He fought the impulse to say, "Shut up and mind your own business," and instead meekly said, "Don't worry, boss. Less than three minutes. We're fifty feet away, watching his every move."
"You're an overconfident idiot. Don't mess this up." With slightly more than two minutes left before the deadline expired, the lights suddenly went out in the restaurant. Like that, the room was pitched into darkness.
Nearly simultaneously, the kitchen door flew open and out marched a long line of waiters and waitresses, one after another, ten in all. The cute waitress with the impressive bosom headed the procession, proudly hauling a chocolate cake with ten lit birthday candles. The marching line was loudly slaughtering "Happy Birthday," in English polluted by thick Hungarian accents, and moving at a fast clip directly toward the table in the center of the room. Then they came to an abrupt stop, positioning themselves directly between Vladimir, Katya, and the table by the window where Alex and Elena were seated with Eugene.
The moment the throng was in place, stamping their feet and singing in a brash routine imported from an American restaurant chain, Alex leaped up from his chair, lifted the empty chair beside him, and hurled it with as much force as he could muster directly at the big picture window ten feet away. He had rehearsed this throw over and over in his mind. Over and over he told himself, ignore the pain from his dislocated shoulder, forget the severe burn on his chest. No matter how agonizing, put everything he had into this one chance. There wouldn't be another.
The moment the chair launched, he shut his eyes, held his breath, and prayed.
The chair flew through the air, and then, with a loud satisfying crash, the large plate-glass window shattered into a thousand shards and crumbled to the floor. Vladimir was still holding the satellite phone, still smarting from the conversation.
Katya had been eavesdropping. Her elbows were planted on the table, her head craned sideways in a wonderfully successful attempt to catch every word.
She loathed Vladimir and found huge enjoyment in overhearing the old man browbeat and humble him. She had no love for Golitsin either-a selfish, overbearing, snarling old tyrant she detested to her core. But she worked for him. She took his money and, without complaint, did whatever sordid work he asked of her. And why not? The money was damned good; actually it was merely adequate, but she wasn't about to complain. Two thousand a month in salary when thousands of KGB veterans were out on the street, wiping windshields of traffic-stalled cars and pleading for kopecks.
Plus he was cunning, corrupt, ambitious, and endlessly ruthless; in the bare-knuckle new Russia, with that resume, she was betting the old coot would shoot quickly to the top. There were worse wagons to hitch her horses to, she reasoned. Besides, her other options were few and not overly hopeful. She had spent twelve years doing dirty work for the KGB before the wall tumbled down. Sadly, her skillset had prepared her for only one thing.
By twenty-six, she had thirty kills on five continents. All clean hits, all professionally flawless. Now thirty-one, her once lustrous hair had been peroxided, bleached, dyed and redyed so many times it hung in listless strands. Her skin resembled a snare drum in need of a rigorous tightening. Long years killing under the hot African and Afghan sun had prematurely aged her. She still had an attractive face, one that bordered on beauty, except for a detached iciness that chased men off. She cared less. Her tastes ran more toward women than men anyway.
Besides, sex didn't interest her generally, and emotions even less.
Unfortunately, that arctic demeanor was exactly what attracted Vladimir, who over the past year had come on to her more than a few times. Like many men with bulletproof egos, beating around the bush wasn't his preferred style of seduction. He barged right into the sweet talk, long, swaggering soliloquies of what he'd like to do to her. Much of it sounded physically impossible; all of it sounded vividly repulsive.
Katya encouraged him in the strongest terms to get lost or, barring that, try performing the acts on himself.
One dark night, while they were staking out a target from a parked van, he gave up on the subtle approach. Without ado, he rabbit-punched her twice on the side of the head, clamped his hands around her throat, and tried to rape her.
She wasn't entirely surprised by his foreplay. The brawl was brief. No quarter was given. His balls screamed with pain for weeks afterward.
She didn't nurse a grudge. Vladimir was an animal. Naturally, his urges lingered closer to the surface than most. She simply hated him a little more passionately than before.
And thus, at that moment, while Golitsin upbraided Vladimir on the phone, she smiled and hung on every word. Way to go, old boy. Oh please, don't forget my favorite part-call him an idiot again.
And thus, at the very moment the lights were extinguished, they both were preoccupied with their own thoughts, off guard and flat-footed. One instant the restaurant was brightly lit and humming with small groups engaged in polite conversation; then, without warning, it went dark and the calamitous mob of waiters and waitresses were clustered in front of their table, a gaggle of people in white uniforms stomping their feet and howling that stupid ditty at the top of their lungs.
A long hesitation. Then both drew their pistols and leaped to their feet. It was already too late.
They heard the glass crash and stretched their necks to look over the choir. They began hopping up and down, feeling like idiots. But between the darkness and the wall of kitchen staff, they were completely blinded.
Vladimir, who prided himself on being a man of action, for once was at a loss, frozen. Katya reacted first. She raised her pistol and fired three shots into the ceiling, rapid-fire-boom, boom, boom. It was absolutely effective-and totally the wrong move. The first shot unleashed a wild fiasco; the next two wildly reinforced it.
Between the thunderous crash of the glass shattering and the upsetting flash and bang of the pistol shots in a dark chamber, the entire dining room collapsed into instant bedlam. Half the waiters and waitresses fell to the floor. The other half fled, screaming and hollering and clawing past one another in the general direction of the kitchen. Customers leaped to their feet, shoving over tables and chairs, banging against each other, racing for sanctuary wherever they could find it. Wails and shrieks and flailing bodies bounced around the room.
After an interminable thirty seconds, somebody flipped the lights back on. Vladimir and Katya stared wide-eyed at Alex's table. "They're gone," Katya screeched, and indeed, they were. Quite gone.
They were dumbfounded. They stood, mute, wide-eyed, gripping their pistols and gawking at the empty table. They took in the gaping hole that had replaced the picture window. They observed the heavy chair that hung on the window frame, dangling precariously. They didn't need to confer, didn't need to voice a single theory or weigh any half-baked suspicions. The facts were right before their eyes, unmistakable. They had underestimated Konevitch. A stupid amateur's mistake, and they had made it: plain and simple.
Konevitch had obviously confided to the waitress that Vladimir and/or Katya were old pals celebrating a birthday, and obviously he persuaded, or more likely bribed, her to have the lights shut off and put on a little show to distract them. Just as obviously, he had faked the severity of his wounds. That harsh limp, that shambling gait, that lame shoulder: nobody that horribly mangled could've tossed that heavy chair, much less disappeared with such speed through the window frame. But he and his wife had successfully bypassed the layers of security. They had escaped, and were out there, on the streets of Budapest.