Steven Savile - Silver

That was when Konstantin saw the woman in the red dress-it looked like some sort of evening wear, beautifully cut around her full curves-walk out into the street. She was coming his way. He zipped up and timed his exit to meet her on the street as he stepped out of the green urinal.

She regarded him openly, her gaze drifting slowly from his head down to his feet and back again. Konstantin inclined his head slightly and gestured for her to pass. She did. She walked slowly. He followed her for six blocks, enjoying the luscious, ripe curve of her ass as the material clung to it. He allowed her to lead him another block before ending the game. She broke away, ostensibly drawn like a magpie to the bright, shiny glitter of jewels in a shop window, while he crossed the street. He didn’t wait for the lights. He had heard a second set of footsteps just out of rhythm with his own as he followed the woman in the red dress.

Just as he would have done in their place, they were leading him front and back. Shepherding him.

So, knowing what was happening, he decided there was nothing else to do than appreciate the view-there was something hypnotic about watching the gentle sway of her hips as she walked. That, Konstantin was sure, was the purpose of the red dress. It was the honey on the trap. As pleasing as the view was, it didn’t take his mind off the fact that he was being led like a lamb to the slaughter. Tailing front and back was professional. It took numbers and discipline and, given that the Berlin cell had already sacrificed at least seven from their ranks with the U-Bahn strike, the fact they had the manpower to spare on Metzger’s apartment was more than a little interesting to the Russian.

It wasn’t some random coincidence. There were no random coincidences in his world.

They had been watching for someone. Why? Well he could make an educated guess: it was down to Sorrow’s Bride. They had had the woman for at least a week, perhaps two, and no matter what she was, what her training had prepared her for, there was one basic truth to espionage Konstantin had brought with him over the wall: everybody talks in the end.

The films and books made it glamorous and painted portraits of the hero with the iron resolve and trembling lip who withstood any amount of pain to hold onto his secrets before eventually breaking free. That was all silver screen bullshit. Given time, everyone broke. Everyone talked.

So they knew who she was, who she worked for. They knew what she knew about them, and they had come to see who came looking for her. Again, it was exactly what he would have done. Konstantin had to admit a grudging amount of admiratn for these people. They were thorough, organized, thoughtful and disciplined. All traits he would have associated with professionals, not some home-grown terror cell based around a core of fanaticism. If he had been a gambling man, he would have put a substantial bet on them being ex-military.

What it came down to was this: Konstantin needed to know more about the woman in the painting. She was the key, but he had no idea to which lock.

He had his suspicions, but they were essentially groundless. This case of mistaken identity was only serving to reinforce them. They were looking for whoever came to claim the information on the thumb drive. Who would have known it was there? Her handler? If she was an agent, it made sense-but then why would an agent from one of the Secret Services have latched on to Grey Metzger? Until yesterday there had been nothing remotely interesting about the man.

While the woman disappeared into the antique jewelers, the second ghost set of steps followed him across the road.

Konstantin didn’t look over his shoulder, not even once.

He wanted to see how serious this person was; that meant changing the nature of the game.

He turned the corner and stopped dead in his tracks. He had fifteen steps on the man behind him. He pressed himself up against the wall, taking a second to calm himself, center his breathing and focus before exploding into action. He counted the steps out in his head, tensing.

As the man came around the corner Konstantin stepped into his path. Recognition flashed across the man’s eyes, followed a split second later by blinding pain. Konstantin moved instinctively. Violence was his trade. He knew how to hurt people. He stepped in close, getting right up in the man’s face, feinted as though to slap the man, drawing his eyes to the flurry of motion, and drove the heel of his shoe through the man’s knee hard enough to shatter the cap and tear the cartilage as he forced it to bend the wrong way. The man went down in the fetal position, clutching his ruined leg up to his chest and screaming.

Konstantin stood over him.

“You’ll be lucky to be walking in six months. Be grateful I didn’t kill you. Next time I will.”

He left the man lying in the middle of the street. He crossed the road again, weaving between the slow moving cars. A yellow bus indicated that it was coming to a stop. Konstantin hchest an board and took up one of the window seats that allowed him to see down the length of Schlossstrasse for a few seconds as they drove past the mouth of the street. The man was still lying on the cobbles. The woman in the red dress stood over him, talking quickly into her cell phone. Konstantin couldn’t read lips but he could guess what she was saying: the job was botched, the target got away and they had a man down. It wasn’t the kind of call any operative wanted to make. There would be repercussions. Konstantin didn’t feel the slightest bit of sympathy for them. The woman looked up, and for a moment their eyes met. Then the bus carried him out of sight.

He rang the bell and hopped off less than three hundred yards up the road.

The last thing they would have expected was for him to double-back and switch from hunted to hunter. He walked briskly past the usual line of personality-less shops with their blind windows, then saw the bright yellow sign of a charity shop and ducked inside. It took him less than a minute to pick an oversized sheepskin coat and flat working man’s cap from the rack of dead men’s clothes at the back of the store. He paid in cash and left his own coat as a donation. He pulled the cap down so it covered most of his face and buttoned the sheepskin all the way up to the throat as he stepped back out onto the street. The entire transaction had taken less than two minutes.

He looked, to the casual observer at least, like a different person from the one who had walked out of Grey Metzger’s apartment building less than ten minutes earlier. That would be enough for what he had in mind.

Konstantin had always been happier as the hunter.

He walked back toward Schlossstrasse, head down, hands stuffed in the old man’s coat. He could smell the stale flavor of cigarettes that permeated the sheepskin. It had that comfortable worn in and worn out feel. He felt the first few fat drops of rain fall. Each one seemed to release another forgotten odor from inside the coat.

He saw the red dress before he saw anything else. It stood out like a beacon in the gray street. Konstantin leaned up against the nearest wall, positioning himself beside one of the many bus stops along the street and watched.

Less than five minutes later the sedan pulled up alongside them, and the woman helped the fallen man up and into the car. Konstantin smiled wryly, enjoying the pantomime of pain that went with the whole maneuver. But it was the sedan’s license plate that caught his attention, or rather the zero where the location code should have been. Berlin plates, for instance, had a B prefix followed by a six-digit string of numbers.

The zero marked the sedan as a diplomatic car. /span›

He memorized the number. It would be something to keep Lethe busy, if nothing else. Diplomatic plates could have amounted to just about anything, but on the most basic level it meant friends in high places.