The cargo train shrieked into the Helsinki depot, a long, mournful cry of steel on steel.
Kato and Pavel emerged from the open-topped car like creatures clawed up from the black earth. They were covered head to toe in a thick, gritty layer of iron ore dust, their faces pale masks, their eyes burning holes in the grey morning light.
They were ghosts in a city of spies. They had nothing but the ragged clothes on their backs, a pistol, a captured submachine gun, and a singular, burning purpose.
The hunt was on.
They found a cheap room in a dockworker's flophouse, a miserable little box that smelled of stale sweat and boiled cabbage. Kato spent the first hour under a trickle of cold water from a rusty tap, scrubbing the grime from her skin, her mind clicking and whirring.
Nicolai wouldn't have sent a common thug to clean up his mess. A botched mission of this magnitude, involving a high-value asset like Koba, demanded a professional. A rival. Someone from another department, eager to build his reputation on the corpse of hers.
She needed a name. And she needed it fast.
Pavel sat on the lumpy mattress, methodically disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling their weapons. His movements were economical and precise, his focus absolute. He didn't speak. He didn't need to. He was a weapon, and he was making himself ready.
"We're not going to be subtle," Kato said, her voice echoing slightly in the small, damp room. She was looking at her own reflection in a cracked mirror, at the hollowed-out eyes of a stranger. "Subtlety is a luxury for people who aren't being hunted. We're going to be a hammer."
Pavel looked up from the slide of his pistol, his eyes empty pools of shadow. He gave a slow, single nod. He understood.
Their target wasn't the German embassy. That was a fortress. Their target was its weakest link.
Kato's mind, a finely tuned machine of intelligence analysis, sorted through the possibilities. She found him in her memory: a low-level administrative clerk named Franz, a man with a taste for expensive women and a bad habit of losing at cards. A man with secrets.
They cornered him that night in a dark, wet alley behind a seedy bar where he'd been trying to drink away his debts.
"Franz," Kato said, her voice a soft purr from the shadows.
He spun around, his face a mixture of confusion and fear. "Who's there?"
He saw Kato, and a flicker of recognition, then dismissal, crossed his face. He saw Pavel, a silent, hulking shape behind her, and his bluster returned.
"You can't be here," he sneered, trying to puff out his chest. "I have diplomatic immunity. I'll have you arrested."
Kato didn't say a word. She didn't have to. She gave a slight, almost imperceptible gesture with her head.
Pavel stepped forward.
He didn't hit Franz. He didn't threaten him. He simply took the man's left hand, the one he was waving so dismissively, and pinned it flat against the damp, cold brick wall.
With a calm, deliberate motion, as if he were folding laundry, Pavel bent the man's little finger back until it snapped.
The sound, a sharp, wet crack, echoed in the narrow alley. It was followed by a choked, gargling scream that Franz tried and failed to suppress.
Pavel's face was utterly blank. His eyes were dead. He released the broken finger and moved his grip to the man's ring finger.
"The name," Kato said, her voice still a soft whisper. "The name of the man sent here from Berlin to run the clean-up operation."
"I don't know!" Franz sobbed, tears and snot streaming down his face. "I swear!"
Pavel began to apply pressure.
"Richter!" the man shrieked, the name exploding out of him. "Major Klaus Richter! From military intelligence! A rising star, they call him! Brutal. Ambitious."
He babbled the rest, telling them everything. The safe house was a private apartment above a bakery near the main harbor. Well-guarded, but discreet.
They left him crying in the alley, a broken, whimpering mess.
An hour later, they were across the street from the bakery, melting into the shadows. Kato watched the building, her mind dissecting it, learning its rhythms, its soul.
"He's arrogant," she whispered, more to herself than to Pavel. "Only two guards on the street entrance. He thinks his targets are terrified fugitives, running for their lives across the frozen wilderness."
She allowed herself a small, cold smile. "He doesn't know they're standing across the street, watching him."
She could have Pavel kill them all. It would be easy. A brutal, bloody assault. But that was a thug's solution. A hammer's solution.
She was a queen. She didn't just want Richter dead. She wanted his network. His resources. His life.
"We're not killing him," she said, a new, audacious plan forming in her mind. "We're giving him a new job."
The two guards never saw them coming. Pavel moved like a phantom, a blur of motion in the darkness of the stairwell. There were two soft thuds, the sound of bodies hitting the floor. It was over in less than five seconds.
Kato stepped over them without a glance. She walked to the door of Richter's study and kicked it open.
Major Klaus Richter, a handsome man in his late thirties with cold, intelligent blue eyes, looked up from a map on his desk. His hand instantly shot towards a Luger pistol resting by his inkwell.
He froze.
Pavel was already in the room, a black-clad ghost who had slipped in behind her. The muzzle of his submachine gun was an inch from Richter's temple.
Richter's eyes flickered from the dead-eyed killer beside him to the woman standing in the doorway. She was still smeared with grime, her clothes were ragged, and her eyes were hollowed out from exhaustion. But she radiated an aura of absolute, terrifying power that made the hairs on his arms stand up.
"Major Richter," Kato said, her voice a low, chilling purr that filled the quiet room. "Oberst Nicolai sent you to clean up a mess. He was mistaken."
She took a slow, deliberate step into the room, her gaze locking with his.
"He didn't send you to eliminate a liability," she continued, her lips curving into a predatory smile. "He sent you to your new commanding officer."
"Now," she said, stopping in front of his desk and placing her own bloody hands upon his map of Finland. "Let's discuss the terms of your employment."