Highest Praise for Leo J. Maloney and His Thrillers

Arch Enemy

“Utterly compelling! This novel will grab you from the beginning and simply not let go. And Dan Morgan is one of the best heroes to come along in ages.”

—Jeffery Deaver

Twelve Hours

“Fine writing and real insider knowledge make this a must.”

—Lee Child

Black Skies

“Smart, savvy, and told with the pace and nuance that only a former spook could bring to the page, Black Skies is a tour de force novel of twenty-first-century espionage and a great geopolitical thriller. Maloney is the new master of the modern spy game, and this is first-rate storytelling.”

—Mark Sullivan

“Black Skies is rough, tough, and entertaining. Leo J. Maloney has written a ripping story.”

—Meg Gardiner

Silent Assassin

“Leo Maloney has done it again. Real life often overshadows fiction and Silent Assassin is both: a terrifyingly thrilling story of a man on a clandestine mission to save us all from a madman hell bent on murder, written by a man who knows that world all too well.”

—Michele McPhee

“From the bloody, ripped-from-the-headlines opening sequence, Silent Assassin grabs you and doesn’t let go. Silent Assassin has everything a thriller reader wants—nasty villains, twists and turns, and a hero—Cobra—who just plain kicks ass.”

—Ben Coes

“Dan Morgan, a former Black Ops agent, is called out of retirement and back into a secretive world of politics and deceit to stop a madman.”

—The Stoneham Independent

Termination Orders

“Leo J. Maloney is the new voice to be reckoned with. Termination Orders rings with the authenticity that can only come from an insider. This is one outstanding thriller!”

—John Gilstrap

“Taut, tense, and terrifying! You’ll cross your fingers it’s fiction—in this high-powered, action-packed thriller, Leo Maloney proves he clearly knows his stuff.”

—Hank Phillippi Ryan

“A new must-read action thriller that features a double-crossing CIA and Congress, vengeful foreign agents, a corporate drug ring, the Taliban, and narco-terrorists . . . a you-are-there account of torture, assassination, and double-agents, where ‘nothing is as it seems.’”

—Jon Renaud

“Leo J. Maloney is a real-life Jason Bourne.”

—Josh Zwylen, Wicked Local Stoneham

“A masterly blend of Black Ops intrigue, cleverly interwoven with imaginative sequences of fiction. The reader must guess which accounts are real and which are merely storytelling.”

—Chris Treece, The Chris Treece Show

“A deep-ops story presented in an epic style that takes fact mixed with a bit of fiction to create a spy thriller that takes the reader deep into secret spy missions.”

—Cy Hilterman, Best Sellers World

“For fans of spy thrillers seeking a bit of realism mixed into their novels, Termination Orders will prove to be an excellent and recommended pick.”

—Midwest Book Reviews

Also by Leo J. Maloney

THE DAN MORGAN THRILLER SERIES

Termination Orders

Silent Assassin

Black Skies

Twelve Hours

Arch Enemy

For Duty and Honor

A DAN MORGAN THRILLER NOVELLA

Leo J. Maloney

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

Highest Praise for Leo J. Maloney and His Thrillers

Also by Leo J. Maloney

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-two

Chapter Forty-three

Chapter Forty-four

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ROGUE COMMANDER

Teaser chapter

Teaser chapter

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LYRICAL UNDERGROUND BOOKS are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp.

119 West 40th Street

New York, NY 10018

Copyright © 2016 Leo J. Maloney

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

LYRICAL PRESS, LYRICAL UNDERGROUND, and the Lyrical Underground logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

First electronic edition: November 2016

ISBN: 978-1-6165-0981-1

ISBN-10: 1-61650-981-3

This book is dedicated to my daughter, KATIE, who has been the joy in my life since the moment she was born. She is beautiful on the inside and outside. She’s kind, considerate, and simply an all-around good person as well as a wonderful mother to my three granddaughters, KATHERINE, CECILIA, and GRACE, whom I adore.

I also want to dedicate this book to my niece LIANNE, who has always had a special place in my life and heart. She has been an unfailing supporter of my writing endeavor.

Chapter One

The prisoner’s body was a brick of exhaustion and pain.

Steel cuffs chafed against his raw wrists and ankles, the rough uniform scraping the burns and cuts that lined his arms and legs and pocked his torso. Even under the blackness of his hood, the prisoner smelled stale sweat mingled with his own breath: iron from the blood, acetone from the starvation. He could barely hold himself up against the jolting ride. All that was keeping him upright were the two thick guards at his sides boxing him in.

At the outset, hours ago at the landing strip, the guards were in high spirits, joking and jesting in Russian, which the prisoner could not follow. Whenever he couldn’t hold himself up anymore and leaned into one of them or into the front seat, they would box the prisoner’s head and laugh, forcing him to sit upright again.

But as they drew nearer to their destination, and the car’s heating lost ground against the cold, the guards grew quiet, like there was something grim about the place even to them.

The prisoner swung forward as the jeep came to an abrupt stop, tires on gravel. The doors opened and the spaces on his sides opened as the men got out, leaving him exposed to the frigid Siberian air. Against this cold, the canvas uniform felt like nothing at all.

The guards unlocked the cuffs and yanked the prisoner out. Too tired to offer any resistance, he walked along, bare feet on the freezing stony ground. Someone pulled off his cowl. He was struck by a hurricane of light that made him so dizzy that he would have vomited, if there were anything in his stomach. It took a moment for the image to stop swimming and resolve itself into the barren landscape of rock and creeping brush lit by a sun low in the sky.

The Siberian tundra.

They prodded him forward. He trudged toward the brutalist conglomeration of buildings surrounded by tall mesh fences and barbed wire. Prison camp. Gulag.

The prisoner’s trembling knee collapsed and he fell on the stony ground. A guard gave him a kick with a heavy, polished leather boot and pulled him to his feet.

They reached the top and entered the vakhta, the guardhouse. He passed through the first gate and was searched, rough hands prodding and poking at him. They then opened the second, leading him through, outside, into the yard. His gaze kept down, he saw guards’ boots, and massive furry Caucasian shepherds, each taller than a full-grown man’s waist. He didn’t look up to see the bare concrete guard towers that overlooked the terrain for miles around or at the sharpshooters that occupied them.

He was pulled inside the nearest boxy building, walls painted with chipping murals of old Soviet propaganda, apple-cheeked youngsters over fields of grain and brave soldiers of the Red Army standing against the octopus of international capitalism. On the second floor, they knocked on a wooden door.

“Postupat’.”

The guards opened the door, revealing an office with a vintage aristocratic desk. They pushed him onto the bare hardwood.

A man stood up with a creak of his chair. The prisoner watched as he approached, seeing from his vantage point only the wingtip oxfords and the hem of his pinstriped gabardine pants, walking around his desk, footsteps echoing in the concrete office.

