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  When he eased his hold enough to meet her eyes, a complexity of emotions played over his features, but she couldn’t pin them down before voices rang through the garage and he released her and she stepped back sharply. Khoury turned his face to the shadows, and she busied herself by reaching down to right her bag while a handful of people passed by.

  Meeting like this was a serious protocol breach, and, given the dog-eat-dog environment at Headquarters, a serious risk he’d taken for her benefit.

  As soon as they were alone she shook her head, shifting restlessly. “This is too crazy, meeting here. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “We’ve done crazy before.” His face lit up unexpectedly, and he grinned at her. Thick dark-brown hair, square-jawed, handsome as hell, but the slightly crooked front tooth and the faded scar on his chin from a childhood dare made him look like a kid.

  She couldn’t help but smile. “You’re right, we have.”

  He stepped onto the walkway, guiding her into the endless rows of parked cars, speaking quietly, soberly now. “A body turned up in Stockerau, an industrial district—”

  “About thirty kilometers outside Vienna, I know,” she said, hearing how abrupt she sounded.

  But Khoury took no umbrage. “Early twenties, wearing cheap leather gear like your bike jockey from the Prater. A small-time Austrian-Chechen punk, executed with two close-range shots to the head. If your hit man was cleaning up loose ends, he used the 9×19-millimeter 7N21 cartridge—a high-velocity Russian round used by some of their special forces.”

  “I saw the shooter leaving the park,” Vanessa said flatly.

  Khoury tensed. “Can you identify him?”

  “It was dusk and he was roughly twenty-five meters away . . .” But she nodded. “It’s enough. What I saw, I won’t forget.”

  “Does he know that?” Khoury asked. “If you’re burned—”

  “I’m not burned.” Heat surged through her body. “He killed my asset. He gunned him down in cold blood.”

  In the abrupt silence that followed her words, she heard her own question. Khoury heard it, too, because he said, “Your asset was dead the moment he landed in Vienna.”

  “I was ordered to abort the op, David. But I went ahead.”

  For an instant he cut his gaze away before he said, “You did the right thing; you got the intel.”

  She wished she could believe that absolutely.

  Neither of them spoke again while he walked her to a small, dark sedan parked in a corner of the structure, away from the full glare of industrial lights. He lifted a compact carry-on bag from the trunk, replaced it with her bag, and pushed it closed.

  She reached out, touching his arm. “You know I have one more question you haven’t answered yet.”

  Evading her eyes, he shook his head almost imperceptibly.

  “David.”

  “It wasn’t their hit. That’s the word from my assets—somebody else had a message to send.”

  She went still. Khoury was Lebanese American, and his sources were linked to Hezbollah and Hamas, so, in turn, to Iran. His access was part of his value to Headquarters, part of why he’d been so heavily recruited by the Agency. Now he was confirming what her instincts had already told her.

  She worked to keep her voice cool. “Your assets—have they heard anything to connect this hit to Bhoot?”

  He had inherited his mother’s green-flecked hazel eyes, and they narrowed now with wariness. “I know where you want to go with this, but you’re so fixated on bringing down Bhoot, it blinds you to other possibilities.”

  “But it makes sense; this is the way he works—he eliminates anyone, anything standing in his way.”

  “Then you should be even more careful, Vanessa, because you were in the fucking line of fire in Vienna.” He spoke roughly, in a voice she’d never heard him use.

  She took a step back. “I don’t expect this from you. You’re the one person in my life . . .”

  His eyes met hers, and she saw the quick, dark dilation of his pupils. His fingers grazed her cheek. “I don’t want to wake up next time and hear they got you—” His voice broke off.

  “I know.” She nodded. “That’s how I feel each time you walk away.”

  He reached for her hand, placing the small set of keys in her palm. “Take the car.” He stood, staring at her intently, hesitating too long before he said, “I’m on a flight back to Cairo in less than two hours.”

