That was why she’d volunteered for the Moscow mission.
Flurries of thick snow fell from the sky as Cassidy broke into a sprint. Pelted by drifting drops of ice, she crossed a small square at speed, careful to keep her footing. Agents fell in at her back, maybe twenty feet away, no longer trying to remain subtle. The best part of it was that they thought she was the prey.
Cassidy slipped past a minor, gold-topped cathedral and skirted a throng of tourists. She saw the police to the right and made sure she grabbed their attention. Five men were chasing her. She flitted left and right and switched back the way she’d already come. Snow filled her vision. A slippery path took her right foot for a second, but she managed to stay on her feet, staggering into an outdoor café and two chairs.
Hearing footsteps at her back, she whirled.
It was the man who’d first spotted her. Scarface. He was ten feet away with another agent at his back. The two cops were behind them.
Cassidy whipped one of the wrought-iron chairs around, slapping Scarface across the head with it, sending him sprawling. A gun flew from his suddenly nerveless fingers.
The second man struck the chair on its return journey, metal legs slamming him to the ground.
The cops pulled up, eyeing the gun and fallen men. Cassidy forced a terrified expression onto her face. “Help me,” she cried and ran. Hollywood acting at its best. The cops probably didn’t buy it, but could they ignore it?
No. They were already shouting into their radios and bending to attend to the fallen agents. The trouble was, the downed men’s compatriots appeared seconds later. They fell on the cops, smashing them into unconsciousness.
Cassidy paused at the top of another street. She turned and ran when she spotted agents pointing guns at her. A shot was fired, the bullet smashing into the brickwork to her right.
She hadn’t expected to be shot at.
Still, it added pepper to the mix. And a good dose of pepper couldn’t be knocked. She added urgency to her step, cut through two restaurants and out their back doors, but couldn’t properly shake the agents.
She threw the fake fur coat away, and handed the hat to an old guy. She upended her backpack on the run, took out a change of clothes and quickly pulled them on. They consisted of a black Superdry windcheater and a Ferrari baseball cap, which she wore backward. She cut through a shop, finding the back door without issue, at the same time jamming her red hair under the cap.
The other side was a trash-strewn alley. She traversed it at a run, emerging into a shopping street. Perfect. The agents wouldn’t be so easily fooled, of course. She didn’t relent, didn’t stop her surveillance.
They might have access to back up in the form of surveillance cameras.
Cassidy found a large clothes shop and entered, drifting around the multi-colored racks for a while, whilst keeping a close eye on the large front window. She saw three agency operatives walk past and glance in, but her new disguise, especially within the dark interior of the shop, held up.
Seven minutes later, she grew bored. Yes, the chase had been fun, but she’d been out of action now for almost a week. King Arthur was old news to her mind, even if snippets of the find were only just starting to leak out into the world at large. Cassidy was hands-on; she enjoyed getting dirty on the job.
It’s all I’ve ever known.
She squeezed out of the back, again finding herself in one of Moscow’s more unpleasant back alleys. A short walk brought her around to the main shopping area, her mind turning to an exit strategy. Of course, it was fully pre-planned and involved the Leningradsky train station.
She sped up, walking parallel to the train tracks in a northern direction and finding a surprising and satisfying symmetry here to the stark, graffiti-scrawled walls that lined the street to her right and the concrete boulevards she’d regularly haunted in east LA. Different ethos, different tenets, different systems—same people. Man was man—and woman—the world over.
Still alert, she saw Scarface walk right across the junction up ahead. Just as his head turned in her direction, she slipped into a doorway and pressed as far back as she could. There was a narrow concrete staircase to her left. She squeezed around the doorframe into it and climbed, sure she’d been spotted. There was no sound of pursuit, but Cassidy had a nose for trouble, and took no chances.
She climbed the stairs and exited onto the roof, finding herself on top of a row of houses. The harsh wind erupted around her in freezing flurries. To left and right it was basically a row of twelve concrete squares separated by three feet of air, strewn with rows of flapping washing, garden furniture and heaps of rusted metal that the property owners couldn’t be bothered to get rid of. She crouched, turned and looked back down. Yes, Scarface was pounding up toward her with his friend.
Cassidy decided to stay put.
The chase wasn’t enough for her. She needed a good fight too, especially as, after this, they were going into something that amounted to hibernation.
One last mission, Bodie had called it.
Of all of them, Cassidy was the least sure that she could survive without the fast life, the thrill and the stress, the sheer bliss of victory under duress and revelation of the treasure. It was milk and
