contact her and tell her there is no escape except to face the music back in Moscow. I admit, it’s a strange way to go about things, but there is someone very, very high up at SVR or in the Kremlin who is mandating this. They want to know where she’s been and who she’s been talking to.”
“Why don’t we not do this, and then just tell headquarters we did do this, and she said no?”
Maksim laughed at this. “Lie to HQ?”
“Why not? We lie to HQ every time we tell them you are operationally fit.”
Maksim stopped laughing, but he kept a little smile. “A low blow, Inna. Ever since I got out of the asylum, I’ve kept my shit together, more or less.”
Sorokina didn’t miss a beat. “More or less? Yes, that’s fair. More in Long Island. Less in Crete.” Akulov didn’t respond, so she added, “You are headed one of two places, Maksim. Either back to the loony bin or to the morgue. I can’t stop you, but I don’t want you taking me with you to either of these places.”
The man with the reddish-brown hair laughed again; it was clear to Sorokina that Akulov didn’t give a shit what she thought. Then his head seemed to clear a bit, and he said, “You will make contact with Zakharova just before we move on her. When she refuses to surrender, we kill her. That is final.”
Sorokina didn’t like this complication, but she wasn’t going to fight Akulov. “Ladno.” All right. “You take care of your part, I’ll take care of mine. We’ll wait for Anya to get the safe house arranged, then we get on a train. We can be in Berlin by tonight. Pervak can do his recon, I can conduct surveillance, and after a couple of days learning her pattern, we can act.”
“Which means,” Maksim said as he turned and headed for the door, “Zoya Zakharova has about seventy-two hours left on this miserable Earth.” He drew a cigarette from a pack and lit it. “Lucky girl.”
Inna did not respond. Her leader had a death wish, he was about to target an incredibly challenging opponent, and, the Russian intelligence specialist was certain, there was more to whatever Zoya was up to in Berlin that she needed to figure out before they went after her. She told herself she’d concentrate on the target profile, and she’d just hope like hell Maksim could keep his shit together long enough to make the kill.
She followed her trigger man out the door of Alkohole Nonstop and back into Warsaw’s warm rain.
NINETEEN
TWELVE DAYS EARLIER
Sultan al-Habsi did not have to go personally to the factory in Karabük, Turkey, to see the shipment loaded into the tractor-trailer. But he was here this warm July morning because he wanted it to be known that he had orchestrated every single part of this operation. He wanted his fingerprints on everything. Figuratively, of course, not literally. He wanted—needed—this to be his operation, because there was one person Sultan wanted to prove himself to.
His father.
The crown prince.
He shook thoughts of his father’s judgment from his head just as he had shaken out the thoughts of his brothers’ deaths in Yemen, and then he climbed out of the armored car and followed an entourage of local men and women towards a sterile warehouse. At the door they had to don protective equipment so they would not contaminate the environment inside. Sultan pulled the white fabric over his suit, placed the plastic shoe covers over his feet, and shrouded his face and head in a full mask. Once everyone had done the same, they moved past the warehouse floor and into a large storage and loading area. Here there were several loading bays on the wall, but only one door was open. A tractor-trailer had been backed up to the bay, and armed security men, themselves dressed head to toe in white protective gear, stood by it.
In front of the truck, presented dramatically for al-Habsi’s inspection, were the items he had traveled all the way from the UAE to inspect.
There were forty quadcopter drones, all arrayed on the floor in two arrow-shaped formations. Each of the forty devices was one meter wide and a half meter in height. Packaged together for shipping, he knew they would just fit into the sixteen-meter dry van trailer waiting for them, but first al-Habsi would sit through a lesson delivered by the president of the company.
In truth, he didn’t need the lesson; the