The American’s response came quickly. It was loud enough to be heard, but soft enough so that she was unable to pinpoint just where in the room the man was standing. “I’m trying to avoid a fight. Trust me, Sirena, this is the best deal you’re gonna get from me.”
How the hell does he know my code name?
After a few seconds her shoulders dropped, and she lowered the handgun. She opened the cylinder of the .38 Special and let the five rounds fall to the floor in the shower. They made a clinking sound that would have been obvious to anyone out in the bedroom. Then she put the revolver on the floor in front of her and slid it out through the opening in the door and into the room.
“Thank you,” came the voice. And then, “Are you ready?”
“What?”
The door opened a little further, and a few seconds later a black V-neck T-shirt and a pair of jeans tumbled through the air. Zoya caught the items, noticed there was no underwear, and just as she was about to say something about that, she heard the disembodied voice again.
“Oh… sorry.”
Folded underwear out of her backpack came sailing in.
The door was then pulled shut. Zoya wondered if the man had tied a string to the latch, because she’d neither seen nor heard anyone move inside the room. “No rush,” said the American, and she detected sarcasm in the statement.
Zoya thought this had to have been one of the strangest things she’d ever experienced in the field.
A minute later she was dressed, though her feet were bare, and her chin-length dark hair was still wet and tousled, half tucked behind her ears and half drooping in her face. She opened the door slowly and saw that the lights had been turned back on.
“Come out slowly, hands high.”
She raised her hands, stepped out, and looked into the eyes of the American she’d seen earlier in the night. He stood in front of the door to the hall; the big Glock pistol was low in his hands, but when he saw that her hands were empty he slid the pistol into his waistband at the small of his back.
She lowered her own hands and looked the man over.
He was in his thirties, perhaps thirty-one, perhaps thirty-nine; he had brown hair cut short but not severely so, an athletic build, and eyes that might have been brown, hazel, or amber. He wasn’t particularly tall, his clean-shaven face was pleasant enough but in no way descript, and his expression was impossibly calm, considering all that had happened tonight, and everything she had put him through. There was a little dark soot on the man’s face, but he’d changed clothes into a gray T-shirt and black cotton pants.
Zoya still used the Hungarian accent she’d been employing the past few days. “Who are you?” She felt sure her nervousness was obvious in her voice.
“You know who I am because I’m the one who wasn’t wearing a blond wig and ten layers of makeup tonight. I want to talk to you.”
She shook her head. “I have nothing to say.”
The man now asked, “Maybe I’ll just hang out here till you change your mind. How much time before someone comes here looking for you?”
“Other than yourself, you mean?”
“You know what I mean. From the residency.”
“I don’t know what you—”
“I placed a bug in Oleg’s car.” Then he switched into English-accented Russian. “Ya govoryu po russky.” I speak Russian.
And with that, she muttered, “Der’mo.”
“I’ll ask you again. How long do you have before they come for you?”
She sighed a little, sure she shouldn’t be talking, but unable to see what it mattered at this point. He was here, and he knew who she was and what had happened. She let her Hungarian accent drift off, and her very light Russian accent appeared. “I need to leave. Now.”
“I wouldn’t take the Audi.”
“No kidding.”
The man smiled a little, but he did not move.
Zoya said, “Well… If you came looking for Nattapong, as you can see, I’m not hiding him anywhere.”
The American replied, “I found Nattapong where you left him. I’m no doctor, but I don’t think he’s going to be much help to me.”
Zoya swallowed. Yes… now she understood the American’s plan here. He had come to torture her for the intel she picked up from Chamroon so he could get his hands on Fan Jiang. She wondered if he’d kill her when he was done.
She gauged the distance between herself and the door, and the distance between herself and the man with the gun in the small of his back. She thought she could get to him before he got the weapon out, but she found herself unwilling to try. He wasn’t particularly big, and he had not threatened her overtly, except by his presence here. But Zoya knew what this man had done tonight — part of it, anyway — and he’d certainly be wired to suspect some sort of resistance on her part.
And he’d be ready for it.
To her surprise he said, “I’m here to ask for your help.”
With suspicion in her voice, she asked, “What kind of help?”
“First, let’s take my car and get out of here. We’ll go somewhere safe. Then we can talk.”
The Russian girl with the wet dark hair looked down to the floor, bit her lip, and then shrugged a little. “You have the gun. So I will agree to your terms.”
“Good.”
“But I have to pack first.”
The American lifted her bag off the bed and onto his shoulder without taking his eyes from her. He said, “I took the liberty of packing for you while you were in the shower. And since I’m a gentleman, I’ll go ahead and carry this bag that has two folding knives and a switchblade in the outer pockets.”
“How very nice of you,” Zoya said, and she realized she was now a prisoner of the Central Intelligence Agency.
CHAPTER
FORTY-SIX
Court drove a Toyota Vios, essentially a newer Tercel made for and marketed to the Southeast Asian market. He moved his own big pack into the backseat and threw the Russian woman’s bag in next to it. He moved his pistol from the small of his back to his left side, then climbed behind the wheel while she got into the passenger side.
Court said, “I’m not going to tie you up, and I’m not going to hold a gun on you. I need to earn your trust, so I’m just going to ask you very nicely not to jump out of the car until you hear what I have to say. After we talk, if you want me to drop you off somewhere… I will do as you ask.”
The woman said, “Right.”
Court could tell she didn’t believe him.
As he pulled away from the youth hostel she looked around at the little gray four-door. “I would have expected the Agency to give you a nicer car.”
“The agency? You mean the car rental agency?”
The Russian just stared at the American for a moment, then asked, “Where are we going?”
“It will be dawn soon. I’ll get us a hotel room, someplace near the airport where it won’t look strange to show up so early. We will get checked in, and then we’ll sit and talk. Are you hungry? We can find some food first, but I don’t want to talk in public.”
The woman shook her head. “No. I am not hungry.”
Court said, “Well, I’m starving and, like you said, I’ve got the gun.”
“I could eat something, I guess.”
Thirty minutes later they were checked in at the Novotel Suvarnabhumi, within sight of the airport runways at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport. Before they even took their bags to their room they sat in the restaurant, their plates full of items from the breakfast buffet.
Around them a few businessmen and businesswomen started their day in small groups, many already talking about work.