blowing up her phone with cryptic texts demanding she check in. She’d ignored them at first, but finally relented and told Yanis and Moises she’d be back later in the afternoon.
Now, as she walked in the direction of the Freie Universität, she pulled out her phone and placed a call.
Her handler answered quickly.
“Brewer.”
“Anthem. Iden Charlie, Mike, Golf, seven, one, Charlie.”
“Iden confirmed.”
Zoya said, “You need to stop reaching out to me. I’ll come to you if I need you.”
“I have intel for you. Hence the texts. First, what do you have to report?”
“Nothing to report. I’m just doing low-end surveillance.”
“Who is the target?”
“A consular affairs staffer at the Iranian embassy. Seems like a nobody.”
“What does Shrike Group suspect him of?”
“The usual. They think he’s VAJA. Haven’t seen any evidence of it yet, but we’ve only been on him for twelve hours or so.”
“Why is this one potential spook so important to them?”
“Unknown. I was just given a portfolio of the man and his home and employment information, and ordered to work with a team to dig into him.”
“So, you have created other contacts with Shrike Group?”
“Just a couple of young surveillance techs.”
“That’s it?” Brewer was displeased.
“I’ve been here two weeks, Suzanne. I haven’t unraveled the mysteries of the universe just yet.” After no response she said, “Something for you to work on, though. The techs are talking about another case officer at Shrike. She’s using the name Miriam, which might be a pseudonym. She’s posing as an Israeli, but I think she might actually be a German national.”
“Age?”
“Thirties, and that’s just a guess.”
“Description?”
“Hot.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The boys said she was hot. That’s all the description I have.”
“So . . . what would you like me to do with that information?”
“I don’t know what you do, Suzanne. I’m not sitting in an office at Langley, am I?”
Brewer answered back with, “Let me show you what I do. This mysterious Miriam you are looking for is named Annika Dittenhofer. She is thirty-six years old, and she has a flat in Kreuzberg, in the south of Berlin. She was born in Dresden, not too long before reunification, and then she served in the Bundeswehr—that’s the German army. After that she was German foreign intelligence, but she’s been out and working for Shrike for several years.”
Zoya was listening, but her true focus was on the source of this intel. “How the hell do you already know all this? I was told by Hanley we had no other access points into Shrike.”
“This is intelligence that came to us in the last twenty-four hours. That’s all I can tell you.”
Zoya didn’t like being kept in the dark like this, but she let it go. “Anyway, I’m told she is a case officer, like me, and I will never meet her due to the firm’s policies about internal security.”
“Where there’s a will, Anthem, there’s a way. You might never work with her, but Ennis will know who she is. You’re going to have to get closer to him. As close as is necessary to complete your assignment.”
This angered Zoya. “Meaning what, Suzanne?”
“Didn’t your nation have a very famous Sparrow school where the art of seduction was taught to pretty young recruits?”
Zoya wanted to reach through the phone and punch Suzanne Brewer in the jaw. But she forced calm into her voice and said, “We also had a very famous school where the art of lethal combat was taught. The kind where a student is trained to snap a neck without any real effort.” After a beat she said, “I went to that school, not sex camp.”
“That’s too bad. Snapping Dittenhofer’s neck will tell us nothing. I want you to keep working Ennis. Work the two techs, as well, for whatever good they may provide.”
Zoya asked, “Have you picked up any hints that Moscow knows I’m here?”
“Nothing at all,” Brewer replied. “Obviously I will make contact if that changes.”
She muttered under her breath, “Obviously.”
Minutes later she was back in the U-Bahn, heading home to her hotel.
EIGHTEEN
Russian assassin Maksim Akulov stepped out of central Warsaw’s rainy noontime bustle and entered through the door of Alkohole Nonstop, a state-run liquor store on Widok Street. He was alone, but as he nodded to the old woman behind the counter, she gave him a sideways glance and a slight nod, indicating that those he’d come to meet had already arrived.
He let water drip from his black raincoat onto the floor as he headed towards the back in the direction of the woman’s glance,