“Amerikanskiy?”

“Da,” a guard answered.

The man crouched, studying the prisoner’s face. “You are one of General Suvorov’s, are you not?” His voice was deep and filled with gravel and a heavy Russian accent.

The prisoner didn’t respond—not that he needed to.

“You are tough, if he did not break you.” He stood, brushing off unseen dust from his suit jacket. “And if he had broken you, you would be dead already. I am Nevsky, the warden. Welcome to my prison.”

The prisoner looked up at last and saw a thickset jowly man, with a nose like a potato, bloodshot eyes, and the ruddy swollen face of an alcoholic.

“We have no official name, but we call it Pokoynit-skaya. Do you know what that means?”

The warden opened a cabinet and poured himself a glass of vodka.

“Charnel house. Because everyone in here is dead meat.” He emitted a grotesque throaty laugh and tipped the glass into his mouth. “Stand up,” he said, slamming the glass onto the side table. The prisoner couldn’t muster the energy to. “I said stand up.”

Oxford wingtips sunk into the prisoner’s side. He doubled in pain, groaning.

“Up!”

Bracing himself on the desk, he staggered to his feet.

“You will learn to do as you are told here.” He poured another glass of vodka. “Look out the window. What do you see?”

A broad barred window overlooked into the tundra, where it was too cold for any trees to grow. A vast bare expanse of low grasses, with mountains rising from the flatness far in the distance.

“The answer is nothing. I will not tell you my prison is impregnable. In fact, we have had breakouts. If they get past the fence, we take bets on who will hit him. But the few that get away, nature takes care of. We find them dead in the wasteland within a few days.”

The warden grabbed the prisoner’s arm, feeling his muscles. “Strong. That will not last.” He slapped the prisoner hard on the buttocks. “This is your life will be. You will mine all day—and the days of the Arctic summer are long. You will be questioned, if the order comes. That will not be pleasant. But mostly, you will work.” As he spoke, the warden circled the prisoner, who kept his eyes down. ”You will waste away, and your mind will break.” The warden came close to him and whispered in his ear, his rancid alcoholic breath filling the prisoner’s nostrils. “And one day, you will die here, forgotten.”

The prisoner’s face contorted in fury. He lunged for the warden, who stepped back to avoid him. The prisoner stumbled under his own weakness and fell back to the ground.

Nevsky sat down and signed the prisoner’s intake papers. “We are done here,” he said. He squinted to read the type. “Show Daniel Morgan to his cell.”

Chapter Two

Two guards pulled Morgan on shuffling feet outside, back onto the cold-hardened earth, where the harsh wind whipped against his skin. They were in the yard now, a squarish space surrounded by various freestanding structures on all four sides, although he was too dazed to get any kind of clear picture of it. He thought he caught a whiff of something cooking and sheer instinct led him to turn toward its source. The guards yanked him, pulling him into another building, this one squat and single-storied. Like the others, it was built out of worn concrete and had heavy metal doors and thick bars on the windows, all covered in rust.

There were two more guards in there who stripped him of his tattered, bloody clothes and tossed them aside. They shoved him, naked, against a wall of chipped porcelain tiles and stood back as one opened a hose. He gasped as ice-cold water blasted him in the chest, sputtering when it hit his face. They tossed a rough moldy sponge and a cracked bar of caustic soap at his feet and hollered at him, pointing down at them. He bent and picked them up with shivering hands, running the sponge against skin reddened by the cold, his wounds smarting with the chemical burn as he scrubbed himself of weeks of dirt and blood and sweat. The pungent scent made his eyes water as he trembled and flinched from every new blast of frigid water.

When they were satisfied, they shut off the hose and tossed him a thin towel, which he fumbled and dropped on the wet tile floor. They laughed as he ran the now-sodden towel over his skin to get off whatever excess water he could manage. The guards then pulled him, still damp, to the next station, where they sat him down on a splintering stool. One of them turned on a clipper that was at least twenty years old and buzzed like a bumblebee the size of a poodle.

They started with the hair on his head, dense and black with wisps of gray at his temples, which fell on the tiles in thick tufts. They shaved his mustache, the machine tugging at his split lip so that it began to bleed again, and the beard that had grown in since his capture. They worked his way down his body, his hair—all his hair—falling about the feet of the stool. Once the guard finished Morgan’s legs, he clicked off the machine. Another guard poured a white acrid-smelling delousing powder onto his head and back, clinging to his damp skin and raising a white cloud around him. The guards cackled at Morgan’s ensuing coughing fit.

Finally, they handed him a folded-up jumpsuit to put on. It was tan canvas, rough and coarse against his skin, and provided little protection against the cold. After he put it on, they shoved a stinking coat in his hand and gave him cheap cloth shoes, which he pulled over his feet. They were, like his hands, numb from the cold. The guards got impatient at how long the operation was taking and boxed his ear for good measure. Morgan pulled on the coat, which at least offered cover from the wind.

From there he was escorted into the blockhouse. It was single-story and much larger than the building he had just left, with only tiny windows letting precious little light in. There were scratches on the wall, the writings and designs of prisoners with no one else to talk to, who wanted to leave their last mark on the world before disappearing, in an unmarked grave thousands of miles away from home, where those they left behind would never find their bodies, never know what happened to them.

They led him to a room where there were rows of bunks that looked more like shelves, each bed only two wooden boards held up by vertical beams. It smelled lived in, of sweat and piss and mildew. The guard pushed him inside, and he stumbled onto the bare concrete floor.

The guard shoved a blanket, woolen and reeking, into his hand and pointed him to a bare wooden bunk. His, Morgan guessed. Then he gave him a bent tin bowl. “This is your bowl,” he said. “You have bowl, you get food. No bowl, no food.”

“Where do I keep it?”

The man shrugged. Not his problem. The other men seemed to store them under their bunks, so Morgan put it on his.

“Rest,” the guard said.

Morgan didn’t need telling twice. He got onto his bunk and collapsed onto the wooden boards. They were hard and uncomfortable, but he was exhausted beyond caring. He pulled on the reeking blanket and slept, clutching the food bowl tight, and dreamed of home.

Chapter Three

Alex Morgan reached upward into darkness and found a handhold in the jutting bricks. She pulled her weight up, finding a new foothold for her left foot. One, two. Easy does it.

The warm summer wind lashed against her at this exposed height. One upward gust pulled off her black knitted cap, leaving her short hair whipping against her head. She followed its progress against the light of the streets below as the wind carried it away.

Then she looked down.

Mistake. Big mistake. She grew dizzy and weak and felt her grip slipping. She slapped her face with her free hand.

This is no time to lose your nerve.

She closed her eyes, using the sting on her cheek to center herself, and kept on going. One, two. One, two.

