Page 36 of Denied Access (Mitch Rapp #24)

S TAN Hurley watched the woman exit the apartment building.

Fashionable Western clothes were hard to find, but the fr?ulein could have made a paper bag look chic.

Her hair fell to her shoulders in a midnight wave and her skin was so white as to be porcelain.

Blue eyes sparkled behind long, thick lashes, and her sweater and pants flattered her curvy figure.

The woman’s shy smile made the most self-assured of men stutter, and she exuded a sense of innocent wonder that often manifested in a bubbly laugh.

She was somewhere in her twenties, glowing with youth, but delightfully absent the cynicism of her peers.

She was, in a word, lovely.

She was also something else.

A gust of wind tousled the woman’s hair.

She pushed the black strands from her face as she looked up and down the street.

Stan turned his back to the girl, cupping his hands as he lit a Karo Lungentorpedo cigarette.

He inhaled and the nicotine hit his nervous system like a freight train.

There was a reason the Germans nicknamed the brand lung torpedoes .

The first time he’d smoked one, Hurley had been convinced someone had exchanged the tobacco for cocaine.

He was standing in front of a department store, and the large display window allowed him to see the woman purse her lips as she searched for a taxi.

In most of East Germany, this would have been a losing proposition.

Not here.

This was Strausberger Platz, home to high-level bureaucrats, ranking members of the Communist Party, and other important officials.

Officials like the one whose apartment the woman had just left.

A Volga sputtered to life up the street.

Its anemic four-cylinder engine powered the taxi to where the woman waited.

She took one last look at her surroundings while climbing into the back seat.

He felt the weight of her gaze on his back as she marked his presence, but Stan wasn’t worried.

East Germany was the definition of a police state.

Here, someone was always watching.

The taxi rumbled away in a cloud of choking exhaust. Stan finished smoking his cigarette in case the woman had the Volga double back.

At least that’s what he wanted to believe.

In actuality, he was steeling himself for what was coming next.

In the last twenty-four hours, he’d killed two KGB thugs before they could kill him and left their bodies floating in the Spree.

Less than twelve hours ago, he’d paid the man who dispatched the murderers, Mikhail Ivanov, a visit in his East Berlin office.

In what passed for restraint in the rough-and-tumble world of espionage, Hurley had put a gun to the KGB officer’s head and explained what would happen if any more Soviet wet-work teams plied their trade against American CIA officers.

Then he’d blindfolded Ivanov, tied him up, and pilfered his files.

Taking the files had been an afterthought. A way to further humiliate the KGB officer and keep him off balance, but after skimming through their contents, Hurley realized he’d struck gold. He’d handed the majority of the stash to a courier for transport back to West Berlin.

One page he’d kept for himself.

Tossing the cigarette to the ground, Stan made for the apartment building’s door.

Unlike much of the new construction in East Berlin, this structure did not appear as if it were one stiff breeze from tipping over.

The fourteen-story building looked out on a greenspace replete with fountains.

The pedestrian area was free of trash and the entrance featured an arc of worked stone that protected residents from the elements.

As with most places behind the Iron Curtain, it paid to be one of the party elite.

Without breaking stride, Hurley pulled open the glass door and stepped into the lobby. A doorman who’d been slouching behind a desk adjacent to the entrance shot to his feet.

“Kann ich Ihnen helfen?”

“ Nein ,” Hurley answered. “I’m here for Herr Volkov.”

The doorman’s eyes widened.

KGB officers on rotation to East Berlin preferred to keep their living arrangements shrouded.

Hurley’s Berlin-accented German was perfect, but the fact that he knew the intelligence officer residing on the seventh floor by his true name rather than an alias further burnished his credentials.

Only another intelligence officer would have access to that information.

In the doorman’s mind, this meant the Hurley was Stasi and best left alone.

Or at least that’s what he hoped.

“If you’ll wait just a moment, I’ll ring Herr Volkov to let him know you’ve arrived.”

“You’ll do no such thing. Not that it is any of your business, but Herr Volkov left strict instructions for me to come to his apartment unannounced.

I will knock on his door. If he is still indisposed, he will not answer, and I will return in one hour’s time.

His instructions were abundantly clear in this regard.

I’m assuming you find them equally as clear. ”

The doorman swallowed. “Yes, but our procedure—”

“Perhaps I haven’t made myself plain,” Hurley said, stepping closer.

“I am going to enter that elevator, take it to the seventh floor, walk down the hall to Herr Volkov’s apartment, and knock on his door precisely three times in accordance with his wishes.

If you choose to deviate from those wishes, the repercussions will fall squarely on your shoulders. Understood?”

The doorman swallowed again.

Stan shifted, allowed his suit jacket to drift open.

The Walther PPK holstered under his left armpit already had a suppressor screwed onto its modified barrel.

The additional length would slow his draw, but in this case, quiet was more important than fast. Herr Volkov was definitely not expecting him, and Stan intended to keep it that way.

“I understand. Please give Herr Volkov my best.”

Hurley nodded, pressed the call button for the elevator, and stepped inside. The trip up to the seventh floor seemed to take an eternity. Each second was another opportunity for the doorman to hedge his bets and ring the KGB officer.

If that happened, Hurley was done.

The elevator shuddered to a halt and the doors slid open.

The landing was empty.

With a thundering heart, Hurley strode down the hallway as quickly as he could move without giving the appearance of running.

Last night, when he’d still been high on bloodlust and the adrenaline spike that came with getting the drop on Ivanov, this had seemed like a great idea.

Now, in the ominous silence, he had a different take.

This was stupid.

Incredibly stupid.

Hurley clenched and unclenched his shooting hand to get the blood flowing as he checked the numbers stenciled on the apartment doors.

