She had a crawling feeling in her stomach that tracking down Lukacs was going to wind up more like the third type.
“What’s your twenty, Lily?” Shepard’s tinny voice crackled in her ear piece.
“Just got out of the cab.”
“Okay, walk north along Quan Jo.”
“Is that the opposite of south?”
“That’s a little snarky,” he complained. “Even for you.”
“Sorry, mate. I’m a bit cranky. Karen booked me on a whirlwind tour.”
“Well, airline seats are tough to get on short notice, you know.”
“I know, but Ho Chi Minh City, really? And then she put me on Aeroflot. I thought the bloody rivets were going to pop out.”
Shepard laughed. “Well, you made it.”
“Barely. The room at the Hilton’s all right, but I hardly had time to bathe, pretty up, and put on the black wig. It’s almost midnight.”
“From what I’ve heard, that’s when things just get going in Seoul. How do you look?”
“Smashing,” she said. “Absolutely smashing.”
Shepard almost giggled. “I’m sure.”
Her black stiletto heels clicked on the sidewalk, which was gleaming and slick from an earlier drizzle. The city was chilly, but she’d forgone her wrap because the flights were exhausting and the cold would kick-start her bloodstream. A snug black sequined dress, very short and with a plunging neckline, squeezed her shapely form.
An emerald choker girded her throat, and, during the Aeroflot flight, she’d had plenty of time to apply and paint a set of cinnamon nails. Her long red hair was pinned up under the wig, which was now cascading onto her shoulders, and a pair of Versace shades hid her eyes, which she’d painted up into a Eurasian slant.
The pissy thing about operative travel was that you could never just bang around with a carry-on and jump from flight to flight. There were “things” to be carried that had to be stowed underneath to avoid the scans, so she’d suffered lots of foot-tapping and waiting at baggage claims. But now she was all kitted up.
High up inside her right thigh was a slim Fairbairn–Sykes blade scabbarded to a snap garter, and she was wearing one of those newly fashionable, small leather backpacks which subbed for a purse. Nothing could be found in there but her iPhone, makeup clutch, cash, the gold access card to the club, and a silk bag of female “unmentionables.”
However, all those items rested on a false bottom, below which nestled her Walther P22 and spare magazine. The underside of the pack had a Velcro tear-away cover, so with a simple finger snatch, she’d be well armed.
Shepard’s voice popped in her ear again. “You should be nearing a subway stop.”
“I see one, coming up.”
“What does it say?”
Lily laughed. “I don’t believe it, Linc. It says Hak-Dong. A bit of castration, shall we?”
Shepard grinned through the comm. “I thought that might cheer you up. I routed you past it on purpose. Take a right.”
“You’re a card.”
She waded through a trio of obviously American troops on leave, whose eyes scanned her lustfully, and then she heard them whistle from behind.
“Think you picked up any tails?” Shepard asked.
“No, only the random piglet. They’ve only got eyes for my legs, and no one seems to mind that I’m talking to myself.”
“It’s the norm now.”
“Indeed.”
Lily smiled, remembering the stories Dan Morgan had told her about the advent of cell phones and the very first Bluetooth devices. All of a sudden, in Boston, he’d said, everyone seemed to be having neurotic conversations with themselves. But she and her peers had grown up with that, and the habit was a boon for spies.
“You should be seeing it by now,” Shepard said. “It’s three stories, flat granite entrance with big black doors and probably some heavies out front.”
“Got it, fifty meters. But there’s no lettering anywhere that says the Pentagon.”
“Above the doors, just an engraved pentagon.”
“Yes, I see it. Strange name for a club.”
“They don’t think so in Arlington.”
Lily snickered. “All right, mute your end for a bit. I’m going in.”
“Good luck.”
She took a breath, emphasizing the jut of her breasts, and she added a bit more sway to her hips as she strode up to the entrance. There were no velvet ropes because no one waited in line for access at the Pentagon; you were either invited or not.
