The Dutch woman proceeded to describe a man approximately five feet ten inches in height, with dark hair and eyes.

“Was he Irish?”

“I couldn’t say. His accent was rather hard to place.”

Katerina placed a credit card on the desk. “I’ll only need the room for a few hours.”

The woman swiped the credit card and then handed over a key. “Do you need any help with your bag?”

“I can manage, thank you.”

Katerina climbed the stairs to the second floor. Her room was at the end of a hallway lined with floral wallpaper and prints of bucolic canal scenes and Dutch landscapes. There were no security cameras visible, so she ran her hand around the door frame before inserting the key into the lock. She left her bag at the foot of the bed and searched the interior of the room for hidden cameras or listening devices. The air smelled of lime and stale cigarettes. It was a singularly male aroma.

She opened the bathroom window to dispel the odor, returned to the bedroom, and picked up the envelope she had been given by the girl at reception. She checked the seal to make certain it hadn’t been tampered with and then tore away the flap. Inside was a single sheet of paper, neatly folded in thirds. On it, in block lettering, was a brief explanation for Quinn’s absence. “You bastard,” whispered Katerina. Then she burned the note in the bathroom sink.

Alexei Rozanov had ordered Katerina to proceed to the target country with no communication between herself and Moscow Center. The note, however, changed everything. It stated that Quinn would not be traveling with her as planned. Instead, he would meet her at the next stop on their itinerary, a small seaside hotel on England’s Norfolk Coast. Under the SVR’s strict operational rules, Katerina could not continue without the approval of her controller. And the only way to obtain that approval was to risk a contact.

She fished her phone from her handbag and composed a brief e-mail to an address with a German-based domain. The address was an SVR front that automatically encrypted the e-mail and forwarded it through a circuitous route of nodes and servers to Moscow Center. Alexei’s reply arrived ten minutes later. It was blandly worded but clear in its intentions. She was to play it Quinn’s way, at least for now.