“Unless they’ve isolated Sokolov on a whole floor, or in somespecial security area,” Titov said. “It would be better if I made the reconnaissance. I have good ID, I really can pass as American.”
“Then I will leave it to you,” Abramova said. “We talk about it. I have no other ideas.”
• • •
Nikitin was stillin pain, though the drugs were helping, and the wound seemed to be healing. The pain was deep, and he had hand-sized bruises on his butt and leg, but they were turning yellow, which the Internet said was a good sign. Still, he wouldn’t be running or even walking any distance. He felt he could drive, since he had no problem sitting upright, and had been wounded in his left leg. If they were to try sniping Sokolov again, it would have to be from a car.
“I don’t believe they will give us another chance with the rifle,” Nikitin said. “Not unless I can get a platform across from the hospital and hit him through a window. But they’re not complete fools: if there was such a platform, they would be occupying it, and they would never open the curtains on the room.”
“Maybe you should check out, see if you can get home,” Titov said. “We could talk to Kuznetsov. If they could get Matvey out…”
Nikitin shook his head: “I can’t run, but with drugs, I can walk, if I have to. Even better tomorrow. I still have eyes and a telephone. I can drive. I’m not Kat, but I’m good enough.”
“That could all be useful,” Titov said. “Still, we have to take care. The Americans know from the video that you were wounded: they could be looking for a man who limps.”
They plucked at the possibility of entering the hospital on a reconnaissance, ate pizza and drank Dr Pepper, and at eleven o’clock,Abramova slipped out of Titov’s room and returned to her own, unseen in the night.
• • •
Abramova was thirty-six,unmarried, unattached, an attractive blonde who worked with two athletic, thirtyish men. Under normal circumstances, sex would raise its head, but that had been dealt with early in their relationship. She did not, and would not, sleep with either of the men on her team, nor with other operators, who, like Titov, were contracted by the Unit.
She’d had occasional sexual relationships in Moscow, mostly with men from the Russian State Agrarian University, where she was allowed to audit courses at the Institute of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture. She had nothing against sex, but didn’t find it compelling. The refusal to sleep with team members was a matter of good management. They got along on that basis.
She approached the work of her team as she would a puzzle, though it was much more interesting than a common puzzle, because the pieces were always shifting shape. Time, place, methods—they constantly moved. Violent death was always the final piece, and in itself, didn’t much affect her, as long as the puzzle was complete.
She didn’t believe that she was either a sociopath or a psychopath, she was simply a person with muted emotional reactions to things that caused great emotion in others. Things like danger, and death.
Nikitin, on the other hand, was clever, intelligent, often amusing, often charming. He liked women and was prepared to like Abramova until she backed him off. He was also a psychopath. If what he felt in killing wasn’t pleasure, it was something off in that direction—apparently, a kind of release. It seemed to Abramova that a long period without a kill built up a psychological pressure within him, and she suspected that when the job didn’t provide him with a target and a kill, he would find one on his own. A man to keep an eye on.
Orlov, however, was a self-effacing man, almost a nebbish, and brilliant in his ability to walk through the streets of even a small town without being particularly noticed or commented upon. He could follow a wary target a mile through Berlin, Amsterdam, or London without ever being seen, and could efficiently and precisely zero Nikitin to the target. He also had an instinctive sense of direction and a love of maps. He could navigate through the canyons of a major city after looking once at a satellite photo.
The team was very good at what they did, and they’d done it seventeen times, though never before in America.
• • •
Back in herroom after leaving Titov’s, Abramova took a shower—one of the things she liked best in America, the long hot showers in even routine accommodations—then lay on the bed and thought about a new approach to the Sokolov problem.
How do you get at a man concealed somewhere in a large building, not under his own name, with hospital staff alerted to inquiries, with possible expert surveillance by non-uniformed FBI agents, and with armed and well-trained gunmen covering the target?
Could somebody go in as a patient? It would have to be Titov, since Nikitin had a strong Russian accent; she also had an accent, and either she or Nikitin would set off alarms.
It was a puzzle.
And after a long review, she decided that the puzzle had no easy solution. It did have a solution, but one that she was almost afraid to suggest.
• • •
They left beforedawn the next morning, to mitigate the possibility of being seen and identified at the motel. They checked out one at a time, five minutes apart, and once gathered in the car, Titov drove, Abramova rode in the front passenger seat, and Nikitin lay in the back, out of sight.
Two hours to the Twin Cities. As Titov settled into the flow of traffic on the interstate, Abramova said, “I have been puzzling this situation, looking for an answer. I think Lev is correct. We will not get another chance with the rifle.”
Titov: “We give up and go home?”
“Not with the man watching. But, there is somebody close to Sokolov, who is on our side. Yes? I’m thinking we use this ChapStick.”
Titov grunted. “Ah. Then everything is out in the open. They might learn the identity of our agent.”
“Not our problem,” Abramova said. “We do a dead drop with the ChapStick, and then we’re out.”