Not that she had too much to worry about. She had a slim body and strong arms and legs, and she left everyone else in the dust back at the training camp when it came to climbing. Height aside, this was routine for her.

Alex climbed one more floor and looked to the right at the balcony on level with her. Was this it? She counted from the top. Yes. Twenty-second floor. This was it.

She edged along the jutting bricks the few feet to the balcony and reached out to grab the railing. She stepped onto the ledge and then swung over, breathing a sigh of relief as her feet landed on solid ground.

“Hello, Alex.”

She was so startled she leapt off the ground. If she had been on the other side of the railing, she’d have fallen off the building.

Diana Bloch, in a maroon silk robe, stood up from a deck chair. “I’d just like you to be aware that one of our snipers had you in his crosshairs by the time you reached the third floor.” She opened the French doors into the apartment and stood aside for Alex to walk through. “Come in. I have chamomile tea steeping for you in the kitchen.”

“Thanks,” Alex mumbled, entering the apartment, “but I don’t drink tea.”

The place was bigger than any apartment Alex had ever seen in the city. She looked back out past the balcony at a breathtaking night view of the bay. Being the head of Zeta Division came with its perks. The interior was obsessively clean and decorated within an inch of its life to look like a design catalog.

Even here in her own home, Diana Bloch was a facade, a front.

“I think you could do with some calming down.”

“Sure.” Alex rubbed her triceps, sore from the climb. “Whatever.” She followed Bloch into the kitchen, where a steaming mug was waiting for her, the string of a tea bag hanging off the side. Bloch pulled it out, letting the excess liquid drip back into the mug before placing the bag in the trash.

“Sugar?”

“Four.”

Bloch dropped in four cubes and stirred. “This was quite unnecessary. You could have severely hurt yourself, or died. We’ve already invested much in your training. It would have been a serious loss.”

“I wanted to see you,” said Alex. “And you kept stonewalling me.” She sipped at the tea. Too hot.

“You are supposed to be in training. Skipping out was quite a feat, by the way. It seems you’ve got your fellow recruits atwitter, wondering how you did it.”

“Bloch, where is my father?”

Bloch’s face took on a pained expression. “Come into the living room,” she said. She sat down at a white leather Barcelona chair and motioned for Alex to sit across from her. “We don’t know where he is. But we’re doing everything we can to find him.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“You know I can’t divulge details of the mission. But he was caught while on assignment.”

“Where?”

“Does it matter?”

“Where?” Alex’s tone took on a hard edge.

Bloch seemed to consider whether to chew her out. She could pull rank at any moment. But instead, she said, “In Moscow. Does that make it better? Does that lessen your pain?”

Alex bit her lip and scowled in anger. “After everything he’s done for the organization. You could move heaven and earth to find him, if you wanted to.”

“There are limits on what we can feasibly do. Your father knew the risks going in, as you will when it’s your turn to go out into the field. But we are doing what we can—”

“Not. Enough.”

Bloch’s eyes went cold. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

“I’ll go on my own if I have to.”

“That’s not a good idea, Alex.”

“I didn’t ask.”

Bloch stood from her seat and dropped ice cubes tinkling into a glass. Then she uncorked a bottle of whiskey and poured. “I know you think you’re ready. Your help has been valuable to us in the past, and you’ll make a hell of an operative someday. But you’re still green. If you go out on your own, I’m afraid you won’t survive.”

“Are you going to stop me?”

“No. I’m not.”

“Then I think we’ve said all we have to say to each other.”

“I suppose,” said Bloch. She unlocked the front door and held it open for Alex. “Why don’t you take the elevator down?”

Chapter Four

Morgan woke to the bark of a guard yelling at him in Russian. His immediate reflex was to punch the man’s lights out, but he was still too tired. So instead he lay disoriented until the guard, impatient, wrested the bent bowl from Morgan’s hands and tossed it down the sleeping quarters. It tumbled, clattering, toward the door.

The message was clear enough.

Morgan stood, shaky from the interrupted sleep but also renewed, if only a little. How long had he been out? The sun was still in the sky, still low, but that meant little out here. The sun was always low. And the wind, even in summer, carried a chill.

He picked up his bowl and went outside into the yard. Men were filing in from the double gates that led outside the camp. The whole procession was hairless like him, although none so recently shaved, so that stubble was already growing in on their scalps and faces. They were shuffling, exhausted from a day of forced labor at the mine. All were skinny, their overalls and coats hanging loosely from their bodies. Their faces were pale, with deep dark bags under their eyes.

These men were broken. Morgan recognized the signs.

Guards oversaw the whole process, carrying their Kalashnikovs, holding dogs on leashes. Even the guards, though young, were stooped, with gloomy, lifeless eyes. Morgan didn’t know if it was from the dreariness of the place—no women, no entertainment, nothing to do but drink in cramped rooms, if they were allowed that much—or the violence they committed against the prisoners. Something about torturing and brutality made men into miserable monsters. He’d seen it often enough.

He wondered whether this was a punishment assignment.

Morgan scanned the group. All were in the same clothes and had the same (lack of) hair, so all he had to go by were faces, and even these looked similar, with sunken eyes and pale skin. It proved just about impossible to pick out an individual from the crowd.

Food was distributed out of a single window by prisoners on meal duty. Morgan wondered if they had spent the day in the kitchen or come back early from work. In any case, it would be a prime position in the camp, the work light and pleasant in comparison to the mines. There was a little more color on their cheeks, too. Morgan guessed that they sneaked food as they cooked.

Morgan clutched his bowl. His stomach growled. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was.

The men lined up at the window and Morgan took his place at the end. There was a scuffle to see who would get closer to the front, but at a shout from a guard, under fear of violence, the men took their places, those behind resigned to their position.

As he stood in line, Morgan noticed a group of three prisoners glowering at him, and he felt like the only unattached girl at a singles bar. The men exchanged words and turned away.

He didn’t like it. Any kind of attention in this place was unwanted.

Morgan drew closer to the meal window as the prisoners got their dinner rations. When his turn came, he held out the bowl. The prisoner who was serving, wearing a jumper like his but stained with food, dunked a ladle into the big pot and spooned the contents into Morgan’s bowl—a stew with vegetables, heavy on onions and potatoes, a few wisps of meat and bits of animal fat, and a thin layer of oil at the top.

The man motioned for him to move along.

Resisting the urge to swallow the portion whole right there, Morgan shuffled off, away from any grouping of prisoners, and sat against the cell block, holding his hand as steady as he could so as not to spill a drop. He’d not had any food in several days.

