Blue with Black Dots (The Caprice Trilogy Book 2) (31 page)

The assassin would know exactly the same.  It had to be true.  The truth always cut like a knife, so did
Occam’s Razor
.  It was simple and it was right in front of her.  She sat up on the bed.  She looked over at her puse and remembered her
Browning
pistol.  She grabbed her purse and left the room much like she found it.  She headed down to the ground floor, the bar area.  The bar was empty except for the barman.  The barman was keen for company, so Georgia sat at the bar and ordered a glass of Pinot Grigio.  The barman was friendly.  Georgia was flirty.  She described Hagan to the barman. 
Medium-height
. 
Swarthy
. 
Deep-toned
.  The barman said he hadn’t seen anyone like that in a recent timeframe.  Georgia went for a long shot.  She described the suspicious average-looking man who boarded the train at Rouen, the one who had no hand luggage.  She came up empty a second time.  There was a black baby grand piano in the back right corner of the bar.  Georgia still planned to meet Hagan at 4:00pm.  She had her Browning and her suspicion, which made it safe enough to let the situation play out.  Georgia had access to the eighty-eight keys for ninety-eight minutes before she had to meet Hagan.  She asked the barman for a request.  He wanted
New York, New York
from
On the Town
.  Georgia knew it.  She played it.  The song earned her a standing ovation from the already standing barman.  Georgia rose from the bench, crossed her right leg in front of her left and did a curtsy.

“
You’d be surprised how few real ladies come to this establishment
,” said the barman, “
You have broken a long streak
.”  Georgia did another curtsy. 
Merci
was all she said but it was what she did that would earn her her place within the Agency.  Very few female operatives would take the time to charm the aging barman in a hotel piano lounge.  Georgia’s attitude was different from a traditional Honey Trap spy.  She didn’t necessarily narrow her focus to the high-ranking official who kept state secrets in a locked bureau.  She would charm a barman who was an easily over-looked source of information.  In reality, Georgia wasn’t a Honey Trap, she was a fly trap.  She trapped as many as she could.

Georgia asked the barman if he knew
Le Simple
, the restaurant where Hagan wanted to meet.  The barman knew the restaurant.  He said it was seven blocks away.  What he didn’t know was that
Le Simple
was closed; not the doors, the business.  The word
a louer
was posted clean and clear on the bare front window. 
For rent.
  The surprise didn’t come from her mouth but from her shoulders, arms and legs.  They did what every body did when shocked.  They froze for an uncontrollable second.  Noticing the immediate lack of control over herself, left her muscles frozen but made the time stretch.  The word
louer
became the only French word she knew.  Although frozen, the word burned into her retinas.  It burnt them out.  She had to close her eyes and reopen them.  The sight was the same, an empty store window with a sign on the inside,
a louer
. 

Georgia put her hand in her purse and touched her
Browning
.  She couldn’t have it out on the streets of Le Havre, so she held it in hand and had it in mind.  She walked back to the hotel with her purse over her shoulder and her finger on the trigger.  The
Browning
was in her purse aimed forward.  She made one transition.  She put on her amber
Foster Grant
sunglasses.  The wide wayfarer lenses let her partially disguise herself and let her hide her wandering eyes.  She scanned up and down the street as she walked.  She even stopped to look in shop windows.  Shop windows were a spy’s best friend.  The storefront gave her a 360˚ view of the entire street.  She could see up and down the street from her periphery and the reflection on the glass let her see behind.  Despite all she could see, she didn’t see anything that stood out.  She kept walking.  She went back to her hotel, her point of operations.  She moved quickly through the hotel and avoided the piano lounge.  She didn’t want the barman to see her.  She went straight up to the second floor by way of the stairs.  She did make a mistake.  She took her
Browning
out of her purse before she entered her room.  The strike didn’t count against her.  No one saw.  She took the key out of the inside pocket of her purse and stood to the side as she opened the door.  As the lock turned she threw the door open and got a quick look at the room, nothing.  The next thing wasn’t expected.  She didn’t ease her way slowly into the room checking for movement.  She made the movement.  With her
Browning
out, she pushed open the door and went into the room quick.  She ran to the back of the room making quick eye movements toward the corners.  She ran to the wall and put her back against it.  Looking back at the rest of the room she saw it was empty.  Her
Browning
wasn’t sure.  The door hung open and she held her
Browning
toward it.  It had to be closed.  She decided to leave it open.  The bathroom was still dirty.  She went to the bathroom with her suspicious
Browning
.  There was enough light that she didn’t have to turn the light on.  The shower curtain was open and there was nothing.  She closed the door.  And lowered her anxious
Browning
. 

