Mission Critical
CHAPTER 49
The lunch crowd was full of tourists at the Ensign Ewart, a pub in a seventeenth-century building just a hundred yards or so from the front gates of Edinburgh Castle. The street out front was even more packed than the pub, so when an average man of average height with average hair and a short beard stepped through the door, not a single person looked his way. He continued on to the back, followed a sign through a narrow door, and entered the men’s room.
Once he was out of view of others in the privacy of the locked bathroom, Court Gentry reached out to the wall to steady himself before moving slowly to the urinal. He’d been popping over-the-counter pain pills since the previous morning, but he still felt like he’d been put in an industrial dryer that had been left on overnight. He hurt like hell, and the past twenty minutes of uphill walking had done his battered body no great favor.
The Ensign Ewart billed itself as the highest pub in Edinburgh, as it was perched on the tallest hill in the city. Court did not know this until he heard a waitress mentioning it to a table as he passed, and had he known beforehand he would have gone elsewhere. He’d picked this central location off the map, figuring it would be as good a place as any for him to stage himself while waiting for more intel from Brewer about just where he was going in the city, but as he left the cheap hotel where he’d spent the morning hours, Court quickly began to regret his decision. There weren’t many European cities Court had never operated in during his career, both with CIA and as a private operator. But this was his first visit to Edinburgh and, when he’d looked at a map on the drive up the evening before, he’d neglected to consider that his map was not topographical. Edinburgh was a city in the hills, however, so the trek had included multiple staircases, a steep climb up a cobblestone street, and a lot more effort than he’d wanted to put in just to find a place to wait for a phone call.
He had acquired a motorcycle late the evening before, but it was ten minutes’ walk from him, a walk that required climbing over one hundred steps in a narrow alleyway, called a “close” here in Scotland.
Court made it to the urinal and unzipped his fly; even this hurt his ribs to accomplish, and he wondered what possible good he could do if he had to go into some defended location and rescue Zoya today.
As he pissed, he thought about the day to come, and both hoped for and feared the nugget of intelligence that would lead him on into action. He also fought the urge to look down for as long as he could, but eventually, this challenge became too great for him.
His gaze lowered, into the bowl of the urinal.
He closed his eyes tight. Fuck. A day and a half after he’d had the shit kicked out of him by the huge boxer, and he was still pissing blood.
His earpiece vibrated, and he touched it, not even bothering to stop pissing.
“What’s up?” he said in a tired voice.
“Violator?” He could tell Brewer couldn’t tell if it was him.
He replied in a bored tone. “Iden to follow. Whiskey, Oscar, Tango, Lima, Mike.”
“Okay. It’s you. Are you operational?”
She wasn’t asking him if he was feeling all right; she was asking if he could do his job.
“I’m just peachy,” he replied, glancing down again at the pinkish urine.
Brewer’s voice filled his left ear now. “We’ve got a facial recog analysis hit up there in Edinburgh. I’ve had a team looking at security and traffic cams for the past eight hours. We finally found who we’re looking for.”
“Zoya?”
“Artyom Primakov aka Roger Fox.”
“The made man for the Russian mob that Belyakov mentioned?”
“That’s right. He was picked up on a camera near the University of Edinburgh. Riding in a black passenger van that turned into an underground garage below a building that used to house a science lab. I have an address.” She added, “He was not alone.”
“How many with him?” Court asked as he zipped up his fly and sat back against the sink.
“It was hard to tell inside the van from the images. We think there were a total of five. Two in the front and three in the back.”
“Was Zoya in the car?”
Brewer paused.
“Was . . . Zoya . . . with . . . him?”
“Anthem was there, yes. Along with a man who looked like he had to have been at least six foot six.”
“Bigger. Much bigger,” Court mumbled.
“He came up on facial recog, too, because of a stint he did in prison for murder. His name is Jon Hines, he’s English. You know him?”
“Only socially.” Court then asked, “What about Zoya’s father?”
“We aren’t sure what he looks like, but there was no one of his age in that vehicle. We ran a wide search of cameras around that location and we just snagged a hit from about an hour ago. A large Mercedes pulled into the same garage. A man in the back of the vehicle might have been General Zakharov.”
“Might have been?”
“This man wore a beard, but he seemed to be the right age and general build. No photo of Zakharov has been taken in fifteen years, so we can’t be certain.”
“What do you think?” Court asked.
“I think we can assume it’s him.”
“Are they all still in the building?”
“We are monitoring all the cams in the area and believe so, but there is only one way to know for sure.”
“I’m gonna take a guess. You need me to just be-bop in there and find out.”
Brewer sighed. Court knew the woman hated him, but he couldn’t help being a smartass to her considering her constant superior attitude.
She said, “Look, the British have a mole, too, so the fewer who know what we’re doing, the better.
“But I am able to offer you some help if you can wait. We are en route to Inverness right now and will fly right over Edinburgh. We can stop off there, get to you, and help hit the science lab.”
Court laughed. “Oh, great. You and Matt Hanley are going to come in with guns up and save the day?”
“No, Violator. That’s not what I’m proposing. Matt has Jenner’s Ground Branch team working as his security, and they are on board the aircraft. Eight operators. The best. If you can wait two hours, we’ll drop off Jenner’s boys, and you all can make entry on the building.”
Court said, “The enemy gets a vote, Brewer. If I think they are about to leave, I’m going to have to go in whether or not Jenner and his pipe hitters show up in time.”
“I understand. There is another singleton asset who just arrived in Edinburgh, along with a case officer. I sent them up last night to help in the hunt for Zakharov. I can send them to you.”