Silent Assassin(5)

It was automatic, part of his training. Possibilities played in his head in short clips of sudden violence. The bigger one would go down with a well-placed elbow to the nose; that would be enough to knock him out. He’d likely draw his gun for the other, but he could not count on doing it fast enough, and might have to improvise. Morgan’s training and experience gave him a keen sense of his environment, and this one provided more than enough for him to work with: here a bronze bust of Elvis that could easily crack open a man’s skull, there a gold-framed mirror whose shards could slice open a carotid in a pinch.

A guttural voice spoke from the next room, in Russian. The short one responded in kind, and Morgan made out, in his speech, the word “Cobra.” The man in the other room responded.

“Go on,” said the short one thickly. “He is waiting.”

Morgan stepped through a columned arch, and the scene that had been only suggested by the acrid and intensifying smell appeared before him, inspiring in him alternately nausea and rage. The Sárkány was elegant and expensive, and the penthouse, on a good day, was by far the best in the hotel. But whatever class the place might have had was subsumed into the filth of the man he had come to see.

“Lubarsky.”

“Merry Christmas, Mr. Cobra!” said Lubarsky jovially. “Please, call me Roman. Have a drink. Make yourself at home.”

Empty bottles of top-shelf champagne and vodka lay strewn about along with two upturned velvet-upholstered chairs. Slumped on the bed, half-covered by a stained white sheet, was a woman who wouldn’t have looked out of place on a high-fashion runway. Her head lay slack on the bed, her white-blond hair hanging off its side, her eyes eerily blank. Another woman, black with high cheekbones and wearing mussed up lingerie, was huddled over an end table from which she had pushed off a wrought iron lamp. She was frantically cutting with a razor at a small mound of cocaine. Victims of human trafficking, most likely. Morgan knew what women went through to become playthings for the rich and unscrupulous. It disgusted him and made him wish he could kill Lubarsky right then.

“I think I’ll call you Lubarsky,” said Morgan.

The man himself was naked, rolls of flesh pendent between his open legs, his back hair so thick he might as well have been wearing a sweater. Greasy black locks clung to the sweat on his forehead and his tiny eyes were open wide, red and manic, with pupils so dilated that they almost reached the outer edges of the iris.

“Do you want to tell me how long you’ve been on this bender?” Morgan asked.

“I take it that’s my money in that suitcase?” He snorted.

“Answer the damn question, Lubarsky.”

The Georgian looked at him with murder in his eyes. No ego like that of a successful arms dealer. “Are you telling me what to do in my own hotel?”

“You and I have things to do today, and I want to know that you’re in good goddamn shape to perform.”

Lubarsky looked at him as if he were about to lunge for his throat, then burst into a hacking, hoarse laugh. “Why all business, Cobra? Sit down. Have some cocaine. Have a whore. I just got these two fresh from a new shipment.” He looked at the woman who had been huddled over the table snorting coke. “You! Come here.”

She did her best to slink over, stumbling over a stray shoe.

“What is your name, sugar?” asked Lubarsky.

“My name is anything you want, baby.” She spoke in a lewd, sedated tone, rendered especially cartoonish by her heavy accent. There was no emotion in her red, heavy-lidded eyes.

“Ha ha, you see, they are well trained.”

“I’ll pass,” said Morgan.

“Are you sure?” Morgan scowled at him. “Fine, fine. You are a modest man. I cannot say I understand. But suit yourself.” He waved absently at the woman, and she stumbled away. “Have a drink then. I have a single malt from the highlands—”

“I don’t drink.”

Lubarsky laughed his hideous laugh again and it made Morgan want to break his nose. “That’s the trouble with you assassin types. Always with the discipline. You make obscene amounts of money, but you never do anything obscene with it!”

“I hear Novokoff can really put away the vodka.”

“Yes, true,” he said, laughing. “But that is like milk of his mother to Novokoff. He has the resistance of an ox. It doesn’t count as debauchery if he does not become drunk.”

“Speaking of the devil—”

“Yes, yes, I have not forgotten the business, Cobra. Your end first.”

Morgan pushed aside a bottle and set down the briefcase on the table in front of Lubarsky.