The Red Cobra: a James Ryker Thriller

by Rob Sinclair

  ‘About this job? About you being in Berlin?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Great. Looks like we’ve got the night off then.’

  ‘A night off?’

  ‘I’m all done revealing my hand. So unless you’ve got anything to add.’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  Logan held up his martini glass and the Red Cobra picked up hers and chinked it against his.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said.

  ‘Zum wohl.’

  Five martinis later, they were giddily walking along the corridor on the second floor toward her room. The Red Cobra glanced up at Logan as they idled along. He was a few inches taller than her, even with her heels. She could tell underneath his shirt he was lean – not bulked up, just fit and strong. She guessed given his height and frame that he weighed over two hundred pounds, almost twice as much as she did. Physically he was exactly the type of man she would have picked up that night anyway. The fact he claimed to be an intelligence agent, that he was a potential enemy of hers, only made the prospect of what was to come more thrilling.

  She hadn’t yet decided what to do with him. She certainly couldn’t have killed him out in the open, in the bar. But in the bedroom, behind closed doors?

  The Red Cobra opened the door to her room and stepped in, Logan a pace behind her. He gently pushed the door closed. She was still facing away from him as he reached out and grabbed her arm then swung her round. He pulled her towards him – not a hostile move. He had something else on his mind.

  But as she was moving, the Red Cobra lifted her knee up, reached down and grabbed the handle of the pocket knife from her ankle strap. As Logan brought her close to him she pushed the blade upwards onto his neck.

  They both froze, staring into each other’s eyes with intent. She was panting. Excited. And a little nervous, she had to admit. He was calm, a knowing look on his face.

  ‘I was wondering how long it would take,’ he said.

  She said nothing. Did she really want to kill him?

  Five seconds passed. The Red Cobra could feel her heart thudding. She was so close to Logan she could feel his heart too as it slowly and steadily beat against her.

  After a few more seconds, her own heartbeat seemed to relax, falling in line with his.

  The knife was still on his neck, pressing against his stubbly skin. He leaned forward an inch, pushing against the blade. She didn’t move. He pushed further forward. The knife nicked him. A dribble of blood ran down his neck, under the collar of his shirt. She moved the blade back, just a little. He followed it. Pursed his lips. Before she could stop herself, she did the same.

  And then it happened. She didn’t even know how he did it. The move was too fast. The pain in her arm shot through her shoulder, into her neck. Her hand opened. It was a reflexive reaction. No matter how hard she’d been gripping the knife’s handle she wouldn’t have been able to hold on. He’d caught a pressure point on a nerve and there was nothing she could do.

  With the knife still falling to the floor, Logan twisted her round. One of her arms was behind her back, a hammerlock. He wrapped his thick left arm around her body, pinning down her other hand and arm.

  His size and strength meant she couldn’t move. At least not unless she wanted her arm broken.

  Perhaps that was what it would take.

  His face was pressed up against the back of her neck. She could hear him breathing, feel his warm breaths against her skin.

  He whispered into her ear, ‘Try anything like that again, and I’ll kill you.’

  Then after a few seconds passed, he lightly kissed her neck. It made the hairs on her neck and shoulders stand on end and sent a pleasant shiver down her spine.

  She smiled. ‘Is that a promise?’

  He relaxed his grip and she turned round to face him. She stared into his glowing eyes for just a moment. Then she reached up and pressed her soft lips onto his.

  CHAPTER 35

  The Red Cobra awoke the following morning to the sound of a phone vibrating. She opened her eyes and spotted the phone on the bedside table. She reached out, flipped the lid and pulled the device to her ear.

  ‘Check your inbox,’ the voice said. Then the call went dead.

  She closed the phone and looked over at the other side of the bed. Empty.

  Shit.

  Feeling suddenly alert, the Red Cobra jumped up out of the bed. She was naked. She grimaced. Her head was pounding. She looked over at the clock by the TV. Nine a.m.

