The Shadow Protocol

by Andy McDermott

  “Don’t all gamblers? I used to play the occasional card game at university, and I thought I was pretty good compared with my friends. But I’m sure I would have been cleaned out in five minutes if I’d taken on a serious player.”

  “I’m confident.”

  “You, or Vanwall?”

  “Both.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Tony said to him. “You and Vanwall. Because if we can’t get Zykov’s persona, we won’t have any leads on al-Rais or Lamplighter.”

  “I’ll beat him,” said Adam. He was more serious now, but Vanwall’s lackadaisical smugness was still present. “You just make sure everyone else is set to catch him.”

  “We will be. Speaking of which, it’s your turn to get ready, Bianca. I’ll turn you over to Holly Jo.”

  “God knows what I’m going to end up looking like,” she said as she headed for the door.

  Adam watched her go, paying particular attention to the sway of her hips. “I’m looking forward to finding out.”

  Bianca looked at herself in the mirror. “Well, that’s … rather good, actually.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Holly Jo, leaning over her shoulder to fuss a powder brush over her cheek. “So? Happy?”

  “Yes, thanks.” The combination of the new hairstyle and the slightly overdone but still-elegant makeup was leagues removed from her everyday look, but she couldn’t deny that it was perfectly suited to her character for the evening: the wealthy English dilettante splurging money on a new thrill. PERSONA wasn’t the only way to take on a new identity.

  “Cool. Okay, get your dress and shoes on, then Billy should have some special jewelry for you.”

  Bianca regarded her newly applied false nails. “Can you give me a hand with the zip? I don’t want to break these.”

  “No problem. Step into it?”

  She did so, Holly Jo helping her slide the bright scarlet dress over her legs and body. As the American started to pull up the zipper, the door opened and Kyle rushed in. “Hey, we need to—Saaay,” he said, tone swinging instantly from urgent to smarmy. “Two girls playing dress-up. Nice.”

  “Kyle!” Holly Jo yelped. “First, knock. And second, shut up!”

  “For God’s sake!” Bianca added, blushing. “Five seconds earlier and you would have caught me in my underwear!”

  “Oh, you shouldn’t have said that,” said Holly Jo, with a disgusted sigh. “Now he’s thinking about it. What do you want?”

  He filed away the mental image for future reference before becoming more professional. “We need to get moving. One of Lau’s guys at the casino said they’re about to start taking buy-ins for the game.”

  “Already?” said Bianca. “I thought that wasn’t until six o’clock.”

  “I guess they can’t wait to get their hands on the money. Anyway, we’ve got to get over there before all the places are taken. It’s first come, first served.”

  He backed out, giving Bianca another quick look before closing the door. “That jerk,” Holly Jo muttered, pulling the zipper all the way up. “Okay?”

  “Yes.” Bianca fidgeted with the dress, then hurriedly put on her shoes. They may have been knockoffs of a designer brand, but they were still a much better fit than the pair she had worn for the Luminica presentation—God, only four days before. Her life had undergone a drastic change in a very short time, she realized as she caught her reflection in the mirror. Red dress, high heels, glam look … and about to throw away a quarter of a million dollars as part of a plot hatched by a team of international spies. “This should be a movie,” she said quietly, hardly able to believe it.

  “You look the part,” Holly Jo assured her. “Ready?”

  “Yes. I think. I hope!”

  The two women went back into the suite’s main room. Its occupants had been joined by Baxter and one of his men, the leader of the tactical team talking to Tony. “When our truck gets within twenty feet of the cab, the transponder activates the rigs under the passenger seats and Zykov and his guys all get a needle in the ass. By the time they feel it, the truck will have hit the car. Five seconds after that, they’re out …” Baxter trailed off as he realized that Tony’s attention had wandered, and turned to see why. “Damn,” he said as he saw Bianca.

  “All right, guys, knock it off,” said Holly Jo. “It’s not as if you’ve never seen a woman before.”