  “You look like you haven’t slept for weeks, David,” she whispered, acutely aware of the strain etched on his face. “Something’s going on; something’s wrong.”

  “It’s nothing, just the usual work shit that always blows over.”

  “Then tell me.”

  His fingers brushed lightly through her hair, but then, as if sensing she was focusing too closely on him, he pulled his hand away. “Next time.”

  “When is next time going to be?” She asked the question softly, knowing it was impossible to answer.

  “Soon.”

  “Khoury—”

  But he intended to change the subject, and he said, “You might want to wear that brunette wig when you talk to the DDO. Your YouTube clip’s been running on CNN today. Every segment.”

  She resisted for a moment, wanting to force him to confide in her, but she knew how stubborn he was—anta aa-need, according to his mother.

  So she relented. “How much shit am I in?”

  He cocked his head, and his mouth twisted into a smile. “Up to your neck?”

  She smiled, too, but she felt the distance between them. “At least it isn’t over my head.”

  “Listen,” he said, abruptly serious. “I watched that fucking video a hundred times. Somebody let you live.”

  • • •

  As he walked away, she thought again about the risk he’d taken to meet her. Relationships between ops officers who shared the same cover were commonplace. It was so much easier to fall in lust and love with someone when they knew what you did for your day job, so much easier to live with someone who hadn’t heard the lies that came before the partial truths.

  But relationships between NOCs and “inside” officers (like Khoury, who ostensibly was a political officer at the embassy in Cairo) were forbidden. Love affairs gone bad did not breed trust in the field. If Chris and the seventh-floor management became aware of her relationship with David Khoury, at the least they could both be forced to come “inside.” Or they could be fired. Either was a fate she would hate. They would end up blaming each other, and maybe worse.

  So how had they let their affair go this far?

  The question pushed her back to training days at the Farm during an interrogation simulation. The metal hut locked in heat and humidity and the stink of a dozen “prisoners.” The hood snuffed out all but the faintest light.

  Heavy footsteps of guards coming back. Vanessa snapped out an internal command that carried the echo of her father—They push you, push the hell back!

  The footfalls faded. But she couldn’t breathe with the stupid hood. And then, a not unfamiliar tickling wave of euphoria lifted her out of herself, and her mind caught up. Her hands were free, weren’t they? Her mouth pulled into a taut little smile.

  She raised the edge of the hood and blinked into dusty light—and found herself staring straight at another prisoner who had pulled his own hood up. For a moment his dark eyes sparkled with a manic gleam. Then he winked and she winked back. Kindred souls.

  They yanked their hoods back down just in time. The guards were back, taunting and shoving. Later she had introduced herself more formally to David Khoury.

  Now he was almost out of sight, on his way back to Cairo, his post at the U.S. embassy, and she felt a sense of foreboding and the fleeting and impossible impulse to call him back.

  Under the intensity of her gaze, he turned briefly
, just a glance, barely a nod. And then he was gone.

  For a moment, his last words echoed silently—Somebody let you live.

  At 17 Rue de la Bûcherie, above Librairie du Mille Ciels, Pauk climbed the familiar, narrow staircase quickly, soundlessly.

  At the crest of the second landing, instead of continuing up the last flight to his attic rooms, he paused to listen to the faint, flat whine of televised voices, a fútbol match, coming from inside his landlady’s apartment.

  In one hand he held a plain brown sack, and he took care not to crinkle or disturb the paper in any way. He knocked once, then again.

  At least a minute passed before he heard the scratch and click of the metal locks.

  The door opened and the old woman peered out at him with her milky eyes. The most she could see were shadows, and yet her wrinkled face seemed to literally crack into a smile. “Vous êtes de retour! Bonjour!”

  In return, he held up the sack and gave it a shake. “Coeur et foie.”

  “Ah, coeur . . .” In a voice of gravel and phlegm, Madame Desmarais admonished him to hurry inside and close the door before the cats escaped.

