The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(27)

A man answered the line. “Yes, Mr. Jenkins, how may I be of service?”

The lead filament did not rest on the hinge.

“Hello? Mr. Jenkins?”

He looked to the carpet, where the filament had fallen, snapped in half.





14



Jenkins turned his back to the closet, as if admiring the view out the window, but kept his attention on the mirror on the adjacent wall, assuming someone, the woman perhaps, was inside the closet.

“I’d like to order some food,” he said.

“My pleasure, Mr. Jenkins. What can I get for you?”

Jenkins flipped the pages in the binder but kept his gaze on the mirror. “I’d like the cheeseburger,” he said, “with fries. And a beer. Whatever you recommend.”

“How would you like your cheeseburger cooked?”

“Medium,” Jenkins said.

“Very good, Mr. Jenkins. Is twenty minutes acceptable?”

“That would be fine.”

The man hung up, but Jenkins continued talking. “I have a free day tomorrow. Do you recommend any place in particular that I might visit here in Moscow? Something close, given this cold spell?” He picked up the phone cradle, gripping the cord snaking behind the desk, turned his back to the closet, and yanked the telephone cord from the wall.

Then he paced.

“That sounds like it could be interesting. I think I would enjoy that very much.”

He continued talking as he paced, keeping an eye on the mirror. He noticed a slight change in light inside the closet, someone moving.

He paced the opposite direction, so the phone was in his right hand. “What about theater performances? Are there any that you would recommend?”

He waited, keeping up the imaginary conversation, looking for an opportunity. A cylindrical tube protruded from the closet door opening. He was out of time.

Jenkins threw the phone but didn’t wait to find out if his aim had been true. The phone crashed with a loud clang. He followed it, hurling his 235 pounds into the closet door and the person inside the closet. They hit the back wall with a thud. He found the hand holding the gun and shoved the barrel at the ceiling just before hearing a pop. Jenkins felt a knee come up fast and hard and quickly shifted. The strike missed his groin, and struck him in the right thigh. He bent the wrist holding the gun and heard the gun pop a second time, before it dropped to the carpeted floor. A hand clawed at his face, fingernails raking skin. He’d had enough. He delivered a short, powerful blow, and felt the person go limp, then sag to the floor.

Jenkins dragged the body from the closet. A woman. He dropped her onto the floor and retrieved the gun, shoving the barrel into the waistband of his pants at the small of his back. He turned the woman over. She wore no glasses. A black wig sat askew on her head. Her clothes were dark—black jeans, a black turtleneck, black boots. He pulled off the wig, revealing light-brown hair tied in a bun. She had angular, Slavic features. He quickly pulled the cord from the phone and used it to tie her hands behind her back. For the next several minutes he went through the pockets of her coat and other clothes looking for any form of identification, finding none.

Someone knocked on the hotel room door. Jenkins moved back to the closet and picked up the woman’s coat, searching it. In the pocket he found the scarf the bellboy had described.

A second knock, three short raps.

“Just a minute,” Jenkins called. He fit the scarf between the woman’s teeth and tied it around the back of her head. Then he dragged her into the closet and shut it. Moving toward the hotel room door, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His shirt was torn. Claw marks lined his chest and had drawn blood down the right side of his face. He couldn’t open the door looking like this.

Another knock.

At the door, Jenkins stood to the side of the doorframe and leaned out to peer through the peephole. A man in a white jacket stood in the hall beside a rolling cart with a silver tray.

Jenkins moved away from the door in case the man also had a gun. “I’m just stepping from the shower,” he said. “Leave the tray on the cart, please?”

“With pleasure,” the man said. “Would you like me to leave the bill as well?”

The man was worried about his tip. “Yes, please. I’ll take care of it.”

Jenkins waited a beat, then looked out the peephole. The young man had departed. Jenkins opened the door and rolled the cart into the room. Then he hurried back to the closet. The woman had opened her eyes, dazed but coming to. He grabbed her and dumped her into the desk chair, then took a moment to examine the gun—a Ruger 22 with a suppressor. Efficient. An assassin’s weapon. The bullet would have been enough to kill him, but not so large as to splatter his brain and blood all over the room.

It raised additional questions, foremost being: If this was the eighth sister, why had the woman come to kill him? If she was the eighth sister, why hadn’t she come to find out what Jenkins knew of the remaining four sisters? Why hadn’t she known his room number without asking the clerk?

The woman sat, staring at him.

“If I remove the gag, are you going to be quiet?” he asked in Russian.

She nodded.

“If you scream, if you make a sound, I will shoot you and put your body under the sheet on that cart. Then I’ll leave you in the stairwell. Do you understand me?”