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“We had an informant in Dobrev’s syndicate. He’s gone silent since the bombing in Minsk.”
“He stopped communicating?” Alex asked. “Why?”
“We don’t know.” Pressed lips went thin, displaying Mrs. Jones’ frustration with the situation. “Things on the ground are tense. Our last message went unread, but our intel says he’s still operational.”
Unless the intel was wrong, and the informant had taken to his heels and disappeared. Not uncommon when a situation was as volatile as this. “He thought there was too much risk,” Alex concluded.
“Precisely. But we can’t afford to lose out on what he knows. We need him to give us more: the leadership structure, what they’ve planned next.”
Nothing good, that was certain. The name Dobrev was appearing ever-frequently in underground networks these days. If MI6 could rely on their information—if their informant could still be bought off and brought in—then Special Operations had their next priority in sight.
“You want me to convince him to come in?”
“We have a joint meeting with DGSE and BND in Berlin next week. I’d like to meet with him before then. There’s no neutral territory with him, I’m afraid, but if I can borrow space in the German’s Nuremberg office before the meeting he might agree to our terms.”
Alex couldn’t place when he had begun to grow suspicious. There were plenty of reasons why an informant might be reluctant to meet. Yet the picture taking shape in his mind fit a rather precise profile. One of a sort of man who might be unwelcome in enough NATO countries for Mrs. Jones to make do with an unbalanced meeting point.
One where a promising incentive to cooperate might not be enough to sway him back to their side.
“And if he doesn’t?”
The air in her office smelled of flat nothing overlain with spearmint, yet Mrs. Jones wrinkled her nose. “We know your reputation.You'll manage.”
After two days of waiting, six men to the two cramped rooms of the motel suite, Alex was ready either to quit, fake an injury and see himself off the mission, or check himself into an inpatient facility for much needed peace and quiet. And the chance to use a shower which still had warm water and eat a meal beyond microwaveable ramen noodles.
They might not have much longer to wait. Possibly he would manage to complete the mission with his mind intact.
If he didn’t, there was always the door. A lifetime of wilderness survival and a fierce streak of self-reliance meant he’d make it home unscathed.
Of course, if he truly lost his temper, he could always shoot one of the others as he left.
And who knew. After dealing with Snake’s off-tone humming for the past few days, his target might not even be Yassen.
“Yassen Gregorovich is your fucking informant?” Wolf had sworn when he’d first picked up the briefing.
“Not my informant. And not my idea.” Alex had been none-too-pleased to learn the informant’s identity himself. It connected the dots, sure; Yassen was exactly the sort of self-interested individual to sell out his boss in return for what he wanted out of Special Operations. He was also the sort of person who’d willingly work for a man like Dobrev to begin with.
Unfortunately, Yassen had about a decade and a half of field experience on Alex’s own, and even compared to the combined military training of those in the SAS squad who would be going with Alex as “security reinforcement”, few could deny Yassen’s edge. If Yassen no longer meant to honor his deal with MI6, he wouldn’t. Britain’s elite forces might corner him, but how would they sneak him out of the country against his will and alive?
Mrs. Jones would have considered that equation, he was sure, before landing on her regular solution in the ‘dealings with Yassen’ problem—send Alex.
Alex had been positive it wouldn’t work.
Until it had, and Yassen agreed to head to Nuremberg with them even before Alex could start in with the threats for noncompliance.
Unkindly, Alex wouldn’t have minded time to dig into his list a little. He’d had quite a few stored in the bank after their last run-in.
Practically, Alex hoped the six of them would make it out of each other’s companies alive.
They’d checked into the sole motel by the rural airstrip and hunkered down. Snake had left once for a brief grocery run. Otherwise, they were crowded in the space, a man always on guard duty at the door, as they waited for their improvised exit plan to come through.
Road complications had blocked their access to the German military transport which had been waiting across the border; in lieu of trekking through the Carpathian Mountains, raising questions as they went, they were holed up while MI6 arranged cover for a transport plane to fly in and pick them up.
