"And what do you actually know?"
Izzy unwrapped a piece of dark chocolate—her only vice. "I didn't. But a good agent makes the enemy think she knows everything."
The rain over Sarajevo fell like a curtain of needles, each drop a potential threat. In a grimy café near the old Austro-Hungarian quarter, a woman nursed a cold espresso. Her name was Izzy, but her passport said "Elena Horvat." Her real colleagues knew her as Tajni agent Izzy – Secret Agent Izzy – though the Agency simply called her Codename: Chameleon.
The Collector’s face drained of color. For a long moment, neither moved. Then he laughed—a dry, defeated sound. "They say you’re a ghost. A whisper in a crowded room." tajni agent izzy
He smiled and tossed the rook into the air. She didn't flinch. She let it fall, roll across the floor, and stop at her feet. Then she kicked it back.
"Because your sniper on the balcony? He's asleep. My tranquilizer darts have chamomile extract. Very calming." She tilted her head. "And the chip you're holding? A decoy. The real one is inside the pawn you pawned off to your mistress last night."
Amateurs , she thought.
"You're giving it to me," she said. It wasn't a question.
Her mission, should she choose to accept it (she already had), was to retrieve a stolen memory chip hidden inside a cursed, antique chess piece. The piece was about to change hands between a corrupt Interpol liaison and a Balkan arms dealer known as "The Collector."
"Where's the rook?" she whispered. Not the chess piece—the meeting point. "And what do you actually know
She bit into the chocolate. Another mission over. But somewhere in Vienna, a locked briefcase awaited. And Tajni agent Izzy was already planning her next disappearing act.
"Thank you." She vanished into the downpour, leaving the two men clutching at rain.
She left money on the table and slipped into the back alley. The rain muffled her footsteps. When the first man rounded the corner, she was gone. When the second looked up, he found her hanging from a fire escape ladder, upside down, her silenced pistol pressed to his temple. In a grimy café near the old Austro-Hungarian
"I prefer 'strategic listener,'" Izzy said, cuffing him with a polymer zip-tie. "Now, about that pawn…"