He tilted the bowl against his lips. They were cracked and split from the beatings he had taken in the past week, but the stew, thin as it was, filled him. Even with the faint odor of rotting potatoes and onions, even with the stringy, gristly meat, it was the best thing he’d ever tasted. He wanted to down the whole thing in one gulp. But he knew that if he ate too fast he’d puke it all up again, so he chewed each solid mouthful twenty-five times before swallowing, and took small sips of the liquid. In his hunger, he lost awareness of everything else around him. All he could focus on was the next mouthful.

He finished the scant portion, tilting the bowl against his lips to get the last drop. It felt warm and full in his stomach, after days of nothing but a trickle of water. He felt invigorated, power flowing back into his muscles.

But at the same time he was aware that it wasn’t enough. Two of these a day would keep a bedridden man alive and comfortable, but for men working all day in the mine, this was a starvation diet.

He wondered how long anyone lasted in here. Every one of the thousand or so men milling around in the yard looked withered and wasted, some more than others.

As he looked around, Morgan caught sight of the three who had been staring at him before. They were crowding around a man—Arabic, of around forty years old. Morgan had noticed him before, off in the corner making his prayers to Allah as others waited in line for food.

The three punks circled him, pinning him against the wall of the prisoner barracks. He was backing off from them, shaking his head. They stepped forward, holding out their hands. Morgan saw the Arab had his bowl in his arms, protected as if it were a baby. The goons wanted it, his only means of getting food, an extra portion for them. Without it, he would starve.

The prisoners around them couldn’t be missing it, but they made a point of not raising their heads. A guard looked at the scene with no more interest as if he were seeing a dog scratch himself. One of the men slapped the Arab in the face and screamed something in Russian.

Morgan pushed himself up off the ground, his own bowl in his hand. Bad idea, getting into trouble on his first day. Plus, he was sore and exhausted. He had every reason not to get involved.

He walked the diagonal over to the men, inserting himself between them and the victim.

“Step off.”

They first looked surprised, then glanced at each other with a blend of confusion and amusement. The oldest of them, a man slender and short like a weasel, spoke to him in Russian.

“No Russkyi,” he grunted. “Amerikanskyi.”

A different man broke in, the youngest and tallest of them, fair-skinned and blond, who looked like the Russian equivalent of an Iowa farm boy except for the tattoo of a snake that peeked out of his overalls on his neck. “American, eh?”

“That’s right. And you’re going to leave this man alone.”

He translated for his confederates and they shared a laugh. “Americans like to think they are cowboys. New sheriff in town, come to do justice. Move away, cowboy, or you die.”

“Step. Off.”

The farm boy turned sour. “This is not funny anymore.”

“Never was.”

“You do not want to pick this fight.”

“Maybe I do.”

The man mugged at his comrades as if to say, Can you believe this asshole? and took a swing at Morgan, trying to catch him in a sucker punch. Morgan was slowed by hunger and fatigue, but not enough to fall for that tired trick. This was a bully, untrained at fighting anyone who knew how to fight back. Morgan dodged and grabbed his arm, using the man’s own momentum to drop him to the ground. Weasel man growled and pounced on him. Morgan pivoted out of the way, kicking his leg at the knee so he fell face first on the dirt ground of the yard.

The third hesitated, casting his eyes on his two confederates. He’d learned his lesson not to rush in. He balled his hands up into fists.

Morgan didn’t give him the opportunity to get close. He rammed the sole of his foot into the man’s chest, causing him to stagger back. Morgan then moved in to deliver a punch that would lay him out flat when someone grabbed his right arm. He saw a prisoner’s overalls in his peripheral vision. He twisted to break free, but someone else grabbed his left. Morgan struggled, but he wasn’t in any shape to wrest himself free of two men who, in spite of the conditions, had been sleeping and eating better than him for weeks now.

Someone new came up to him. He was older than most, as old as fifty. He was skinny as anyone else, but Morgan could tell he was thickset and jowly, with once-fat cheeks. His eyebrows were like two hairy gray caterpillars. He carried himself with all the dignity of a mafia don.

He moved in and punched an immobilized Morgan in the gut.

“You tried to be a hero. But this is not a place for heroes.” He followed this with a meaty right hook to Morgan’s cheek.

He’d have done worse, but the guards sprung into action at last, pulling the men apart from each other and knocking them to the ground, along with Morgan himself. The guards set upon all of them them, kicking them with heavy boots. Morgan took a painful kick in the ribs.

The man who had hit him, the don, was merely shooed away. Morgan went limp as they dragged him off. He didn’t need any broken bones in here.

“You are dead, American!” the don yelled after him. “You hear me? Dead!”

Chapter Five

The siren woke Morgan in the solitary cell they had tossed him into after the fight the night before. With no room to stretch out, he had slept leaning against the far corner of the cell, feet resting against the door. This took its toll on the form of a throbbing pain in his lower back. His left cheek was sore and tender from the punch he took from the don. He stood with difficulty and tried to stretch the pain away to little avail.

Almost on cue, the deadbolt on the door was undone and the door opened, letting daylight flood into the darkness of the cell.

“Time to work, American!”

They pulled Morgan out and escorted him down an L-shaped hallway lined with cells and then out to the yard.

It was still dark, the sky leaden in the horizon where the sun was about to come up. The morning air chilled him to the marrow. The yawning, drooping prisoners lined up outside again, first for the morning count, and then at the food window, this time to get a dollop of potato porridge, bland and lumpy. But it was food, and it was warm.

Morgan kept an eye out for Bortsov’s men, who paid him no attention. Morgan would assume they’d give him extra scrutiny after the day before. This raised alarm bells in his head, but he didn’t have time to ruminate on it before another siren sounded and they lined up for the morning’s meal.

Lacking any kind of utensils, Morgan followed the others’ lead and ate with his hands. Once everybody had gotten their ration, they were lined up again, three abreast, in front of the double gates. An escort of guards surrounded them, one for every twenty or so men. A smaller siren rang out and the double gates swung open. With a shout from a guard, the men set marching. They filed through the no-man’s-land between the inner and outer perimeter fences. Morgan knew how it worked. Anyone caught there would be shot without ceremony or a second thought.

This was not an army, and their march was slow and plodding. Stuck near the back, Morgan couldn’t see where they were going, so he settled for keeping his eyes down on the stony ground to keep from stumbling or stepping on the heels of the man ahead of him.

“You are American, right?”

It was good English, a young voice, right next to Morgan. He turned to his left to look at the man, in his early thirties by the look of it, with baby blue eyes and dark blond hair coming in on his head. There was something still unbroken in him despite his having the same sunken cheeks and sallow eyes as everyone else.

Morgan didn’t have a mirror. He wondered whether he had the look yet. He would.

“I saw you back there.” His English sounded like he might have been educated in the US. “Standing up to those thugs. Not just anyone would do that for another man.”

Morgan squinted into the dawning sun. A hawk shrieked far above.

