Chapter Nine
By late evening, we were ready. The preliminaries had gone perfectly. Natalie was still the best at legerdemain, so she was the one who tipped a bottle of eye drops into the bodyguard’s tea. It’s a common misconception that eye drops cause diarrhea, but tetrahydrozoline generally doesn’t upset the stomach—it goes straight for the heart. First, the rhythm changes. A steady, regular beat will start to thrum erratically. Then the blood pressure drops, and sleepiness sets in. That’s the sweet spot. Too much in the system and you get breathing difficulties, and the last thing we wanted was a bodyguard wheezing his way into the infirmary. Tetrahydrozoline is unpredictable as a means of inducing cardiac arrest, but as a makeshift sedative, it’s cheap, easy, and generally effective. In a pinch, I’ve used it to take the wind out of a target’s sails before getting down to business. A mark is less likely to fight back when they’re half-conscious. Natalie will argue that Rohypnol is far more reliable, but she’d used the last of her supply on a final job in Marrakech and hadn’t restocked. She’s also usually packing molly, a joint or two, and some industrial-grade accelerants in case she needs to burn something down, but then she was a Girl Scout and I suppose that kind of preparedness training sticks with you. In any case, her fanny pack didn’t have anything we needed, so we ended up going with eye drops from the ship’s gift shop, a more discreet option than a vial of GHB anyway.
I could never admit this to anyone else, but I actually like it when a job goes slightly wrong. There’s something exhilarating about walking that razor’s edge between success and complete failure and then sticking the landing in spite of the odds. In this case, it meant dealing with the security cameras and coming face-to-face with Lazarov. But security cameras are not as foolproof as everybody thinks, mostly because cameras are only half of the equation—the guards that monitor them are the other half. Every image has to be monitored, and an absent or inattentive guard is just as bad as not having a camera at all. Worse, actually, because many people rely too much on them instead of investing in better training for their guards. Movies love to show people hacking into security systems, but that’s like using a sledgehammer to hang a picture nail—too much trouble and potentially disastrous. Most systems have an alert built in to flag somebody trying to gain access through a back door, and even if you manage to get the tech right, there’s no guarantee it won’t be traced. Far better and much easier to take care of the human element instead. Well-trained observers can penetrate the best disguises, but only if they know they should be looking in that direction. The trick is to get them to look past you. Hide in plain sight and you’ll never be seen.
From across the Chart Room, I monitored the bodyguard’s condition. He fought the sleepiness hard, pulling himself up with a jerk each time he seemed about to nod off. When his body language indicated he was about to get up, I opened the latest copy of Harper’s , snapping it slightly. That was the signal for Mary Alice to totter by, stumbling slightly against him as he got to his feet. Under other circumstances, he wouldn’t have even felt it. She would have gently bounced off him. But in his current state, he swayed, putting out his hands and grasping Mary Alice’s shoulders. She gave a merry little laugh as they untangled themselves, chattering brightly, and unless you were watching carefully, you’d never have seen two fingers dip into his pocket and retrieve his key cards. We figured he’d have two—his own and Pasha’s. Rich people are used to people coming and going all the time, and the very last thing they want to do is keep getting up to open doors for their own staff. We needed only Pasha’s key, but there was no way to tell without looking at the room number to see which was which. The hardest part of Mary Alice’s job was purloining the keys, choosing Pasha’s, and slipping the other back into the bodyguard’s pocket. We needed to avoid the bodyguard figuring out he’d lost both keys and heading to the purser to have them reissued.
But Mary Alice was a pro. She chattered a moment longer, just enough for her to dart a look at the keys, then slide the extra key into the bodyguard’s jacket. The bodyguard, clearly woozy, flopped back into his seat and was staring into the middle distance with a goofy grin on his face. Mary Alice shuffled on to the next seating area, settling herself into an armchair and taking out her knitting. I got up, collecting my tote, and walked in her direction. Just before I reached her, she dropped a ball of yarn. I picked it up and returned it with a smile, pocketing the key card she’d tucked inside. Maneuvers like that are a ballet of sorts, each of us knowing exactly where the others will be and how they will move. With the key in my pocket, I strolled from the room. The bodyguard didn’t register me at all.
