Kosov lit a Camel cigarette and took a deep drag. He held in the acrid
smoke for a long time before he exhaled. He felt better now.
Much better. When he smiled, the expression made him look even uglier
than he wa's.
630 pm. #30 Ldtzenstrasse
Ivan Kosov's black-clad assassin padded softy into Ilse's apartment
building and slipped into the stairwell. He was looking forward to
paying back the German whore who had taunted him yesterday, and he knew
a hundred ways to extract his pound of flesh. He only hoped that the
old tart's young companion would be home with her. She could prove very
entertaining before she died. It never ceased to amaze Misha how
cooperative women became after only the briefest acquaintance with his
knife.
Three floors above him, Eva Beers leaned toward her bathroom mirror and
pulled a stained bandage away from her cheek. The laceration looked
considerably worse than it had twelve hours before.
The skin hung slack in spite of her best attempts to smile or grimace.
Last night, when she had first got back to her apartment, she'd
discovered that the lower half of her left cheek did not seem to be
moving normally. It disturbed her, but she put the problem down to
shock. Eva had been in her share of bar brawls, and drawing on this
experience she did a fair job of patching the deep gash inflicted by the
young Russian. But now she worried.
The bleeding had long since stopped, but the stubborn flesh to the left
of her mouth still hung lifeless, like that of a stroke victim.
Replacing the bandage, she decided to ignore Kosov's warning and seek
proper medical assistance.
She slipped on a housecoat and walked out to the front room of her
modest apartment to check on Ernst. The tough old cabbie lay snoring on
the sofa. He had taken a bad beating and needed a doctor almost as
badly as Eva did. She leaned over him, listening to his irregular
breaths. His bruised and battered face made her furious again. She had
expected the Russians to come back for her as soon as they realized she
had lied about Ilse, but they hadn't. Lucky for them, too, she thought.
Because for the remainder of last night and most of today, some of her
heavily built friends from her Ratskeller days had hung around the
apartment just in case the Russians showed up. An hour ago Eva had
thanked them and sent them on their way, glad that no further trouble
had visited.
Kissing Ernst lightly on his forehead, she went back to her bedroom and
pulled the door shut. In her bureau drawer she found the number of an
old general practitioner who not so long ago had run a quiet practice
catering to smugglers, addicts, and young girls in trouble. I hope he's
still in business, she thought. She had no patience with emergency
roomstoo many forms to fill out, too many questions to answer.
She left the doctor's number on the bureau and went into the bathroom to
make up her face.
In the hallway outside the apartment, Misha inserted an@e-thin tOOl
into the door lock and picked it with ease.
Eva had carelessly left the bolt unshot when her friends left but she
had fastened the chain. Misha put his deceptively' narrow shoulder
against the door and leaned into it hard, yanidng the chain's
anchor-plate from the doo@amb.
The noise of the screws pulling loose was minimal, but enough to make
the sleeping cabbie shift on the sofa.
Misha's ears detected the rustle, and after his eyes adjusted to the
darkness, he discerned the supine form. He crossed the room silently
and stared down. Bruises and a badly blackened eye distorted Ernst's
face, but Misha recognized the old man who had fought so tenaciously
outside his taxi on the previous night. As Misha stared, Ernst's eyes
flut@ open. With the dreadful clarity of nightmares the old cabbie
recognized the Russian above him. He opened his mouth to scream a
warning to Eva, but Misha snatched a threadbare pillow from the couch
and slammed it over Ernst's contorted face, pressing down with all his
strength.
In the bathroom Eva heard nothing. The battle being fought in her front
room was desperate but soundless. Just when Misha felt the old man's
struggles begin to subside, a hand shot upward and locked around his
throat in a maniacal death grip. The Russian struggled to hold the
smothering pillow in place, not believing the old man's strength. The
bony fingers clutching his throat seemed to be probing for some hollow
place where they could gain sufficient purchase to crush his windpipe.
Misha had had enough. The pillow had seemed a good idea at first, but
it was obviously too slow for this old lion.
Fighting to breathe, he held the @illow in place with his right hand and
drew his stiletto from its ankle sheath with his left.
A veteran of the streets, Ernst the cabbie knew what the snick of spring
and steel meant, but he rould fight no harder than he was already. He
felt the cold blade pierce his chest just below the sternum. Misha
expertly twisted the blade across the midline marking the passage of the
aorta; the old man felt ice turn to fire. He jerked spasmodically, then
his wrinkled hands slipped from Misha's-throat. @ I The Russian gulped
in huge lungfuls of air and shook his head to clear it. He had not
expected this battle. Then suddenly, as the pillow slipped from the old
man's livid face, Ernst somehow summoned a last measure of energy and
cried out-not loudly, but it was enough. Misha looked see Eva's bedroom
door slam shut and hear the click of the bolt shooting home.
Cursing, he scrambled around the room's baseboards until he found the
telephone line running from the bedroom. He severed the black wire two
seconds after Eva picked up the receiver in her roomSheathing his knife
with a grin, he charged the bedwom door. The bolt did not give.
He stepped back and examined the door. it had a heavy frame with two
solid planks crossing with ur thinner sheets of in the middle, but it
was Paneled with an above wood. Aiming at a spot on the upper right P
el-just the knob-Misha kicked hard, splintering the brittle woodA second
kick opened the hole he wanted. He thrust his left hand through the
jagged opening, groping for the bolt.
With the sure eye of a seamstress, Eva drove the point of a brass letter
opener through the back of the Russian's ex@ hand. The shriek from the
