these terms. The round-trip flight will cost you less than ten thousand. Thirty thousand profit for a day of flying is a good deal for you. Plus, Yasenevo will be in your debt. We know you’ve been having money troubles.”
Zoya knew nothing of the sort, but she was playing a hunch looking at the man’s disheveled office and expensive aircraft, an aircraft she was certain he didn’t own outright.
He nodded slowly. “I guess you won’t want to come in contact with customs and immigration.”
“You’re very clever, Arkady.”
“How am I supposed to—”
“I will board the flight after you go through departure immigration at the airport here. We will land in the UK at night, I’ll exit the aircraft on the taxiway, and you’ll continue on to the terminal alone.”
He groaned again, rubbed his face, then finally said, “Be back here at eight p.m.”
Zoya shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere. Except to London. Now.”
CHAPTER 19
Court Gentry walked to the front entrance of the pub on Angels Row at seven p.m. He had a plan, but it was thin, and he was banking on his improv skills seeing him all the way through. He was unarmed now, with all his guns and his grenade launcher left in the dead Audi forty miles east, and his forged passport and wallet jammed in a new backpack he’d stuffed into a storage locker at the main train station.
He’d spent the last hour working on his accent. His strategy involved him convincing a group of Englishmen he was English, and even more specifically a resident of a particular region. He’d sat by the canal watching YouTube on his phone for examples of the accent and dialect, and he thought he was ready, but he knew well that he wouldn’t be certain he’d pulled it off till he saw the reactions from those around him.
He was determined not to get into yet another gunfight here, to use social engineering to complete his task instead of his considerable martial skill. It was going to be tough pulling this off, but impossible if his American accent gave him away.
Feigning supreme confidence, he opened the door to find a meager crowd inside, which seemed unusual to him considering this was at the end of the workday, when many Brits tend to stop off for a pint on the way home. He picked a stool at the center of the bar, waited for the bartender, and scanned the room through the mirror on the wall.
He saw no more than a dozen in total in the room; all male, all aged between their twenties and fifties. It was a decidedly blue-collar crowd and, even though he saw no overt malevolent looks from anyone, he’d been in more than enough bar fights to recognize the kind of establishment where one might touch off at any time with just a little provocation.
He ordered a pint of Carling lager, and was just a few sips through it when the bartender leaned over to him.
“Not from around here.” It sounded like a statement, not a question.
“No,” Court said; his British accent sounded fine to him, but he knew he couldn’t be sure he was pulling it off just yet.
The bartender cocked his head. Shit. Court halfway wanted to throw his beer in the man’s face and make a run for it, but he didn’t move.
“Think you got business here, do ya?”
“Yeah. I think I do.”
“What kind of business?”
Court took his elbows off the bar and sat up straighter. In a voice loud enough to be heard by other men sitting around him he said, “The kind I’ll only talk to Charlie Jones about.”
The few hushed conversations around him all stopped.
The bartender made a face, then snickered. “Not how it works, mate.”
“Maybe not for you lot, but he’ll want to talk to me.”
A voice from down the bar said, “What’s a bloke with a Hampshire accent know about Charlie?”
Nailed it, Court thought to himself. He’d once spent two weeks in Southampton with CIA watching over a ship docked there, photographing the comings and goings because it had suspected ties to an al Qaeda financier. Nothing ever came from the op, as far as Court knew, but he’d spent his time in cover listening to and attempting to replicate the local dialect. He’d forgotten more than he remembered about his time there, but by using YouTube to refresh his memory, apparently he’d done a good enough job to at least trick a couple of guys in a pub