“My name is Grushin. I am a journalist. In today’s Russia, that’s enough of a crime to get me sent to prison, but I got a little too inconvenient for even the usual holes they stick us in. So they put me in the gulag.” He kicked a rock, which rolled diagonally and nearly hit a guard’s boot. The guard turned, searching with a scowl for the culprit. Morgan looked away to deflect suspicion. “What are you in here for?”

Morgan didn’t respond. The kid was nice, but as they say in reality shows, he wasn’t here to make friends.

“All right, Uncle Sam. I should know better than to ask.”

Morgan felt the spot where he took a boot the night before. It was aching anew with the strain of the march. He wondered whether he had a broken rib. “You should know better.”

“But I can talk,” he said, grinning. “The guys you attacked. They’re all ex-mafia people. The one who punched you was their leader, Leonid Bortsov. They don’t have much power, although I think their people bribe some of the guards from outside, so that gives them privileges in here. They run the laundry, which gets them away from the worst of the forced labor. One of the perks. The other is that they steal the others’ food and blankets.” He sighed. “Somehow, even this place is not bad enough that men like Bortsov can’t make it worse.”

They marched for forty minutes across the tundra, on cold hard ground. The path was well beaten, so that the low grasses that covered the plains around them did not grow there. Everything around them was flat. Even if he could run, there was nowhere for him to run to, nowhere that would put him out of the line of sight of the guards’ rifles.

The sun had risen above the horizon by the time they arrived at the mine. It was a handful of shacks surrounding a hole cut into the rock, sloping down to a set of double steel doors. The men fanned out, each seeming to know where to go.

A guard approached Morgan. “New prisoner,” he said. “You go with Vanya’s team.”

Vanya was a tall man, wrinkled and with heavy scarring on half his face. Morgan guessed it was chemical burn, probably from torture. Vanya argued with the guard. After a brief back and forth, the guard gave what from the tone was an ultimatum. Vanya swore and said, “Come, American.”

He walked off, and Morgan followed. “What was that about?” he asked.

“We have a quota per man on the team,” he said. “More men, higher quota. If we do not meet quota at the end of the week, we get lash.”

“Sorry about that.”

“You look strong,” he said. “You will pull your weight. We do not do your work for you. If we get the lash, you get worse. And then you will be very sorry.”

“Got it.” Morgan was making friends left and right.

Vanya led him to the toolshed, where men were crowding around, elbowing each other, trying to get their hands on an implement. Morgan followed Vanya’s lead, fighting to the front of the line to look at what was on offer.

No modern mining equipment. No machines. Handheld implements was all they had, goddamn shovels and mallets and chisels. Nevsky must have a penchant for the vintage.

There weren’t enough for everyone, Morgan now saw. The smaller and weaker men were pushed aside. They would be getting the lash at the end of the week.

“Get kirkomotyga,” Vanya told him. “Pickaxe.” Morgan he forced his way and took one from among the grabbing hands. He held it close to his chest, smelling the rich iron, holding it against grabbing hands until he got clear of the crowd. Then he examined it. The wood was old and grooved, the head covered in rust. But it would do its work.

A guard unlocked and swung open the heavy metal doors that led into the mine with a prolonged creak. He pulled down a heavy switch on the other side of the door, and dim lights came on. The wooden struts were old and seemed like they could cave in at any minute. Convenient way to bury a group of men the Russian government wanted disappeared.

The prisoners filed into the mine, two by two. Morgan walked inside with Vanya’s six-man team. Being the new guy, he was given wheelbarrow duty, his pickaxe sitting inside as he struggled to hold the wheel steady on the uneven ground. There was no explicit order or direction, but Vanya and the men moved forward without hesitation. As the tunnels branched out, the men thinned until their group was alone.

Morgan wondered how often men got lost in here. He wondered how many corpses had been forgotten in the mine.

They walked for several minutes before Vanya said, “You go with Sergey here. He doesn’t speak English. If you need help communicating, get lost.” Sergey motioned for Morgan to follow him a ways down the tunnel to a small hollow. There, the Russian showed him how to wield the pickaxe, chipping stone from the cave wall.

They worked in silence for a while, only the dull clang of metal hitting rock. It was hard to gauge the passage of time in the darkness of the mine, so Morgan had no idea how much time had gone by when he heard footsteps coming down the tunnel. He turned, assuming it was Vanya and the others.

It was not. From the darkness, the three men he had fought on the yard the day before approached. They said something to Sergey, who dropped his pickaxe and took off running down the passage, the sound of his dash fading in the tunnels.

The three men advanced on him.

“No guards to save you here,” said the young, tall man. “You are going to have a little accident.”

Morgan didn’t like his odds. Someone could get hurt.

He thought about shouting for help, but he doubted that anyone would hear him, except perhaps Vanya’s men. Also, it would do him no good in the long run. Bortsov’s little gang would just wait until the next opportunity.

Morgan knew one thing. He wasn’t going to die in that mine. So he was going to put a stop to this here and now.

He tightened his grip on the pickaxe. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

The tunnel was too narrow for them to come at him all at the same time, which gave him Morgan strong defensive position, but also hamstrung his swing of the weapon.

The first, the younger tall guy, came at him with another pickaxe. He was slow. Morgan moved out of the way and swung his pickaxe against the man’s back, calculating the force to crack a few ribs. The tip connected, and the man fell forward with a cry of pain.

The next man held a shovel, which had a longer reach than Morgan’s pickaxe, putting him at a disadvantage. The man thrust it like a spear, hitting Morgan in the belly. He winced. It was going to leave a nasty bruise.

The man moved to thrust again, and Morgan locked the shovel into the curved head of the pickaxe. Morgan pushed head of the shovel back against the attacker. The handle caught him in the chest and he staggered back. This gave Morgan his opening. He pushed the shovel to the side. It fell from the man’s weakened grip and clattered to the stone on the cave floor. Then Morgan swung at the man’s head with the side of the pickaxe, which slammed into the man’s temple. He hollered, clutching at the bleeding wound. Morgan kicked the man’s leg out from under him and he dropped.

The third attacker, the tiny, weaselly man, came at him, roaring, wielding a long-handled mallet two-handed. He swung downward and Morgan parried, almost losing his grip on the pickaxe. The man swung again, and Morgan dodged out of the way, inches from taking a blow that would crush his jaw.

Morgan kept backing away as the swings came. The man had too much reach, and Morgan couldn’t get an opening in the tight quarters. He could rush his attacker, but only at the expense of leaving himself open to a bone-crunching strike. And soon he’d be back up against a wall, a sitting duck.

Morgan took stock of the environment as he stepped back. Was there anything he could use? Narrow tunnels, held up by struts too strong to break, not high enough that climbing would give him any advantage. But connected to it . . .

