Definitely been watching us.
The doorman was a dead-eyed brute with a scar splitting his chin. He wore a puffy down-filled coat. As he waved them through, Monk caught a glimpse of a shoulder holster. Once inside the vestibule, they were confronted by another guard who patted them down before allowing them up a dark stair.
Here we go.
As they climbed, another gunman had been posted at each landing. The two at the door hadn’t brandished weapons, likely cautious of being spotted from the square outside. Up here, there were no such reservations. The first guard had a pistol in hand; the next manned a sniper rifle pointed through a gap in a boarded-up window.
Monk imagined this assassin following their path across the plaza, the weapon’s sight fixed to his head. He suppressed a shudder.
Valya was definitely not taking any chances.
The final landing at the top was guarded by two men carrying stubby assault rifles. One guard broke off and led them down a hall to a closed door. Their escort rapped his knuckles on it and spat in Russian.
The door opened, and the two were ushered inside. Mara kept at his heels, bumping into him in her haste to get away from the armed men. Apparently, that steel in her spine hadn’t fully tempered yet.
As Monk entered, he took stock of his surroundings with one glance. The room was stripped of wallpaper, with pieces still stuck to the lath-and-plaster. Underfoot was freshly laid subfloor. The only exit—a single window—had been boarded up like all the others. With the sun on the other side of the square, a few slits of light cut through gaps in the boards, illuminating air heavy with dust motes.
The only other light was a lamp pole standing next to a wooden table.
One of the room’s two occupants was bent over a laptop. He was lanky, with disheveled brown hair and thick black glasses. Next to his elbow was a case full of coiled cables, small meters, tiny screwdrivers.
Clearly Valya’s tech expert.
The other man in the room was a bear—a Russian bear from his close-cropped blond hair and cold blue eyes. If there was any doubt to his homeland, the man had stripped to a T-shirt, oblivious to the cold in the unheated room. A red sickle-and-hammer tattoo stood out prominently on his exposed bicep.
Further confirming his nationality was the military-issue pistol in his hand, a Russian MP-443 Grach—also known as a Rook.
It seemed Valya had come to play chess.
Monk lifted his case.
Then it’s good that I brought a queen of my own.
4:18 P.M.
As Mara finished setting up her Xénese device, she tried to imagine how this would all end. She eyed the boarded-up windows, knowing how thoroughly they were trapped. She pictured the square outside. She had visited the plaza once before, during her trip to Madrid with Eliza. As they shared tapas, the librarian had told her how witches were burned in this square, often in great spectacles with multiple pyres aflame.
She remembered Eliza’s words, sad but determined: Women of intelligence have always been persecuted. We will end that one day.
But unfortunately, that wouldn’t be today.
Mara expected to suffer the same fate as those witches of the past.
To distract herself, she eavesdropped on the two men in the room. They spoke quietly in Russian, not aware she understood every word. She listened to their rude comments, their derisive chuckles. The bigger man—Nikolaev—suggested lewd ways to make her cooperate, which earned a lascivious smile from his tech partner.
Screw you all.
A few minutes ago, their chatter had briefly quieted when Monk first opened the case, revealing the softly glowing Xénese device in low-power mode. As she hooked it to her laptop, Kalinin, the computer expert, kept a close eye on her work, all but breathing down her neck, smelling of garlic and bad hygiene.
She did not rush, making sure all the calibrations were correct before powering Eve back on.
Kalinin was clearly losing patience. “Glupaya shlyuha,” he complained to Nikolaev, calling her a stupid whore. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
Mara was accustomed to such derision from male colleagues. As in the past, she would let her work do the speaking for her. Once satisfied, she typed in the proper code to return Eve to her full glory.
On the floor, the Xénese device flared brilliantly to life.
Caught by surprise, Kalinin stumbled back a step and covered his face with an arm, as if fearful the device might explode.
Mara looked over and sneered. “Mu-dak.”
Shithead.