Holed up, walled in, and low on entertainment and sleep. Rotating sleep schedules so at least three of them always had eyes on their asset.
Asset. Not prisoner. Technically. Yassen was cooperating.
And in case Yassen reconsidered, he had a retinue of five armed officers to convince him otherwise.
Waiting for the inevitable showdown had been the only thing keeping Alex awake during his first shift on guard duty. He’d even been looking forward to it, in a way—waiting for the moment Yassen realized they were more threat than he’d reckoned on, that he was heading to Germany for a meeting with Mrs. Jones regardless of how he felt about the matter. The annoyance in Yassen’s eyes wouldn’t be half of the payback Alex deserved—it had taken most of a month for his bruising from their fight on the railcar to heal.
Alex had paced all through their first night at the motel, waiting.
And waiting.
The inevitable still hadn’t gone down.
Contrary to expectations and in spite of every single relevant fact about Yassen Gregorovich which must have been included in their briefing, the four-man SAS squad was handling their close proximity to the enemy as a matter of due course. They weren’t his number one fans, sure. But they’d made their stance clear: so long as Yassen cooperated with their goal, things could remain civil.
“He worked for Scorpia for fourteen years,” Alex had found himself hissing toward Eagle’s general direction after the man had offered Yassen something to drink.
“Fifteen,” Yassen had corrected, choosing a flavor from the basket of complimentary teas as he spoke.
It was a miracle Alex hadn’t left then.
He managed to stomach the SAS men and Yassen trading tips about injury management solely through the power of will and concentrated naps.
This most recent turn in the conversation, though? Alex had dealt with enough.
“We’re giving you a secured guard out of the country,” Alex said, imagining himself someplace calmer, with reasonable people. In a lecture about thermo-dynamics, for example. Or practicing bomb defusal with trained monkeys. “You don’t get to complain the accommodations aren’t five stars.”
“Or one star,” Yassen said. He surveyed the dust on the windowsill critically.
“You don’t get to complain,” Alex said again. This time more slowly. Not because Yassen couldn’t understand, but because Alex needed to calm down before Yassen got the reaction he was looking for. Two days of close quarters with the enemy would wear on anyone. Alex had been done by the end of hour four.
“Relax, Cub,” Wolf said. “It’s fine.”
“I wouldn’t mind better rooms myself,” Snake yawned from the adjacent room. Technically, he was off-guard at the moment. He was laying on one of the suite’s two single beds, trying to sleep.
Failing to sleep, Alex thought sorely. “You aren’t supposed to agree with the enemy.”
“He has a good point,” Trout pointed out.
“You want to bring the complaint to the boss, go ahead,” Alex said shortly. As long as he wasn’t dragged into the wreckage.
Trout dismissed the idea. “Of course not. But you don’t need to like the man to think the room could use maintenance.”
“Six people need more space than this,” Yassen said. “And more than two beds.”
Alex felt the familiar weight of the holster on his hip. He didn’t reach for it. He tipped his head back against the headrest of the aged recliner he was sitting in. “They don’t,” he said, “because they need to stay up and watch you.”
“You don’t trust me?” Yassen asked, as if he were merely curious.
Alex didn’t have to look at Yassen to see the amused glint in his eyes.
“Nope,” he said, refusing eye contact. “Not at all.” Which wasn’t the complete truth. But right now, figuratively locked in a room by circumstance, it felt complete enough to pass muster.
Anyway. He was a spy. Wolf and his men were SAS. They didn’t survive by trusting hostile agents.
Snake sucked in a whistling breath which could be heard clearly from Alex’s seat in the next room.
“We don’t need to trust each other,” Wolf interjected. “Just get to our destination.”
“And when will your air support be arriving again?” Yassen asked.
He knew they didn’t know. Wolf had decided not to bother keeping secrets from their asset-not-prisoner; even if they’d wanted to plan covertly, they didn’t have the space.