Hanging from the strut above him was the last bulb of the tunnel. Without pausing to think twice, Morgan swung the pickaxe upward, shattering the light bulb and plunging the passage into darkness.

Morgan could see the man’s silhouette against another light bulb up the passage, but Morgan himself was concealed by a pall of murk. The man swung the hammer blindly. Morgan waited for a wide swing and brought the pickaxe down on the hammer’s handle. Without expecting it, weasel man lost his grip. Then Morgan rushed him with a running tackle that knocked the man off his feet.

Morgan took up the hammer from the ground. He raised it, and the man, seeing Morgan by the dim light he was no longer blocking with his body, raised his hand in defense.

Morgan dropped the implement next to the man on the floor, panting. “It’s a very, very dangerous thing to attack me. I’m not looking to kill anyone today. That makes this your lucky day. Try again and I guarantee your luck will run out.” He brought his foot hard against the man’s side. “And tell Bortsov that if he pulls this shit again, I’m coming for him.”

He walked away, leaving all his would-be killers writhing in pain on the cave ground.

Chapter Six

They marched back to the camp after ten hours in the mine, the sun still glaring in the Siberian summer sky. A truck drove alongside them, carrying the day’s haul in tin ore. Bortsov’s three goons limped along with everyone else, keeping the pace in spite of their injuries.

No one said anything about the fight. Morgan watched as his attackers were questioned by hostile guards in the yard as the mess window opened and men struggled to be among the first to eat. Morgan asked Grushin what the guards were saying.

“They say it happened in an accident. That they fell.”

The guards didn’t look like they were buying it for a second, but Bortsov’s men said nothing that would connect the occurrence to him. Stonewalled and not interested in taking this any further, the guards let it go. It wasn’t skin off their backs if a couple of inmates wanted to give each other shiners, as long as the ore was flowing.

Morgan had expected as much. They were already under scrutiny for the fight the other day, and would not want to call any more attention to themselves. The whole point of attacking him in the mine was to do it in secret, where no one would see. And with renewed suspicion because of their injuries, they would have to lay low before making their next move.

But it was clear they wouldn’t let this go. Especially not now.

“You are a lightning rod for trouble,” Grushin said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” he said. “It was just natural curiosity that you were so interested in the men’s injuries, which I’m sure have nothing to do with the fact that you’re trying to hide a limp.”

“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re too smart for your own good?” Morgan asked.

“What do you think got me in here? Anyway, don’t worry, no one will tell the guards. I’d be more worried about Bortsov, myself.”

“You think they’ll try something else?”

“You are challenging the pecking order. They can’t let that stand. If he can, he will kill you. But not yet. Eyes are on him now. I don’t think he can afford to make a move.”

“Sure you still want to be my friend? It can be dangerous to your health.”

“Can’t sink that much lower.” Grushin surveyed the yard, the line for dinner organizing itself out of disorder. “You know, if we all attacked together, at the same time, we could take their weapons and take over the prison. There are almost a thousand of us and, what, maybe a hundred of them?”

“A hundred with Kalashnikovs,” said Morgan.

“Still. We get a hold of one or two, and with a decent tactician . . .”

“I don’t like the way you’re looking at me.”

Grushin rested his back against the wall. “I’m not going to die in here. I refuse to. If I am to die, I want it to be trying to escape. Fighting against oppression, instead of collapsing from exhaustion or starving like a dog.”

“Careful with that talk. There are people in here who’d sell you out for an extra dinner ration.”

“But I don’t think you’re one of them,” he said.

“Why do you figure?”

“I’m a journalist. My job was—is—to see things. So I see people around here. Most of them keep to themselves. Those are your basic survivors, the ones who are focused on getting through the day. Some find God. They tend to stick together—that’s them over there. You got your standard bullies, like Bortsov’s men, who try to get the upper hand even in here. There are the flight risks, too, although it’s harder to figure out who they are beforehand. But they are the ones who will just take off running one day. Usually they get shot. Some get brought back.”

“And the rest?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Grushin was probably right about that. “Sounds like you’ve got this place figured out.”

“There are the specific cases,” Grushin said. He pointed out a small man, very thin and middle aged. Morgan couldn’t quite tell, but there seemed to be something wrong about the way he carried himself. “They say that is Kolya the Cannibal. He terrorized St. Petersburg some ten years ago. Ate at least thirty people, most of them children, before they caught him. They found the bones in his basement.”

“He’s been in here since then?”

“It’s what they say. Honestly, I don’t know how he survived this long. He has never said a word to anyone here. Maybe that’s his secret.”

“And you? How long you been in?” Morgan asked.

“It’s been five months. Feels like as many lifetimes.”

“I’m done with this place after a day.”

“You won’t stay long in here,” Grushin said. “Your government wouldn’t allow it.”

“I wouldn’t count on it. I’m dead, as far as my government is concerned.”

“I see,” said Grushin. “So what are you? CIA? Identity disavowed in case of capture?”

“No. Not CIA.”

“But something, right? There’s something about you.”

Morgan didn’t respond. He wondered whether he was that transparent.

“I am going to write about this place when I get out,” Grushin said. “The world needs to know what is going on in here. When they take you away, remember us here, okay?”

After dinner, the guards lined up all the prisoners on the yard for the evening count. One guard marched down the line counting aloud while another ticked each number off on a clipboard.

Twilight was setting in by the time they finished, and the men filed into barracks. They distributed into their respective rooms. Morgan was relieved to find that none of his twenty-odd cellmates were the men he had confronted in the yard. The man he had saved, the Arab, was not among them either.

Morgan lay down on his bunk. He was still tired enough that he felt sleep coming on, but he wasn’t about to drift off before making sure the others would, too. Sleep left him exposed, and he didn’t like it. But soon enough, his exhaustion got the better of him and he drifted off into dreamless sleep.

Chapter Seven

“How are you holding up?”

Karen O’Neal, with her pretty half-Vietnamese face, fussy, socially awkward and a bit off-putting, sat across from Alex in a downtown Boston Starbucks drinking a triple-shot espresso. They had just missed the morning crowd, who left newspapers and coffee rings on the tables, and were sharing a table during the tranquil mid-morning lull.

“Not well.” Alex emitted a hollow laugh. She was nursing an iced hazelnut macchiato with an obscene amount of sugar in it.

“I’m glad you called,” said Karen. “Sometimes this job sucks, and sometimes it’s hard on the people close to us.”

“I think it was harder on my father this time,” said Alex.

“I know. I was being polite.”

This was why Alex liked Karen. Sometimes she was honest to a fault. “What happened to him?” Alex asked.

“I don’t know much. Zeta’s keeping this mission on the down-low, even from people on the inside. They’re even boxing me out of looking for him.”

“What? Why? Bloch said they were doing everything they could.”

“I guess that’s not literally true,” Karen said.

