their old colleagues. That’s why Logan hating the CIA makes him trustworthy—at least in that.”
“It’s still a risk in other ways,” she said, “if Logan’s unstable.”
“As I say, Logan was the best, and he was allowed to take the fall for someone else. In the end everything is and everything isn’t a risk,” he said, and he grinned once again, now he’d made his way through the uncomfortable story to the other side. Then he went on. “He doesn’t have any woman close to him. He keeps his various women at a long arm’s length. For obvious reasons, I guess.”
“So you want me to look after him.”
“Just be sweet. And only if it fits for you,” Burt said. “Only if it seems to work in the context of the assignment. And nothing too intimate, unless that works for you too.”
She was silent.
“That’s fine, then.”
The next morning Anna postponed her date with Logan at the movies to another day. It would be the fourth day since the contact with Mikhail. She needed time, but the reason she gave was that she felt unwell.
In the course of that day, after her discussion with Burt, she began to make her preparations. Everything was going to have to be alarmingly spontaneous, but it was all she could do. Improvisation was familiar to her. Any trained intelligence officer could follow instructions, but only the best improvised successfully.
In the course of the day, she collected what she could find in the apartment, away from prying eyes; a large wedge-shaped doorstop made of wood that was used in the conference room, and then another one she found lying unused in one of the smaller rooms; a small hammer that was in a kitchen drawer. There wasn’t much.
After some discussion between Burt and Bob Dupont the following morning—details that related to her security outside the apartment walls—it was agreed that she and Logan could go to the movies, accompanied by the usual swarm of minders.
With the boyish enthusiasm of a teenager on a date, Logan bought tickets and popcorn and they watched the new Clint Eastwood film at a theatre on Broadway. From time to time he used a whispered comment on the film as an excuse to put his hand briefly on her knee, as if it were merely to get her attention. Anna was amused by his sudden eagerness to be physically intimate, but she didn’t respond, and he didn’t press her. He seemed pleased just to be in her company, and she found, to her surprise, that she was similarly enjoying the experience. But her mind, when it wasn’t focused on the movie, was elsewhere.
They emerged from the movie theatre at just before five p.m. onto Broadway, where the half a dozen watchers were spread out on either side along the sidewalk.
It was well below freezing, even this early in the evening. But Logan suddenly declared he didn’t want to go back to the apartment, despite the instruction that it was a movie, then back “home.”
Anna could see Larry standing on the sidewalk outside the movie theatre, clapping his hands together from the cold, but also out of impatience to get going. The other watchers were invisible, but out of some professional habit or merely for her own amusement, she began to pick them out—one standing looking at a paper, two others waiting by the street as if for a taxi, another over to the right, beyond Larry, and the sixth idling by a newsstand on the sidewalk to the left. All were ahead of her and Logan or to the side, she noted.
Behind them, in the movie theatre itself, there was no one, and what had been running through her mind in the course of watching the movie now came to dominate her next step.
“Better go,” she said to dampen Logan’s enthusiasm, and as she’d expected, she just increased it.
Logan hesitated without moving towards the waiting car.
“Why not walk for a bit?” he said.
“We should go back,” she replied. “Won’t they cut our privileges if we disobey?” she added in a tone of mockery.
“Let’s go somewhere,” he said, slowly revealing intentions that were beginning to be insistent.
She returned his open gaze. “Look, Logan, if you want to sleep with me,” she said, “why don’t you just say so?”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s about it. I do.”
“Only it isn’t very convenient, is it. Not right now.”
“That’s a not a no, then,” he said, and gave her a broad smile.
“It isn’t a yes either.”
She put her arm through his, and from the corner of her eye watched as Larry scowled at them.
“But if it ever did happen,” she said carefully, “I’d rather we had a situation that was a bit more relaxed than this, don’t you think?” She laughed.
She felt him squeeze her arm in his. The warmth of the movie theatre was fading fast out here on the sidewalk.
She looked around casually at the watchers. “I’ve no doubt I could evade all of them,” she said easily. “But could you, Logan? Burt says you’re the best. But are you really that good?” She smiled up at him with the challenge, and he laughed, the tension easing between them.
“Are you kidding?” he said.
“The Mercer Hotel in half an hour. Make your own way. Alone, or you’ve blown it. And I bet I beat you.”
“How much?”
She looked him in the eyes. “You never know your luck.”
Then suddenly she was gone, not onto the street, but straight back into the movie theatre. She didn’t look back.
She knew she only had a few seconds. Six pairs of eyes were on her. But she crossed the foyer at a brisk walk, and when she turned, she saw that the watchers were only just moving towards the doors outside.
She pushed through the doors to the interior. The auditorium was lit only by dull wall lights high up. There was nobody there, no staff or stragglers from the movie still left behind. When she was through the door, she snatched a fire extinguisher from the wall on the inside, fed the hose through the two handles of the doors so that it gripped them shut, and placed the end of the hose behind the lever, so that when the doors were pushed, it would set off the extinguisher.
She ran now—down the side aisle, through a fire door to the right of the screen, slamming the door shut behind her. She looked down the dimly lit concrete corridor, took one of the wooden doorstops from the inside pocket of her coat, and beat it into the foot of the door with the hammer. Once it was jammed as far it would go, she ran down the corridor. It might give her a few extra seconds, perhaps, longer than the task had taken at any rate, but those might be the seconds that counted.
She came to another fire door. Pushing it gently, she saw the street. She had come out at the side of the theatre.
She looked to the left and exited in front of a group of three men who were passing. She didn’t look back, but walked in front of the men, letting them screen her. In another long few seconds she reached the end of the block, half walked, half ran straight across the street, dodging hooting cars, and kept running.
Outside the theatre, by the waiting car, Larry saw Anna turn almost as she did so and watched her begin to walk back inside. He hesitated, then walked fast towards Logan.
“Where’s she going?”
“Ladies’ room,” Logan said.
Larry whistled, and the two watchers on either side of the theatre came up fast towards him.
“She’s gone back inside. Ladies’ room—so he says,” Larry added, and scowled at Logan. “Stay with her.” He looked at Logan. “You. Get in the car.”
“Sure.” Logan walked to the car and looked from the sidewalk in through the front passenger window at the driver. He tapped on it.
“We’re almost there. Just waiting for her,” Logan said through the fractionally opened glass. The driver didn’t acknowledge he cared either way.
Logan walked around the trunk at the back of the car and made for the door to the back seat on the street side. He opened the door. When he saw a bus coming fast and pulling out to pass their stationary car, he stepped in front of it and ducked through, feeling the rush of air as it passed behind him. There was a loud blast of its horn.
He dodged a car into the next lane with inches to spare. Then he ran across the three remaining lanes, inviting angry blasts from half a dozen cars, and reached the sidewalk on the far side.