As soon as I left the Chart Room, I picked up my pace. I was on deck three and I had to get myself up six levels as quickly as possible without making it seem like I was in a hurry. I was also somewhere midship with Lazarov’s suite at the very back of the liner. I jumped into an elevator and rode up to deck eight, hopping out long enough to head down the long, narrow central corridor. Across the back of the ship, the Verandah restaurant overlooked the pool terrace, but just before this was a public ladies’ room. The vanity area was empty, and I locked myself into a cubicle. I was already wearing black trousers and flats with a sharply tailored white shirt. I exchanged my glittery red cardigan for a cutaway white jacket—a piece of the cabin staff uniform Mary Alice had lifted during a lucky trip to the laundry. Helen had sacrificed a black silk scarf to make a bow tie, and with the addition of a dark wig pulled into a neat ponytail, I looked the part. I added a pair of nondescript tortoiseshell readers from the gift shop and headed out.
Natalie met me in the lift with a tote of her own—this one stuffed with pillows. I pulled them out and handed over my bag for safekeeping. She had already hit the buttons for decks nine and ten and when we stopped at nine, I got out alone, holding the pillows up on my shoulder to obscure my face from the cameras. To anybody watching, I looked like any other room attendant delivering an order from the pillow menu. I passed two doors before I reached Lazarov’s, pausing to tap discreetly. I waited, then swiped the key card to enter.
I stopped inside the door, listening and running a mental inventory of the whereabouts of all the principal players. Helen was surveilling Lazarov as he took his after-dinner drink in the Commodore Club. It was on the same deck as his cabin but the opposite end of the ship. The bodyguard was either still dozing in the Chart Room or had stumbled off to the bed in his sad little cabin on deck two. Either way, Mary Alice would keep an eye on him until she had the all clear. Natalie was hiding out in the ladies’ room on deck ten with my bag. Here, Lazarov’s suite was quiet, the hum of the engines far below barely detectible. The wi-fi on board was crap, but I’d managed to pull up full floor plans of the suite as well as a video tour on YouTube thanks to CruiseLuvr2251. I’d studied it until I knew the layout so well, I could have made my way around in the dark. Everything in the suite was exactly where I expected. Just inside the main door was a narrow hallway with a shower room on one side and a small kitchenette on the other. It was really more of a glorified wet bar, but Lazarov’s butler kept it stocked with all kinds of treats, I noticed. Fruit baskets, packets of Fortnum the largest suites had their own attendant, which was good news for me. The last thing I needed was to be spotted by the guy who had unpacked my underwear and carried in my morning tea.
The butler scooped up the discarded clothes. “I will have these laundered directly. Is there anything else, Mr. Lazarov?”
Lazarov murmured something and waved his hand.
The butler exited with the armful of clothes. I slowly counted to five hundred in English. By the time I repeated the exercise in Arabic, I figured Lazarov was probably starting to prune and the coast was clear. I slipped out of the shower room, moving silently towards the tub. I already had the plastic bag in hand. I’d asked Helen for a big one, but she’d had a better idea. She’d bought an assortment of things from the shops, asking for each to be put into a different-sized bag so I’d have several to choose from. You don’t want one too small, obviously. The head has to fit inside neatly with plenty of extra to go around the neck. But you don’t want one that’s too big either. All that plastic just gets in the way and you can’t even recycle it when you’re done.
Lazarov had just taken a sip of his tea and was moving to set the cup into the saucer when I sprang, dropping the bag over his head and twisting it tightly. His hands came up but I dodged them, pulling the bag tighter still. His feet scrabbled on the oil-slicked tub, sliding uselessly under him. It takes only ten seconds to choke a person into unconsciousness, but as soon as you let go, the airflow is restored. Then they’ll pop right back into consciousness, only now they’re good and pissed and surging with adrenaline. The trick to preventing that is to put a little extra pressure on the carotid arteries, ensuring a nice, deep blackout. If your goal is to kill them, then you just keep pressing for a good three minutes which is why I make a point of hitting arm day hard at the gym. It takes a lot more time and effort than you’d think to do it right.
But I wasn’t out to suffocate Lazarov—just to incapacitate him. I only had to hold on for about twenty seconds before he was properly blacked out. He’d stopped struggling after eight; I hung on for the other twelve to make sure he wasn’t playing possum. But his limbs were limp, his neck soft as his head lolled to the side like a baby’s. The bubbles weren’t doing much to preserve his modesty, so I scooped a little foam over his groin and finished the job.
First, I slipped off the plastic bag and stuck it into my pocket. Then I pushed him gently under the water and kept my hand resting on top of his head. Slow bubbles rose to the surface for a few minutes, then gradually stopped. I put a hand beneath the water, feeling for his carotid. There was no pulse, and even if he’d been able to fake that, his bowels suddenly relaxed with a gurgle and I yanked my hand away. I stood back to study the scene. It was supposed to look like Lazarov had suffered a massive heart attack and drowned after losing consciousness. The teacup had been a casualty of the struggle, shattering on the floor, but it was reasonable that a man feeling a coronary coming on could have flailed a bit. That could account for the small amount of water that had sloshed onto the floor as well, so I didn’t bother to mop up. There were no marks on his neck. I’d removed the plastic bag before I’d broken any blood vessels. I had worried a bit about that because the last thing I wanted was to leave ligature marks but he was clean.
