust, not in the time frame I have. Lancer and his colleagues will have him before I can put anything together. You, down here, a two-hour flight from Mexico City…you’re my only hope.”
Zoya pocketed the business card, stood, leaned over, and kissed the man on the cheek. “Tonight. I’ll call. I promise.”
She left the café as the man at the table reached back into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
•••
Thick, low clouds had formed over the apartment balcony in the ten minutes Zoya had been talking. Court looked up at them for the first time as she finished her story.
“Rain,” he said. “Any minute.”
On cue, a low clap of thunder rolled in over the lake, momentarily drowning out the din from the streets of the little town.
Zoya said, “I couldn’t have told you in the restaurant that we’d been blown. You’d have grabbed my arm and walked me out through the kitchen, and we’d be out of town in fifteen minutes.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“There was no way I could assure you, not right then and there, that Slava coming to Panajachel like that, waiting patiently for me, was no threat to us. I know him, I trust him. I had to find out for myself what he wanted.”
Court did not respond to this. Instead, as another rumble of thunder filled the air, he said, “I’m not going to Mexico City.”
“But…what if what he said was true?”
“That Russia wants to steal American technology? Whose fucking side are you on?”
The conversation was going downhill, Court knew, and he also sensed that he was the one causing it. Still, he was furious, hurt, destabilized by her deception, no matter her justifications for it.
She repeated herself from earlier. “I trust Slava. He is a kind man. If I can protect him from harm, then I think I should.”
“You don’t even know what this weapon he’s talking about is, and you’re smarter than me, so I sure as hell don’t understand it. We can’t just go to Mexico to help the Russian government take possession of something we can’t even comprehend.”