Alex adjusted his spot in his seat. He rolled his gaze to where Yassen sat, seemingly content, against the wall on the mottled carpet. “I don’t understand what you’re getting out of this.”
“Immunity from the Ukrainian government?” Yassen asked. He stretched himself out against the wall lazily, rolling his shoulders into a comfortable recline.
Alex wasn’t fooled by the carefree act. Yassen had slept in hour-long increments interrupted by watchful periods of wakefulness since giving himself up. He had been watching the SAS men as closely as they’d been watching him.
More than them, he’d been watching Alex.
“You’re lying.” Yassen didn’t care about immunity, even assuming it was something MI6 could give. Plenty of countries would let Yassen live in them without accosting him. Plenty wouldn’t, yet Yassen managed to end up in them often enough he evidently didn’t fear prosecution.
“I have my reasons.”
Eagle, an elbow on the desk in front of him, pretended to study his road map of the region. Wolf wasn’t pretending any distraction. He was frowning steadily at Alex, but he was listening in.
“You’re going to give MI6 the truth?” Alex asked. “You’ll tell them about Dobrek’s plans and it will all be exactly as you say?”
“You’re calling me a false actor,” Yassen observed.
“I’m asking if you are.”
Yassen considered, then stood, uncrossing his legs and brushing his jeans free of dirt from the carpet as he did. “You can trust my information.”
Trout leaned against the door, his back pressed against it. Eagle put down the road map. They made no secret that they were watching Yassen.
“Just not you,” Alex said.
He had subconsciously leaned forward, he noticed, tracking Yassen’s movements himself.
Yassen leaned against the wall himself, indifferent to the attention he faced. “Your boss seems to trust me.”
“Cub,” Wolf said. He gave Alex a warning glance. “We don’t need to evaluate anything here.”
That Wolf could lean on his relationships as a peace-keeping skill revealed how he had matured with command.
It also revealed the inherent power-differential age still played in their relationship. With any other operative, Wolf would have understood the leadership structure differently. Another agent from Special Operations would automatically have been seen as the man in charge. Wolf would have understood that if that agent needled and prodded at their asset, it was for a reason.
Wolf respected Alex.
He also saw an agent roughly a decade his junior, an agent he had first met when Alex was a child young enough for the codename Cub. A boy who was in Wolf’s charge, not the other way around.
And Yassen saw it too.
“Listen to him, Alex,” Yassen said. With damning praise, he continued, “Wolf here understands orders.”
Wolf’s head snapped to Yassen. “That’s enough out of you as well.”
Alex sank back into the chair. He didn’t say, I told you he’s not our friend. Or we don’t need to play nice. Instead, “He’s just trying to get a rise.” Don’t let him.
“Oh, no need for that.” Yassen glanced around, turning as he did so, stopping with his attention on Trout at the door. “We can get along just this well until you take me across the border to speak to your people. What would I do instead?”
There was no threat in Yassen’s voice.
There was an incredible amount of threat in his words.
With a sense of inevitability, Alex waited for the drop.
“You tell me,” Wolf said. He spoke with a deliberate cadence which fooled none of them, Alex knew, least of all Yassen. “What would you do instead?”
“You aren’t armed,” Eagle pointed out, from where he sat at the desk.
His hand had gone to his waist.
He, similar to the other men of K-Unit, was.
“We outnumber you,” Wolf detailed.
“And we will be moving from here,” Yassen observed, “to the airfield across the road. In public. In a country with weighted objections to NATO’s history of foreign interference.”
“Will you stop?” Alex asked.
It was wishful thinking. Yassen wouldn’t.
Yassen smiled down at him. “You have quite a team here, Alex. How well do you think they would fare against someone who does not want to be taken?”
“I think they’d fare better than the unarmed man who doesn't have a team.”
Yassen looked critically at Eagle, the metal of his weapon now in view. “How long since your leg healed?”
