Free Victory Square by Olen Steinhauer Page A

the mall itself, the air became saturated with astringent smells that brought back his nausea. The perfume section. Women in faux medical smocks and feathered haircuts stood bored behind counters, some chatting, but all ignored him. Gavra held his breath until he was clear of them.
    He paused beside a tiled water fountain, peering down the mall’s length. It looked like an obscenely clean city street crowded with shoppers. Ahead, to the left, he saw a store called Fit-4-All, which advertised “Today’s styles for today’s gentlemen.”
    Only after he was inside the shop, among racks of gray and blue suits, did he let himself peer through the display windows for his shadow. He wasn’t out there.
    “Well, howdy, sir!”
    He turned to find a broad-chested, very effeminate man with a yellow tie and a white name tag that said ROG. “Howdy, Rog,” said Gavra.
    Rog’s smile didn’t change as he said, “It’s pronounced
Rodj,
sir. Short for Rodger.”
    “Oh.”
    “What can I do you for?”
    “I’d like a suit.”
    Rog giggled. “Well, you came to the right place! What’s your size?”
    Gavra wanted a black suit, but Rog disagreed, insisting on “navy” blue. It was also more expensive. In the changing room, Gavra transferred his wallet, his money, both passports, and the P-83 to his new clothes. He left the jeans and polo shirt crumpled on the bench.
    “Very
handsome, sir.
Manly?
    Gavra looked past the salesman through the open door—still no sign. “I’ll take it.”
    “Excellent!”
    “And I’ll wear it now.”
    “As you wish.” The salesman sank to his knees.
    Gavra stepped back, disoriented, before realizing the man was using a large pair of scissors to snip off the price tags.
    He paid in cash, and as he was leaving, Rog called, “Sir?”
    Gavra looked back. “Yes?”
    “Your clothes? The ones you came in with.”
    “Keep them.”
    That seemed to please Rog immensely.
    In the center of the mall, Gavra stopped between another tiled fountain and an information desk where two white-capped girls chewed gum. It was busy here, loud with voices and Muzak. He considered leaving by another exit and stealing a car. But if the police caught him, they’d easily connect him to the body of Lebed Puton-ski back in the motel room registered to Viktor Lukacs. He couldn’t toss the Lukacs passport, because his real one had no American visa. So he headed back to Sears.
    Halfway there, he spotted his blond shadow standing beside the dark entrance to Spencer’s Gifts, drinking from a large paper cup of Coca-Cola.
    The shadow was staring back at him.
    Despite the lessons that Brano Sev had hammered into him during his two-year apprenticeship a decade and a half ago, when he met those eyes, the panic hit him hard. Rationally, he knew that if this man wanted to kill him, he would have tried it back at the motel, but Gavra couldn’t hold on to the numbers anymore.
    An old woman bumped into him, then went around, muttering something. The shadow lowered his drink and smiled. Then the panic became solid, because Gavra could see his position here with complete clarity. He was in a foreign, enemy country with false papers, and there was a dead man in his room.
    Gavra turned and walked quickly away.
    He followed bathroom signs into a white corridor and entered the door marked with an abstracted male figure. He ignored the men lined at the urinals and closed himself in a vacant stall, then squatted, feet on the toilet seat, and tried to catch his breath. He took out his pistol.
    Fifteen minutes later, his knees felt like sacks of stone. He tensed when an old man came in, taking the stall beside his, then again when a father and son entered and went to pee together, but he didn’t move. He knew that, whatever orders the shadow was working under, he would inevitably have to come in here.
    It was a momentary advantage, but he had trouble visualizing how to utilize it. The numbers were a mess. All he could do was wait for a