All in all, it had gone well and the scene looked plausible, I decided. And Pasha Lazarov was as dead as he was going to get. I stepped into Lazarov’s bedroom to collect my extra pillows. I was halfway out the door when I noticed it. On his bedside table was a pocket diary—navy crocodile with his initials stamped in silver. I flicked through it quickly. The pages were pale blue, thin, and watermarked, each corner perforated to keep track of the current week. The days at sea were marked with a series of simple slashes, but the pages before that were crammed with entries. They were jotted in a tiny, cramped hand, a mixture of English and Bulgarian, not a proper cipher, but the sort of mishmash you write in when you’re bilingual. One line featured a string of numbers that looked interesting, but before I could make any sense of it, I heard a noise from downstairs. The butler. Again . There was a soft susurration of footsteps on carpet and I realized he was climbing the stairs. Turndown service, no doubt. In about five seconds he’d be up the stairs and cutting off my means of exit. I didn’t plan what happened next. Sometimes instinct just takes over and you find yourself acting without thinking about it. I closed the diary and stuffed it into my pocket, grabbing the extra pillows off the foot of the bed as I heard the butler coming closer. I scuttled back through the dressing area and into the shower room. On the other side of the shower room was the back door of the suite, leading directly to deck ten. I held the pillows at shoulder height again as I slipped out the door. There was no way to lock it behind me. The butler might notice the unlocked door—the only sign of my presence I’d left behind—but then again, he might not. And even if he did, there was nothing to connect that with Lazarov’s seemingly natural death.
Except that his pocket diary was now missing , I realized. I paused, thinking fast. Lazarov was meant to have died of natural causes which meant all of his possessions should be accounted for. Under normal circumstances, there wouldn’t be an inventory made of his things, but Lazarov was the richest, most important passenger on board. To cover their own asses, the cruise line would probably make a detailed list of everything they packed up. And if they didn’t, the bodyguard sure as hell would.
A list that would go where? Who was Pasha Lazarov’s next of kin? I flicked back through the mental dossier I carried around on him. The only relative left was Aunt Evgenia, and she was ancient, living in an old folks’ home in Switzerland. I didn’t expect she’d be sharp enough to notice a missing diary, and even if she were, the omission would probably be chalked up to confusion in the wake of Pasha’s death. Maybe the bodyguard would even get the blame. It was fine.
A little flicker of guilt tickled the back of my neck. I was slipping. Unless Provenance had made a direct request for retrieval, taking anything from a mission was completely forbidden. We didn’t kill outside our briefs and we definitely didn’t keep trophies. We never took anything from marks, not even a breath mint. It was beneath us, the sort of opportunistic profiteering a common hit man might engage in. We were better than that.
It was almost as bad as killing the wrong mark . I shoved the memory of Chicago away as fast as it came. That had been my worst mistake, the likes of which I’d never made since.
Until now, of course. I considered my options, but returning the planner was out of the question. I’d made my escape and going back now could mean running into the butler during turndown service. And if he saw me, I’d have to kill him—a can of worms I had no intention of opening. Telling the others wasn’t high on my list of options either. The last thing I wanted was for them to give me the look we gave others, the ones who’d gotten soft or sloppy or too old for this job. The quick side-eye full of judgment and relief—judgment at the loss of skill and relief it isn’t you.
Blowing out a slow breath to steady my nerves, I eased down the staircase to the ladies’ room where Natalie waited. Forty seconds later, I’d ditched my uniform jacket, tugged off my wig and glasses, and shoved them along with the pillows into my tote before pulling my sequined cardigan back on. Natalie and I left together, our heads close as if we were gossiping, but it had the effect of keeping our faces averted from the cameras. We took a circuitous route back to the stateroom I shared with Helen, stopping long enough to ditch the plastic bag in one of the trash cans in another ladies’ room.
Back in my cabin, I went into the dressing area and stripped off the clothes I’d been wearing. I slipped the planner into the interior pocket of my tote, zipping it out of sight and out of mind. I slipped on a robe, and when I emerged, the others were there, and the champagne was already on ice.
“Well?” Helen asked anxiously.
I grinned. “Done. Pop the cork,” I told her. “It’s time to celebrate.”