Two large men in black suits who looked like San-Do practitioners glared down at her without a hint of interest in her body. She wondered if they were eunuchs. One of them stuck out a ham-sized hand.
“No pubbrick,” he growled in a heavy accent. She assumed he meant “public.”
She smiled, unslung her backpack, reached inside, and showed him her gleaming gold access card. Then both men bowed their cinder-block heads and pulled on a pair of shiny brass handles.
She stepped into a large “submarine chamber” as the doors closed behind her. Another Sumo type stood behind a high black podium with a computer on top and a reader that looked like a Baccarat shoe. He took her card, and the reader swallowed it up.
Game time, she thought as her calves tensed. If alarms are going to go off, it shall be now. She wondered if she’d even be able to bolt past the gorillas out front.
“List,” the man said.
She stared at him for a nanosecond before realizing what he had said. She held out her wrist, and he snapped a slim black bracelet around it—cinching it with a device that resembled a notary’s seal.
She hoped she was home free, but he pointed at her backpack. She shrugged it off her shoulders and opened the top for him. He rummaged through it perfunctorily and waved her on through the next set of doors.
Yesss, she triumphed in her mind.
The music hit her like a mortar barrage. It was German techno thumping in blast waves—making the floor vibrate as if a squad of giant blacksmiths were pounding their hammers. She’d been in plenty of nightclubs, casinos, and discos in scores of cities around the world, but this place made her stop and gape.
The Pentagon’s three stories comprised one enormous space, with a circumference of angled silver tubing arching skyward to a domed ceiling of somehow floating stars. Halfway up the tubes, nests of razor wire held disco spotlights that swung on gimbals, flashing neon like machine guns—an epileptic’s nightmare.
In the center of the space was a raised pentagonal stage, with a DJ team of Amazon-size girls in black spandex working six turntables of vinyl disks. Bracing the stage were four faux-stone towers with turrets atop, each sporting the huge head of an animatronic dragon. It was like a mix of time-travel décor—a prehistoric altar inside a space station.
There was no discernible dance floor as the packed bodies swayed and twitched everywhere. Two curved aluminum liquor bars with neon ledges flanked the space against the walls, and between the spinning revelers she saw round tables with red leather banquettes filled with drinking guests. She watched as a team of male “selectors,” bare-chested with leather vests and black bow ties, pushed through the crowd, pounced on a buxom, German-looking blonde, and carried her up to the stage.
She was clearly half in the bag, and they cooed and wooed her as she surrendered and danced solo. The crowd swarmed closer to the stage, hands thrust up and clapping to the pounding techno rhythms, and at last she pulled her tube top off. Her breasts bounced out, and the crowd roared its approval while the dragons spit gouts of flame.
This is going to be quite a challenge, Lily thought as she perused the crowd. Finding Lukacs in this mess would take some doing, but she had to make sure he wouldn’t spot her first.
She rose on her toes and twisted her head until she spotted it—a mermaid bus
t protruding above a recessed door.
She worked her way along the wall to the Ladies’, where a gaggle of Korean girls spilled out, laughing as they wiped powder rings from their nostrils. They were dressed to the nines and looked terribly easy. She figured that to get into the Pentagon, you had to be a very wealthy man, his squeeze, or a high-priced hooker.
Inside the restroom, Lily passed three girls at the sink, adjusting their push-up bras and makeup. She sidled up to the mirror to make sure her disguise still held up. She looked good: somewhat Eurasian but nondescript. She could play it both ways.
She looked around. For a fleeting moment, she was alone in the restroom. She tapped her right ear. “Linc, you can say anything you like to me now. No one’ll hear a bloody thing in this mêlée.”
He laughed. “Is it a wild joint?”
“It would curl your hair, luv.”
She marched out and right away absorbed the pounding techno beats into her body. She swayed her hips from side to side, clenched her fists out in front of her chest, and pumped them back and forth. She started to dance, taking a planned strategic search pattern. She’d circle the outer perimeter first and then tighten that circle, around and around, until she spotted her quarry.
