then took a narrow staircase down into the basement and began moving past stacks of boxes of Irish whiskey, Polish vodka, and Hungarian wine. He made a left at a stored display advertising a popular local honey liqueur, then continued down a dark and narrow aisle. Passing a shelf of loose 1.5-liter bottles of various alcohols, he didn’t break stride as he yanked a room-temperature bottle of Chopin vodka, then continued on into a back room, the booze now tucked under an arm.
Here, two women and a man sat at a small table, each with a paper cup of coffee from nearby Café Nero. A fourth cup sat on the table in front of the one empty chair.
Maksim took the remaining seat with his wet coat still on. He put the bottle down on the table and opened the lid of the coffee cup.
The man on his left was older, with gray hair and a thick midsection. One of the women was a little younger than Maksim at thirty-nine. She was dressed in a business suit and wore eyeglasses; her long blond hair was braided and a tablet computer rested in front of her. The other woman, still in her twenties, had dyed platinum blond hair, cut short, and she wore jeans and a tank top. At first glance, Maksim thought she was the most attentive of the bunch today, and he was proven right as soon as he sat down.
She spoke up brightly. “Dobroye utro.” Good morning.
“Is it though?”
She motioned to the cup now in his hand. “Brought you some coffee, sir.”
Maksim replied with a disinterested “Spasibo,” then took the coffee and poured it unceremoniously onto the concrete floor next to him while the younger woman looked on.
He unscrewed the lid off the Chopin now, poured himself a long shot into the still-hot cup, and then downed warm coffee-infused vodka in a single gulp.
Both women winced.
The other man at the table chuckled a little. “Polish vodka? Are you just keeping up your cover or do you really like it better than good Russian vodka?”
Akulov flinched a little with the bite of the drink going down, then recovered and poured himself another shot. While doing so he said, “Nyet, Semyon, it’s not better than good Russian vodka, but it’s better than shit Russian vodka, which is the only kind these idiots import into their country.”
“They are used to shit,” declared Semyon Pervak, making the statement as if it were common knowledge.
Inna Sorokina, the older of the two women, kept her eyes on Maksim as she took a careful sip of her hot brew, and then her eyes flashed over to the younger woman on her right.
Maksim caught the glance between Inna Sorokina and Anya Bolichova, knew he was being judged by his female subordinates for hitting the bottle before noon, but he didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, his constitution could handle anything he could throw its way, at least until the next morning. Still, he told himself the sooner he started drinking each day, the sharper and smarter it made him and, more importantly, the sooner the day would be over.
He knew that Semyon Pervak, Anya Bolichova, and Inna Sorokina all looked down on his life choices, but they hadn’t walked in his shoes. Despite their judgment, however, Maksim Akulov knew they would shut their mouths and do their jobs, just as soon as he gave them a job to do.
To that end, he ignored any further pleasantries, reached inside his coat, and pulled out a sheaf of papers in a manila folder. “Back to work, finally. A target in Berlin. We leave today.”
“Berlin is boring,” Bolichova declared.
“And Warsaw isn’t?” Pervak asked.
Maksim downed the second shot before saying, “I’d love an assignment in Tahiti as much as the rest of you, but we go where they send us, don’t we?”
It was a rhetorical question, and his team regarded it as such.
He put the folder down in the middle of the table and kept his hand on top of it. When Semyon reached for it, Maksim held it firm. He looked up at Sorokina instead. “Inna will see the assignment first.”
The thirty-nine-year-old woman cocked her head in surprise. Semyon Pervak was second-in-command on this team, not her.
She pulled the folder to her and asked, “Why me?”
Maksim smiled; he was already reaching for the big bottle of Chopin again. “You’ll see.”
Inna opened the folder, and almost immediately she let out a little gasp. She then looked quietly through the