There was the possibility the assassin wanted to get her out of the room.  But it only made sense if he was waiting for her when she came back.  She thought of one more place he could hide, the balcony.  The truth was it didn’t seem likely.  The reality was it did.  Government assassins held different status than hired hitmen.  The kill was more important than the cover.  A hired gun wouldn’t hideout on the balcony.  The risk of being noticed outweighed the risk of not making the kill.  The hitman wasn’t so concerned about this job.  He had his mind on the next job and the one after that.  It was what he referred to as a career.  Careers were defined by longevity, especially for hitmen.  There were so many factors that could end his career.  Being identified was worse than being killed.  It could end a career without ending a life.  He had to live with the consequences.  But government assassins were different.  They could kill and do it out in the open.  If a Soviet KGB operative was following Georgia, he could kill her with a witness.  He might even kill the witness.  As long as he could get back on the other side of the Iron Curtain, he could leave his worries in the Western Bloc, just another
wet job
.  If anyone, that would be the identity of the assassin—a Soviet
wetworks
operative.  And he was good.  Good enough to take the Agency’s good cards off the table.  Georgia could imagine a Soviet assassin sitting on her balcony drinking black tea until he heard someone enter the room.  Only then would he activate.  Moscow planned ahead.  That was the nature of a planned society.  It gave the Soviets the balls to plan ahead into an uncertain future.  It worked with a static economy.  The Agency did everything in models and statistics.  The models were never wrong.  It only made a difference what the assumptions were.  Georgia assumed a silent Soviet was waiting on the other side of the sliding glass.  She got low on her knees then stomach.  She crawled toward the glass door leading out to the balcony.  She raised her arm and her body to unlock the door.  She cracked the door wedging her fingers in it.  She slid the door to the right giving herself a clear shot.  She waited.  No one came toward the door.  Georgia waited out the assassin.  She felt Soviets were patient.  Americans were not.  If that was meant to give the assassin an advantage, Georgia considered her British passport for the time being.  It wasn’t patience but English manners that made her wait.  She did her assassin a courtesy.  She let him make the first move.  His move took a long time.  Looking at her watch, Georgia saw fifteen minutes had gone.  She had been waiting awhile.  Either the assassin was being more courteous to her or he was still not finished with his black tea. 

Georgia stayed low and crawled out on the balcony squeezing her shoulders through the door sideways.  She kept her
Browning
by her hip so it couldn’t be knocked away.  She turned her head right and left and almost slid herself back inside, until she realized there was nothing to draw herself away from.  The balcony was empty.  Georgia went inside and sat down on the bed.  Something she was running out of suddenly came in full supply, time.  It was the time she had allotted for talking to Hagan.  That conversation was supposed to color in all the gray areas.  But it didn’t erase the gray shades.  It erased the things she thought she knew.  That conversation wasn’t going to happen now.  The time had to be repurposed.  That was the Agency talking, not Georgia.  She had to set a new objective and start moving steadily toward it.  Moving forward wasn’t the issue.  Which way is forward was.  Coming to Le Havre only made sense to meet Hagan.  She had convinced herself of the added safety of being brought up to speed.  Hagan clearly knew more than she did.  He knew the others were dead.  She knew about Patrick only. 

Georgia’s youth began to play with her.  At 24, she simply lacked the experience to directly cope with her own situation.  She was highly trained but not highly taught.  The Agency gave her the best preparation it could.  But there were still those life lessons.  The ones she had been warned about not only by the Agency.  Her mother had warned her as well.  Her father had left the topic alone thinking it unfair to have a baby too forewarned, afraid of the future.  She was afraid now.  She had made all the steps she could think to make.  She did one desperate thing to make it seem as if she was still focused.  She looked under the bed.  The bed was too low for a body to be under.  She did it to make herself think she still knew what was going on.  Her eyes got wet.  She didn’t do anything about it.  She let the moisture run.  Her mind did the same thing.  Her mind pointed something out to her, an inconsistency. 
Le Simple
had been closed for a while.  The floor was clear and the window had the
for rent
sign.  It looked more abandoned than just shutdown.  That look took time to manage, like the difference between old actors and actors made to look old.  You always knew the difference.  If Hagan chose
Le Simple
as a meeting point, he knew the restaurant was closed when he chose it.  If that was true, then it wasn’t a meeting spot at all.  And Hagan didn’t plan to meet Georgia.  It only made sense if Hagan planned to kill her.  Put her on the spot.  Take the shot.  It was a really good idea.  She would be dead in the street and he could be far away.  He could retire and put Xs over the eyes of the Queen of Spades.  Georgia found the idea intriguing.  Even though it involved killing her.  She was still young.  Her death, to her, always seemed a long way off.    It had to intrigue her.  She was a dying breed, being hunted by her own species.  But she wasn’t dead, which made intriguing the word for it.  Surviving was her responsibility. 

