“Most popular in his class,” muttered Moran to Baumann, who nodded. Repina and Magda didn’t get the joke.
In the fifth-floor alcove, Blokhin peeked out, scanned the ceiling, and identified the black fish-eye lenses of the security cameras, one at each end of the corridor. They could not see him in the elevator alcove. He slipped a light full-face neoprene balaclava over his head, pushed through the stairwell fire doors, and ran up one flight. Repina’s group was just entering a room halfway down the hallway, and Blokhin waited for them to get inside and close the door. He waited another five minutes, subconsciously flexing his shoulders and loosening his wrists. He walked up to the room, took a cleansing breath, and knocked lightly, as hotel staff or a chambermaid would knock. He dragged the hood off his head and kept his head down.
If Iosip Blokhin had been wired to monitors at that moment, his heart rate would have registered 50bpm, blood pressure, 110/70, and ventilation rate, 12 breaths a minute. His galvanic skin response, an indication of stress measured in microsiemens, was at “resting” levels. He recognized the calm clarity that always came before combat, the sudden acuity in vision, and the sharpening of both his sense of smell and hearing. He savored the icy edge of immediate action and the gummy relish of imminent killing. He could hear muffled footfalls on the carpet coming closer. The peephole darkened a second, then came the rasp of the dead bolt moving past the strike plate as the door opened.
Blokhin hit the door with his right shoulder, snapping the security chain and hitting Officer Baumann in the forehead with the edge of the door, and he fell back hitting the wall with his head, trying to get on his feet, but Blokhin closed like a leopard on a baboon, and hit him in the throat with a web-hand strike, compressing his trachea, and sending the cop gasping to the floor, where Blokhin stomped on his Adam’s apple, totally crushing his windpipe. Blokhin rolled the strangling cop butt-high to fish out the Glock from his holster; extracted the fifteen-round magazine to check it; then racked the slide as he walked into the sitting room of the minisuite, picking up a bright throw pillow from an armchair and stepping up to Sergeant Moran, who was lying on the couch in his stocking feet watching a baseball game.
“Who was at the door?” said Moran, not looking away from the TV, as Blokhin shot him from a meter away through the pillow four times in the temple, cheek, and jaw, then turned to an openmouthed Magda sitting at the desk and shot her six times through the now-shredded pillow into her gaping mouth, forehead, and throat, knocking her backward in her chair to the floor amid a welter of pillow stuffing and fabric, floating bits of which settled on and stuck to her bloody cheek. Eleven seconds had elapsed since Blokhin knocked on the door.
Daria Repina walked barefoot into the sitting room in a cloud of steam from the bathroom, wrapped in a hotel bathrobe too big for her, toweling her pixie hair. She stopped short, seeing Blokhin in the room, the queer bloke in the elevator, and her natural combativeness took over. She asked him what he was doing in her suite, and to get the hell out, and who the fuck did he think he was? Blokhin faced her, and quietly said, “Tolko choromu I ne vezot,” Only the black cat, and no luck. Mother of God, thought Repina, only then noticing one of Magda’s bare feet sticking up in the air over the upturned chair, and the blood-smeared face of one of the policemen on the sodden couch, and she knew this man was from Moscow sent by Putin, and she ran to the bedroom, turned to slam the bedroom door and get to the phone, but Blokhin threw her on the bed and hit her massively four times with a knife-hand Spetsnaz Cross: a strike to the right side of her neck, crushing the brachial plexus between the collarbone and the first rib, then across backhand to strike the lower left rib cage, staving in the seventh and eighth ribs, which pierced the lower lobe of her left lung, then up across to the left side of the neck, and back down to fracture the right rib cage, puncturing the right lung, each time forcing a grunt out of Repina, now barely conscious. Her body shook as Blokhin sat her up and wrapped his lobster-claw hands on her chin and slowly twisted her head first one way then the other, listening to the green-stick snap as the C2, C3, and C4 cervical vertebrae separated. Repina flopped back on the mattress, staring sightlessly at Putin’s henchman. Elapsed time: seventeen seconds.
Blokhin had been instructed to destroy the target with maximum unizhenive, maximum humiliation. Moscow wanted Repina to be found in the morning, reduced to a savaged pile of flesh, a demonstration of Russian wrath and a warning to others who dared follow her example. He roughly stripped the bathrobe off her corpse—her skinny body already was a lurid mass of hematomas—and dragged her by one ankle off the bed, her head thumping onto the floor, into the living room, broken neck wobbling, into the middle of the carpet, wrists crossed above her head, and legs kicked out wide, genitals cruelly exposed. He left the other bodies where they were in mute testament to the Kremlin’s wrath. Blokhin scratched a B on Repina’s stomach with the minibar corkscrew (the Cyrillic V for Vympel group of Spetsnaz) for investigators to puzzle over. He did not interfere with either of the women; the massacre tableau was enough, and he took a panoramic photo of the room with his cell phone. Total elapsed time: three minutes. Only the black cat, and no luck.
As he left the room, sliding his balaclava back over his head, he looked at his handiwork: Only one thing missing, he thought. Colonel Dominika Egorova should be lying on the carpet alongside Repina, staring at the ceiling. D’yavol, the Devil. He’d tailed her after her return from meeting the illegal, but had lost her too easily—the isotope device was too weak. Shlykov said she was good on the street, and she was, better than anyone he’d encountered before, but she was a spy, after all. He knew she’d eventually make a mistake, and then Blokhin would crush her, like stepping on a snail in the garden.
BLOKHIN’S KOREAN BARBECUED RIBS
Rinse flanken-style ribs in cold water. In a separate bowl, mix soy sauce, brown sugar, rice wine, sesame oil, black pepper, and cayenne. Combine onion, garlic, pears, and ginger, and process to a smooth purée, then add to the soy mixture. Add toasted sesame seeds and a splash of water to thin. Pour marinade over ribs and toss to cover. Chill overnight, then bring to room temperature and discard marinade. Grill or broil until caramelized. Serve on lettuce leaves with ssamjang paste, pickled peppers, kimchi, cucumber salad, and steamed rice.
11
Pitch and Roll