CHAPTER 35
Cotton woke.
The last thing he recalled was a car striking his and spinning him around, then hitting something solid.
A streetlight or power pole? He shook the cobwebs from his brain and tried to focus.
He was no longer in the car. Instead, he was inside a room.
Small. Lit by a single lamp on a small table beside the bed upon which he lay.
And the furniture. Antiques. Stylish. Old-style. Where was he?
He pushed himself up.
A wave of dizziness swept over him, which he allowed to pass. A concussion? Maybe. He needed to call Stephanie. He searched for his phone, which was not in any of his pockets.
The door to the room opened.
And a familiar face strolled in.
“You have a name?” Cotton asked.
“Call me Ivan.”
The Russian accent lacing his English made the label appropriate, as did the man’s appearance—short, heavy-chested, with grayish-black hair.
A splotchy, reddened skink of a face was dominated by a broad Slavic nose and shadowed by a day-old beard that shone with perspiration.
He wore an ill-fitting suit. They stood in a small plaza within the shadow of the Round Tower, a seventeenth-century structure that offered commanding views of Copenhagen from its hundred-foot summit.
The dull roar of traffic was not audible this deep into the Str?get, only the clack of heels on cobbles and the laughter of children.
They were beneath a covered walk that faced the tower, a brick wall to their backs.
“Did your people kill those two men back there?” he asked.
“They think we come to whisk them away. Big mistake.”
“Care to tell me how you know about Cassiopeia Vitt?”
“Quite the woman. If I am younger, a hundred pounds lighter.” Ivan paused. “But you do not want to hear this. Vitt is into something she does not understand. I hope you, ex-American-agent, appreciate the problem better.”
“It’s the only reason I’m standing here.”
His unspoken message seemed to be received. Get to the damn point.
“You can overpower me,” Ivan said, nodding. “I am fat, out-of-shape Russian. Stupid too. All of us are, right?”
He caught the sarcasm. “I can take you. But the man standing near the tree, across the way in the blue jacket, and the other one near the Round Tower’s entrance? I doubt I’d evade them. They’re not fat and out of shape.”
Ivan chuckled. “I am told you are smart. A few years off job have not changed this.”
“I seem to be busier in retirement than I was working for the government.”
“This bad thing?”
“You need to talk fast, or I may take my chances with your friends.”
Ivan chuckled. “This problem we have is serious.”
He lunged forward, grabbed Ivan by his lapels, and slammed him into the bricks behind them. He brought his face inches away. “Where the hell is Cassiopeia?”
He knew the backups were most likely reacting. He was prepared to whirl around and deal with them both. Of course, that was assuming they didn’t decide to shoot first.
“We need this anger,” Ivan quietly said, his breath stale.
“Who is we?”
“Me, Cotton.”
The words came from his right. A new voice. Female. Familiar.
He should have known. He released his grip and turned.
Ten feet away stood Stephanie Nelle.
There were a lot of surprises that night in Copenhagen when he first met Ivan from the SVR.
An unlikely field operative. He’d wondered then what could possibly have rankled the Russians to the point that they mounted a full-scale intelligence operation, dispatching a midlevel operative as overseer.
Then, to thwart the Americans, the Russians brazenly shot two people dead in the middle of Copenhagen.
Back then, when Danny Daniels was still president, Stephanie and the Magellan Billet were usually only called in when conventional intelligence channels no longer were viable. She’d been there that night.
And here they were again.
He, Stephanie, and—
“Good to see you,” Ivan said, with a smile.
Then it occurred to him. “Did you have someone ram my car?”
“Da.”
He shook his sore head. “You’re about to really piss me off.”
“Like back in Denmark, we need your anger. Hitting your car was fastest, easiest way to get you here.”
“With me unconscious?”
Ivan shrugged. “Work for me.”
“I see your English is not any better.”
“How your Russian?”
“I try and stay away from the country and its people.”
“A shame. But all this necessary. I can explain.”
“I really, really hope so. For your benefit.”
“I much more important now than back in Copenhagen. High in command. We do good there, and in China. Changed things. Now here I am. Doing good again.”
Cotton rubbed his temples and decided to be patient. Ivan, if nothing else, was competent. And the big man had gone to a lot of trouble for something. “Okay, tell me. What’s going on?”
He knew this Russian liked to feign that he was not the brightest bulb in the box. But that was not the case.
Not in the least.
“I need to show you important things.”