Konstantin was tempted to go pay the watchers an unexpected visit and bust a few heads. That was his Russian blood. He turned away from the apartment without so much as an upward glance. There would be time enough to return to Schlossstrasse later. A four a.m. visit would satisfy his heritage.
The final giveaway was the guy on the corner who still sat on one of the red benches in front of the sausage kiosk, still eating a bratwurst sprinkled with dried onions. Konstantin had noticed him sitting there, hunched up against the cold, when he had turned onto Schlossstrasse looking for Metzger’s home. In the time it had taken Konstantin to go through Metzger’s apartment the sausage eater hadn’t managed a single bite-probably because he had bought it in the early hours, and now it was cold and greasy and more likely to make him throw up than to sate any real hunger he might have.
The devil was in the details.
He walked up to the window and ordered himself a brat with all of the fixings, then made a show of licking his fingers as he enjoyed it. The sausage was hot and tasted twice as good for it. He washed it down with an apple spritzer. Konstantin nodded to the cold man with the half-eaten sausage and said, “God, I needed that,” before he walked away. He smiled. It was unnecessary-a game-but he liked the idea of letting the man know he’d seen him, twice. Konstantin was interested to see how they would deal with the knowledge that they had been compromised. How they reacted would tell him how good the team he was up against really was.
He stopped on the corner, ostensibly to retie a shoelace. He checked out the street. The sausage eater hadn’t made a move to follow him, which was unsurprising. There was no point in the one face he would recognize tailing him if they had someone else on the street.
The car rolled slowly up to the end of Schlossstrasse and indicated a right turn. He watched it make the turn and drive away. There were two ways the car could play it-it could drop off another watcher once it was around the corner, allowing them to follow him from the front, or it could hope to pick him up again later and assume one nondescript sedan was much like another in this city of nondescript BMWs and Mercedes, Volvos and Saabs.
There was an element of risk in trying to drop back onto his tail that Konstantin himself would never have allowed if he had been running the operation, so he had to assume whoever his opposite number was, the man was every bit as methodical as he was. And that meant they had at least one more man on the street that he had missed.
Konstantin took his time. There was a green pissoir fifty feet further down the road. Berlin’s elaborate city crest was embossed on the swing door. He walked toward it, counting out his footsteps on the paving stones. Each step sounded crisp in the chilly air. Twenty feet away the reek of urine came his way as the wind picked up. It was one of a thousand unpleasant smells in the city. Some cities had a thousand stories, he thought, remembering the old TV show-Berlin had a thousand reeks. Konstantin grunted. He decided to relieve himself.
The pissoir was built in such a way that he could see over the top into the street as he urinated. It was a rather peculiar idea, very German. It did, however, give him a full minute to watch people, see who was moving, who was slowing down, and who the sausage eater was watching-because it wasn’t him. Konstantin tried to follow the direction of the man’s gaze without dribbling on his shoes.
The man seeme looking intently at Grey Metzger’s doorway.
That was when Konstantin saw the woman in the red dress-it looked like some sort of evening wear, beautifully cut around her full curves-walk out into the street. She was coming his way. He zipped up and timed his exit to meet her on the street as he stepped out of the green urinal.
She regarded him openly, her gaze drifting slowly from his head down to his feet and back again. Konstantin inclined his head slightly and gestured for her to pass. She did. She walked slowly. He followed her for six blocks, enjoying the luscious, ripe curve of her ass as the material clung to it. He allowed her to lead him another block before ending the game. She broke away, ostensibly drawn like a magpie to the bright, shiny glitter of jewels in a shop window, while he crossed the street. He didn’t wait for the lights. He had heard a second set of footsteps just out of rhythm with his own as he followed the woman in the red dress.
Just as he would have done in their place, they were leading him front and back. Shepherding him.
So, knowing what was happening, he decided there was nothing else to do than appreciate the view-there was something hypnotic about watching the gentle sway of her hips as she walked. That, Konstantin was sure, was the purpose of the red dress. It was the honey on the trap. As pleasing as the view was, it didn’t take his mind off the fact that he was being led like a lamb to the slaughter. Tailing front and back was professional. It took numbers and discipline and, given that the Berlin cell had already sacrificed at least seven from their ranks with the U-Bahn strike, the fact they had the manpower to spare on Metzger’s apartment was more than a little interesting to the Russian.
It wasn’t some random coincidence. There were no random coincidences in his world.
They had been watching for someone. Why? Well he could make an educated guess: it was down to Sorrow’s Bride. They had had the woman for at least a week, perhaps two, and no matter what she was, what her training had prepared her for, there was one basic truth to espionage Konstantin had brought with him over the walclass="underline" everybody talks in the end.
The films and books made it glamorous and painted portraits of the hero with the iron resolve and trembling lip who withstood any amount of pain to hold onto his secrets before eventually breaking free. That was all silver screen bullshit. Given time, everyone broke. Everyone talked.
So they knew who she was, who she worked for. They knew what she knew about them, and they had come to see who came looking for her. Again, it was exactly what he would have done. Konstantin had to admit a grudging amount of admiratn for these people. They were thorough, organized, thoughtful and disciplined. All traits he would have associated with professionals, not some home-grown terror cell based around a core of fanaticism. If he had been a gambling man, he would have put a substantial bet on them being ex-military.
What it came down to was this: Konstantin needed to know more about the woman in the painting. She was the key, but he had no idea to which lock.
He had his suspicions, but they were essentially groundless. This case of mistaken identity was only serving to reinforce them. They were looking for whoever came to claim the information on the thumb drive. Who would have known it was there? Her handler? If she was an agent, it made sense-but then why would an agent from one of the Secret Services have latched on to Grey Metzger? Until yesterday there had been nothing remotely interesting about the man.
While the woman disappeared into the antique jewelers, the second ghost set of steps followed him across the road.
Konstantin didn’t look over his shoulder, not even once.
He wanted to see how serious this person was; that meant changing the nature of the game.
He turned the corner and stopped dead in his tracks. He had fifteen steps on the man behind him. He pressed himself up against the wall, taking a second to calm himself, center his breathing and focus before exploding into action. He counted the steps out in his head, tensing.
As the man came around the corner Konstantin stepped into his path. Recognition flashed across the man’s eyes, followed a split second later by blinding pain. Konstantin moved instinctively. Violence was his trade. He knew how to hurt people. He stepped in close, getting right up in the man’s face, feinted as though to slap the man, drawing his eyes to the flurry of motion, and drove the heel of his shoe through the man’s knee hard enough to shatter the cap and tear the cartilage as he forced it to bend the wrong way. The man went down in the fetal position, clutching his ruined leg up to his chest and screaming.