'No. The Harpooner would be worried about security if he were staying in a hotel room. Do we have any way of fine-tuning the location of the signal?'
'No,' Korsov said.
'It was too brief, and our equipment is not sensitive enough to determine height in increments under two hundred feet.'
'Can we get a diagram of the hotel?' Orlov asked.
'I have that,' Korsov said. He pulled a page from the pile he was holding and laid it beside the map. It showed a ten-story hotel.
'Natasha is trying to break into the reservations list,' Grosky said. He was referring to the Op-Center's twenty- three-year-old computer genius Natasha Revsky.
'If she can get in, she will give us the names of all single male occupants.'
'Get single females as well,' Orlov said.
'The Harpooner has been known to adopt a variety of disguises.' Grosky nodded.
'You feel very confident about this?' Orlov asked. Korsov had been leaning over the desk. Now he stood like a soldier, his chest puffed.
'Completely,' he replied.
'All right,' Orlov said.
'Leave the hotel diagram with me. This was very good work. Thank you both.' As Grosky and Korsov left, Orlov picked up the phone. He wanted to talk to Odette about the hotel and then get her on site. Hopefully, the American would be strong enough to go with her. The Harpooner was not a man to tackle alone.
Baku. Azerbaijan Tuesday, 10:07 a.m.
Odette Kolker was cleaning up the breakfast plates when the phone beeped. It was the apartment phone, not her cell phone. That meant it was not General Orlov who was calling. She allowed her answering machine to pick up. It was Captain Kilar. The commander of her police unit had not been in when she phoned the duty sergeant to let him know that she would be out sick. Kilar was calling to tell her that she was a good and hardworking officer, and he wanted her to get well. He said that she should take whatever time she needed to recuperate. Odette felt bad about that. She was hardworking. And though the Baku Municipal Police Department paid relatively well-- twenty thousand manats, the equivalent of eight thousand American dollars--they did not pay overtime. However, the work Odette did was not always for the BMP and the people of Baku. The time she spent at her computer or on the street was often for General Orlov. Baku was a staging area for many of'the arms dealers and terrorists who worked in Russia and the former Soviet republics. Checking on visa applications, customs activity, and passenger lists for boats, planes, and trains enabled her to keep track of many of these people. After putting away the few dishes, Odette turned and looked back at her guest. The American had fallen asleep and was breathing evenly. She had placed a cool washcloth on his head and he was perspiring less than when she had brought him home. She had seen the bruises on his throat. They were consistent with choke marks. Obviously, the incident in the hospital was not the first time someone had tried to kill him. There was also a tiny red spot on his neck. A puncture wound, it looked like. She wondered if this illness were the result of his having been injected with a virus. The KGB and other Eastern European intelligence services used to do that quite a bit, typically with lethal viruses or poison. The toxin would be placed inside microscopic pellets. The pellets were sugar-coated metal spheres with numerous holes in their surface. These would be injected by an umbrella tip, pen point, or some other sharp object. It would take the body anywhere from several minutes to an hour or two to eat through the sugar coating. That would give the assassin time to get away. If this man had been injected, he probably was not supposed to die by the virus. He had been used to draw his colleagues out into the open. The hospital ambush had been well organized. Just like the ambush that killed her husband in Chechnya, she thought. Her husband, her lover, her mentor, her dearest friend. They all perished when Viktor died on a cold, dark, and lonely mountainside. Viktor had successfully infiltrated the Chechan mujihadin forces. For seven months, Viktor was able to ohtain the ever-changing radio frequencies with which different rebel factions communicated. He would write this information down and leave it for a member of the KGB field force to collect and radio to Moscow. Then the idiot KGB officer got sloppy. He confused the frequency he was supposed to use with the one he was reporting about. Instead of communicating with his superiors, he broadcast directly to one of the rebel camps. The KGB officer was captured, tortured for information, and killed. He had not known Viktor's name but he knew which unit her husband had infiltrated and when he had arrived. The rebel leaders had no trouble figuring out who the Russian agent was. Viktor would always leave his information under a rock which he would chip in a distinctive fashion. While he was out one night, supposedly standing watch, Viktor was brought down by ten men, then taken into the mountains. There, his Achilles tendons were severed and his wrists were slashed. Viktor bled to death before he could crawl to help. His last message to her was painted on a tree trunk with his own blood. It was a small heart with his wife's initials inside. Odette's cell phone beeped softly. She picked it up from the kitchen counter and turned her back toward her guest. The woman spoke softly so she would not wake him.
'Yes?'
'We believe we've found the Harpooner.' That got Odette's attention.
'Where?'
'At a hotel not far from you,' Orlov said.
'We're trying to pinpoint his room now.' Odette moved quietly toward the bed. She was required to check her service revolver when she left police headquarters every night. But she kept a spare weapon in the nightstand. It was always loaded. A woman living alone had to be careful. A spy at home or abroad had to be even more careful.
'What's the mission?' Odette asked. Termination,' Orlov said.
'We can't take a chance that he'll get away.'
'Understood,' Odette said calmly. The woman believed in the work she was doing, protecting the interests of her country. Killing did not bother her when doing it would save lives. The man she had terminated just a few hours before meant little more to her than someone she might have passed in the street.
'Once we've narrowed down the guests who might be the Harpooner, you're going to have to make the final call,' Orlov said.
'The rest depends on what he does, how he acts. What you see in his eyes. He's probably going to have showered but still look tired.'