  What the hell had happened? She could remember being in the room with Logan. Kissing him. Stripping off. Having sex with him on the floor. Then on the bed. Then... no, after that, she didn’t know. Her mind was a blank. She couldn’t remember if they’d lain in each other’s arms. She couldn’t remember him making a quick exit either. Had he stayed the night? She had no clue.

  That was odd. She didn’t think she’d had that much alcohol, but maybe the combination of gin and exhaustion had taken its toll.

  But she also wondered whether Carl Logan had drugged her.

  Ignoring the daggers in her head, she raced over to the laptop. The almost invisible seal she’d put across the lid was still there. She opened the laptop, booted it up, and went straight into the computer’s metadata. There was no record of the machine having been used since the previous afternoon. So Logan hadn’t been snooping there. That was a relief.

  Her phone. She went back to the bed and grabbed it. She was always so careful about using a mobile. She deleted call histories, messages, as soon as she could. This time she had a slight moment of panic that perhaps she’d left something on there. It only took her a few seconds to realise that wasn’t the case.

  She breathed a sigh of relief then went to her backpack and searched through that, then the rest of her meagre belongings. Nothing was missing. Nothing seemed to have been moved or tampered with.

  So what the hell was going on? Why had Logan upped and scarpered?

  For once in her life, the Red Cobra felt embarrassed. Or was it ashamed? She felt like she’d been used. Even with the martinis sloshing around inside her, she’d felt like she’d been in control of the situation with Logan. Like she was the one playing him.

  But was it really the other way round?

  The more she thought about it, the more it worried her. And he had called her Anna at the bar. It had struck her at the time but she’d not dwelled on the point for long. Now it came back to the forefront of her mind.

  How much about her and her past did Carl Logan already know?

  The chat portal finally loaded up and the Red Cobra checked her inbox. Again the message was brief, coded too. But it was clear what it meant. She was to carry on the surveillance of Gazinsky and wait for the meeting that was planned, with a man called Charles McCabe. British Intelligence, like Logan had said. And then she was to kill them all. Which she could only assume meant Logan too, if he happened to be there.

  It was a welcome message. She didn’t like being made a fool of.

  The Red Cobra sent a return message to confirm her intentions, then deleted both that and the message she’d received. Then she shut down the laptop. She moved over to her backpack and checked over the material on the outside. It was the obvious place for Logan to have bugged her the previous day.

  She found the small tracking chip within minutes. It was tiny, the size of a freckle. One side was sticky allowing it to be pressed easily into place. She found it stuck onto the underside of one of the pocket flaps – an innocuous position. She admired the move that Logan had made to put the chip there, even if it did make her look stupid.

  She would get her own back.

  After showering and dressing, the Red Cobra put on a flame-coloured wig and some emerald contact lenses then made her way across Berlin on foot. She had her backpack though she wasn’t planning on heading back to the apartment to spend the day looking through a camera lens. What was the point? Logan already knew about that location. Most likely he’d have a man station
ed there from now until the meeting between Gazinsky and McCabe had taken place. If she was to continue to surveil, she needed to find a new location.

  That was easier said than done. The apartment had taken her days to find and properly arrange, putting in place all the correct documents and contracts to keep her trail clean. She simply didn't have time to do that all over again.

  She required a more direct approach.

  A little over an hour later, the Red Cobra walked through the luxurious lobby of the Waldorf Astoria. She headed straight past the many eager staff members and into an open lift behind another guest. She realised as the guest – a man in his fifties – pressed his room card onto a small pad that the lift only worked with an active card. He pressed the button for the fifth floor. She looked at the man, catching his attention, then gave him a seductive smile.

  ‘Fifteen, please,’ she said, assuming he’d understand her English.

  He smiled back, then placed his card up against the pad a second time before pressing the button for the fifteenth. The button lit up and she thanked the man as they reached the fifth floor. He gave her another look before he exited. What, was he thinking she was about to head off to his room with him because he pressed a damn lift button for her? The Red Cobra ignored him. Seconds later, she was on her way up again.

