перерезать эту нить. “Cut the threads.” Another of Yakov’s favorite teachings. Poor Professor Charles, the fence in the hotel room, the brothers in the warehouse. That left only two remaining threads. She considered showing Curt the photos she had on her phone, which she’d taken from the surveillance cameras at the casino. The unidentified young woman, and the ex-con. Patricia had already made inroads into finding them—an inside track, of a sort, on an investigation already in motion. Once she found them, she believed, she would be on her way to accomplishing her mission, but Curt didn’t need to know any of this, because Curt was just like her. A mercenary. Nothing more.

“They have names,” she said, quietly, not a hint of her Russian accent showing through. “The swans. They come back every year, right to this spot. They call them Romeo and Juliet.”

Curt raised an eyebrow.

“That makes this spot even more romantic. If, again, clichéd.”

“It turns out that they’re both female,” Patricia continued. “They’re quite beautiful. But they can also be vicious. Dangerous, even.”

“So I’ve heard. The beaks—”

“You would think so, of course, but it’s not the beaks you need to watch out for. It’s their wings. Beneath the beautiful plumage, the elbow joints. Strong and sharp; it’s rumored that they can break a man’s arm with one flick of those wings.”

She turned, gave Curt a long look.

“There will be no more failures. No more loose threads.”

She didn’t wait for him to respond. Without another word, she rose and headed off through the park, away from the bench, the mercenary, and the swans.

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Adrian Jensen muttered angrily to himself as he worked the combination wheel on his bike lock, pinning the lightweight, ridiculously expensive carbon frame of his cycle to the aluminum signpost jutting up above one of the most highly trafficked corners in downtown Boston. Not cursing, exactly; Adrian was too aware of the constant stream of morning foot traffic coursing by him, like a river parting around a jagged stone. But he was stammering and gabbling under his breath: a steady torrent of verbal self-affliction that had run continuously and unimpeded for the six-mile ride from his office at East Hall, 6 The Green, smack-dab in the center of the Tufts campus.

He was still talking to himself, in fact, as he removed his bike helmet—and as usual, and in dramatic fashion, once again brandished his reddish-gold hair—then hooked the helmet to the bottom of his heavy backpack. The backpack was still slung over his left shoulder, the strap digging into the thin material of yet another of his many tight cycling jerseys. This time, the jersey matched his pants, which hugged his oversized calves and thighs like a wet suit, or if you hated the look, like an oil spill on a drowning bird.