She wasn’t going to stay the night.  Not because it was protocol but because the whole timeline was overwhelming.  It was bigger than anything she could think of because she couldn’t think of anything.  It didn’t matter how smart she was.  She’d be dead before she understood what was happening.  She followed the line.  The line belonged to the Director. 
When the operation is reduced to an unfamiliar timeline, reduce the operation
.  It came to mind when it came true.  Georgia wasn’t thinking about the timeline in particular but the only thing she could do was wait.  If Hagan had killed the others, he would eventually come for her.  If a different assassin had killed the others and Hagan, he would come for her also.

Georgia went to the front desk to cancel her reservation for the second night.  A dark-haired woman with short hair was behind the desk.   Georgia’s mind moved quicker than her mouth.

“I need to cancel my reservation for tomorrow night,” said Georgia.

“Under what name?” asked the dark-haired woman.  Georgia didn’t say anything.  But she had an idea that said something.

“Actually, the company might need me here for one more day,” said Georgia, “I’ll stay.”

“Very well, Madame,” said the dark-haired woman.

It wasn’t error correction or a change of mind.  It was a strategy.  Perhaps her assassin was scouting.  It had never left her mind that, maybe, she didn’t know the identity of the assassin.  It was still possible that she had been lured to the spot in front of
Le Simple
for identification.  It was the occupational hazard of hitmen, a positive ID.  If the killer was a KGB wetman, he had to see what she looked like.  Perhaps it wasn’t the plan to gun her down in the street.  It made more sense to kill her in her sleep.  It wouldn’t look like a kill.  Her death would send a signal to the Agency without signaling anyone else.  Her body in the street would send signals in all directions. 

She played against the idea.  Her strategy was to keep her room to see if anyone came calling.  She wouldn’t answer.  She was headed back to Paris.  But she would call the hotel to see if someone had asked for her.  For the plan to work, she had to get out of Le Havre and being seen on the street would tip her hand.  She asked the dark-haired woman to call her a taxi.  The train station was five and a half blocks away.  The cab ride took just under two minutes.  It would have been under one minute but the taxi driver had to drive away from the train station to make a U-turn before heading back.  Georgia tipped but not big.  Not tipping would have pissed off a Le Havre cabbie.  The economy was rough enough and to call a cab for a five-block fare was almost a waste of time.  But tipping big would have been a talking point.  Talking points were breadcrumbs.  The assassin on her tail could be anyone.  It didn’t have to be a direct agent of the KGB.  It could be a KGB operative who was actually French.  It could be a French official, a policeman or military.  Such an assassin could follow her easily.  He would find her just by asking.  Having an official ID, and a way with people would make her trail that much more warm.  She made it as cold as she could.  Her youth urged her to put on her sunglasses to hide her face.  The Director’s words came back to her. 
We don’t hide, we hide in plain sight
.  Georgia and the others spent months training in the distinction.  Covering her face was hiding, walking at a normal pace and speaking French with no accent was hiding in plain sight.  She didn’t need ID to purchase a train ticket but she needed French. 
Un billet à Paris
was all she had to say. 
A ticket to Paris
.  She paid and went to the platform.  It was forty minutes before the departure of the train, on the same rail line that brought her to Le Havre.  She waited like any would-be traveler.  She didn’t stare at her watch.  She looked at it periodically.  She withdrew into her book, the same one that helped her hide her
Browning
.  On her way back to Paris, her
Browning
was in her purse.  The safety was on but one round was ready.  She didn’t travel first class this time around.  There were more travellers in second class.  It made her more normal.  She stood out less.  And she wasn’t worried about her
Browning
.  She wasn’t planning on having her baggage checked but she wanted her
Browning
already assembled.  The need to protect herself outweighed the risk of being discovered with a firearm.  She halfway planned on bringing her firearm out into the open.  If the time came, she would be the one standing over a bleeding body, not the other way around.  Dying to protect her cover made no sense in France or anywhere else.  If her identity as an American agent came to light, the light provided a lot of avenues.  She would be taken into custody and possibly deported.  An exchange between the two governments could be set up or she could simply go to prison.  But she would live.