into the hotel from a door on the eastern side. He had been sizing up people as potential threats for thirty-five years, and something about the man piqued his senses. His age, his fitness, his bearing. He was dressed in less expensive-looking clothing than most other people here in the lobby, and it all came together to ring alarm bells in the fifty-three-year-old Russian’s brain.
Semyon didn’t know who he was or what he was doing here, but he tracked the man with his eyes as he headed over to the bar, near the seat Pervak himself had taken to give him an angle on Zakharova. Once settled, the stranger looked up into the mirror, back in the direction of Pervak’s own target.
Sorokina had insisted Zakharova knew better than to take this job with Shrike Group under thin cover. She felt certain their target had some sort of backup, or was part of a larger operation.
Semyon had discounted it at the time. He wasn’t half as impressed with the target’s dossier as was Sorokina, but now he did wonder if this lone man was here in some capacity to benefit her.
He couldn’t think of any other reason she would have a tail. There was nothing in her file that suggested German or U.S. intelligence knew about her presence here, and there was no way in hell SVR or GRU would send two teams after the same target at the same time.
This odd man out was interesting to him, so he sent Bolichova into the elevator alone, telling her he was going to check something out before heading upstairs.
Pervak crossed the lobby and took a seat where he could see both Zakharova out the window on his left, and the mystery man alone at the bar.
* * *
• • •
Zoya was disappointed she had not learned more from Ennis during their nearly two-hour dinner. She did get the scoop on Mirza and Iravani, but once she’d brought up Miriam, the American had clammed up. She couldn’t tell for certain if he stopped spilling the beans simply because he was worried about Shrike Group’s veil of secrecy, or if it had to do instead with the fact that he’d shifted into brazenly making passes, and he treated all talk of work with complete disinterest.
As the evening wore on, he had seemed less inclined to pass out more intel, and more inclined to talk about his football days at San Diego State, and his travel and intrigue with the CIA. He talked about his divorce, about the loneliness of a bachelor on a long-term work assignment, and, after a second bottle of wine had been consumed, after they were halfway through their after-dinner drinks, he asked her to think of him not as a boss but as a close friend, a confidant, and whatever else she needed him to be.
Zoya thought him to be a self-absorbed prick, and never more so than when he spoke again.
“Your secrets, Zoya, all your secrets, I want you to know they are safe with me.”
Ennis had the power to have Zoya killed by Moscow. He knew it, she knew it, and he knew that she knew it. Alluding to the danger while aggressively showing his interest in her was, as far as she was concerned, reprehensible.
The thought of grabbing her knife and plunging it into Ennis’s carotid appealed to her, but she simply thanked him, and then she did her best again to steer him back to important matters. She couldn’t be overt about it, she had to keep him comfortable talking around her, even if she didn’t learn all she needed to know tonight.
But she pressed one last time. “You said we were tracking Haz Mirza.”
He nodded.
“Are you the one on him?”
“Why do you ask?”
She shrugged, portraying nonchalance. “His name came up in my investigation today. Even if we have a horizontal structure at Shrike, it seems like I should be coordinating with whoever it is who has him under surveillance.”
Ennis pounded his old-fashioned, sucked on the orange peel for a moment, then spit it back into the glass. “Forget about the way you used to work. We’re different.” She thought he was about to clam up for good, but instead he said, “Miriam is running the Mirza surveillance operation. Just telephonic conversations. She’s not physically on his ass. If she learns anything relevant to your work with Sasani, I’m sure she’ll communicate that to you.” He smiled. “Through me.”
“Good,” Zoya said. “That’s all I ask.”
Finally, Ennis