Midnight Black

Milda’s suspicion that the sounds of the shower would be picked up by surveillance artificial intelligence proves correct. In Vienna, Austria, Karol Dvorak gets a call that artificial intelligence has detected a “pattern-of-life deviance” from the house of their Latvian target. Subsequent investigation from surveillance cameras reveals a man in black entering Milda’s apartment through the fire-escape window minutes before the shower was turned on. Dvorak instructs his local unit, half an hour from Milda’s house, to leave for Old Riga at once.

At Milda’s house, Court keeps a watch for an attack as he talks to her. He learns that Milda, a former professor, was approached during the Cold War to smuggle CIA and other Western operatives in and out of Russia. Recently, she has been in touch with people critical of the Peskov regime, which is why she may be on the GRU watch list. Milda does not want to help Court get into Russia because she thinks that will be akin to sending him to his death.

Court, who lost his mother when he was very young, is unnerved by Milda’s maternal concern. He asks her again to show him the way into Russia; he promises that he will survive—he has skills unlike the usual operative.