  He obeyed, eyes watering from the stench of cat piss and shit, waiting by the door until she limped her way back to the loveseat. Cats scattered as she turned and dropped onto the faded blue cushions. He shook the bag again for the animals’ benefit. Half a dozen multicolored felines clustered around him, squalling and mewling at the scent of bloody organs. A pied piper of sorts, he lured them toward the tiny kitchen, all the while his eyes flickering to the television screen, where—during a break in the France versus Pakistan game—a segment suddenly featured Terek Stadium in Grozny, Chechnya.

  His throat clenched as he was sucked back almost twenty years—only to see a boy, weak and spindly and crying like a baby, dragged by an old man with iron claws down a filthy, crumbling staircase. The boy struggled, fighting to run back to the apartment where his mother lay sick and close to death, but the old man was strong, and he forced the boy the rest of the way to the icy, stinking street.

  Gray world, filthy snow, bombs, tanks, and rubble.

  At the makeshift orphanage, they locked him in a closet so he couldn’t run away. When he managed to escape, he ran back to find his mother, but she was gone and strangers occupied what had been his home.

  Months later the rebel fighters, the Wahhabi, found him hiding in a ditch filled with raw sewage and freezing rain. Some of them laughed; others shook their heads and said he was an orphan crazy from war. But one day, a rebel put a long and battered rifle in his hands and showed him how to use it.

  So then, for the cause and for Allah, they told him to kill one of the Russian soldiers from the camp far across the creek. Whichever one he wanted!

  He had no idea if Allah cared or not—or if He even existed—but the rifle gave him a purpose and the faintest sense that he belonged to something.

  It took him three days lying prone in the snow and then mud. He shit and pissed his pants. He didn’t move. Lay there frozen in the rough weeds. Watching through the scope: one soldier, then another and another. He didn’t know which one to kill. By the third day the Russians began to move gear to their trucks. He picked out the biggest soldier who might be easier to hit because of his size. He held him in his scope, squeezed the trigger, and put a hole in his heart.

  When the Russians went berserk and crazy for revenge, he didn’t know what to do or where to run or hide. If not for the man who pulled him from the weeds, he would have been dead.

  The man took him to a room where it was dry and too warm. On the first day he just sat silently and kept the distance between them. On the next day he brought a ball—shiny and smooth, black and white—unlike any ball Pauk had seen in his life. The man asked him in broken Chechen, “How old are you? Twelve? Thirteen?”

  The man was a resistance fighter, too, but he came from far away and spoke strange words in a quiet voice. He moved slowly. Even when he made the ball dance and spin and obey, still he moved slowly.

  When he finally sat across from Pauk, the boy saw the man’s dark eyes were different—his left eye slashed with tiny shards of blue—

  A woman’s voice cut into his memories: “Merde!”

  Pauk blinked, openmouthed, to see Madame jerk forward in her seat. “Connard!”

  This is Paris, Madame’s apartment—where he was jolted by the cries of the fat tabby.

  He took the final few steps to the kitchen, where he selected the sharpest knife and a cutting board. He poured out the chicken parts, arranging them neatly with the tip of the knife. He worked, dicing the organs with precision to the rhythm of the steady drip of water from the faucet. Whenever the cats jumped up on the small, cluttered counter, he gently shooed them away.

  In between slices, he opened the cabinet above the sink. Soundlessly sliding the collection of empty canning jars to one side, he slipped the knife blade into the barely visible seam at the back of the shelf. The trick panel released.

  He took a passport from his pocket and set it on top of a pile of a dozen others—the identities he used for jobs. Unremarkable men, all in their early thirties, hailing from countries such as Switzerland and France and Canada and the UK.

  He kept the tools of his trade locked in a broken freezer, chained shut, in the same private one-car garage where he parked the Fiat. Three retractable hunting knives; his Snayperskaya Vintovka Dragunov—the same model of “short stroke” semiautomatic Russian-made Dragunov sniper rifle he used to make his first kill as a boy in Chechnya; boxes of 7.62×54R rounds; extra “cans,” or suppressors; and a Leopold Mark IV scope.

