Now Zoya gave a tired little laugh. “You were drunk, and we were in the middle of an operation. Under different circumstances, you might have succeeded.”
“What do you want?”
“Stuff.”
“Stuff? What stuff?”
“Tools, gear, kit, supplies.”
“You are out of SVR. Why would I give you anything from the London cache?”
“I would have thought the answer to be obvious.” She waved the gun back and forth in front of her face.
Shulga said, “Oh. Right. Killing two SVR officers won’t get you into much more hot water than killing just one.”
“Exactly. Listen, I know you have three forty-foot sea containers of cached SVR weapons and other gear here on your warehouse floor. You and I are going to walk down there, I’m going to take a few items, and then I’m going to leave. At that point, you have three choices. Either you alter some paperwork to make the equipment disappear, or you make it look like you were robbed overnight by some unknown subject, or you tell SVR your security was shit, Sirena the burned dead officer got the drop on you, and then you outfitted her with enough equipment to conduct an intelligence operation.”
Gorik’s face turned gray.
“Yeah,” Zoya said. “You get the picture, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Sirena. You’re crazy. You always were off in your own little world. Motivated by something other than our nation. Some . . . some desire to make your dead father proud. Well . . . I don’t think he’d be so proud of you now.”
Zoya did not respond.
“So . . . who are you working for?”
“If I were working for anyone, I wouldn’t be here stealing equipment from you, would I? I have a personal interest in a delicate situation, and I need to figure some things out on my own.”
“With guns and knives and bombs?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’ve got bombs?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “Kidding. I’ll need a pistol and ammunition. A couple of fixed-blade knives. But what I really need is surveillance tech, climbing gear, audio equipment for safe cracking, that sort of thing. You can lose that sort of equipment and cover for it.”
“I can’t cover for a lost gun,” he said flatly.
“Give me one of your local purchases. One you haven’t logged with Yasenevo.”
He made a face. “What are you talking about?”
“Come on, Gorik. We came up the ranks together, until you topped out at thirty. I’m sure you remember I used to run foreign caches at the beginning of my career. I know how the game is played. You have official equipment, and you have unofficial equipment, black market shit in case you need to pass it out to a proxy. Give me one of those guns, the rest of the gear I ask for, and you can paper over this entire day.”
Gorik just eyed her for a long time. “What do I get in return?”
Zoya rolled her eyes. “Again, dummy, I’m pointing a gun at you. You get to live.” She added, “Doubt you’d have ever figured out how to get my dress off if I let you try back in Venice.”
* * *
• • •
Twenty-five minutes later Zoya Zakharova left Gateway Shipping and Air Freight with a backpack on her back and a second, smaller backpack strapped around her front. Gorik was back in his office, and Zoya put the odds at fifty-fifty as to whether he was already on the phone to Moscow.
She hoped he wouldn’t make that call, of course, but to tip the scales in her favor if he did, she decided she would speed up her work even more here in London. She’d go to the office of Terry Cassidy this evening. She’d find that damn safe and, she hoped, whatever was inside would help her figure out her next move.
CHAPTER 28
ONE MONTH EARLIER
David Mars arrived in Edinburgh with Fox, Hines, and a full security crew of six men who knew how to dress, act, and move as if they were not a security crew. They wore civilian attire, and nothing that screamed “Tactical Tuxedo.” Their weapons remained perfectly concealed. HK MP7s with folded stocks under arms or in instantly accessible gym bags over their shoulders, and various makes and models of pistols carried under their shirts in the appendix position. As Fox, Mars, and Hines headed along Lauriston Place, past buildings that made up part of the University of Edinburgh, the UK-born-and-trained security detail commander walked ten yards ahead. The principal was flanked by two armed protection agents, and two more walked twenty feet behind the trio but not in any set formation. A sixth man was one hundred yards ahead, looking for threats but in a low-profile manner.
Mars, Fox, and Hines finally entered the building that housed Janice Won’s research lab, passed through an unmarked door, and took an elevator to the third-floor lab. While three of the detail remained outside to keep their eyes open for trouble, the security commander and one of his men came with the protectees. The point man was already in the lab, checking over everyone there.
Won was there, in the middle of the laboratory, at a stand-up desk with a laptop computer. Around her two technicians worked on one of the fermentation vats, monitoring temperature and moisture via gauges on the side of a cylinder that looked like a large high-tech oil drum.
“Good morning, Doctor,” he said as he crossed the room. “How lovely to see you.”
Won did not return the smile, but she did shake his proffered hand. He always felt her do this with reticence, and he remembered reading in her file that the Russians had found her to be psychologically damaged and unable to form intimate relationships or even friendships. Something from her childhood, Mars imagined, but he didn’t really care.
He said, “We just wanted to drop in and see how you are getting along with the task of growing the spores from the material taken from Stockholm.”
She replied curtly. “We will speak in my office first.”
Mars raised an eyebrow at Fox but followed her compliantly.
A minute later they sat in the small and spare office, cups of steaming tea in front of them. Mars didn’t love green tea, but his English manners, learned in the last thirty-five years of his sixty-two years on Earth, obliged him to sip it.
He tried a little small talk but, as usual, Won was mission focused in the extreme.
She interrupted his comment on the weather to say, “Regarding the development of the plague spores, it is impossible for me to give you a progress report, with completion percentages and time projections, because I do not yet know how much developed Yersinia pestis is needed for our operation.”
“Understood. Perhaps just let me know the percentage increase in the bacteria you have grown. I can make a layman’s estimation from that and—”