She picked a sweating young Asian executive first, his open shirt displaying a gleaming, hairless chest. She gripped his shirt with her left hand, bumped her left hip into his crotch, then turned, and gave him her right one as he grinned and gripped her waist. Then she spun him, twisting across the floor in dirty-dancing pirouettes, her fingers gripping his belt buckle as her eyes took in three hundred sixty degrees behind him. Nothing yet, so she kissed his cheek, pushed him off, and rocked on to her next buoy in the sea of gleaming, bouncing bodies.
Next she chose a girl, a punky type with fire tattoos, bobbed black hair, and ample breasts. Lily gripped her muscled arms and grinned, letting the tips of her chest rub over the girl’s, and again she covered more of the floor as her green eyes flicked over faces and forms, searching for Lukacs’s silver-blond hair and angular face.
After that she backed up into a surprised, middle-aged European—a banker type— and she smeared his fat fingers to her belly and let him hump her from behind as she covered another swath of floor. She passed close to the stage, where this time a lithe, buxom redhead was cooed into flipping up her microskirt. The dragons spat flame, and the crowd roared.
She spotted him. Twenty meters from stage left, a group of men were hunched over one of the large round tables. Apparently the club was also a roving casino, without set games or playing installations. Instead, the croupiers were roving ladies dressed like German bar girls—in black leather lederhosen and bouncing cleavage.
They carried playing trays, dangling from straps around their necks, and gamblers could summon them over for a round of five-card stud or blackjack. Lukacs sat among a quintet of Asian men—a pile of chips and cards and cash between them. A couple of his ugly bodyguards stood back from the table and watched. She quickly abandoned her hopeful paramour and danced to somewhere else.
“Acquired,” she said as she smiled and pranced, barely moving her lips.
“Say again?” Shepard prodded.
Lily put her fingers to her throat and pressed. That sometimes helped with the audio.
“Got him.”
“Outstanding! Who’s he with?”
“Unknown. Hang around for video.”
“I’m glued to my chair, lady!”
This next part was going to be dicey. First, she ran a check on the emergency exits, spotting one to the right near the Ladies, and another directly opposite, near the Men’s. There was likely another somewhere behind the stage, but getting back there would be a last-ditch thing.
Now she needed some cover, at least one “mark,” or two would be better. She had to get near Lukacs with her cell, shoot some images, and send them to Linc.
Ahh, there you are, gents. She smiled as she spotted a pair of European-looking men in their thirties, sitting at a small round table about twenty meters from Lukacs’s position. They were fashionably dressed in gleaming black, with chest curls poking from the tops of silk shirts. One was blondish, and the other one had darker ringlets, probably French or maybe Corsican.
She strode right over to their table, pulled out a chair and plopped herself down. She leaned back, blew out a breath that flicked her bangs, and said, “Whew!” as she fanned herself with a hand. The two men looked a bit startled, but then they scanned her body and grinned. She took a stab at her instincts.
“Bon soir, mes amis.” She nearly had to shout it above the techno fray. Then she leaned forward, displaying her cleavage, and stuck out a hand to the blond one. “Amanda Flay.”
He smiled and took her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Pierre,” he said.
The other one took it and squeezed it. “Antoine.”
“A pleasure.” Lily leaned forward, one elbow on the table as she cupped her chin, perused their chest curls and smiled.
“Do you speak French?” Pierre asked in a heavy accent.
“No, but I know how to French. And I’ve always dreamed about a ménage-a-trois.”
The men jerked their heads back and leered at each other. Lily fingered her emerald choker.
“I’m terribly thirsty,” she said. “Escort a lady to the bar?”
“We shall lose our table,” said Antoine.
Lily got up and motioned for her newfound friends to do likewise. She gripped the top spars of their chairs and tilted them both across the table. Then she reached for Antoine’s belt buckle as his eyes went wide, whipped the belt from his trousers, and girded the two chairs together.
