She swung her feet to the floor, padded into the kitchen, and brewed a cup of coffee in the automatic maker. She drank it while standing over the machine and immediately prepared another. Her SVR-issue mobile phone was lying on the counter. She picked it up and frowned at the screen. There was still no departure order from Alexei. She was convinced it was not oversight on Alexei’s part. Alexei had his reasons. He always did.

She checked the weather forecast. It was a few degrees above freezing, rare for Moscow at that time of year, and the clouds were expected to stay away for the remainder of the afternoon. It had been a long time since she’d had any exercise, and she decided a run would do her good. She carried her coffee into the bedroom and dressed: a base layer top and bottom, a cold-weather tracksuit, a pair of new running shoes—genuine American shoes, not the cheap, threadbare knockoffs that came out of Russian factories. Better to run barefoot than in Russian trainers. Next she pulled on a pair of heavy gloves and stuffed her hair beneath a woolen cap. All that remained was her gun, a Makarov 9mm that she hated to carry when she was running. Besides, if some vodka-soaked pervert were foolish enough to try something, she was more than capable of looking after herself. She had once beaten a groper unconscious on the footpaths of Gorky Park. Alexei had finished the job—at least that was the rumor at Moscow Center. Katerina had never bothered to inquire about the man’s fate. He had deserved it, whatever it was.

She stretched for a few minutes while smoking her second cigarette and drinking her third cup of black coffee. Then she rode the elevator down to the lobby and, ignoring the hungover greeting of the unshaven concierge, stepped into the street. The pavements had been cleared of snow; she set out at an easy pace westward to Michurinsky Prospekt. It bordered Moscow State University, the school Katerina might have attended if she had been a normal child and not the daughter of a KGB officer who’d forgotten to take her birth control while setting a honey trap.