glance at her in confusion and, as he did this, he realized what was happening.
“No promises,” Court said from across the room and, at the same time, Zoya dropped her head down in a blindingly fast motion, pushing against Maksim’s arm around her. She exposed a portion of the Russian assassin’s face in the process.
Maksim held her tight, however, and he recovered from the surprise of her action, and put his pistol back against her temple.
And then a single gunshot cracked in the night. Azra Kaya screamed in the hallway.
The bullet left Court’s Glock and burned the air on its way across the kitchen and the living room, down the hall, and into the bedroom, where it struck Akulov’s left eyeball. It tore apart flesh as it penetrated the eye, passed through the bone of the orbital socket and into the brain, where it passed through the Russian’s medulla oblongata.
All motor functions in the assassin’s body ceased in one tenth of one second, and he fell straight down, his pistol clanking on the floor. Unfired.
Zoya stood there. Court lowered his gun and raced to her, and they embraced in the dark.
Dr. Kaya entered the room a moment later, rushed over to her med kit in her bathroom, then ran back into her bedroom to check Akulov.
Court said, “Forget him. My buddy downstairs is hurt pretty bad. Please go help him. We will be down right behind you, and we’ll all leave together.”
“I am leaving?”
“Best thing for you right now. Police will be here in minutes.”
She grabbed her kit again and started towards the door, but she turned around and looked at Zoya. “You risked your life for me. Why would you do that?”
“Because I trust this guy. We work well together. I knew we could end the threat and leave you out of this.”
The doctor looked down at the body again, then turned and ran for the stairs.
Court said, “Maksim told me he had associates downstairs.”
Zoya went to the window of the flat and opened it through the curtains, hiding her body from the street. “Help me lift his body.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m proving to Maksim’s people that he can’t, in fact, fly. Inna and the support staff will run when they know their trigger man is dead.”
Together Court and Zoya rolled Akulov out the window, and he fell four floors before impacting with a loud thud against the sidewalk.
Across the street, a black four-door fired up, turned its lights on, and sped off.
Zoya said, “Das vadanya, Inna.”
Court and Zoya kissed for a long moment, and then he said, “Should we go help with Zack and get the fuck out of here?”
Zoya shrugged. “I kind of like him docile.” Then she smiled. “But we should probably go.”
SEVENTY-SIX
Court stood on the tarmac at Tegel Airport at eight a.m. in a light rain shower, outside a beautiful Gulfstream jet that he was very confident he would not be boarding. Zoya was in the car in the lot; Hanley hadn’t asked her to come to this meeting, and both she and Court took that to mean he would be getting a new assignment today.
She figured she’d get hers soon enough.
Hanley’s two Yukons arrived. He climbed out of the rear vehicle and was surrounded by Chris Travers and his team. They walked forward, and the Ground Branch team began loading bags into the cargo hold while Matt met Court at the foot of the jet stairs.
The DDO asked, “How’s Zack?”
“He’ll be okay. We got him treated, then on a train to Dresden. He’s in a hotel; I have a friend looking after him, she’s a doctor. She’s in the next room, which is a lot better than staying in her apartment in Berlin, where I blew the back of a guy’s head off next to her bed.”
“Makes sense.”
Court said, “How bad is the fallout going to be from what happened here?”
“You mean, in addition to the forty-seven dead last night?”
“Yeah.”
“The director wants me in his office the instant I land, so . . . it’s not looking too good.”
“Sorry, boss.”
“Had to happen. Fucking al-Habsi.”
“How long had he been planning this?”
Hanley shook his head. “We don’t know it all, but here’s what we figure. Originally, the plan had been to use Shrike Group to obtain intelligence on Iran’s activities throughout the EU, for the purposes of discrediting them. They wanted to keep the sanctions strong. When Europe relaxed the sanctions, al-Habsi decided to hold the intelligence product Shrike had gleaned and to use it to