Ripple Effect

Chapter Fifty-Nine: ...laces.

Elizabeth

Tuesday, 4th December, 2018

12:06 AM

"They're here." The voice crackled through the radio of the agent who sat on the spindle-back chair tucked into the corner of the room, out of sight from the window set into the door.

The agent, a fellow blonde with a similar build to Elizabeth, had been drafted in during the shift change and had been waiting with Elizabeth for the past half hour or so. Amongst the things she had brought with her were a spare pair of shoelaces, just one of Matt's conditions if they were to go ahead with the plan, and it was these that Elizabeth tied up now as she stooped forward a little stiffly where she perched at the edge of the mattress. They were wiry, black laces—the kind that belonged to dress shoes—rather than the broad, white laces that suited Elizabeth's sneakers, but they'd do. Better than having her shoes slip off with every step, even if it looked the equivalent to belting up her jeans with a power cord.

"Hallways clear. Bluebird's good to go."

The buzz of the voice over the radio hummed through Elizabeth and it lit in her a thrill that fizzled along her nerves with the same static edge; it was enough to silence the niggle of doubt to no more than a whisper swirling at the pit of her stomach. She had always accused Will of being an adrenaline junky—which, of course, he was—but she couldn't deny there was nothing quite like the hit of a covert op, and it was perhaps the most alive she'd felt since that day at the restaurant, or perhaps even since the moment she'd learnt they'd been taken off Code Night Watch. Life was about risks—calculated risks—and the more she'd thought about it over the past few hours, the more she'd convinced herself that this one would pay off.

"You ready, ma'am?" The agent rose from the chair. In the darkness of the room, with the dim fluorescence from the hall floating in through the window slats, she'd pass for Elizabeth easy enough, especially at a cursory glance.

Elizabeth tugged the double bow tight, and then eased to her feet. "Ready."

Win over Avdonin. Prevent escalating tension between the Kremlin and the White House. Capture Kostov. Simple. Or at least, nothing that the old Elizabeth couldn't pull off.

***

A sheet of drizzle hung in the air, not enough to wet Elizabeth and her agents as they walked, but enough to prickle against Elizabeth's face and fluff her hair and leave beads of moisture clinging to the wool of her coat. The scrunch, scrunch, scrunch of their footsteps through the gravel lifted into the night, along with the fog of each breath, and the sound drifted through the trunks of the paper birches that lined the track.

At the end, a black SUV had pulled up inside the grey stone pillars of the gate. When the group neared, the car doors opened and an asynchronous clunk echoed up. Minister Avdonin and his own security detail—four men, all in black suits, just like her own agents—climbed out. They waited in the pool of light that flowed down from the beacons atop the pillars, a patch of hazy yellow with the darkness pressing in around. How well they could see Elizabeth and her agents as they stared out into the valley of black between the birches, Elizabeth didn't know, but it looked as though they were sizing them up, like a showdown in one of those old westerns that Henry liked to watch.

"Ma'am..." Matt began, and his voice dragged. "I feel I ought to remind you that this is strictly against protocol."

"I'm aware." Elizabeth hugged her coat around her and tucked her hands beneath her elbows to keep the cold from biting into her fingertips. "But we're doing this, Matt."