it didn’t have a bathroom attendant, as many European places did, perhaps because Americans were uneasy with the custom, or maybe because the management thought it an unnecessary expense. Reilly entered and saw three urinals, two of them being used. He unzipped and urinated, then rezipped and turned to wash his hands, looking down as he did so ... and just out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other two men share a sideways look. The Russian was taller. The men’s room had the sort of pull-down roller towel that America had largely done away with. Reilly pulled it down and dried his hands, unable to wait too much longer. Heading toward the door, he reached in his pocket and pulled his car keys part of the way out. These he dropped just as he pulled the door open, with a muttered, “Damn,” as he bent down to pick them up, shielded from their view by the steel divider. Reilly picked them off the tile floor and stood back up.
Then he saw it. It was well done. They could have been more patient, but they probably both discounted the importance of the American, and both were trained professionals. They scarcely touched each other, and what touching and bumping there was happened below the waist and out of sight to the casual observer. Reilly wasn’t a casual observer, however, and even out of the corner of his eyes, it was obvious to the initiated. It was a classic brush-pass, so well done that even Reilly’s experience couldn’t determine who had passed what to whom. The FBI agent continued out, heading back to his seat at the bar, where he waved to the bar-keep for the drink he figured he’d just earned.
“Yes?”
“You want to identify that Chinaman. He and our friend traded something in the shitter. Brush-pass, and nicely done,” Reilly said, with a smile and a gesture at the brunette down the bar. Good enough, in fact, that had Reilly been forced to sit in a witness stand and describe it to a jury, a week-old law-school graduate could make him admit that he hadn’t actually seen anything at all. But that told him much. That degree of skill was either the result of a totally chance encounter between two entirely innocent people—the purest of coincidences—or it had been the effort of two trained intelligence officers applying their craft at a perfect place in a perfect way. Provalov was turned the right way to see the two individuals leave the men’s room. They didn’t even notice each other, or didn’t appear to acknowledge the presence of the other any more than they would have greeted a stray dog—exactly as two unrelated people would act after a happenstance encounter with a total stranger in any men’s room anywhere. But this time as Koniev/Suvorov resumed his seat at the bar, he tended to his drink and didn’t have his eyes interrogate the mirror regularly. In fact, he turned and greeted the girl to his left, then waved for the bartender to get her another drink, which she accepted with a warm, commercial smile. Her face proclaimed the fact that she’d found her trick for the night. The girl could act, Reilly thought.
“Well, our friend’s going to get laid tonight,” he told his Russian colleague.
“She is pretty,” Provalov agreed. “Twenty-three, you think?”
“Thereabouts, maybe a little younger. Nice hooters.”
“Hooters?” the Russian asked.
“Tits, Oleg, tits,” the FBI agent clarified. “That Chinaman’s a spook. See any coverage on him around?”
“No one I know,” the lieutenant replied. “Perhaps he is not known to be an intelligence officer.”
“Yeah, sure, your counterintelligence people have all retired to Sochi, right? Hell, guy, they trail me every so often.”
“That means I am one of your agents, then?” Provalov asked.
A chuckle. “Let me know if you want to defect, Oleg Gregoriyevich.”
“The Chinese in the light blue suit?”
“That’s the one. Short, about five-four, one fifty-five, pudgy, short hair, about forty-five or so.”
Provalov translated that to about 163 centimeters and seventy kilos, and made a mental note as he turned to look at the face, about thirty meters away. He looked entirely ordinary, as most spies did. With that done, he headed back to the men’s room to make a phone call to his agents outside.
And that pretty much ended the evening. Koniev/Suvorov left the restaurant about twenty minutes later with the girl on his arm, and drove straight back to his apartment. One of the men who’d stayed behind walked with