She padded to the bathroom, peed without flicking on the light, padded back to bed, knowing she likely wouldn’t sleep any more tonight. She had not lied to Shane, not exactly, when she told him taking down the Russian assassin would be just another operation. But what she hadn’t told Shane, what she suspected he knew anyway — he was a lot of things, including one amazing lover, but he wasn’t stupid — was that a typical CIA op would have taken place after dozens, if not hundreds, of hours of preparation, and would only have been green-lighted after briefings, surveillance, and meticulous planning. And it would have involved a hell of a lot more people than one lone agent.
Her mission later today would be the exact opposite of that: a rushed intervention based on the uncorroborated words of a Soviet politician sitting thousands of miles away, and potentially unreliable information offered up under duress by a pair of Russian spies. There had been no preparation. Tracie had never even set foot inside the building she would enter to stop the assassination.
And she would be alone. Utterly and completely alone.
Tracie slipped under the covers. Next to her, Shane snored softly, the rhythm of his breathing steady, almost hypnotic. She supposed it stood to reason she would find herself going solo on the most important mission she would ever undertake. She had always been alone. Career-wise, personal-wise, every kind of wise. She had steadfastly refused to allow herself to get close to anyone, preferring to rely on her own devices, always.
Until the last couple of days.
Until falling like a lovesick teenage girl for the handsome Maine air traffic controller who had appeared out of nowhere, like the hero in some ridiculous romance novel, a hero who had saved her life at the last possible moment, literally sweeping her off her feet. He was good-looking and self-deprecating and generous and kind. His smile took her breath away. When they were together, it was all she could do not to throw him to the ground and rip his clothes off and ravage him.
And she knew he felt exactly the same about her.
And he was dying.
And when he was gone she would once again be alone.
She ran her hand gently over his chest, twirling the wiry hairs in her finger. She wondered how long it would take before he ceased to have any semblance of a normal life, before the cancer took him and he had no life at all. She thought about what he’d said, how no one really knows how long they have, how we’re all dying, some quicker than others, and realized it was truer for her than for most. Covert CIA work was dangerous and the careers of operatives tended to be short. So did their life spans.
Hell, there was the very real possibility that she wouldn’t survive beyond a few more hours. She was trying to put up a brave face — for herself as much as for Shane — but the fact of the matter was, trying to take down a KBG pro and his team, who had undoubtedly been planning this assassination for months, with no backup and no real plan of action, was likely a suicide mission.
And wouldn’t that be ironic? Fall in love, find out the man who had stolen your heart had mere weeks to live, and then die before he did. It was almost humorous in a cynical, black-hearted way. It was a play Shakespeare might have written had he been born four hundred years later than he was. Romeo and Juliet for the twentieth century.
Tracie smiled at the thought and was surprised to feel her eyelids getting heavy. She glanced at the clock with the ghostly green numerals. 12:15 a.m. She closed her eyes and slipped away.
42
The seventh floor of the Minuteman Mutual Insurance building was used for storage — cleaning and maintenance supplies, reams of paper, cast-off typewriters, word processors, office furniture, boxes and boxes of pens. All of the tools and equipment necessary for the operation of an American insurance company in the late twentieth century.
Nikolai assumed the janitors had already armed themselves with whatever materials they needed to begin their shift, so his only real concern was of the guard becoming suspicious and checking on the progress of the “floor refinishing” project. He pulled his cart quickly down the hallway, stopping in front of a door with a red-lettered sign that warned, ROOF — AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
He had disabled the alarm on a previous visit, so there was no way anyone would realize the door had been breached. Picking the lock was easy. Within thirty seconds of removing his lock-picking tools from the cart, he was pulling open the metal door. He pulled a heavy electric belt sander out of the cart and set it on the floor, using it to prop the door open.
Roof access was via a cement stairway slicing like an artery between reinforced cinderblock construction walls. The building had been erected close to a century ago, but the Victorian-era elegance of its interior did not extend to the portions the public would never see, and Nikolai knew it would take no small effort to muscle the cart up those narrow stairs.
He stepped through the doorway, then turned and grabbed the cart by its reinforced-steel frame. He lifted the front and pulled. The angle was all wrong, it was hard to get any leverage, he was straining, but after a moment he was rewarded by the sound of the cart’s metal front wheels clattering onto the first step.
He lifted and pulled again and gained the second step.
Lifted and pulled. Third step. The rear wheels squeaked and complained and then slid onto the first step.
Nikolai breathed deeply while maintaining a grip on the cart. As he began pulling again, a disembodied voice from somewhere down the seventh-floor hallway said, “Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing up there?”
Nikolai froze. Cursed softly in Russian.
He released his grip on the cart, hoping it wouldn’t lurch back down the stairs and nullify his hard-earned gains. It didn’t.
He wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead and reached down to his ankle, pulling his combat knife smoothly out of its sheath under his pant leg. He positioned it in his right hand, blade resting against his inner forearm, handle nestled in his palm. He turned his arm so the knife would be invisible to whoever was in the hallway, then placed a look of innocent confusion on his face.
He squeezed past the cart and descended the stairs, then walked through the doorway. Moving briskly down the hallway was the guard who had examined his forged work order. Nikolai had known the man was suspicious of him but hadn’t really thought he would pursue him. He had been wrong. The guard’s face was dark, his eyes hooded, and this hand rested on the butt of his weapon as he challenged Nikolai again. “What are you doing, boy? What business does a floor refinisher have on the roof?”
Nikolai walked forward slowly, non-threateningly, smiling and nodding to placate the guard even as the man moved along the hallway to intercept him. He was still at least eight meters away. Too far for Nikolai’s purposes.
“I am sorry,” Nikolai said meekly.
Six meters.
He continued. “I do not know where…”
Four meters. Still too far.
The guard slowed, confused. “Do not know where…what?” He spread his hands in a show of frustration.
Two meters, almost close enough.
“I do not know where…” The man was now directly in front of Nikolai, and although his hand still rested on the butt of his gun, it was as useless to him as if Nikolai had taken it away and thrown it off the roof. He was a dead man. He just didn’t realize it yet.
With a practiced flick of his wrist, Nikolai dropped the knife into his hand, spinning it effortlessly so the blade faced outward. The guard recognized the danger much too late and took one stumbling step backward just as Nikolai attacked, his arm a blur. He plunged the knife into the guard’s ample belly and slashed upward between the bones of the rib cage.