“I would love one,” Felicity said, “but I’m still on London time, so I should call it a night.”
Stone turned to Dino. “It looks like it’s just you and me.”
Dino’s phone began to ring.
“Sorry, pal. Just you. It’s morning wherever Viv is, and she just woke up.” He accepted the call. “Good morning.”
As Dino headed off, Stone said to Felicity, “I’ll walk you up.”
When they reached her door, Felicity said, “I’d invite you in, but I’m afraid I don’t have the energy for anything extracurricular tonight.”
“I would have been unavailable to fulfill those desires, even if you had them,” he said.
“Are you hiding someone in your room I don’t know about?”
“Not at all, but someoneisjoining me tomorrow.”
“That sort of thing hasn’t stopped you in the past.”
“Perhaps I’m maturing.”
Felicity laughs. “Stone, please. Men stop maturing in their teens. But tell me, is the someone in question the lovely Tamlyn Thompson?”
“One and the same.”
“In that case, I forgive you.”
“You’re forgiving me fornotsleeping with you tonight when you already told me you weren’t going to?”
“Exactly.”
Chapter 8
A few hours earlier, ina hotel suite overlooking the Danube River in Budapest, Hungary.
Leonid Bronsky popped the cork on the bottle of Moët champagne and poured himself a glass.
On the TV, BBC International was continuing its coverage about the car bomb that had killed Dame Felicity Devonshire. The car bombing that he’d ordered.
When footage of the burning wreckage played, he raised his glass and toasted the screen.
Finally, the thorn in his side was dead.
It had been years in the making, starting all the way back when he had been London station chief for the SVR—Russia’s foreign intelligence arm.
At that time, one of his assets—a disillusioned minor British royal by the name of Wilfred Thomas—had turned the former deputy chief of MI6 into an assassin for Russia. Bronsky had anticipated great things from Brigadier Roger Fife-Simpson. The man had performed well on his first assignment but had failed when it came to eliminating his former boss at MI6.
What followed was a fiasco that saw Fife-Simpson and hiswife taking refuge at the Russian embassy and Thomas being captured by British Intelligence.
Soon after, the Fife-Simpsons were part of an asset swap between Russia and the U.K., in which three British citizens imprisoned in Russia were sent home, and the Fife-Simpsons were allowed to leave the embassy and travel to Moscow, where they were now living the high life. Bronsky had no idea what had happened to Thomas, as there had been no further word about his status—not that he cared much.
Because of Thomas’s incompetence, Bronsky’s bright career path had been completely derailed. Within a day, he’d been replaced as London station chief and recalled to Moscow, then shuffled between a series of low-level jobs that he’d come to believe were meant to bore him to death.
He knew the only way he would get back on track would be to prove his worth. And the way to accomplish that seemed obvious—finish the job Thomas and Fife-Simpson had failed to do: eliminate Dame Felicity Devonshire.
In the intervening years, as he toiled away at meaningless positions, he secretly built his own network of assets. A ring of spies within a ring of spies.
Wanting to avoid the mistakes of the past, he had been biding his time as he waited for the perfect opportunity to present itself. But when he found out that Dame Felicity was planning on retiring, he knew it was time to act.