  “Not one as stunning as this,” said Adam, grinning broadly. He swaggered across the room to the pair. “Not that there was anything wrong with the way you were before, but right now you look like a million dollars.”

  “Only a quarter of a million,” Bianca reminded him. She stopped, teetering for a moment on her towering shoes. “Oh! Bloody heels.”

  “They look great,” Adam said, giving her legs an admiring look. “But they’d also look good kicked off at the foot of a bed.”

  She couldn’t help blushing, the overbearing Vanwall persona so different from Adam’s usual self. “Well, er, they will be,” she managed to say. His smile took on a more lascivious curl. “My bed, after we’re done tonight. And I go straight to sleep.”

  The unctuous smirk faded but didn’t disappear. “It’s gonna be a long night. Who knows what’ll happen?”

  “What’ll happen,” said Tony firmly, with more than a hint of disapproval, “is that we complete the mission and get the hell out of here. Okay, the taxi is rigged. Adam, it’s up to you to get Zykov out of the casino and into that cab. Make sure that he’s mad enough to come after you to get his money back. We’ll handle the rest. Bianca, Billy’s got some equipment for you.”

  From his use of the word equipment, she half expected to see a selection of guns and lasers laid out on the table for her, but instead found a pair of large gold earrings and two small plastic cases, similar to the kind used to hold memory cards. “These aren’t just to make me look pretty, I assume.”

  “No, no, these are something special,” said Billy. He picked up one of the earrings, cradling it in his palm. “There’s a skittle camera inside it. It points forward, so it’ll see more or less what you see. It’ll set off the metal detector, but then it’s a piece of metal, so they’d expect it to, right? There was enough room for an extra battery, so it should work for about six hours. Hopefully the game’ll be done by then.”

  “That’d be a long game,” Bianca agreed. “What about Adam, though? Won’t the metal detector pick up his earwig and the power pack and everything?”

  Billy shook his head. “They’re mostly conductive polymers rather than metal. A lot harder to pick up. And speaking of earwigs, I’ve got one for you.” He put down the earring and tapped one of the plastic cases.

  Bianca looked more closely. Inside was a silver sliver the size of a grain of rice. “You’re going to drop that in my ear?” she said with dismay.

  “Oh, don’t worry—I’ll glue it in.”

  That actually sounded worse, but she still sat—with considerable trepidation—so he could do the deed. “What’s in the other box?” she asked as he delicately picked up the earwig with a pair of angled tweezers and dipped each end into a small drop of clear adhesive.

  “It’s a microtransmitter,” Billy said. “Okay, stay very still …” She held her breath as he lowered the earwig into her right ear.

  “So you can tell us if you think Zykov or any of the other players are bluffing without having to speak,” Tony elaborated. “We’ll glue it under your fingernail—a fake one, not your real one,” he quickly added. “It doesn’t do much, just sends a bleep if you apply pressure to it. But that’ll be enough for you to give us a code. One bleep if they’ve got a genuine hand, two bleeps if they’re bluffing. If you’re not sure, don’t send anything. Holly Jo will pass your signal on to Adam via his earwig.”

  To Bianca’s relief, Billy withdrew the tweezers. “It’s secure. Holly Jo, can you check that it’s working?”

  Holly Jo had already donned a headset and crossed the room to her laptop. “Okay, Bianca, I’m send
ing … now. Testing, testing, can you hear me?”

  The last was said in a whisper, but Bianca heard it—tinny, but perfectly clear—as if it were coming from inside her skull. She flinched. “Oh! That was really, really weird.”

  Another telepathic whisper. “But you can hear me okay?”

  “Yes. It’s as if you’re right next to me. Well, closer. You’re literally a voice in my head.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Adam. “You’ll get used to it.” Tony nodded in agreement.

  Billy took her left hand and placed the transmitter under the false nail of her little finger. “Holly Jo? The bleeper’s in place. Bianca, if you can just very lightly press your nail against the table …”

  She did so. “It’s working,” Holly Jo called.

