Chapter 17
VICTORIA
Prague, Czech Republic
Prague smells like rain and old stone, and the cobblestones under my heels are slick enough to remind me that vanity kills in this business.
The shoes are part of the cover, Italian leather with a heel that adds enough height to shift my center of gravity, and I chose them because the woman I'm pretending to be tonight would own nothing less.
A Committee financier with access to asset redistribution channels does not arrive at a Cold War-era restaurant in Mala Strana wearing tactical flats.
The last time I walked through this district, I was running from destruction.
Weeks ago, though it feels longer, I moved through Prague like a ghost burning the last of her network, warning Marek in his Vinohrady flat, handing him cash and telling him to disappear.
He was dead before the warning could matter.
This time is different. I am different.
The earpiece sits flush against my canal, invisible beneath the fall of my hair. Sarah comes through from Echo Base, crisp and efficient, already hours into the Montana night shift.
"Comms check. Cross, confirm."
"Confirmed," I say, pitching my voice low enough that the couple passing on the sidewalk won't catch anything beyond a woman murmuring to herself. "Position is two blocks south of the venue."
"Frost, confirm."
"Confirmed." Roman's voice is steady in my ear, the register he uses when he's working.
He is somewhere behind me, close enough to cover the approach and far enough that anyone watching will see a woman arriving alone.
He'll enter the restaurant after I do, position himself with sight lines to my table, and look like a man being paid to keep an eye on his employer.
His eyes on me have never been professional, a complication neither of us has time to address.
"Stryker and Mercer are in position at the east and west exit points," Sarah continues. "Satellite coverage is clean. Tommy has the restaurant's communications network mapped. We're ready when you are."
This is the largest operation we've run, and it is nothing like Roman and me improvising our way through European cities with encrypted phones and whatever resources Kane could route through Tommy's channels.
This is a full team deployment, coordinated from Echo Base with tactical support on the ground and signals intelligence running in real time.
It is the operation I used to dream about when I was selling information to whoever would pay, back when my resources were my wits and whatever contacts hadn't yet been murdered.
The restaurant occupies the ground floor of a building that has survived centuries of occupation and reinvention.
The facade is understated, a deliberate plainness that signals exclusivity to people who understand the code.
A brass plaque beside the door carries a name in Czech that translates to something poetic about rivers, and the interior beyond the frosted glass is warm and golden and designed for conversations that cannot be overheard.
I know this place. I worked a Committee contact at a corner table in the back room years ago, a German logistics coordinator named Lenski who managed shipping routes through Eastern Europe.
Lenski is dead now, killed by his own people when they discovered he was selling information to anyone who could afford his price.
The table is probably still there. The Committee's taste in meeting locations hasn't changed any more than their taste in expendable personnel.
The maitre d' greets me with a warmth that arrives on cue, paid for in advance along with the reservation.
My cover identity tonight is Elise Renault, a French-Canadian financier with connections to Committee investment channels in Montreal.
Tommy built the legend over the past week, layering financial records and corporate histories deep enough that a cursory background check will confirm everything and a thorough one will take longer than we need.
"Madame Renault. Your party is expecting you. This way, please."
The private dining room is through a corridor lined with photographs of Prague in various decades of the last century.
Soviet-era images hang alongside Habsburg portraits and modern cityscapes, the visual history of a city that has learned to survive by accommodating whoever holds power. The lesson is not lost on me.
Aldric Fane sits at a round table set for four, though only two places show evidence of use.
He is leaner than his dossier photograph suggested, sharp-featured and precise in his posture, a man who has spent his career in rooms where every gesture is assessed.
He was formerly German intelligence, recruited by Webb after circumstances made him unemployable by legitimate agencies.
He handles the coordination between Webb's strategic planning and Volkov's field operations, the nervous system of the Committee's European command structure.
His agreement to this meeting means Baumann's intelligence was accurate.
"Madame Renault." Fane rises and extends a hand. His grip is deliberate, neither aggressive nor weak, every interaction calibrated. "I appreciate your willingness to travel. Prague is more discreet than Brussels for conversations of this nature."
"Discretion is the foundation of productive relationships, Herr Fane.
" I take the chair he indicates, positioning myself with my back to the wall and a clear line to the corridor because instinct built those habits long before paranoia could claim credit.
"I understand the Committee is restructuring its European financial operations.
My clients are interested in discussing how that restructuring might benefit from external capital placement. "
The conversation unfolds in the language of money and power and carefully constructed ambiguity.
Fane is intelligent, precise, and more paranoid than his dossier indicated.
He probes the edges of Elise Renault's financial history with the patience of someone who has survived in Committee leadership by never trusting anyone completely.
I match him point for point, a woman who has been lying to dangerous people for decades and long ago stopped keeping count.
Roman enters the private dining room while Fane is explaining the Committee's position on asset diversification.
He crosses the threshold with the unhurried authority of a man whose job is to occupy doorways, nods once to Fane in acknowledgment, and takes the chair nearest the door.
A security operative positioning himself between his principal and the only exit.
Fane registers him, assesses him, and returns his attention to me without comment.
A woman of Elise Renault's wealth does not travel to Prague without protection, and the man sitting by the door with his jacket cut to accommodate a shoulder holster is exactly what Fane expects to see.
Roman's presence registers in the base of my spine, a low hum of awareness that has nothing to do with operational security and everything to do with what happened on the briefing room floor.
I file the awareness where it belongs, in the compartment marked later, and return my focus to the man sitting across from me.
The surveillance device is a modified audio transmitter built into the clasp of my handbag, designed by Tommy to piggyback on the restaurant's wireless network and establish a persistent monitoring channel.
It activated the moment I entered the building's wireless range, mapping every device connected to the system, cloning the communication signatures of Fane's phone and anyone else in proximity.
All I have to do is stay long enough for the transmitter to complete its sweep, and Tommy will have enough data to trace Fane's operational network across Europe.
Fane is mid-sentence about investment return structures when the door to the private dining room opens.
Gregor Volkov walks in.
I knew he would be here. Baumann's intelligence was specific: Volkov meeting with Webb's deputy, Prague, this restaurant.
I briefed the team on his attendance. I studied his dossier photograph until I could sketch his face from memory.
I prepared for this the way I prepare for everything, with information and discipline and the professional certainty that knowledge is armor.
Knowledge is not armor, not for this.
He is shorter than his dossier photograph suggested, or perhaps the scale of his cruelty created a larger figure in my imagination.
He is stocky and silver-haired, dressed in a suit that was tailored by someone who charges what Volkov's victims will never earn.
He moves with the confidence of a man who has never been made to wait, and the two men flanking him have the flat eyes and precise steps of professional security.
I prepared for the fact of Volkov. I did not prepare for the experience of him, for the specific way the air leaves my lungs when the man who ordered Ines tortured for information about my network, who authorized the killing of Henrik and Sato and Marek and Gerhard, who signed off on the operational orders that turned my contacts into corpses, sits down at the table across from me and unfolds a napkin across his lap.
"Herr Volkov." Fane's voice carries a note of deference that wasn't there when he was speaking to me. "I didn't expect you this evening."
"Plans change, Aldric." Volkov's voice is deep, accented with the particular Russian cadence of someone who learned English in intelligence briefings rather than classrooms. He looks at me, and the assessment in his gaze is thorough, unhurried. "And who is our guest?"
"Elise Renault. Canadian. She represents private capital interested in our restructuring."
"Madame Renault." Volkov extends a hand. I take it.