Briggs shook his head.
Kobin looked wounded. “Hey, you want intel? How ’bout this: You can’t fly into Sochi. Not in this bird. And I know you guys like to go in heavy. So how you getting there? And more importantly, how you getting in there with all your gear? Sounds like you’ll be needing me to arrange a delivery once you’re on the ground. So laugh now, meatheads, but you’ll come crawling back to me. They always do.”
Kobin grinned crookedly and headed off.
“That’s Russia,” said Briggs. “Can’t do an airdrop. CIA assets are too far away . . .”
“I’ll talk to the prick. We’ll set that up.”
“And I’d like to get one of those pastries,” said Briggs.
Fisher averted his gaze in shame. “Me, too.”
They both looked up as Grim appeared in the hatchway. “Charlie’s got footage of a group ushering Nadia into that hotel. Yenin’s story checks out. That’s actionable intel. Let’s move.”
* * *
THE fast ferry hydrofoil out of Trabzon, Turkey, made the trip directly north across the Black Sea to Sochi in just over four hours. There was no visa required to enter Russia for a seventy-two-hour stay, although tourists needed to remain aboard ship or book a room at one of the local hotels. The ferry ran three times per week from Trabzon and departed at about one P.M. local time, so the team was in luck. They made it back from Kiev to Incirlik in time to drive up and catch a ride aboard the Hermes. The ferry was a colorful red, white, and blue affair with massive foils lifting her hull from the water, along with a spaceship-like bow suggesting a futuristic prototype from another century.
While Charlie remained back on board Paladin to keep working on Kannonball’s code, Grim joined them on the ferry and planned to coordinate from inside the hotel while Fisher and Briggs reconnoitered the place and planned their assault. Even though she’d done her best to conceal it, Fisher sensed that Grim was excited by the prospect of returning to the field.
They settled down into seats on the port side, and when Briggs excused himself for a moment, Fisher seized the opportunity to have a private word with Grim.
“We should talk about what happened in Vilcha.”
“What’s there to discuss?”
“I know you would’ve made a different call.”
She opened her mouth to say something, bit it back, then finally spoke. “Sam, you need to take yourself out of the moment and think long-term.”
“What do you mean?”
“You terminated Yenin. You let Kestrel walk with no way to track him . . .”
“Kestrel’s not worth much anymore. And, yeah, maybe killing Yenin was a mistake, but I’m with Kestrel on this one: anyone who worked for Reed—”
“I worked for Reed.”
“No, you worked for the POTUS.”
“Sam, what I’m saying is, I would’ve appreciated a little consultation before you began shooting assets.”
“Yenin wasn’t an asset. He’d already been locked out, written off. Like Kestrel said, they would’ve anticipated his capture, his talking, so that anything he shared would’ve already been shifted, changed, covered up . . . he was yesterday’s news. We got what we needed out of him.”
“I’ll say it again. I’d like to be consulted first.”
“Duly noted.”
Briggs returned and pointed out the window. “Nice view.”
Fisher rolled his eyes. Grim ignored him.
“And we’re all just one big happy family,” Briggs said through a deep sigh.
After a minute or two to cool down, they were all taking in the coastline, with the silver walls of high-rise hotels framed by a brilliant green forest and the cocoa-colored mountains crowned with snow on the horizon. Fisher even spied dozens of palm trees sprouting from the city’s broad, cobblestone quay. Sochi’s climate was humid and subtropical, making it an odd choice for the winter games; however, once you headed up into the higher elevations, you understood why athletes from around the world would travel there. Now, during the winter months, the daytime temps hovered around fifty degrees Fahrenheit, still cold enough for jackets but hardly the biting temps they’d faced at the plane crash site.
For her part, Grim was carefully dressed for the weather in her black Aeroflot flight attendant’s uniform and matching coat. She shouldered an expensive leather carry-on bag. She’d chosen not to wear the “cute little beret,” as Charlie had put it, looking daggers at him after the remark.
Fisher and Briggs were unarmed and dressed business casual. They’d all had to pass through customs in Turkey, a long and unfortunate process, but their documentation was, of course, flawless. For the next few minutes, they brushed up on their Russian in order to help Grim, who admitted she was still a bit rusty. By the time they reached the port and were being guided in near the rows of yachts and other pleasure craft, Grim was joking with them like a native speaker.
They split up at the rental car office. She drove off in a small green Chevy sedan, heading south for about twenty kilometers to the hotel. Fisher and Briggs picked up a black Mercedes SUV and left for a meeting that, God help them, Kobin had arranged. Briggs was at the wheel while Fisher called up the GPS location with his smartphone.
* * *
SHE was a heavyset babushka, probably pushing seventy, and they met her about three kilometers outside the airport, beneath the rusting hulk of an old bridge that had been condemned by the local government. Her real name was Vera, but Kobin just called her “Bab” and instructed Fisher to do likewise. She climbed out of her brown minivan whose driver’s side front tire was merely a donut spare. She waddled around to the rear doors, pushing back the yellow scarf covering her head to unloose a shock of gray hair as dense and matted as steel wool. She’d probably stopped wearing makeup decades ago, and her face was a relief map reflecting a long and exacting life.
“Do you have it?” she asked in English.
“The money?” Fisher asked.
“No, peanut butter.”
Fisher hustled back to the SUV and produced two jars of extra crunchy that Kobin said they needed to seal the deal. He’d told Bab about Charlie’s peanut butter addiction, and apparently she had one of her own.
“This is gold,” she said, pressing one jar to her cheek. “Now, let me see money.”
“We speak Russian,” Fisher reminded her.
She chuckled under her breath. “No, you don’t.”
Briggs and Fisher exchanged a look, then Fisher handed over the money.
After tucking the jars under her arm and licking her thumb, she flicked through the rubles with thick, wizened fingers. “In nineteen sixties I work for CIA,” she said with great pride. “Everyone knows Bab. You need something, come to Bab. Now, market is bullshit. People like Kobin ruin everything.”
“So you don’t like him, either,” Fisher said with a grin.
She returned to the van, where she stowed her peanut butter, then turned back and threw up her hands in disgust.
Suddenly, the minivan’s back door swung open and two young men in their twenties hopped out.
Briggs and Fisher responded by ducking to either side of the van, but Bab was hollering, “Oh, my grandsons, don’t worry! They carry boxes for me.”
“Be nice for a little heads-up,” Briggs told her.
The taller kid was wearing a faded AC/DC T-shirt and jeans, while the shorter, heavier one wore a hockey jersey, a replica of those worn by the Russian men’s national team. After some obligatory handshakes that revealed their shyness, the two men opened several anvil cases to display more than a dozen handguns—Berettas, SIGs, Glocks, and a few others that even Fisher did not recognize. Longer cases held six rifles, one of them a Dragunov sniper rifle. They unzipped some oversized nylon bags to reveal several tactical vests along with holsters and heavy leather gun belts.
Briggs reached forward, but Bab slapped away his arm. “First, we make promise.”