711.

712.

713.

This was it.

Easing the pistol from his holster, Hurley held the weapon with the muzzle pointing downward. Then he took a step backward, and before the rational portion of his mind could regain control, he kicked the door just below the handle.

It swung open.

Hurley allowed his momentum to carry him across the threshold.

The PPK was already at eye level, and the extra length added by the cigar-shaped suppressor made the weapon feel even more stable.

With ease he tracked the tip to the forehead of the man seated on the couch in the apartment’s small living area.

“Don’t move,” Hurley said. “I’m here to save your life.”

Dmitri Volkov did not look particularly physically imposing.

Though he was of an age with Stan, the Russian already had the beginnings of a beer belly.

His eyes were bloodshot and his face veined, probably from too much vodka.

He looked like a man who had just finished a night of debauchery with a winsome German girl young enough to be his daughter.

He did not move like one.

In a blur that Stan would not have believed had he not witnessed it, the KGB officer reached behind the couch’s cushion.

Volkov was incredibly fast.

Hurley was faster.

The PPK spat a single round, and a tuft of fabric jumped an inch from the Russian’s outstretched fingers.

“The next one’s in your forehead,” Hurley said. “I just want to talk. Give me five minutes. Then I’m gone.”

For a long moment, Hurley wasn’t sure which way this was going to go. Then Volkov slowly moved his hand back into his lap. “I often have people who wish to speak with me. They usually make an appointment with my secretary. She’s quite good.”

“Do you know who I am?” Hurley said as he eased the apartment door closed with one hand while keeping the pistol trained on the Russian with the other.

“Of course.”

“Then you know why I couldn’t call your office.”

Volkov shrugged. “There are ways in which these things are done. Kicking down a man’s door and sticking a pistol in his face is not one of them.”

“I don’t have time for formalities. Neither do you. Unless corrective actions are taken, I expect you’ll receive an unscheduled recall to Moscow by the end of the day. By this time tomorrow, you’ll be a guest of Lubyanka prison. You know what happens next.”

For the first time, Hurley saw a fissure form in the Russian’s otherwise calm and collected demeanor.

The slight frown vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared, but Hurley knew what the look signified.

Dmitri Volkov might be a rising star in the KGB, but he would not be the first hotshot officer to have his flame extinguished in one of Lubyanka’s dank basement cells.

Lavrentiy Beria might be long dead, but his famous sentiment of show me the man and I’ll show you the crime was still very much alive. “Why should I—”

The phone on the end table next to the Russian rang to life.

Volkov glanced at the handset and then back at Stan.

“Go ahead,” Hurley said. “Answer it.”

While he hoped the KGB officer took his instructions as a sign of confidence, they were actually an act of desperation.

Stan was betting that the caller was the doorman.

By now the shock-and-awe campaign Hurley had waged in the lobby had probably worn off.

Or maybe the man was just hedging his bets and figured that he had more to lose by not calling the Russian than by angering Stan.

Either way, if it was the doorman and Volkov didn’t pick up, Hurley knew who the dutiful German would call next.

The Stasi.

With exaggerated motions, Volkov lifted the trilling handset and held it to his ear.

“ Ja? ” The Russian listened in silence for several seconds, then thanked the caller and hung up.

“That was my doorman. A message just arrived via a courier from the office. They’d like me to come in on my day off. ”

Hurley nodded like that was exactly the news he’d expected, while hoping against hope that his thundering heart wasn’t as loud as it seemed. “Then I guess you have places to be. I’ll show myself out.”

Stan reached behind him. His fingers were closing on the doorknob when the Russian spoke.

“How did you know?”

Stan sighed.

“The woman you’re seeing—Stefanie—she’s Stasi. A swallow.”

Technically, swallow was a Russian term of art. Stan wasn’t sure what the Stasi called officers who had been trained to use sex to ensnare potential agents, but he figured the distinction wouldn’t matter to Volkov. Judging by the look of rage on the Russian’s face, he’d been correct.

“Get out,” Volkov said. “Now.”

“It’s true, and you don’t have to take my word for it.

” Reaching into his coat pocket, Stan withdrew a single piece of paper.

“I paid your boss a visit after he sent two men to kill me. We had a constructive discussion about what the rules of engagement between our intelligence services should be going forward. I also helped myself to some of his files. I thought you might be interested in this nugget.”

With the pistol still pointed at the Russian’s chest, Hurley handed over the single page like he was offering a strip of raw meat to a tiger.

It wasn’t that Volkov had become more formidable in the last thirty seconds.

Quite the opposite. The Russian sagged like a deflated balloon, but he was angry and desperate.

Angry and desperate men did stupid things.

Volkov snatched the paper and began to read. Stan could tell when he got to the damning paragraph. The jerky typewriter-like motion of his eyes stopped. For a long moment, the Russian just stared at the paper.

Then he slowly placed it on the end table.

“Why did you bring me this?”

“Your boss tried to kill me, and according to that, he plans to use the excuse that you fell into a honeytrap to kill you. That means you and I have something in common.”

Volkov smiled a tired smile. “Would you care for a drink?”

“Next time. I’ve been here long enough. Do you want me to take care of the girl?”

The smile died. “I believe a man should clean up his own mess.”

“So do I,” Stan said. “You’re in a tough spot, Dmitri, but I make a better friend than enemy.”

“You and I are now friends?”

Stan holstered his pistol. “You know how this works. Your boss wants to kill you. I’ve risked my life to save you. Doesn’t seem like a hard choice to me. I’ll be in touch.”

Hurley opened the door, ghosted into the hallway, and closed it behind him. As recruitments went, the pitch he’d just delivered to Volkov wasn’t exactly textbook.

Then again, neither was he.