black sports bra, showing the men who would inevitably have her under riflescope that she was unarmed.
Slowly she began walking up the rain-soaked hill, her sweater held in one hand.
A pair of men in ski masks appeared out of the tall grasses in the unkempt cemetery in front of the church and ordered her forward in Russian. At the low stone wall they commanded her to drop to her knees and then lie flat on a patch of pasture trimmed short by a flock of sheep grazing on the hill. She complied, they stepped over the wall, and she was searched. She was pulled to her feet and walked towards the entrance to the sanctuary, and she put her sweater on as she did so.
Zoya noted the gear and stature of the men walking alongside her. Immediately she could tell these were not Bratva gunmen from Moscow’s Solntsevo neighborhood, nor were they like the other security forces she’d seen around Fox and her father. No . . . these guys were not in military uniforms, but they sure as hell looked like the Spetsnaz men she’d worked with in the past.
Looking up into the church windows she saw a pair of snipers, also in ski masks. Again, their positioning, the gear she could see, their professional demeanor: it all told her there was a sizable force here protecting her father’s operation that the Americans knew nothing about.
This suddenly terrified her. She knew a raid on this location would be coming, perhaps within a couple of hours. Ten or so American operators, even highly skilled ones, would not be able to take this place from a platoon of Spetsnaz men with high ground and fortified positions without suffering devastating losses.
* * *
• • •
Feodor Zakharov sat at the small wooden table in the church canteen. He looked on at his daughter as she was brought in and placed in a chair in front of him. He had a cup of tea for himself but offered his daughter nothing even though she shivered in her wet clothes. He ordered Fox and Hines to give them the room, but he allowed two mercenaries to stay. They leaned against an empty bookshelf behind Zoya, providing security in case she tried something stupid.
Finally he relented in his hard stare, then asked one of the men to grab a towel from the kitchen, and when he returned Zakharov handed it over to his daughter himself. She began toweling off her face and hair without thanking him for the gesture.
His voice was low. Soft but intimidating. “My little Zoyushka. I was so pleased you escaped the laboratory with your life. But it was foolish of you to come here.”
“And you are a fool for being here. Did you not think you would be found when the Americans captured Dr. Won? You’re working with the DPRK? Was that to reflect responsibility on them when this was over?”
“That’s exactly what it was. Your mind works in the strategic realm as well as the tactical realm. That makes me proud. All the years of instruction I gave you.” He didn’t seem proud. He sounded as if he was about to have her shot.
Zoya glared at him, and her face reddened. Under her shirt her stress hives positively glowed.
“Why did you come, Zoya?” Zakharov asked.
“I am here, Father, to provide you with the intelligence you need to make a reasonable decision.”
“Go on.”
“They will be here soon, and they will end your operation, destroy your plans.”
Zakharov seemed completely unfazed by this, which confused his daughter.
“And even if you do make it out of here, do you really think there’s any way in hell you are going to get a crop duster within half a mile of Castle Enrick? Won talked. They’ve already put snipers on the roof. They’ve already got helos in the air circling for ten miles. Attack jets ready to swoop down from twenty thousand feet. You’re done.”
“So you came to ask me to just go quietly off into the sunset? To concede defeat and forget it?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she said, “I learned something else last night. You lied to me. The British didn’t kill Feodor, Father. You did, by your foolishness.”
General Zakharov made no reaction to the charge.
“Am I wrong?”
The big bearded man sat there quietly for several more seconds. Finally he said, “Feo was the fool, Zoya. Not me. I invited him to the UK during a short break from his studies. I had doubts he’d come