The Asset (Lance Spector, #1)

by Saul Herzog

“Where to?” “The Four Seasons.” “It’s between Park and Madison, right?” The driver was Russian. She could tell from the accent. “Yes,” she said in Russian. “What street?” “Fifty-eighth.” They got out of the airport, and he said, “Nice place.” “The airport?” “No, the Four Seasons.” She nodded. It was a nice place, one of her favorites. They called that stretch of the street Billionaire’s Row. Rooms started at a thousand a night. There was a penthouse suite, the third most expensive in the world according to the hotel’s website, that was over sixty thousand. According to Agency legend, it was in that very suite that the Russian and Chinese presidents had met to discuss their new joint strategy. It was there they’d formulated the policy that set the future course of the GRU, and which would see Russia and China oppose American hegemony on every front, in every theater.

Besides, the boutiques in the Four Seasons lobby alone would put Moscow’s luxury district to shame.

That at their core, Westerners were not equipped for war. They could never truly be warriors because, in their hearts, they still clung to the promise of peace. They lived their lives as if those Memorial Day barbecues, those Thanksgiving turkeys, those Christmas presents under the tree meant something. As if they were real and would go on forever. As if all those quaint, familiar comforts somehow protected them from the reality of the world. They were slaves to their delusions as much as any Soviet apparatchik.