“Fine. First, your mission to locate and recover Dirk Visser is over.”

“Why is that?”

“He was located and recovered. Out of the Thames, in fact. It looked like he’d been run over by a truck, but Scotland Yard is looking into the exact cause of death.”

Court sighed, then moved on. “What do we know about a lawyer in London . . . I guess they call them solicitors here, named Terry Cassidy?”

Court could hear Brewer typing. It would be just seven a.m. in Washington now, and this woman was sitting at a computer, either at Langley or at home.

He doubted she had a life beyond work, and wondered if she and he actually had more in common than he’d imagined.

After thirty seconds Brewer said, “Terrance Albert Cassidy. Aged forty-three, born in West Sussex. Divorced. Father of—”

“I don’t need his Wikipedia page. I need to know who he runs with, who his clients are.”

More tapping on the computer. “He deals in offshores, cryptocurrencies, that much we know. No known ties to any criminal element that I see, but I’ll keep digging.”

“Shit,” Court said.

“Here’s something. He travels to Russia regularly.”

“Moscow?”

“Yes. Always. Every month or so.”

Court said, “I guess I’m going to have to go in and take a look at his office tonight. Keep digging, see if you can find anything relevant about his contacts, clients, known associates in general.”

“Understood.”

She started to speak again, but Court noticed something through his scope and disconnected the call in his ear. He then concentrated fully on Cassidy, who had stood up from his desk and walked over to a painting on the opposite wall of the room. He reached a hand behind the frame, slid it up high, almost out of reach, and then he pulled the painting open like a door. Behind it Court clearly saw the dial of a safe built into the cherry-paneled wall.

The solicitor worked the dial for several seconds, swung the latch, and opened the small door to the safe. Inside he pushed a button, and a section of wall, from the floor to six feet above it, slid open a few inches.

Cassidy pushed this up, then stepped into a large vault.

Court was no expert safecracker, but with the right audio equipment and enough time, he thought he’d have a fair chance to get into this vault on his own. He put down his weapon with the four-power scope and hefted his ten-power binos, and through these he was able to determine the make and approximate model of the door to the vault. He jotted down some notes on a waterproof pad next to him, then continued scanning the office.

Cassidy reappeared seconds later, locked the safe, and replaced the painting by closing it on its hinges. He then returned to his desk.

Court knew then and there he would need to enter the building tonight. But to do so he wanted a lot more intel about the property and those in it, so he settled himself in for a long day of watching in the rain.

* * *

• • •

   Gorik Shulga pulled up to his office at Gateway Shipping and Air Freight in south London just after lunch, climbed out of his Renault, and entered through the open warehouse door. In front of him were dozens of forty-foot shipping containers and CONNEX boxes, all either just off ships and out of customs or else in the process of being loaded with export goods for overseas.

He was thirty-six years old, reasonably good-looking with a serious brow and dark brown hair, but his suit was off the rack and a little loose fitting, and he walked with a bounce in his step that made it hard for others to take him too seriously.

He greeted a couple of his shift leaders and walked down a long hallway to the administrative section of the forwarding company.

He entered his office and dropped his keys on his desk, then took off his raincoat and hung it on a coat rack. He’d just begun to turn around when he heard the hammer clicking back on a pistol.

Shulga knew enough about guns to feel sure he’d heard the cylinder of a revolver turn, as well, because although Gorik was officially the manager of this freight forwarding concern in London, in truth he worked for SVR.

“Who’s there?” he asked in English, still staring at his coat on the rack in the corner in front of him.

But the reply came in Russian, and it was a woman’s voice, one that sounded faintly familiar to him. “I’m not going to hurt you, Gorik. Not unless you really, really want me to.”

He raised his hands, cursed himself for not checking the corner of his office as he entered, and said, “Well, can I take a look at you before I decide?”

“Turn slowly.”

Gorik Shulga turned very slowly. He saw a woman seated in the wooden chair across the room, and the pistol pointed at his chest. When he took his eyes off the gun and put them on the face of the brunette woman, his head snapped back in surprise. “Sirena? Is that you?”

Zoya Zakharova’s code name with SVR had been Sirena Vozdushoy Trevogi, which meant Banshee, but it had been shortened operationally to simply Sirena.

“Da. It’s me. How have you been, Gorik?”

“I heard you were dead.”

“Not true.”

“I heard you turned traitor on your nation.”

“Not true, either.”

“I heard you were booted out of SVR.”

“That, actually, is accurate.”

“You killed an SVR operative in Thailand. Utkin. Is that right?”

“Da.”

“Well, Sirena, I’m not Oleg Utkin. You will find me harder to kill.”

“If it comes down to it, I doubt that.”

“Why is that?”

“Because, Gorik, Utkin had a gun to my head and I still managed to kill him. And now I have a gun pointed at your head. Want to see if you’re faster than a speeding bullet? Oleg wasn’t.”

Shulga offered no protest. Instead he sat down in front of the Russian woman with the small pistol pointed at him.

Zoya said, “I always liked you. You were one of the good ones. Slower-witted than many of the others, but sweeter.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Thanks . . . I guess,” he said.

“I would feel terrible if there were some misunderstanding now and I had to shoot you.”

“And I might even feel worse.”

Zoya smiled. Repeated, “I always liked you.”

“Not enough to let me get that black dress off you that night in Venice, as I recall.”