“There,” she said. “Now no one would dare!” She unslung her backpack, took out her cell, draped the pack over one shoulder again, and took their elbows. “Onward!”
She guided them through the thumping crowd, pulling them close, letting her hips rub theirs as she felt them stealing glances at her bouncing breasts. They passed fairly close behind Lukacs’s table, where she took a quick glance at the back of his head. Across from him sat a stocky Korean with a flat-top haircut, a forehead scar, cruel black eyes, and a boxer’s nose. That one had to be Lukacs’s contact; the rest looked like hangers-on.
The trio pushed their way to the neon bar on the left. The bartender was a girl with spiked blue hair. Pierre and Antoine ordered martinis. “Amanda?” Pierre inquired.
“Vodka, if you please,” she said.
“With?”
“With vodka.” She smiled and turned her back to the bar, leaning her elbows on the neon tubing as she gripped her cell casually. Lukacs’s table was about seven meters away, appearing, and then blocked again, at intervals, as the crowd ebbed and waved by. She pressed the button and recorded in bursts.
“Okay, I’m getting it,” Linc said in her ear. “Try to hold it steady.”
She did, as Antoine leaned down from her left.
“So, mademoiselle, where are you from?” he asked.
“Your dreams.” She smiled up at him as she dug her nails in his ribs.
“That’s a good one,” said Linc. “You’re from everyone’s dreams. Give me one more burst, and I think I’ve got this.”
She did, but then some instinct caused Lukacs’s Korean contact to swing his head around. His black eyes met hers for a split second before she turned back to the bar. Pierre, to her left, had their drinks and was slapping some cash on the counter. She squeezed his ass cheek and looked up at him.
“Kiss me,” she said. His eyes widened, but he did. He was fairly slimy, but it was not the worst she’d ever suffered.
The three of them pushed back toward their table, and she made sure not to glance at Lukacs again. Antoine recovered his belt as Lily tucked her cell phone away. They sat and drank while she boldly hinted about her most sensitive spots and favorite positions whi
le Pierre and Antoine squeezed their thighs together. It seemed to be taking Linc forever, but at last his voice murmured in her ear.
“Okay,” he said. “The dude across from Lukacs is Colonel Shin Kwan Hyo, North Korean, which means he’s got a big set of balls showing up in Seoul. The other dudes don’t register, except for three of Lukacs’s thugs, who I just matched from Prague. If you’re copying this, give me a cough.”
Lily took a swig of her vodka and ice, coughed once, and played with Pierre’s fingers.
“Received,” Linc said. “You also got a shot under their table. Hyo and Lukacs both have identical briefcases beside their legs. They’re gonna pull a switch. You did good. Now you better hightail it. Copy?”
Lily coughed one more time and finished her drink. She smiled at Pierre and Antoine as she sketched a crimson nail along her cleavage. “Gentlemen, I would love to see your hotel room. Is it far?”
They downed their martinis as quickly as possible. But Lily glanced to the right and froze.
Two of Lukacs’s goons were moving toward her through the dancing patrons, one of them taking a wide berth to the left while the other came straight on. The crowd seemed to have gotten even larger, the music louder, but, as some dancers push together and parted, she glimpsed Lukacs and Hyo staring her way. She turned back and touched her throat.
“Blown,” she muttered.
“Pardon?” Pierre said.
“Get the hell out,” Linc said in her ear.
But it was too late. The first heavy was already beside her chair, staring down at her. She looked up. He was shaved bald and brick-faced with slitted gray eyes, and he was wearing one of those safari vests. Armed.
“My employer would like to have a word with you.” His accent was thick and Slavic.
“So sorry. My dance card’s full.”
He leaned down and gripped the back of her chair, and his face turned stony. “Now,” he growled.
“Later,” she sneered up at him. “I’m with friends.” She slipped her feet out of her heels.
Rogue Commander Page 10