Reamde

He climbed it now, not with a lot of grace or dignity, but he didn’t fall and he didn’t kill a lot of time. A surviving limb arched away from the trunk toward the building’s corner. He shinned out on it, finding himself a couple of meters above the building’s roof and a couple of meters away. The jump was not especially difficult, though Jeremy Jeong’s dress shoes betrayed him as he was shoving off and he ended up catching the eave in his belly rather than landing flat on the tiles as he had envisioned. He lashed out with his left hand and grabbed the bracket of a satellite dish antenna. With his right he gripped the coaxial cable that ran up to it. Getting both hands then on the cable, he let himself slide down until his flailing feet found what he was pretty sure was the concrete railing around Olivia’s terrace. Placing his weight on that, he leaned back to clear the building’s eave, then pivoted and dropped to a squat on her terrace. This was barely large enough to support one chair and a tiny table. From here, access to her flat was barred by a glass door with an iron grille. Through it, he could see all the way through her bedroom and into the little sitting room beyond it.

The door was locked. Earlier today, he had gotten it open by jerking out the hinge pins. For he had noted on one of her phone pictures that the installers had committed the grievous error of situating these on the outside. Still, it had taken several minutes of screwing around.

He could not see Olivia, but he could see her shadow moving on the wall and the floor. He was fairly certain that she was standing near the flat’s door.

He pulled his little flashlight out of his bag, slid it between the bars, and rapped sharply on the glass. Then he turned it on and aimed it at his face.

The shadow froze, then went into slow movement. Olivia peered around the corner for an instant, then drew her head back sharply. He could see her hand coming up to her mouth. Then she risked another look.

What would she do when she recognized him? Calling the PSB would be a perfectly rational option.

Instead she moved his way decisively and unlocked the terrace door, then stood aside to let him enter the bedroom.

“Someone’s knocking at the door—says he’s a security guard,” she said.

“Get dark, warm clothes,” Sokolov said. “Put them in a bag with water and food. Other than that, ignore everything.”

“What does that mean?”

“Everything.”

Sokolov shoved the Makarov through its rail, chambering a round. He then put it back into his waistband.

He strode to Olivia’s door, undid the lock, and hauled it open.

The man in the security guard uniform was standing there, hand raised to knock again. Two of his friends were lurking a couple of paces behind him. The third was farther away, keeping a lookout at the top of the stairs.

Sokolov grabbed the “security guard” by the hair, hauled him inside the apartment, slammed the door, and locked it.

The guard pulled a knife—Sokolov could discern this from the way he had chosen to move—and tried to hit him with a direct overhand stab. Sokolov blocked it to the outside with his left forearm, wrapped his arm around the other’s like a vine, getting him just above the elbow, then jerked up until he heard a crack. This left the security guard standing very close to Sokolov, a little bit sideways. Sokolov brought his right knee up into the other’s groin. When he doubled over, Sokolov jammed his thumb into the man’s throat to bring him upright again, then brought his forehead down on the bridge of the man’s nose, shattering it. Finally, Sokolov pulled his knife from his trouser pocket, gathered his arm above the opposite shoulder as if to deliver a backhanded chop to the neck, and swung the blade all the way through the security guard’s throat.

Before the man could fall down, Sokolov opened the apartment door again and pushed him straight out the door, directly into the arms of one of his friends, fountaining blood from both carotids.

The other friend was standing just off to the side. Sokolov grabbed the man’s jacket, pulled him forward, and rammed his knife straight up into the underside of the man’s chin until the handle stopped against the point of his jaw.

The sound of a weapon being cocked: the man at the top of the stairs. Sokolov stepped back, slammed the apartment door closed, locked it, then fired half of a clip through the wood, aimed toward the man who was burdened with the security guard’s body.

Seeing as how gunfire had started, Sokolov checked his watch, wondering how many minutes it would be before the authorities shut down the ferry terminal.