His face reddened, whether out of embarrassment at his reaction or shock that she spoke Russian.
He strode forward and pushed her out of his way.
“Careful how you handle the lady, bub,” Monk warned.
Nikolaev came forward, weapon raised, ready to intercede, but then Eve and her garden appeared on her laptop.
All eyes turned toward her creation.
Even Monk gasped.
On the screen, Eve had transformed yet again. She had shed her clothing, her nakedness now obscured by a silvery coating that shimmered and flowed, like a storm-fed river in moonlight. Her face remained Mara’s mother, only far more glorious, her eyes shining like black diamonds.
Monk glanced over to Mara, his face uneasy: What the hell?
She gave the tiniest shrug, knowing that any overt concern might throw off this deal. She had only one explanation. Eve must have learned how to continue her processing under low power. Normally when her hardware idled, she went dormant. She had clearly devised ways to operate more efficiently. Even during the short walk over here, Eve had leaped forward—dramatically so.
Still, Mara kept her reaction muted. She waved to Kalinin and spoke in Russian, further proving her fluency. “Inspect everything.”
Kalinin didn’t have to be told twice, his lust bright, but this time directed at Eve.
Mara kept watch, making sure he didn’t damage anything.
After several minutes, Monk grew impatient and pressured Nikolaev, too. “See, everything’s fine. Now I want to speak to your boss.”
Nikolaev shrugged and pulled out an e-tablet. He opened it with a thumbprint, then propped it upright on the table, angled toward the computer.
After several seconds of delay, a videoconference call connected and a woman’s face appeared on the screen. She looked like a ghost, with white-blond hair and pale skin. Her only blemish was a prominent tattoo of a black sun covering one cheek.
Monk stepped closer. His lips had thinned to hard lines, his jaw muscles prominently protruding.
Mara got out of his way.
Even Nikolaev retreated, still covering him with a pistol.
Monk leaned closer. “Valya . . . we had a deal.”
4:30 P.M.
Monk picked up the tablet and turned its small screen fully at the technician inspecting the Xénese device. “You can see I met my end of the bargain. So free my daughter and Seichan.”
“And if I refuse?” Valya asked, testing him. “What will you do?”
Monk had been prepared for this. “I had Mara enter an abort code, a kill switch. It’s timed to engage at seventeen hundred hours. The deadline you gave to me. Thirty minutes from now it will scrub this entire system. Only I know the code to stop it. So, either you show me live footage of Harriet and Seichan being delivered somewhere safe and sound, or I do absolutely nothing and you lose everything.”
This was a lie, a bluff.
Before coming here, he had tried to convince Mara of this plan, but she had refused. She still believed Eve was too important to the world, especially with that other device still on the loose. Plus, Mara trusted that Eve in her current state would refuse to be a slave to a new master.
From the way Eve looked on the screen right now, Monk didn’t doubt that.
So, he played his best hand and shrugged. “It’s your move, Valya.”
His opponent remained expressionless as she considered her next words carefully. Time stretched. The lamp pole flickered as if sensing Monk’s anxiety and impatience.
When Valya finally spoke, her words were directed at the tech. “Kalinin, have you completed your analysis of Ms. Silviera’s device?”
The tech straightened, lifting aloft a heavy scanner that took two hands to hold. He had been passing it back and forth over the Xénese device. “Da.”
“And you are confident you’ve captured a full schematic?”
Kalinin stepped over to his own laptop and tapped several buttons, then a window opened showing a detailed three-dimensional representation of Mara’s device. “Da,” he confirmed.
Monk felt his stomach dropping.
“Then we can wait the thirty minutes out,” Valya said. “In the end, I can be satisfied with this schematic. I’m sure my people could reproduce the device. So, you either type in the cancellation code and deliver what you promised . . . or I will be sharing the live footage that you demanded. But I don’t imagine you will enjoy the show.”
She finally smiled. “Your move.”
So much for my bluff.