  “Great,” said Tony. “Okay, Bianca, we’ve got some extra jewelry so you look the full part, and then you and Adam need to get moving.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Adam as she stood. “These guys’ll be watching out for you the whole time. Just be cool, have a good time … and lose all your money.”

  Enough of the real agent came through the sleepy, smarmy Vanwall persona to make her feel that she genuinely was in safe hands. “Okay,” she said. “And you just make sure that you win it all back.”

  Vanwall returned. “Oh, I will. Be sure of it.”

  By the time she reached the casino, Bianca’s unease had returned. Merely knowing that she was carrying a valise containing a quarter of a million dollars in cash had been stressful enough—had a random bag-snatcher picked her as a target, he would have found the risk more than worth it—but now she was being escorted by an obsequious casino employee to one of the Imperial’s VIP rooms, carrying that amount in high-value poker chips. Her mission: lose it all, while helping another player cheat. She had seen enough Martin Scorsese films to assume that the casino would not take it lightly if they were discovered … to say nothing of how the other players would react.

  They reached the metal detector, another casino worker standing beside it. He gestured for her to go through. As she had expected, an alarm went off, though it was more a quiet trill than a clamor of bells. The attendant ran a wand over her. The jewelry inevitably provoked another electronic warble, but he was unconcerned, seeming more suspicious that she might have some device concealed in her hair. When his check revealed nothing, he gave her body a more cursory examination—the dress was snug enough to make hiding anything under it a tricky proposition—before nodding to her guide and respectfully stepping back.

  She set off again, rounding a corner to enter the VIP room itself.

  The mission’s target was already there.

  She recognized Ruslan Zykov immediately from the surveillance photograph. What it hadn’t revealed about the Russian was how short he was. Zykov was only about five foot five—and something about his stance, an imbalance she knew from her own high heels, suggested that he had resorted to lifts in his shoes to bring him up to that. If he was sensitive about his height, that went some way to explaining his temper.

  Zykov had permanent frown lines creased into his forehead, despite presently smiling—with condescension—as he spoke to an Asian man. He also clearly worked out a lot, compensating for the vertical with the horizontal. His barrel chest and thick arms stood out even under his tuxedo.

  Dangerous, she thought. She would have had the same instinctive opinion if she’d known nothing about him beforehand.

  She took in the room. Softly lit, lavishly if tackily decorated. There was a bar at one end with tables from which the players’ companions could watch the game. About a dozen people, expensively dressed men and women, were already there. Two of the men appeared to be drinking only water rather than anything alcoholic, and were watching Zykov closely. His bodyguards? According to Tony, he had arrived at the Imperial with four companions: all male, all large. This pair matched that description.

  Dominating the room was the poker table, an elongated oval of green baize rimmed with darkly varnished hardwood. Nine chairs were arranged around it. One for the casino’s dealer, the other for the players.

  And she was one of them. The game was a regular event at the Imperial. There was no need for an invitation, or even a recommendation by an existing player. To buy in, all you needed was enough money. Tonight, that amount was $250,000 US.

  Eight players. Two million on the table. Zykov thought he was good enough to take it all.

  Adam had to be better.

  “Madam?” said her escort, directing her to the table.

  Zykov caught the new arrival in his peripheral vision—then did a double-take to get a better look at her. His smile became genuine, if predatory. He said something dismissive to the other man, then turned to face Bianca. “Dobryi vecher,” he said, following it with, “Good evening.”

  “Good evening,” Bianca replied, giving him a bright smile.

  “Ah! English, yes?”

  “Yes, I am. And you are … Russian?”

  “That is right, yes.” He eyed her stack of chips. “So, you are playing against me tonight?”

  “I am. I hope you won’t clean me out too quickly!”

  He laughed, then regarded her with a sly grin. “Now, are you trying to give me a false sense of security by acting innocent?”

  “Oh no, no,” she said, remembering her own persona for the evening. “I’m just here to have some fun.”

  “It is an expensive way to have fun, hmm?”

  “I can afford it.”

