Irene Ortega felt her phone vibrate on the couch next to her, moments before she was about to fall asleep in front of the TV.
She’d been up for twenty-four hours, hadn’t slept well in days, and at first she lamented the disturbance, but when she looked at the number calling, her fatigue was the least of her concerns.
The call came from an extension at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, although this extension wasn’t saved in her phone. She sometimes got late-night calls, so that was no big deal, but considering what she’d actually been doing at work the past few days, a sense of dread jolted her body.
Reluctantly, she reached for the phone. “Hello?”
A woman’s voice came over the line, speaking urgently, but clearly. “Irene, I need you to listen carefully to what I am about to tell you. You don’t know me, and I don’t have time to explain, but there is a man in your building right now, and we believe he is coming to do harm to you.”
Irene rose from her couch and stood there in the middle of the room. The TV was on mute; she had Fox News on and she glanced at it. A video of flashing police lights on a street somewhere. Her eyes focused on the chyron running below the images.
Double Murder Near CIA Headquarters
Momentarily distracted by this, she heard the woman’s voice again on the phone to her ear. “Irene?”
“What?”
“This is serious. Do you have a gun?”
It took her a moment to answer this. “No, I don’t have a gun. I live in the District. Is this…Whois this?”
“There is help on the way to you now, but you need to shelter until he gets there. Can you go to a friend’s unit on your floor? Quickly? If you hurry you might be able to—”
“I’ve only been here a month. I don’t know any of my neighbors. Not well enough to bang on their door at eleven thirty.”
The woman on the other end of the line sighed, then said, “Lady, you need to find a place to hide.”
“No.Youneed to tellmewhat the hell is going on. Is this related to what happened in Tysons Corner?”
“It’s related to Gauntlet, Irene. It’s related to Lewis Shaw, the man you followed this afternoon.”
Irene Ortega’s heart pounded so hard she could feel the blood pulsing in her neck. She stood there, frozen in panic.
“Irene?”
Still…she did not move. She tried to speak, to lift a foot, to go make sure her door was bolted shut, but she just stood there, looking at the news.
At the murders.
—
The Belarusian assassin known to the Russians by the code name Spiral and to the Americans by the code name Deep Space passed the sixth-floor landing, ascending at a relaxed speed. The stairwell was empty, concrete, and the building owners had gone cheap with the lights. Dim bulbs widely spaced gave the stairwell an eerie feel, and a damp dusky scent filled the air around him. He’d pulled his FN pistol and screwed on the suppressor, and now he hid the weapon back in a deep inner pocket of his coat.
It bounced around over his right hip as he climbed.
Suddenly, an American’s voice came through his earpiece that itself was tucked inside his latex mask. “Spiral, this is One.”
“Yes?” One, Spiral knew, was in the driver’s seat of the Audi on the west side of the condo building.
“Uh…we’ve got a guy behind our vehicle on the sidewalk. He’s calling out to us; I think he’s saying he’s with Homeland Security. He’s got a gun out and he’s ordering us out of the car.”
Spiral stopped climbing, held his hand to his earpiece. “What does he look like?”
“He’s out of the light. But he’s average height, has a beard, a big coat. There’s definitely a pistol in his hand.”
“Uniform?”
“Not that I see, but some Homeland agents are plainclothed.”
