Page 60 of The Shadow Friends

“You’re supposed to be retired. Both of you.”

“We are retired.”

“It didn’t look that way to us.” He turned to Lloyd. “Not after you asked Interpol to ID a certain person of interest.”

“You mean the man in the gray suit?” said Lloyd. “My contact at Interpol said the man’s face isn’t in any database.”

“That’s for his own safety. To protect him against what almost happened to you, if we hadn’t intervened.”

“How long have you been watching us?” said Maggie.

“Since you turned up at the apartment building this morning.”

“You had it under surveillance?”

“And you, as well. We know you arrived on a flight from Boston this morning. We were rather hoping you wouldn’t involve yourselves in this, but there you were. Walking into the spider’s web.” He looked down at the two bodies on the concrete floor. “Now we have a mess to clean up. And questions these two won’t be able to answer.”

Maggie had heard enough to understand what was going on. She looked at the dead man. At the tattoos on his finger and the back of his hand. “He’s Vory.”

Marcus shot her a startled look, the first hint of emotion she’d glimpsed in that sphinx of a face. “How do you know?”

“He spoke Russian. And that’s a quincunx tattooed on his hand. He’s done time in prison. I’m guessing that if you open his shirt, he’ll have an eight-pointed star on his shoulder.”

The Dutch agent bent down and peeled back the man’s shirt. There, on the shoulder, was a tattoo of an eight-pointed star.

“Prison mafia,” said Maggie. “Here to kill someone named Dmitry.”

The Dutch agent straightened. “These Vory are everywhere in Europe, like cockroaches. Brussels, Amsterdam. They work for whoever’s willing to hire them.”

“And the woman?” asked Maggie. “She sounded Dutch to me.”

“She is,” said Marcus.

“You know her name?”

“We do.”

“Something you’re willing to share with us?”

“We’ve shared enough. It will mean nothing to you.”

Maggie moved toward Marcus, who stared back at her, his blue eyes cool and aloof. He was two decades younger than her, and his height put her at a physical disadvantage, but she was too seasoned to be intimidated by details as trivial as size. “My friend and I almost died tonight. I looked into the barrel of that fucking gun. After that experience, I’m not feeling particularly deferential. Let me tell you what I do know, and we can make a trade.”

“What kind of trade?”

“Information.”

“What could you possibly have to offer me?”

“First, I assume Dmitry is now in a safe place?”

That made Marcus pause. He glanced at his Dutch colleague, whose mouth lifted in a half smile. A subtle acknowledgment that she was on the right path.

“I do hope you got him out in time. But of course you did. Otherwise, these two wouldn’t have been waiting in his apartment to kill him. That new identity, Willem Dekker. Did we set it up for him? Or was that British intelligence?”

“May I remind you, you’re no longer with the Agency.”

“Before he defected, what was Dmitry’s full name?”