Dylan walks beside me through the Old Town Square, his hand resting casually on my lower back. To anyone watching, we're tourists. Freelance journalist and her photographer boyfriend, taking in the Christmas markets before they close for the season. The camera around his neck is real. The photos he's taking are real. What's hidden in the modified memory card is something else entirely.
"Three o'clock," he murmurs. "Gray coat, newspaper."
I don't look directly. Just shift my angle, pretend to admire the astronomical clock while my peripheral vision finds the target. Gray coat, folded newspaper, the universal signal of a man waiting for a contact. He's been in position for twenty minutes, which means whoever he's meeting is late.
"Committee or Kosygin?" I ask.
"Kosygin. I recognize him from Cross's files. Dmitri Petrov, mid-level logistics coordinator."
We've been in Prague for nine days. Nine days of surveillance, documentation, and careful mapping of the network Webb is building with his new Russian partners. The merger is real. Money flows through shell companies. Personnel rotate between safe houses. And the tension between the two organizations is palpable, even from a distance.
Webb's people don't trust Kosygin's people. Kosygin's people think Webb's operation is sloppy, compromised, too exposed after the recent revelations. They're working together because they need each other, but the alliance is fragile.
Which is exactly what we've been waiting for.
"There." Dylan's voice tightens. "Coming from the north side."
A woman approaches Petrov. Tall, blonde, moving with the confidence of someone who knows she's being watched and doesn't care. I recognize her too. Elena Gracheva, one of the Committee’s senior operatives. She was Morrison's before the transition, one of the true believers who stayed when others fled.
They exchange words I can't hear from this distance. Petrov hands over a slim envelope. Gracheva tucks it into her coat without checking the contents. Trust, or the appearance of it.
"Got it," Dylan says quietly. The camera clicks three times in rapid succession. "Time stamp, faces, the handoff. Kane will want to see this."
We've documented dozens of these exchanges. Built a map of who meets whom, where money changes hands, which safe houses serve which function. Intelligence that will feed prosecutions for years, if we can get it out of the country.
But intelligence isn't why Kane accelerated our timeline. Intelligence doesn't require the package Tommy built for us, the one currently hidden in the lining of my laptop bag.
"She's moving," I say. "East, toward the river."
We follow at a distance, two more tourists drifting through the crowd. Gracheva walks with purpose, checking her phone, completely unaware that the woman she dismissed as a journalist three days ago is tracking her every move.
I approached her at a café near the Committee's primary safe house, playing the eager reporter chasing rumors of Eastern European financial crime. She shut me down in thirty seconds flat, cold and professional, certain I was nobody worth worrying about.
She was wrong.
The safe house sits on a quiet street near the Vltava River. Three stories, unremarkable architecture, blending into its surroundings. Gracheva enters through the front door. We keep walking, circling the block, counting windows and exits.
"Security's light today," Dylan observes. "Two on the door, probably two more inside. They're getting comfortable."
"Comfortable makes mistakes."
We find a café with sightlines to the safe house and settle in for the wait. Coffee and pastries, watching the street while pretending to review photos on Dylan's camera. I open my laptop like I'm writing.
The file Tommy built sits in an encrypted partition, invisible unless you know exactly where to look. Financial records, communication intercepts, operational details. All of it real. All of it damaging. And all of it carefully curated to make Kosygin's organization look like they've been feeding information to Western intelligence for months.
The goal isn't to destroy the alliance. It's to poison it.No bullets, no bodies, I told Dylan when we planned this.Just information in the right place at the right time.
"Window, second floor," Dylan says. "Movement."
I glance up. Shadows behind curtains, figures moving. The safe house is active, which means our window is closing. Whatever we're going to do, we need to do it today.
"I'm going in," I say.
Dylan's jaw tightens, but he doesn't argue. We've discussed this. The plan requires someone inside, someone who can plant the file where it will be found by the right people. Someone who looks harmless.
"Fifteen minutes," he says. "Then I'm coming after you."
"Twenty. I need time to find the right terminal."