With a moment of insight, Alex realized what Yassen had noticed. Eagle had acquired a slight limp since the last time he’d worked with Alex; in the recent past, some form of harm had injured his left leg.
“And you,” Yassen directed to Snake, who was staring in from bed, making no pretense of attempting to sleep now. “Did they call you Snake because of your vision? It’s not so good as it was once, perhaps.”
Also true. Alex had noticed Snake fumble with their inventory several times. He hadn’t connected the dots.
“It would take a moment to wrong-foot you,” Yassen said to Trout. “You favor your right. The knife at your wrist would be easy to take.”
As easy as Trout’s neck would be to slit.
Laconically, Yassen swiveled his attention to Wolf.
“And me?” Wolf asked.
His voice was as threat-free as Yassen’s. They were just making conversation.
Until they weren’t.
Yassen shrugged. “Maybe I should leave some things a surprise?”
“Maybe so,” Wolf said.
“I don’t think it would take long,” Yassen said. “If I didn’t want to join when you leave.” In the dead silence which followed, he shrugged. “But that is a hypothetical.”
“Of course,” Wolf echoed. “A hypothetical.”
Judging by the poised still in the room, it was less of one than their words pretended.
Snake cautiously rolled onto his side.
Trout, too, had reached for a weapon—the aforementioned knife above his left wrist.
Fine.
Alex would play peacemaker.
It was why Mrs. Jones had sent him, after all.
“You know,” Alex said, “That’s not a very good hypothetical.”
Two pairs of eyes, Yassen and Wolf, considered him slowly.
“You forgot someone.” Alex raised his eyebrows in a challenge, waiting for Yassen’s reply. Or for one of the SAS men to tell him off.
No one did.
“Well.” Yassen turned his hands over, in a gesture of false pity. “You are not a very good shooter when it comes to live targets, are you?”
On the other side of the room from Yassen, a minute wince crossed Wolf’s expression.
Alex, on the contrary, could have scoffed. If that was what Yassen thought Alex’s weakness was, Alex wouldn’t disabuse him.
“Is that all?” Alex asked.
Wolf was too slow to hide his sympathy. He, clearly, thought valuing the sanctity of human life was a far worse weakness than Alex.
“One of them,” Yassen agreed.
“Good for me then that my orders are to bring you in alive.” Alex felt the frustration vent out of him in the form of a concentrated, calculated smile. “So. Why don’t you play the good, cooperative asset before you discover just how strong my aim is when I’m taking out a knee?”
He was lying.
Probably.
But in the ensuing pause it became increasingly clear Alex may have channeled his frustration into a finer spear-point than he realized.
Wolf was still.
Snake had gotten out of bed entirely.
Eagle and Trout had made eye contact with the other, uncertain on what to do.
And Yassen had the exact twinkle in his eye Alex had tried to avoid earlier.
“Cub,” Snake said, “Do you want to come take a breather?”
“No,” Alex said. He glared at Yassen. “I want you to stop pestering.”
Yassen smiled. Then, with a chuckle, he resumed his earlier position, sitting against the wall.
Trout cleared his throat.
Wolf was frowning at him. “They didn’t teach me that strategy for de-escalation,” he said. “Is that a secret agent special?”
Alex couldn’t answer. A complicated emotion was taut in his throat. Yassen was still watching him, amused.
Sure, Wolf, he couldn't say. It’s a Double O Something trick. Threaten the guy you’re dealing with until he’s laughing so hard he stops pushing.
He wanted to claim it was more than that. He did. But deep down, Alex suspected there wasn’t. Yassen had been pushing, meanly, but he hadn’t meant to do anything. Raise some hackles, that was all. Put his guard on a minor edge. If he’d meant anything, Alex’s words wouldn’t have stopped it.
Especially since Yassen knew the truth. Alex wouldn’t shoot Yassen. Not even in the knee. It was as improbable as Yassen shooting him.
Why else would he have laughed?
Alex wouldn’t have believed him, either.