“I need to know more.”

“I’m sorry, I’m just not in the loop.”

But Alex had a last resort, a trick up her sleeve. “Was Lincoln working on this project?”

Karen blushed. “Yes.”

Lincoln Shepard was the resident computer tech at Zeta, a brilliant nerd who Karen had been dating in secret for months now. Alex was among the few who knew, having found out by accident.

“He never told you anything?” Alex asked.

“No, but . . .” Karen looked left and right, as if someone might be listening. “There’s a name I heard him say several times,” she said. “Apparently in connection to this case. Suvorov. Some sort of military officer.”

“Suvorov . . .” Alex echoed as she committed the name to memory.

“You’re not actually thinking of getting involved, are you?”

“No, of course not. I just wanted some closure, I guess.” Liar. “Anyway, what are you working on now?”

This was enough to get Karen to go off on a tangent about trying to find contraband through recurring patterns in shipping containers. Alex picked Karen’s brain about how data models worked as they finished their coffees, and then Karen said she had to go. They parted on the street with a wooden hug.

“He might not be dead!” Karen called out as Alex waved goodbye.

Alex rode her motorcycle home. She pulled off the highway to the suburb of Andover, Massachusetts, where kids on summer vacation populated the streets on bicycles and on foot. One group was playing in the spray of a hose on the lawn. Alex felt a pang of nostalgia for her own childhood.

She found the house empty except for their German shepherd, Neika. Her mother was out at work, as usual. Diving into her work was her coping mechanism, and as such things went, it wasn’t a bad one.

Taking advantage of her solitude, Alex opened the door to her father’s office. She found everything still, the air slightly stale, a light dust settled on the gun display case, the model cars.

It was eerie being in there with him missing.

But Alex had purpose, and the heebie-jeebies were not going to stop her. She opened a cabinet behind his chair and removed two piles of old tax and personal documents. Then she felt around the corners for the button, and removed the back panel.

Stashed there was nearly fifty thousand dollars and a Rolodex. She drew out the money and the old apparatus, shuffling through the cards. They were written in a simple cipher, an idiot code that Alex had over time taken pains to decipher.

Now, she was looking for a specific card. She went through them until she found it. A name, which deciphered read Valery Dobrynin. And a phone number.

She picked up the phone in the study and dialed the complex country code and then the number. It rang ten times before she got an answering machine message. She had been studying Russian, but she didn’t quite get what the recording said. She only knew she had not heard the name Dobrynin.

She heard the beep, her signal to start talking. “I’m not sure I have the right number. I’m calling about my father, Dan Morgan. I—he needs help. I think you know who he is, and I think you can give me that help. Please, if you care about him, call me back.”

She left her number, finished off with another plea for help.

It could be nothing. A total mistake, a man long gone. But she would take anything at this point.

Chapter Eight

Days went by and Morgan had no more trouble from Bortsov’s men beyond angry looks. He shared most of his meals with Grushin, who told him about life on the outside, about his political radical girlfriend, and about how he was worried about her and how much he missed her. Morgan said little in return, and next to nothing about his life back home. But the young man was glad enough just to be listened to.

Morgan would’ve preferred to think he was above it, that he was better as a lone wolf. But the young man’s company was humanizing, in a place where most other interactions were opportunistic at best, cruel at worst.

It was about two weeks into Morgan’s internment when Vanya interrupted a dinnertime conversation with an announcement.

“Detonation tomorrow. If we’re lucky, we won’t get picked to do it, and have a day of rest.”

They got picked. It was a random draw, and theirs was the short straw—Morgan’s team and another, which Morgan saw that morning included the man he had defended on his first day there, the Arab. The twelve of them marched alone to the mine, along with six armed guards. The rest of the prisoners stayed behind and enjoyed a rare day of rest from hard labor.

On their arrival at the mine, the guards unlocked the dynamite shed and told them to get to work.

“Come,” said Vanya to Morgan.

“Why me?”

“What, you what me to do it? You are new. You do it.” Seniority applied in the mines, apparently.

Vanya first took a satchel from a shelf and stocked it with wires, detonators and tape. He then opened a green arms chest, packed with sticks of dynamite. “You carry.” He loaded it with eight sticks as Morgan held it.

Morgan lifted it carefully over his shoulder and walked with smooth and precise steps, trying to jog the volatile cargo as little as possible. Vanya led all of them into the depths of the mines, where two spots had been marked for detonation. Once they were there, Morgan set the satchel on the ground and the Arab came forward and drew out three sticks.

With deft fingers, he connected the detonators. While Morgan unwound the wire toward the mouth of the cave, the Arab set the sticks at the second site.

Once everything was ready, they unspooled the wire all the way to the outside. Vanya closed the heavy steel door and everyone stood clear. The Arab activated the charge on a car battery and the ground shook. Dust shot out from the corners of the door, which rumbled on its hinges.

The guards gave them a few minutes to wait for the dust to settle. They were smoking cigarettes, and in a rare moment of empathy offered each prisoner one. The Arab waved it away. Vanya smoked his with relish. Morgan took one and pocketed it. He might be able to trade. At least it might be a treat for Grushin.

They went back inside, coughing at the dust that was still thick in the air, dimming the reach of the electric lights. Vanya surveyed the collapsed rock.

“We did not do enough here,” he told Morgan. “We will need to do a second detonation.”

On the way back up, he knelt at a spot where stones had been knocked loose. The wire had been cut on a sharp edge.

“Shit. We do not have more. We will have to use fuses. I hate fuses.”

They went back for more dynamite. Morgan was given the job of carrying the satchel again. He, the Arab, and Vanya made their way back down, the dust now a bit clearer, to the first detonation site.

“This doesn’t look too safe,” Morgan said as the Arab set the sticks in the recess of the rock where they wanted to blow the new passage..

“Do it right this time,” said Vanya. He was pissy about all the extra work.

“Lighter,” said the Arab. Vanya reached over and lit the fuse.

“All right, clear the cave.”

They ran single file away from the hissing fuse. Ducking under a low passage, the Arab put his hand on a strut. Weakened by the explosions, it shifted, groaning, and then cracked. Morgan pushed him out of the way, and they rolled together on the ground. A section of the passage wall collapsed on top of Vanya. He was knocked forward and screamed. His leg was pinned against the ground.

“Help me!”

Morgan looked at the light of the fuse, burning not fifty feet away. How long did they have before it reached the stick of dynamite?

Morgan owed this man nothing. The sensible thing to do was to run away with everyone else and get clear of the blast before it went off.

Instead he grabbed a shovel. “Come on, help me!” he said to the Arab. He wedged the shovel under the rock and pushed down on the handle. It didn’t budge. “Help me!”

