Zachek, clearly out of ideas, tried to kick Boris with one of his steel-soled shoes, but Karpov danced out of the way. “Uh-uh,” he said, delivering a mighty slap to the back of Zachek’s head. “Clearly, you need some lessons in how to behave.”

Zachek had given up trying to extricate himself from Karpov’s grip and was wiping the blood off his face. He had a split upper lip and the flesh over his right eye was puffed up, rapidly turning a deep purple-blue.

Boris shook him until his teeth rattled. “Any more of your SVR pals around?”

Zachek shook his head.

“Answer me when I speak to you!” he ordered.

“There… was just the three of us.”

“You figured that was more than enough to handle an old man like me, right, little prick? Don’t shake your head, I know exactly what’s in that pea brain of yours.”

“You… you’ve got it all wrong. Oh shit.” Zachek snorted a clot of blood out of his nose. It stuck on the wall in the middle of the widening blot.

“Okay, little prick, tell me how I’m wrong.” He shoved the Tokarev’s muzzle into the soft flesh where Zachek’s lower jaw met his neck. “But if I don’t like your answer—boom!”

“I… I need to sit down.” Zachek was hyperventilating. Beneath the smears of blood, his face looked pale.

Boris dragged him back down the alley, all the way to the other end, where a number of wooden crates that smelled of fresh oranges were stacked. Zachek collapsed gratefully onto one and sat slumped over, his hands crossed over his head, as if he was expecting Boris to beat him senseless.

There was less vehicular traffic beyond this end of the alley, but the foot traffic was heavy. Luckily, it was rush hour. Everyone was hurrying home, lost in their own thoughts; no one so much as glanced into the alley. Nevertheless, Boris didn’t want to stay there any longer than he had to.

“Pull yourself together, Zachek, and tell me what you have to say.”

Zachek gave a little shudder, pulled his stained cashmere coat more tightly around himself, and said, “You think we set that ambush for you and the woman.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know who she was.”

“The fact is I don’t.” Zachek’s ashen face looked like a battlefield. The man was spent. “I didn’t come here following you. I didn’t set that ambush, that’s what I was trying to tell you in the crowd back there.”

Boris remembered Zachek shouting something at him, but in the roar of the mob and the screams of police sirens, he hadn’t been able to hear a word.

“You’re making no sense,” Boris said. “You have precisely ten seconds to rectify that.”

Zachek flinched. “Beria sent me here to keep an eye on Cherkesov.”

All the blood drained out of Boris’s face. “Viktor is here?”

Zachek nodded. “I had no knowledge of you being in Munich until I saw you in the street. Believe me, I was as shocked to see you as you were to see me.”

“I don’t believe you,” Boris said.

Zachek shrugged. “So, what can I expect?”

“Give me a reason.”

Zachek’s nose had begun to bleed and he tipped his head back. “I can get you an interview inside the Mosque.”

“Tell me.”

Zachek closed his eyes. “As easy as that? No, I don’t think so. I want your word that I get out of this alive.”

Boris watched Zachek’s body language, which he had found a virtually foolproof method of discovering whether or not a person was lying.

“The only way you get out of this alley alive is if you become my eyes and ears in SVR.”

“You want me to spy on Beria? If he finds out he’ll kill me.”

Boris shrugged. “Make sure he doesn’t find out. For a smart little prick like you that shouldn’t be difficult.”

“You don’t know Beria,” Zachek said sourly.

Boris grinned. “That’s why I have you.”

Zachek looked up at him as he licked his bruised and swollen lips. His right eye was almost completely closed. Boris crossed his arms over his barrel chest. “It seems, little prick, that we need each other.”

Zachek rested his head against the building wall. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call me that.”

“I’d appreciate some answers. Are you in or out?”

Zachek took a shuddering breath. “It looks as if you’ll be mentoring me, after all.”

Boris grunted. “If you didn’t set the ambush, who did?”

“Who knew you were coming to Munich?”

“No one.”

“Then ‘no one’ set the ambush.” Zachek’s lips twitched in a parody of a smile. “But of course, that’s not possible.”

Of course it isn’t, Boris thought. All at once he had trouble breathing.

Zachek must have seen the change on his face because he said, “Life’s more complicated than you thought, eh, General?”

This time, could the little prick be right? Boris wondered. But it’s impossible. Absolutely unthinkable. Because there was only one other person who knew he was going to Munich: his old and trusted friend Ivan Volkin.

21

CHRISTOPHER HENDRICKS FOUND any face-to-face with M. Errol Danziger thoroughly unpleasant, but he had every confidence that this time would be different.

Lieutenant R. Simmons Reade, Danziger’s sycophantic pilot fish, appeared first. He was a thin, weasel-eyed individual with a contemptuous demeanor and the manners of a demonic marine drill sergeant. The two spent so much time together that, behind their backs, they were known as Edgar and Clyde, a cutting reference to J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson, the Beltway’s most infamous closeted gays.

Danziger looked the part. He was short and, unlike his days in the field, was running to fat around his middle, a sure sign that he liked his steaks, fries, and bourbon too much. He had a head like a football and a personality to match: tough, a will to get over the goal line, and always the possibility of fumbling short of the first down. The problem lay in his constant promotions. He had been deadly in wet work, near brilliant as the NSA’s deputy director of Signals Intelligence for Analysis and Production, but a total bust as the director of Central Intelligence. He had no sense of history, didn’t know how CI worked, and, worst of all, didn’t care. The result was akin to trying to jam a dowel into a square hole. It wasn’t working. The reality, however, had done nothing to stop Danziger’s headlong reaving of the hallowed halls of CI.

“Welcome to the director’s suite at CI,” Lieutenant Reade said with all the officiousness of a palace chancellor. “Take a pew.”

Hendricks looked around Danziger’s vast suite and wondered what he did with all the room. Bowl? Hold archery contests? Shoot his Red Ryder BB gun?

Hendricks smiled without an ounce of warmth. “Where’s your shark, Reade?”

Reade blinked. “Beg pardon, sir?”

Hendricks swept the words away with the back of his hand. “Never mind.”

He chose the chair that Danziger had sat in the last time they’d had a meeting here.

Reade took a military step toward him. “Uhm, that’s the director’s chair.”

Hendricks sat down, working his buttocks into the cushion. “Not today.”

Reade, face darkened, was about to say something more when his master stepped into the room. Danziger wore a fashionable pin-striped suit, a blue shirt with unfashionable white collar and cuffs, and a striped regimental tie. A tiny enamel American flag was pinned to his lapel. To his credit, his pause at seeing where Hendricks had seated himself was minuscule. Still, Hendricks didn’t miss it.

Forced into the facing chair, he made a project of lifting the fabric of his trousers over his knees, then shooting his cuffs, before he uttered one word.

“It’s good to see you here, Mr. Secretary,” he said with a closed face. “To what do I owe this honor?”

But of course he knew, Hendricks thought. He had gone crying to his general buddies at the Pentagon, who had petitioned the president. Who’s your mommy, Danziger? he thought.