Matthew Dunn - Slingshot

Kurt Schreiber exited the mountain residence, walking down the road toward the garages. As he passed the bodies of his men, his thoughts turned to his business empire. He’d need a new base of operations and more men, and would need to spend time with his new deputy so that he could groom her to take on day-to-day responsibilities for his activities while he kept a low profile.

He grinned. So many people involved in the Slingshot project had failed.

Dugan and the other conspirators.

Dmitriev, who was now living in fear that one day Schreiber would order his assassination.

Kronos.

And Will Cochrane and his colleagues.

The only man to walk away with anything to show for his involvement was Kurt Schreiber.

He pulled out car keys and hobbled down the road, ensuring that he took in all of his beautiful surroundings. This was the last time he’d come here. He’d miss this place.

Still, he’d never been a man to look back. Instead, he’d always embraced fresh beginnings.

The.50-caliber bullet smashed through his upper torso. After he collapsed to the ground, another removed his head.

Kronos stripped the sniper rifle down to its working parts, quickly slotted them into their compartments, shut the case, and walked back down the mountain. He wondered why Cochrane had let Schreiber walk out of the house. One explanation was that the two men he’d had in his sights were not Cochrane and the older man, rather were Schreiber’s guards. But if that was the case, why would they have let Schreiber expose himself to Kronos’s thermal imagery? No, the men in Schreiber’s room had to have been Cochrane and the older man. For some reason they couldn’t pull the trigger, so they did the next best thing and persuaded Schreiber that the sniper would not harm him when he left. Goodness knows how Cochrane had done that.

He could have shot the former Stasi colonel as soon as he spotted him leaving the living room. Instead he’d waited until Schreiber had exited the house, so that he could switch off his thermal imagery. He’d wanted to see Schreiber’s face clearly through his sights. One last time. Before he shot the man who’d inspired Slingshot, ordered him to kill Dmitriev, and insisted that he leave his family after the assassination in Holland.

Stefan smiled. Thanks to Schreiber, his family was five million dollars richer. But that wasn’t why he was smiling. Tonight he’d be back home, sitting around the kitchen table with his twin sons and his wife. He cherished every moment he had with his beloved family. And tonight would be special, because he’d be able to tell them the rest of the story.

Hidden from view outside the property, Mikhail Salkov watched Sarah and James unpacking boxes within their new Scottish home. They were moving back and forth between the rooms, completely oblivious to the danger that had been surrounding them.

He looked at the countryside around him. The house was isolated, though Edinburgh was only five miles away. His family home was similar. Located a few miles outside of Moscow, it gave his wife and daughters the chance to get their fixes of both city and country living. He hoped Sarah and James gained happiness living here.

He looked at the dead man by his feet, then lifted and threw him on top of the three other bodies in the trunk of his SUV. Thank goodness he hadn’t needed to be here two weeks ago. Then, he’d still needed a walking stick to aid his injured leg. Fully fit, he was able to observe Schreiber’s surveillance team for hours before receiving the call from Cochrane.

The MI6 officer had anticipated Schreiber’s ploy to use Sarah as leverage if Will succeeded in infiltrating his Bavarian residence and came face-to-face with the man. For weeks, he’d had other men watching Sarah and Schreiber’s team. The British Special Forces men were under orders to act if Sarah was threatened, but Will knew that they’d never agree to a cold-blooded hit on U.K. soil. He needed a ruthless, deniable expert for that. So today he’d ordered his men to leave and had asked Mikhail to take care of matters if required to do so. The call would be the trigger, the wording precise and intended to mislead Schreiber.

If I touch him, Schreiber will kill my sister. We’ve lost. Get right away from here. Don’t touch Schreiber.

It meant, kill the men watching my sister.

He’d been surprised that Cochrane had given him the task, though he had quickly concluded that it was Cochrane’s way of saying that he trusted the SVR spycatcher because he’d broken rules by not taking Lenka Yevtushenko back to Russia. If he ever met Cochrane again, he hoped it would be in circumstances that allowed them to remain allies. One never knew in this line of work.

He slammed the trunk shut and got into the vehicle. He had a long drive ahead of him to reach the deserted woodland where the bodies would be buried. After that, he could finally go home.

The taxi stopped on the long residential street in Minsk. Will told the driver to wait and turned to the man sitting next to him in the rear of the vehicle. “I promised her that I’d bring you home. In return, I want you to give me your word that you’ll have nothing more to do with intelligence work, will get a job in one of the local universities or schools, will never return to Russia, will stay with Alina and Maria for the rest of your life.”

Lenka Yevtushenko nodded slowly. “I give you my word, but it’s not a difficult thing to do because I want all of those things more than anything else.”

Will handed Lenka a grocery bag. Inside were the ingredients to make kotleta pokrestyansky , the meal that Alina had promised to one day make for Will. “You’ve been apart for quite some time. There’s nothing like cooking a meal together to break the ice.” He smiled. “You caused a lot of trouble by stealing that piece of paper.”

Lenka opened the door. “You mean pieces of paper.”

“What?”

“Pieces of paper. Schreiber instructed me to steal twenty of them. Only one had a partial grid reference on it. The other nineteen were full codes. When I was held at the farmstead, the guards spoke openly about it. I guess they believed I was a dead man so didn’t care what I heard. Schreiber needed backup options in case Kronos had died during the last twenty years, or was no longer fit to conduct the assassination.”

“He had the ability to activate nineteen other sleeper assassins?”

Lenka nodded. “Kronos was his preferred choice for the assassination of Dmitriev, because he was the very best. In any case, Schreiber was of the view that the other assassins would still be of value to him because he could use them to kill anyone who tried to go after him at some point in the future.” He bowed his head. “If only I’d known the true value of what I’d stolen.”

He exited the vehicle, shut the door, and walked to the front entrance of Alina’s apartment building. Within one minute, Alina and baby Maria were there. Alina threw one arm around Lenka and pulled him close to her. She was shaking with sobs. They stayed in their embrace for minutes before speaking inaudible words. Alina looked at Will. She gave the slightest smile, kept her eyes on him, then turned and took her partner and her child into their home.

Will sat motionless.

Staring at other people’s happy lives, with no idea how to become like them.

No hope of becoming like them.

He told the driver that he’d decided to walk back to the city center, thrust cash at him, and got out of the car. Tomorrow he’d be in London. He’d report to Alistair that Schreiber’s anonymous female successor had nineteen other sleeper assassins who could be activated if Will or others tried to destroy Schreiber’s empire.