in Jenner’s team, and you’re the DDO. Do you really think that’s enough?”
Hanley smiled a little. “It’s enough to protect me, anyway, so stay close and you’ll be fine.”
Brewer was furious that Hanley was now adding more to her plate. She excused herself to go back to work, because it was going to be an even rougher day than she’d envisioned.
CHAPTER 23
Court climbed out of the Tube station at West Kensington and found himself in the middle of one of London’s many ethnically diverse neighborhoods. It was also an area with a lot of hotels, which meant tourists, and good access to two Tube stations: Baron’s Court and West Kensington.
He saw a sign for a basement flat and walked the street to check it out from a tactical standpoint; then with a burner phone he’d bought in Nottingham he called the number on the sign. Within an hour he was in a leasing office a mile away, signing papers, proffering a CIA passport Brewer had insisted was firewalled from any alias database at Langley and set up only for him.
Court had no way of knowing if this was true, but he deemed it worth the risk because he needed a home base in London while he set up surveillance on Cassidy. He rented the place for a full month but was hoping to start eyeballing the solicitor’s office within a few hours and get what he needed here in London within a couple of days. A daylight infiltration of a building for the purposes of establishing a surveillance hide was, to put it mildly, suboptimal, but he liked his chances.
It was nothing he hadn’t done a hundred times in much less permissive environments than London, England.
By ten a.m. he stood alone in the little furnished flat. It was nicer than most places he stayed, but security-wise it was good enough. Down a narrow set of metal stairs, an iron gate led to a short passageway between the laundry room and the door to the flat, and the wooden door itself was well made and secure.
He judged the conditions suitable, if not ideal.
Soon he was out the door, heading on foot to the nearby neighborhood of Earl’s Court. He’d make his way up onto the roof of the building near Cassidy’s office and see what he could see. If he couldn’t get much good intel, he’d have to go ahead and perform a sneak-and-peek, but only through surveillance would he know the camera angles and force structure, if any, inside the building. This took time to do right, and Court was anxious to get started almost immediately.
He figured if the man was, in fact, somehow affiliated with elements in the underworld, then there was at least a fair chance he kept a pretty secure work environment.
He had a plan for this afternoon and tonight, but he was not ready to act just yet.
No, right now he needed some gear.
* * *
• • •
Zoya Zakharova rented a tiny flat in London’s West End, with a small supply of cash and a large supply of bullshit. Her story was that she’d lost her passport, she was a Croatian national who’d been told she’d have to wait up to three days for her embassy to get her the paperwork she needed to go back home, and she couldn’t afford anyplace else around.
The Pakistani couple who owned the small and poorly kept Soho building took pity on her, and they handed her the keys to a tiny attic room.
It was a fourth-floor walkup, dingy and dark with two bare lightbulbs illuminating the entire studio. There was no furniture, not even a chair or a table.
She put her bag down in the middle of the room, sighed, and turned back for the door.
She purchased a sleeping bag at an army surplus store in the Arch Gallery, along with eating utensils for one, an olive green cold-weather balaclava head and face covering, and a few other personal items. She stopped at a hardware store to pick up some tools, a home goods store for a towel and a washcloth and a thick rubber welcome mat, a sporting goods store for a yoga mat in a canvas case, and a food market for provisions on her way back to the flat.
Back inside she stacked her food on a moldy shelf in the kitchenette: a few bags of crackers, protein bars, canned tuna, and bottled water.
In the tiny and foul-smelling bathroom, she put her toothbrush and toothpaste on the