  For the garage, he paid cash every month and had the payment delivered to the same box. He and the owner had never met in person.

  He ran his thumb along the stack of passports, sensing which he might use for the next job. Then he replaced the panel, carefully arranging the jars just so, the way Madame liked them.

  He selected three saucers, dividing the diced organs evenly. He fed the cats, rearranging several of the bolder ones and a kitten, so each had its share.

  On the counter, his glass of Beaujolais nouveau awaited.

  He sat in his usual chair and settled in to the noise and the company of the woman and her cats. She raised her glass to greet his: “À votre santé,” always the beginning of their fútbol ritual.

  He would be her eyes—for the pretty boys in their bright uniforms—and she would let him. She was his only contact with normalcy. But his mind kept circling back to Vienna, and he felt haunted by the dark-haired woman. What, if anything, had she learned from the Iranian traitor?

  Thirty minutes to cover fifteen miles between Dulles and safe house Stag, a faux-Colonial condo in the congested, crazy Tysons Corner. Ten minutes to splash water on her face, brush her teeth, run a comb through her hair, and rummage up a Band-Aid for her blistered heel. Another fifty-two minutes of mental and physical pacing. Until she finally opened the door to Chris Arvanitis, her direct boss at CPD.

  At five-foot-eight, he stood barely taller than Vanessa, and he seemed to live in his silver-rimmed glasses and kept what was left of his receding hair cut in a military buzz. At first glance unprepossessing—at second glance, formidable. He pumped weights, belonged to Mensa, and his dark brown eyes could make you feel you’d been cornered by a tiger. He brushed past her with a black look, the fallout beginning.

  She frowned, on her guard. “Where’s the DDO?”

  “You’re lucky I got here first.” Chris pivoted so abruptly he pinned her in the corner with her back against the wall and they were eye-to-eye, his thick lashes magnified behind the lenses of his glasses. “What the hell, Vanessa?”

  “Chris—”

  “Why the hell did you ignore my order to abort?”

  “Why the hell did you call me off?”

  Chris shook his head sharply. “Don’t you dar
e provoke me, not after all I’ve done for you, not after Prague. I covered your ass. Without me you’d be in fucking backwater Montevideo.”

  His face loomed so close she flinched. “You’re right.” She swallowed, her mouth gone suddenly dry. “Sorry.”

  “Goddamn it, Vanessa.” His dark brows pulled together sharply, and his eyes still bored through her, but he lowered his voice and took a step back. “We had intel from MI6 that one of the Iranians at the conference might be a target.”

  “When did this come in? I wasn’t read in—”

  “I don’t have to read you in. If I give you a direct order, you follow it. What the hell about that don’t you understand?” He turned and strode into the living room, and she followed.

  “You’re absolutely right, Chris . . .” Her voice softened, the corners of her mouth pulling down. God, she hated this feeling—like a contrite child. He still had his back to her, but she did her best to reach for words he needed to hear her say. “Of course I need to obey orders.”

  Now she reached out physically, touching his sleeve just as he turned to face her. “But I got the intel, and, Chris, it’s what we need to put nails into Operation Ghost Hunt, so we can get Bhoot, so at least hear me out.”

  “You’re missing the point—”

  “No, I get that I screwed up, I get that—but if I had obeyed your order, if I aborted the op, my asset would still be dead, and I wouldn’t have shit—and this is big. It’s what I’ve been waiting for.”

  His eyes narrowed to slits. “You?”

  “It’s what we’ve been waiting for,” she corrected herself quickly. “Our team at CPD.”

  He stared at her now, intently, and she felt him take in her bruised cheek, the shadows beneath her eyes, her bare feet. His expression shifted among anger, exasperation, and open concern.

  As she met his gaze, he turned away, rubbing the knuckles of one hand hard against his cheek, a familiar gesture of fatigue. He checked his watch. “The DDO should be here any minute.”