  “Well, then I think we shall both have fun tonight!”

  “I’m sure we will. By the way, my name is Bianca. And you are?”

  “Ruslan,” he said proudly.

  “Ruslan the Russian. That should be easy to remember!”

  Another smile. “You will not forget me anytime soon.”

  “I’m sure I won’t.”

  A voice in her ear, a whisper so as not to startle her. “Bianca, it’s Holly Jo. Adam’s just gone through the metal detector.”

  “Okay,” she automatically replied—before realizing her mistake and hurriedly adding, “So, where are you sitting?”

  Zykov waved a hand at the stacked chips in one of the table’s places. “Here.”

  “Do we pick our own seats, or—” She broke off as she saw Adam enter the room.

  Even in a sharply pressed dinner jacket, there still seemed something vaguely crumpled and disreputable about him, Vanwall’s languid arrogance soaking through like a thin sheen of oil. He was living his part; now she had to do the same with hers. “Oh no,” she said, trying to sound disgusted.

  “Do you know him?” Zykov asked.

  “Yes. I’m afraid so.” She and Adam had devised a little act during the short journey to the casino. “I’ve played him before, in London. He beat me.”

  The Russian picked up on the subtext, as she had hoped. “It does not sound like you think he did so fairly.”

  Before she could say anything more, Adam spotted her and, with a big fake smile, strode over. “Well, looky who it is! This is a surprise, Bianca.”

  “Not a pleasant one,” she replied, voice icy.

  “Aw, don’t be a sore loser. Besides, a rich girl like you, it’s just a drop in the bucket.” He nodded toward her chips. “Looking forward to taking those from you tonight. Now, where are you sitting?”

  “Why don’t you pick a seat first, then I’ll decide?”

  He smirked, then pointed at the place facing Zykov’s. “That looks lucky.”

  Bianca put her chips down beside the Russian’s. “This looks luckier.”

  “Don’t count on it. Have a good evening—for as long as it lasts.” He dropped his chips in messy piles at his seat, then headed for the bar.

  Zykov watched him, eyes narrowed. “You think he cheated you?”

  “I’m absolutely positive. But I couldn’t prove it.”

  A glance toward the two muscular men. “If he cheats tonight, he will regret it.” So they were his bodyguards. T
wo in here—which meant the other two were probably somewhere close by in the casino.

  She smiled at him. “I like the cut of your jib, Ruslan.”

  It took him a moment to work out her meaning, but when he did, he was pleased. “I think we are both going to have a good evening tonight.”

  “It’ll be interesting, I’m sure.” That was something she couldn’t deny.

  Two million dollars. And I’m going to take it all.

  Adam’s poker face matched Peter Vanwall’s: a near-permanent hint of arch smugness, each card, good or bad, regarded with the same heavy-eyed smirk. It was a technique honed over many years by the Illinois card sharp, and it had served its user well. Stoic unreadability was one thing, but Vanwall had found early in his career that infuriating his opponents with nothing more than the curl of his lips was better. Pissed-off players made mistakes.

  And Zykov was pissed off.

  The Russian was trying to hide it, but his anger was rising with each lost hand. Bianca thought she had spotted telltale hints of when he was bluffing early on, silently relaying them to the team outside the casino with nothing more than gentle pressure on a fingernail. Holly Jo relayed her assessments back to Adam through his earwig, and it had taken only a few games for him to spot the pattern.

  It wasn’t so much a distinct tell—no nervous tics or beads of sweat here—as a shift in Zykov’s entire demeanor. On a weak hand, he seemed to shrink, his squat, muscular frame drawing protectively inward. It was very subtle, but once noticed it became impossible to miss.

  Would he have picked up on it without Vanwall’s persona in his mind? The gambler had taken on every kind of player imaginable in his long career, thousands of different faces blending together into twenty or so types. The raccoon, skulking at the edge of the action and only darting in with a big bet when it felt completely safe. The pigeon, pecking at everything on the table. The shark. The spider. The owl. Everyone was an animal.