  The plan? She had to get into Gazinsky’s suite. She would kill them all, as she’d been asked to do. But she didn’t need to sit and wait for the meeting with Charles McCabe to conclude. She’d kill whoever was in that suite already, then take out whoever else arrived after.

  When she came out of the lift, the Red Cobra smiled when she spotted her opportunity. A maid’s trolley, two doors down from where she was.

  The Red Cobra walked over, scanning in front and behind her to make sure no one was watching. She spotted a CCTV camera at the far end of the corridor but with her cap low and her head down the camera would never get a good capture of her face. And she doubted there was anyone sat watching live feeds covering such an extensive building so there was little chance of her tripping an alert with what she was about to do.

  When the Red Cobra reached the doorway to the substantial room that the maid was cleaning, she did one more scan up and down the corridor. Satisfied, she stepped in through the open doorway and quickly shut it behind her.

  The noise caught the maid’s attention. She was in the process of dusting the coffee table in the middle of the lounge area. The look on her face... she knew she was in trouble.

  The Red Cobra sprang towards the petrified woman.

  Three minutes later, in the maid’s blue and white dress, the master keycard dangling from her waist, the Red Cobra stepped back out into the hotel corridor. She placed her backpack – now filled with her clothes – into the maid’s trolley, out of sight under blankets, then casually pushed the trolley down the corridor to Gazinsky’s suite.

  She pulled the keycard up and placed it into the slot on the suite’s door. The red light flicked to green and she heard the lock release. She put one hand to the handle. The other she balled and knocked gently on the door three times.

  ‘Hauswirtschafts,’ she said, pushing the handle down and the door open.

  The Red Cobra took two steps into the room. The door closed behind her. She stopped. She didn’t need to go any further. She’d surveilled this room for over thirty hours over the last few days. She knew the layout. She knew the location of sofas and drawers, wardrobes, the bed. Where Gazinsky and his wife had placed all their belongings. And it was clear to the Red Cobra that this room was now empty.

  Gazinsky was gone.

  CHAPTER 36

  The Red Cobra didn’t panic. Doing so wouldn’t help her. Instead she backtracked out of the suite and up the corridor with the trolley, from which she grabbed her backpack. She then opened the door to the room she’d been in moments earlier, entered, and closed the door. The maid was on the floor, writhing around, frantically trying to undo the dressing gown belt that was tied around her wrists. She murmured, trying to cry out, but the fabric stuffed in her mouth was muffling her cries. She was going nowhere.

  The Red Cobra stripped off the maid’s dress, opened the backpack and as quickly as she could, put her own clothes back on.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the maid, a second before opening the door and heading to the lift, which she activated using the maid’s key card.

  When she exited the lift on the ground floor, the Red Cobra set her sights on the main exit. She dropped the maid’s card into a bin then strode toward the doors, wanting nothing more than to get out into the fresh air and determine her next step.

  Her plan was halted only seconds later though when she heard the all-too-familiar voice.

  ‘Good morning,’ Carl Logan said.

  The Red Cobra was riled by what sounded like a jovial, taunting tone, but she ignored him and carried on walking out into the street.

  ‘You’re quite the chameleon, aren’t you?,’ he said. He must have only been a step or two behind her. She didn’t let up. ‘Blonde, brunette, red. How do you remember who you really are?’

  ‘I’m sure you’re used to pretending too.’

  ‘You’re right, I am. Part of the job, eh?’

  ‘A necessary evil.’

  ‘I had a good time last night.’

  The Red Cobra stopped. She turned round, expertly keeping the anger that was bubbling inside off her face. Logan stopped too and stared at her.

  ‘You didn’t say goodbye,’ she said.

  ‘You were sleeping. You looked peaceful.’

