Kael Vance landed in London two days later. She had a contract meeting scheduled with a British Aerospace executive in Mayfair, a cover for her next assignment. She walked through Heathrow with a spring in her step. The Zhivago operation had been seamless. She felt sharp, in control, a high that money couldn't buy.
Her current location was a suite at Claridge’s, a place that felt like old money, safe and secure. She unpacked her few belongings, placing her Beretta in the safe, and took a long, hot bath, sipping champagne. Life was good when you were winning the Cold War one defector at a time.
She switched on a small, encrypted burner phone Bill Donovan had given her. It buzzed immediately.
He’s arrived in Helsinki. Volkov. The Iceberg is moving. Watch your back. He’s operational.
Kael finished the champagne in one gulp. Good. She was tired of the abstract fight. The idea of Volkov—this quiet, disciplined, humorless Soviet apparatchik—stirred her blood. She liked having a face for the enemy. It was cleaner that way.
She put on a stunning black dress, something elegant and form-fitting. If Volkov was going to hunt her, she wasn't going to hide in safe houses. She was going to force him to look her in the eye, in public, on her own terms.
The rivalry, for Kael, was a personal demonstration of superiority. Her system of individual initiative was faster, smarter, and more efficient than his slow, bureaucratic collective. She was here to prove it.
She called a car service, instructing the driver to take her to a high-profile restaurant in South Kensington. She was not a woman who waited to be found. She would make herself highly visible, a brilliant flare in the London night sky, daring the shadows to reach for her.
The game wasn't just about the defector anymore. It was about defining whose world would survive into the next decade. Kael smiled at her reflection in the car window as London's lights blurred past
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