Chapter 67: The Honeytrap
Montgomery was awake by the time they arrived back at Casey's apartment — sitting upright on the couch in Casey's living room, nursing what appeared to be a very deliberate drink, looking for all the world like a man who had decided that the circumstances of his revival were beneath comment.
Simon took one look at him and revised everything Casey had said about the man upward by about thirty percent. The whiskey and the unconsciousness and the apartment under the bed had been the wrapping. What was inside was something else — composed, watchful, with the particular stillness of someone whose apparent relaxation was a professional tool rather than an actual state.
"This one's interesting," Montgomery said, studying Simon with the unhurried attention of a man who assessed people the way others assessed rooms. "Too young for the job. But the eyes are right."
"Thank you," Simon said.
"That wasn't entirely a compliment."
"I know," Simon said. "I took what I could get."
Montgomery almost smiled.
The plan, as it developed over the next hour, was exactly as improbable as Simon feared. Sasha was known to be susceptible to a specific type — confident, slightly dangerous, unimpressed by her. Chuck was none of these things by default. Montgomery's contribution was to make him temporarily become them.
"You're sending Chuck in as a honeytrap," Simon said, looking at the assembled group.
"Correct," Sarah said.
"To seduce a former KGB operative."
"Also correct."
Simon looked at Chuck, who was in a suit that fit him reasonably well and had the expression of a man who had agreed to something in a moment of conviction and was now confronting the full dimensions of what he'd agreed to.
"You're a cruel people," Simon said, to no one specifically.
"Pity," Montgomery said, still studying Simon. "A few years older and you'd be the right candidate. The instincts are there."
"I'll take it as encouragement," Simon said.
Chuck made a laugh-shaped sound that contained no actual amusement.
The hotel was in downtown LA, the kind of place that charged for atmosphere as much as rooms. Simon drove — because Simon always drove — with Montgomery and Sarah in the back running surveillance equipment, and Casey riding passenger having the worst time of anyone in the vehicle.
He dropped Chuck and Casey — Casey in a bartender's jacket that fit well enough to pass — at the front entrance, then looped around to the parking structure adjacent to the hotel's rear exit.
He backed into a space with clear sightlines to the service entrance and cut the engine.
"I'm on perimeter," he told Sarah through the comms. "Eyes on the rear approach."
"Confirmed," Sarah said. "Stay sharp."
Through the earpiece, the operation unfolded with Montgomery's voice as the throughline — patient, precise, guiding Chuck through an approach to Sasha that required Chuck to perform qualities he didn't naturally possess. Simon listened without comment and was quietly impressed by how much Montgomery could communicate through tone alone. The man understood people the way a mechanic understood engines — as systems with predictable behaviors and exploitable failure points.
Chuck, to his credit, was trying.
Then a burst of static hit the earpiece — interference, sharp and brief, dropping the signal to white noise.
"Comms are down," Simon said, turning toward the back of the van.
"Working on it," Sarah said. Her hands were already moving across the equipment panel.
She had it restored in under ninety seconds, which was fast enough that the mission should have been recoverable.
It wasn't.
"Mission's blown," Casey's voice came through flat and clear. "Sasha's gone. Pack it up."
"Excellent," Sarah muttered, in a tone that meant the opposite, and moved toward the hotel entrance.
In the earpiece, a different conversation was happening.
"Ron. What's the fourth move?" Chuck's voice, quieter than before, with a new quality in it — focused, not panicked.
"The mission is over, Charles," Montgomery said. "Push any further and it becomes dangerous. You're not ready."
"I'm ready. Tell me."
A pause long enough to mean something.
"Be a bastard," Montgomery said.
"Define that."
"Stop being you. No sensitivity, no sweetness, no consideration. Become the opposite. Become Carmichael."
Whatever that unlocked in Chuck, it worked. Simon could hear the shift in his voice even through the earpiece — still Chuck, but with something covering it, something flatter and more dangerous. He spoke to Sasha in a way that had nothing apologetic in it, nothing accommodating.
Sasha, apparently, responded to this the way the mission had hoped she would.
"She's taking him upstairs," Simon said, half to himself.
"Faster than expected," Casey said through the comms, with a dryness that could have gone several directions.
Sarah's voice, managing the situation: "Chuck, it's fine. We're moving. Have you located the chip?"
Rustling. Silence. Then, with more urgency:
"Abort abort abort. I need extraction. Right now. I am going to die in this room."
Montgomery's voice, unruffled: "Don't panic, Chuck. I've been in worse situations. Have I ever told you about the incident in Bangkok? The king's daughter. A rooftop. It was—"
"Nobody cares about Bangkok right now. How do I get out of here?"
"Balcony," Montgomery said.
"And then?"
"Tie a bedsheet around your waist and jump."
"I am absolutely not jumping off a balcony."
"It's the third floor, Charles. The physics are manageable."
"That is not—"
A new voice in the earpiece. Female. Accented. Cold. "Hello, Ron. Interesting choice of proxy. He's very earnest."
Simon was already starting the car.
"Chuck," he said, pulling forward. "Jump. Right now. I'm at the rear entrance."
"I'm working on it — oh God—"
The crash was audible through the earpiece — not the sound of something going wrong, but the sound of controlled impact on a surface that was designed to absorb exactly this kind of arrival.
Then breathing. Unsteady, but present.
"I'm down," Chuck said. "I'm down. I'm okay. I think I'm okay."
Simon was already at the rear entrance with the passenger door open.
Chuck appeared from around the corner of the building at a speed that was not quite running but was doing everything running did. He got into the car without fully stopping.
"Drive," he said.
Simon drove.
"The chip?" Sarah said into the comms.
"I didn't get it," Chuck said, catching his breath. "She made me the moment Sasha talked to her. I barely got out."
A pause from Sarah.
"But," Chuck said, and there was something different in his voice — not triumph, but something adjacent to it, "I know where it is. She's carrying it. I saw where she keeps it."
Simon glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
Chuck was straightening his jacket, smoothing his hair, looking approximately nothing like a man who had just fallen off a hotel balcony.
"Montgomery," Chuck said into the comms. "I'm ready for move five."
A long pause.
Then Montgomery's voice, with something warm underneath the professional neutrality: "That, Charles, is what I was waiting for."
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