and slides a knife into your spine.”
Bolichova’s eyes were wide, but Maksim and Semyon were wholly unimpressed.
Sorokina ignored their annoyance as she looked slowly around the table at all three. “We might get her, but she’ll get one of us, at least. I promise you that. Which one of you wants to die?”
Maksim raised his hand, and Anya took it as a joke and laughed.
Semyon shook his head. “You’re being ridiculous, Inna. I’ve been doing this for a long time and—”
Now Sorokina yelled at the mafia enforcer. “You’ve been killing hapless fools who never saw you coming! Zoya knows there are teams like us out here, hunting her! She has her defenses up, and she is a hair trigger away from going on the offense at any time!”
Maksim rubbed his eyes like it was five a.m., then ran his fingers through his thick and unkempt reddish-brown hair. He took in Sorokina’s words, then shrugged in acquiescence. “I don’t need to be told that every good plan can go to shit. We hear you, Inna. We’ll be extra diligent.
“Let’s get back to the information we have. We build this operation like any other. Zakharova is in Berlin, posing as an American, using the name Stephanie Arthur. She’s working in cover for a private intelligence firm; the Kremlin thinks it has Israeli ties, but she’s essentially on her own. There will be no one watching her back.”
“Bullshit,” said Inna.
Maksim sighed now. “Are you suggesting our intel is wrong?”
“I’m suggesting we don’t start complimenting ourselves on a job well done before we do the damn job. She knows Moscow is after her; if she is showing up on our radar like this, then there is a bigger game at play. Whatever she’s doing, she will be ready for us.”
Semyon Pervak leaned back in the metal chair, his cheap blue blazer open and his girthy midsection on display, covered by an off-white shirt that needed a wash and a press. “Dammit, Sorokina, this Zoya isn’t the fucking Gray Man.”
Bolichova laughed aloud. She knew the legend of the unkillable uber assassin the Gray Man, and she also knew it was nothing but a fantasy.
Akulov said, “No . . . she’s not the Gray Man.” He sighed wistfully. “But I wish she were.”
* * *
• • •
The meeting adjourned after another half hour, with a game plan of moving the team and their equipment into a safe house in central Berlin having been established. Bolichova handled the team’s logistics, so she left first to begin preparations. Pervak was “the Cleaner”; his task was to reconnoiter in advance of the hit, and then to come along behind the hit, before the first responders arrived, and make sure there was no evidence left behind that might incriminate the team.
Inna Sorokina served as the intelligence officer in the small unit. She orchestrated target acquisition, and she, along with Maksim, decided on the time and the place for the actual assassination.
Maksim Akulov was the trigger man, save for one time on the island of Crete where he had been too drunk to get out of the car to shoot a man in an outdoor café, so Pervak was forced to both do the deed and clean up any evidence from the scene.
No one in the unit talked about that night in the island town of Chania, and Maksim Akulov had made amends somewhat on the two jobs since, for which he had stayed off the bottle, at least for a few hours before conducting his kills.
After Semyon left the liquor store, Inna sat with Maksim, who gazed at the garbage can where his bottle of vodka had been tossed.
Inna saw the distant look in his eyes. “Pazhalusta, Maksim.” Please. “Respect this woman as a competent foe.”
“You think I won’t?”
“I think that, if you want to survive, then this job has to be run like Minsk, like Ankara, like Long Island. It can’t be another Crete.”
Akulov pushed himself up from the table, slid the dossier into the small of his back. “Fine. You run the pre-workup to the target, and when the time comes to act, I’ll be on my best behavior.”
Inna was pleased. “Good. We go in with full stealth, she never sees or hears—”
Maksim raised a hand. “You read the brief. She has to get a chance to walk in.”
“She won’t do it. That’s insanity.”
“Yes, that’s insanity. Do you know what else it is? It’s an order. When we have her found and fixed, you, her old colleague, will