Pervak was certain he’d made no sound, but he hadn’t survived the nineties on the mean streets of Moscow without knowing a thing or two about adapting to sudden threats. He wasn’t in knife range, so he yanked his CZ 75 pistol out of its holster and raised it in the man’s direction.
The shadow moved his hand away from his gun and raised his hands.
Softly, and in thickly accented English, Pervak said, “Give me your money.”
“My money?” came the reply, also in English. The man seemed confused, and it didn’t look like he was about to comply.
“Yes. Money.”
The man looked at the weapon with more fascination than fear, then shrugged, and slowly began reaching for his wallet in his pocket.
Pervak closed on him quickly, planning on pistol-whipping the man across the temple to knock him out, but as he neared, the man dropped his wallet on the ground and used the distraction to try again for his gun. The big Russian lunged forward even faster, knocked the man’s gun hand away, and crashed with him to the ground, jolting the man’s earpiece from his ear as they began to fight on the pathway in the trees.
* * *
• • •
Zoya Zakharova did not know Maksim Akulov, save for his reputation. He’d been a Spetsnaz operator for the GRU, then a behind-the-lines Vympel assassin for the Russian government in Chechnya, Ukraine, and Afghanistan. He’d done hits for the SVR, as well, killings in America and the UK and Lithuania and Hungary, and these were just the ones Zoya had heard about.
She’d never even seen a picture of him.
The word was the man was off his rocker, had been since his twenties, but a couple of years ago she’d heard through the grapevine he was finished. He’d seen too much, done too much, to function in normal society in any capacity. Hell, if he was too crazy to kill people for a living, then Zoya figured he should probably spend the rest of his days chained to a wall in a padded cell.
But now, if Sorokina was to be believed, he was here, in Berlin, and Zoya was his target.
With a voice remarkably weak for a woman who held another woman at gunpoint, she said, “Why would they put him back in the field?”
Inna said, “Maksim has run this team for the past year, after being pulled out of Mental Hospital Number Fourteen, quite covertly.” Inna kept talking. “You come with me now, Sirena, or Maksim appears by your side while you’re eating dinner one night. Slices your sweet throat as you swallow a sweet bite of strudel.”
Zoya went cold. She suddenly felt more alone and vulnerable than she’d ever felt in her life. She began moving to the right, towards the street to the south, but she kept the gun on Inna Sorokina.
“I am the last friendly face you will ever see,” Sorokina said.
Zoya didn’t find her face friendly at all. The gun quivered, and Inna saw this.
The older woman smiled a little. “You understand. There is only one chance for you. Come home, and talk to us.”
* * *
• • •
The man pressing his hand into Court’s chest, holding him upright against the window of the bank, had been trying to raise his partner over his earpiece, obviously without result. Court was hoping this guy would just take off to go check on his friend, who was probably just having regular comms trouble, the kind Court had dealt with countless times before.
Court spoke English now, with a fake Russian accent. “I go back to hotel. I no trouble, sir.”
The man wasn’t listening to him. He held his free hand to his earpiece, said, “Noah? Noah?”
Court saw an opportunity to sweep the man’s hand off him, to spin him away forty-five degrees with the movement, and then to slam a left jab into his jaw, hopefully dropping him outright or at least stunning him enough for Court to get away. This he could all do easily if he were healthy, but at the moment it would take more speed, strength, and dexterity than he’d exhibited in many weeks.
So he stood there, pressed back against the window, and hoped that whatever glitch was preventing this asshole from communicating with his teammate would take precedence over the drunk Russian, and this man holding him would just run off into the night.
But Court’s slim hope evaporated in an instant as a gunshot cracked, the sound rolling across the empty street from the west. It