facial features and focused, intelligent eyes, although Dittenhofer’s hair was somewhat longer and much, much curlier, and her eyes were aquamarine, whereas Zoya’s were brown.
Court shook his head to clear it. Upon further inspection, she looked little like Zoya.
The woman before him had a look about her that said all business, all the time; she typed on her laptop, her ceramic coffee cup next to her, her oversized shoulder bag on the chair at the table.
Getting caught in the open by going to a café similar to the one she regularly met a compromised colleague at was not good tradecraft on her part, to say the least, which meant one of two things to Court. Either Drummond had misjudged this woman’s abilities, or else this woman wasn’t experiencing much or any counterintel threats in her work.
But Drummond had been NSA and CIA; he knew quality when he saw it, so Court assumed Miriam was simply confident Drummond had not compromised her before he died, and she clearly wasn’t feeling any threats from any of her intelligence targets here in Berlin.
Court raced out of his apartment and down the stairs to his motorcycle, hoping he could make it to Café Latrio before she left her seat.
* * *
• • •
Since the moment Ric Ennis’s body had been discovered in a hotel suite registered to Stephanie Arthur the day before, Annika Dittenhofer and Rudy Spangler had spoken to each other over a dozen times. Annika was desperate to get more information from the police, and Rudy was in full crisis mode himself.
Both of them suspected from the outset that a Russian hit team had come for Zakharova, and Ennis had just suffered the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But this theory had one flaw. It didn’t account for Zakharova’s whereabouts now. Spangler speculated that the former SVR operative had been rendered back to Russia alive, and the operation was a kidnapping and not an assassination plot at all.
There was some evidence in favor of this. The entire camera network at the hotel had been brought down as the operation took place. It seemed like this was a step the Russians would only have taken if they were not going to be able to exfiltrate in a clandestine fashion.
Annika wasn’t sure. She still felt Zakharova could have actually been the one who killed Ennis, although she couldn’t figure out why.
Each time Spangler and Dittenhofer spoke, the owner of Shrike International Group urged his subordinate to stay focused on the company’s mission. Spangler passed down a new targeting list to Dittenhofer, and when she called him this morning, his first question was about her progress.
“The names I gave you. VAJA men. Where are you on—”
“Rudy?”
“What is it?” he asked, his voice nervous.
“I have good news, for once. Haz Mirza received a hard stand-down order from military intelligence in Iran. They disavowed any actions he might take, and they threatened to send men to kill him themselves if he even contemplated doing anything to upset the Europeans.”
“You picked up communications from Tehran?”
“We did. Mirza wasn’t happy about it, but Tehran was very clear in their wording. No attacks are to take place in Europe.”
Spangler said, “That is, indeed, excellent news. I told you, Annika, that something good was going to come of this.”
Annika was dubious. She let out a little laugh. “So far, nothing has come out of our work, other than the fact that we know Iran isn’t going to retaliate.”
“My client is taking our information and processing it, and I expect all the Quds operatives to be arrested in short order.”
“Okay, well, I’m not rolling up my operation. Moises, Yanis, and I are going to stay on Mirza today. Track his movements. We picked up chatter that yesterday he dropped in on a couple of the cell members; they were complaining to one another that he was wild with fury, insisting they would get a green light for one of their operations. This was before he was given the stand-down order, but he sounds like a loose cannon. I’m going to keep tracking.”
Spangler said, “Don’t compromise yourself. After what happened to Ennis and Zakharova yesterday, we need to be careful.”
“You, too, Rudy.”
Annika Dittenhofer hung up the phone, took her empty coffee mug to the counter, then left Café Latrio, anxious to meet up with Moises and Yanis in their surveillance vehicle to see if Haz Mirza was going to meet with any of his people today.
But first, she