Linko knew he was an attractive man, but at thirty-six, he was almost twice her age. He was dark and virile, and he kept himself in tip-top shape with regular visits to the gym and to martial arts dojos. He was a soldier, but more than that, he was a survivor. He carried scars from Chechnya. He stood a little over six feet tall and was well built. He kept his black hair cut short and had a permanent five o’clock shadow that allowed him to look Middle Eastern when he needed to. As a colonel in the FSB, sometimes missions carried him into the satellite countries that had once been under Russian rule.
“No. I’m not shy.”
The woman came over to him and bit her lower lip. Perhaps she had seen this in an American movie and thought it was sexy. Perhaps she believed all American men loved women who bit their lower lips in such a way.
It was attractive, but Linko was no fool. The woman was here for a reason.
He had left enemies in Chechnya, and there were more in the Middle East and the satellite countries. People who knew him, who knew what he truly did under the cover of the FSB, feared him. He was a ghost, a man who could do the impossible, get into fortified places and kill those marked for death.
In the past eight years, he had slain forty-three targets. He kept count, and he remembered their faces, how they had been afraid and begged for their lives at the end.
Linko knew he’d gotten too good at the killing though. His superiors used him as a small, tactical nuclear device, but they were wary of him at the same time. It was regrettable because he had surely risen as far in rank as he could under the circumstances.
“That’s too bad.” The woman bit her lip again. “I like shy men.”
Scanning the crowd over the woman’s shoulder, Linko spotted the two men watching her. Both of them wore loose clothing and weren’t lost in the bar’s party atmosphere. They were working, hounds preparing to meet the fox.
Linko smiled. They were bearding no fox. They were on the trail of a true Russian bear.
“You have a nice smile. You should smile more often.” Boldly, she seized his glass and drank the rest of his vodka.
“Perhaps I will.”
“Come with me. I will put a smile on your face. I will teach you to love Moscow. You will come back again, even more excited than you were the first time.”
Linko gave a show of hesitation, but he knew he was going to go. The young woman and her friends were what he had been needing to break the restlessness that gripped him between missions. He was used to being in play, used to chasing or being chased. Downtime did not agree with him.
His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. When he checked the phone, the woman’s smile faltered a little. No doubt, she was thinking she was about to lose her prey. Nervously, she glanced back at the two men. She lacked professionalism, but the men did not appear to notice her. They were holding to their covers.
Linko’s estimation of them went up, and excitement climbed within him. He had thought they were merely street thugs. Evidently, they were more experienced than he’d thought. That was promising.
The caller ID on his phone showed NO DATA. That was curious because no one had this number.
He punched the button and held the phone to his face. “Yes.”
“Colonel Linko?”
“Yes.”
“This is Mikhail Nevsky.”
The world tilted crazily around Linko. In all his years with the FSB, a Russian president had never contacted him. He had acted on their orders several times, to be sure, but never direct contact.
Paranoia gripped him, and he at first believed he was being set up. But that was foolish. There was no reason to do such a thing.
“I trust you know who I am?”
“Yes. Of course.” Linko wasn’t certain if the president was joking or truly making certain that he knew who he was.
“I have a task I need you to perform. One that must be done quickly and quietly.”
“Of course.”
“I have made arrangements for you on a charter plane to Herat, Afghanistan. Once there, I want you to find a man named Boris Glukov. I will send you further instructions at that point.”