Page 91 of Assassin Anonymous

“Didn’t they use that in 2002? The hostage situation at that theater in Moscow?”

He smiles and looks at Astrid. “See? This is why he is the best.”

Astrid lunges forward, but she’s tied too tightly to the chair. Kozlov looks at me with a sheepish little grin. “She is not a fan of me, it seems.”

“I’m going to wear your skin to FaceTime your mother,” Astrid says.

Kozlov smiles. “That is a good one. But my mother is dead. Anyway, the boss has no use for you.”

“And who’s the boss?” I ask.

Kozlov looks at something over my shoulder. “He is here, now.”

“Ave Maria” has been playing—the Bocelli version, I think—but almost as if on cue, footsteps approach, and a soft, awkward voice joins in:

Ora, ora pro nobis peccatoribus

Nunc et in hora mortis

The translation is not lost on me: “Pray, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

The footsteps stop directly behind me.

“You brought me some presents. Thank you, Viktor.”

That voice.

No…

A clammy wave passes over my skin as it erupts into goose bumps.

A pair of hands take mine and undo the cuffs. They clatter to the floor, and those same hands untie the ropes holding my legs.

I stand and turn, yanking the bow off my head, to find Stuart.

He’s barefoot, wearing an oversize maroon sweater and a pair of khakis. His entire demeanor is different. Gone is the scared-animal energy he had at the meetings. He seems to have grown a few inches since the last time I saw him, which I thought was: stomped to death on the floor of his apartment.

“Merry Christmas, Mark,” he says. Then he looks at Kozlov. “The bows are a little theatrical, but I’ll give you the points for effort. Why don’t you give us a moment? Don’t go far.”

Kozlov crosses to the other side of the room. Stuart turns the chair around, scoots it back a few feet, and sits, draping one leg over the other. He points to my empty chair and says, “Please, sit. We haven’t been introduced. Not properly, at least. You probably know me better as Hannibal Khan.”

“You son of a—” Astrid starts.

Stuart turns to her and says, “Speak again, I will carve your tongue from your mouth and feed it to you.”

Astrid complies, more frustrated than intimidated.

I sit on the chair to keep my knees from buckling, my body moving on autopilot.

Stuart snaps his fingers. “You have questions.” The confidence in his voice is deeply unsettling.

“Many,” I tell him.

Though I know the biggest mistake I made thus far was dismissing him. And the corpse. That was the only piece of this that didn’t fit. Why Stuart? And I forgot one of the most basic rules of this job: don’t ruin the target’s face, or else you could kill someone else and pass them as genuine.

He points a finger at me and smiles. “I see the wheels turning. I needed something to throw you off, just in case you came looking. Which was impressive that you found the apartment, you didn’t have much to go on. It was a homeless guy, panhandled around the corner. Same body type. I let him take a shower and borrow some clothes and once I was done driving my boot into his skull, it was an easy enough mistake to make.” He puts his hands out, in mock-worship. “Even for the great Pale Horse.”

“How’d you know?”