  ‘Sleeping? I was unconscious. That’s pretty lame, you know. Having to drug women to get them to have sex with you.’

  ‘I didn’t drug you. You were pissed. Maybe you should stay off those martinis next time.’

  ‘Next time?’

  ‘Figure of speech.’

  ‘Oh, for a moment I thought maybe you were a decent human being and wanted to get to know me.’

  ‘I hadn’t ruled it out. I had a good time.’

  ‘Yeah. Sure you did.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you want me to say.’

  ‘We had to move Gazinsky. It wasn’t deemed safe for him here anymore.’

  The Red Cobra strode away down the street again. She walked through a crossing that was on red without once looking. A car screeched to a halt and the angry driver blasted on his horn. The Red Cobra didn’t react.

  With Logan keeping pace next to her, she headed along the wide pavement alongside the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which stood as a permanent reminder of Berlin’s war-torn past, the scarred shell of its bell tower jutting into the sky like a jagged tooth.

  ‘You got the better of me,’ she said. ‘You win. Let’s all go home.’

  ‘I know that’s not what you really think.’

  ‘Why are you even bothering with this charade?’

  ‘Because I like you.’

  ‘Like me. That’s coming from you? I don’t think you’re capable of such a feeling.’

  Though she realised, she was hardly one to talk. Perhaps she shared more with Logan than she wanted to believe at that moment.

  ‘Depends how you define like,’ he said. ‘And exactly what it is about you that I like.’

  ‘My breasts?’

  ‘They’re not bad. Nice actually. But I was talking more on a professional level.’

  ‘I’m flattered.’

  ‘This way.’ Logan pointed to his left to one of the entrances to the sprawling Tiergarten.

  ‘Why?’ the Red Cobra asked, her suspicious mind questioning what he was up to.

  Logan stopped and held his hands up. ‘It’s not a trap. Just thought it’d be better to talk somewhere quiet rather than roam the streets.’

  ‘No.’ She carried on walking. ‘I prefer the streets. Easier to get lost in.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ He picked up his pace again. ‘You’re being set up with this job. You m
ust know that?’

  ‘Being set up for what?’

  ‘The man you think you’re working for. He’s with the Russians. SVR. They’re setting you up. You take out Gazinsky, then they’re going to kill you. Hang you out to dry publicly too.’

  She took a few moments longer than she probably should have to digest his words. She had to admit part of her was sucked in. It wasn’t like she fully trusted her current employer. In her line of work that simply wasn’t possible. Her father had instilled that in her for years.

  So perhaps it would come down to whom she trusted the most. But who was that? The man who was offering her two million dollars to kill Gazinsky? Or Carl Logan?

  ‘If that’s true,’ she said. ‘If they’re setting me up, I’ll handle it.’

  ‘It is true. What I said yesterday, I meant it.’

  ‘Which bit.’

  ‘That we can work together. You’ll be paid. But you need to stop what you’re doing here. Leave Gazinsky to us.’

  ‘They’ll kill me.’

  ‘They’re going to try to do that whatever you choose.’

  ‘How do you know they set me up?’

  ‘I know a lot about you, Anna.’

  ‘Why do you think that’s my name?’

  ‘Would you prefer me to call you something else? Red Cobra perhaps?’

  Her face remained passive even though inside Logan’s words sent a shiver right through her.

  ‘You can call me whatever you want,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t mean you know me.’

  ‘Think what you like. I’ve told you this already: I won’t let you kill Gazinsky. Or McCabe. If you come after either of them, or me, I will kill you. I won’t hesitate even for a second.’

  ‘And if you try to stop me, I’ll kill you. We can both talk macho bullshit, you know.’

  The Red Cobra stopped walking and took a seat on a metal bench. They were near to a busy crossroads filled with cars and bikes. Throngs of people were scurrying around just yards away. If she needed to make a quick exit from the conversation, she felt she could easily lose herself in the crowds – it was certainly a far safer place than the middle of an expansive park.