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It was just past six p.m., the pair of freelance operatives’ sore bodies were covered in sweat and grime, and they both just wanted a shower, a beer, and a place to lie down flat.
It was a ten-minute walk to a little hotel that, from the outside, anyway, looked like it took cash, didn’t give a damn about passports, and would rent them a shitty but cheap and out-of-the-way room with a bath.
Inside they found what they were looking for from the front desk, and soon the couple began heading up a narrow and uneven flight of stairs, unlocking their door with an old iron key and entering the dark and cramped space.
Zoya immediately went to the bathroom, then returned, making no mention to Court of the mold she’d encountered on the walls and the weak plumbing system that meant the toilet barely flushed. She’d experienced worse, much worse, and she knew her partner had, as well.
Court had dropped his bag on the floor, and after spending a couple of minutes looking out the window at the street and then tightly wedging a rubber doorstop under the door to the hallway, he now sat down on the squeaky bed and drew his knife from inside the waistband of his jeans.
He lay down and put the knife on his chest, ready for quick access should the need arise, and he felt Zoya lie down beside him with more squeaks from the springs below them.
She kissed him on the cheek without speaking, then rolled onto her stomach.
Court closed his eyes, and then, four hours later, he opened them again. It was ten p.m.; the heavy rainfall outside along with the rumble of thunder sounded ominous but simultaneously comforting somehow, as if the threat offered by a storm precluded any other potential threats from raining down on them.
He took a moment to reacquaint himself with his surroundings, and the bed squeaked when he turned his head. He rarely slept on beds, preferring closets or bathrooms so that anyone who tried to surprise him in his sleep would have to come looking for him. But he and Zoya had been so exhausted and uncomfortable when they arrived, they couldn’t help themselves.
He could hear the shower running; this meant Zoya had climbed off the noisy bed and he’d slept right through it.
Court admonished himself for the poor tradecraft. Can’t get soft, he told himself, repeating a refrain that had been beaten into him a long time ago in a trailer in a parking lot on a CIA base in Harvey Point, North Carolina, where he was trained to become a denied asset for the U.S. government.
He sat up. He wasn’t going soft, he told himself. He’d been somewhat out of practice for a few months, but as indicated by the events the previous evening, now it was time to get back into the groove and unfuck himself from an operational and personal security perspective.
Climbing off the bed, he told himself it would be a long time before he felt a mattress again.
He walked across the room and grabbed the TV remote, flipped to Canal 3, a local Guatemalan network, and saw that the news was running.
It was in Spanish, of course, but Court spoke the language well enough to follow along. A shooting the night before in Panajachel had killed three, and at least one of the dead was a former special forces officer who, authorities asserted, had strong ties to a crime syndicate in the capital. Neither what this man from Guatemala City was doing up in the highlands nor the identity of the person or persons who shot him and his colleagues was mentioned by the reporter, certainly because she knew nothing more than what the police had told her.
The video showed the lakeshore during the day. The bodies had been collected but arterial spray on cobblestones, dozens of shell casings lying in the gutter, and bullet-sized pockmarks on boats rehashed the scene for all those who had not been present.
Court had been present, however, so he just looked on, semi-detached somehow, as if he’d not been responsible for at least some of that blood.
Within moments, however, the gunfight at the marina on Lake Atitlán left the TV; a quadruple murder at a nightclub in Guatemala City was described, then a story about a mudslide on the Pacific Coast.
Court’s attention drifted away from the news and towards the fading light through the curtains.
But not for long. He heard the words “asesinato,” assassination, and “Mexico City” together, and he turned back to the screen.
A female reporter doing a stand-up on a city street said, “Witnesses say a lone gunman on a motorcycle armed with what was described as a large pistol opened fire on two men entering a car on Avenida Mazatlán in the La Condesa neighborhood around lunchtime. Multiple bullets struck each man, as well as two people standing in front of a nearby Shell station. All four persons struck died at the scene.
“The two intended victims of the assassination were both Russian nationals.” She looked down at her cell phone, then said, “Maxim Arsenov of Saint Petersburg was a thirty-eight-year-old freelance software engineer, and seventy-one-year-old Borislava Genrich was an international businessman based in Berlin, Germany. Authorities have not indicated what either man was doing in Mexico at the time of their deaths.”
The reporter gave the names and ages of the two killed at the gas station, but Court wasn’t listening because he realized Zoya was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her and her blond hair wet and tied in a bun on the top of her head.
“I’m sorry” was all he could think to say to her.
Zoya sat down on the bed; the springs squawked, her eyes still locked on the TV.
After a moment Court spoke softly. “It was Lancer.”
Zoya thought this over. “At seven p.m. last night he was in the highlands of Guatemala, wounded and falling into a lake. Do you really think he could assassinate two people in Mexico City at noon the next day?”
“I know his work. Oversized pistol, collateral damage. That dude never fails to fail.” Court sighed. “He definitely had help fixing his targets, even if he was the only shooter.”
Zoya nodded. “Slava said there was surveillance of the area in Mexico. Drones and personnel. Whoever ordered the hit had the engineer pinned. Lancer might have only had to land and jump on a bike before he acted.”
Court turned to her. “And Slava didn’t say a word about who was doing this?”