The Arab stepped forward and helped Morgan push the shovel down. They grunted at the exertion. With a creak, the stone moved a fraction of an inch. Under their combined strength, it rose, little by little, rocks shifting as it moved.

“Get him out!”

The Arab let go. Morgan held, giving every ounce of strength he had, as the man pulled Vanya’s considerable bulk backward, clear of the rock. Morgan let go, dropping to his hands and knees with exhaustion. The rock hit the cave floor, sending up a plume of dust.

“Move it!” cried Vanya.

Morgan and the Arab helped Vanya to his feet, and he limped, weight resting on their shoulders, as they moved together down the passage.

They walked barely ten paces when they were knocked off their feet by the blast. They collapsed into a pile on the cave floor, hot air running all around them. The passage behind them caved in, raising a cloud of dust. If they had gotten out five seconds later, they would have been buried.

“Is everyone all right?” the Arab asked.

Vanya didn’t answer, but he was moving and moaning, which was good enough.

“Let’s not do that again,” said Morgan.

Chapter Nine

That evening, Morgan sat to eat with Grushin at dinner that night, as usual. From their regular seats against the laundry building, he caught sight of the Arab doing his evening prayer halfway across the yard. At the back of the food line, Vanya was limping on an old-fashioned cast. That poor bastard. With a fracture like that, he needed to be in bed, but hell if Nevsky was going to be that compassionate.

At least Vanya caught something of a break. He was, Morgan found out, taken out of the mine and put on latrine duty.

Someone else was eating with them that day. An older man, his face deeply lined, what hairs were left him wispy and patchy. His eyes were sunken and haunted, but there was spirit in the geezer yet.

“Morgan,” Grushin had said when Morgan sat down. “This is Milosz. He is something of an institution around here. He has been here for many years, longer than anyone can remember. Even him.”

“How you like our home, young man?” Milosz said, in a raspy, guttural English.

“You speak English?”

“I learn in here. Sometimes there is British or American inside. They die or go away fast. But I learn. I learn good.”

“That you did,” said Morgan. “What are you in for?”

“I was fighter in Czechoslovakia,” he said. “In—” he turned and asked something of Grushin in Russian.

“Velvet Revolution,” Grushin said.

“Velvet Revolution!” Milosz said with a flourish of his hand. “I was leader.”

He related stories of his glory days before his capture, of beautiful women and killing Communists and daring escapes until he announced, “I go take a piss.” He rested a hand on Morgan’s shoulder. “Don’t get old. You piss all the time.”

“I’d rather that than the alternative.”

He helped Milosz to his feet and watched as the man walked toward the latrines. He commanded rare respect in the camp. Even the guards seemed to have some deference to the old man, and Bortsov’s men steered clear of him. No, there was something left of the outside in here after all. Respect for elders was too deeply ingrained to be rooted out all the way.

As he watched Milosz, Morgan saw the Arab walking over in their direction, a bowl of stew in his hand.

“I think that’s for you,” said Grushin. Morgan stirred to stand up. “No, I was just leaving. Got some important business to attend to at the other side of the yard.”

Grushin made himself scarce, and the other man took a seat next to Morgan as he tipped the bowl of stew into his mouth, fatty broth filling his stomach. Both were facing forward and didn’t look one another in the eye.

“My name is Badri,” he said.

“Morgan.”

“American,” he said. “We should be enemies.”

“I guess we should.”

“There is honor in you. Perhaps you are a good man.”

“Nah. I’m just like every other asshole in here.”

“No. You are not. Most people here are criminals. People who are lost, who have no hope of righteousness. But you. I have been watching. You have a mind for justice, even in this place where there is none, not for any.”

“Those are big words,” Morgan said. “I see someone in trouble, I do something. It’s an instinct or something.” He sipped from his stew. It carried an aftertaste of rancid onion.

“Even one who should be your enemy.”

“Even.” Badri was testing him. He could tell.

“You have family?” Badri asked.

“Wife and daughter back home,” he said. “My daughter, she’s college-aged. You?”

“Wife, too, and two children,” he said. “But I haven’t seen them in a long time. I don’t know what has happened to them.” He rubbed his face. “Are you from the CIA? I do not know why else an American would be in here.”

Lying was going to do him no good. Plus, given the circumstances, it hardly seemed like it mattered. “I’m not CIA,” he said. “But I did work for an intelligence agency. Something clandestine. Totally secret. Not even working for the government, technically.”

A flash of ice-cold hatred passed before Badri’s eyes. “Then you are the enemy.”

“Well, I’m done with them anyway. I gave everything for my country, for the agency. And they betrayed me. Left me for dead. What are you here for?”

“For fighting the Great Satan,” he said. “For making jihad.”

They stared at each other in silence. Natural enemies, then?

Morgan scratched the scalp behind his ear. “Look, Badri, I’ve seen things. I’ve done things. I know what my country does, has done. Wars and bombing and assassinations for profit and ideology. Covering up war crimes and manipulating our people. I’m tired. I’m tired of the hypocrisy.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “I saw something. In my most recent mission. I was doing reconnaissance in northwestern Syria. Town called Sarmada. A mission against the Islamic State. I was supposed to give my people the location of a group of leaders for a targeted bombing.

“Except when I got there, I saw a wedding. Women, old people, children. I told them not to fire. I told them to hold off.” He spit on the ground. “An entire family killed by a drone strike. A wedding party. Should’ve been the happiest moment of those young people’s lives. Instead, they died.” He gritted his teeth. “I’m sick of it, Badri. This has been festering in me a long time. I’m not one of them anymore.”

“Perhaps you see things as I do,” said Badri. “Perhaps you understand.”

“Well. It’s not like all that matters in here, does it?” He looked at the desolate wasteland surrounding the prison. A treeless wilderness, with no animals to be seen, cold and barren. “All that’s washed away. This is a corner of the world that God’s forgot. All we are in here is muscle and bone waiting to die.” Morgan took another mouthful of soup. “So I don’t see the harm in mortal enemies on the outside sharing a meal.”

“Perhaps you are right,” he said.

“Screw being right. I’m tired.”

Chapter Ten

Alex’s feet pounded pavement, a light summer shower cooling off her overheated body.

These days, she couldn’t do without her morning run. She’d long gone past the point when it was something she had to force her body to do, and now it was something her body craved, and would revolt if she did not.

She thought of her batch of recruits back at the training camp. They’d be at the range at this time, she reckoned. She realized she missed holding the rifle, missed shooting at a target, missed the endurance exercises and slogging through the mud and practicing first aid on her mates and stealth maneuvers.

She was thinking about checking out a local gun range when the music cut out in her earphones and the ringer sounded.

She stopped, catching her breath for three seconds before drawing her cell phone from its waterproof case and picking up.

“Hello?”

“How you get this number?” Through a heavy Russian accent, the man’s voice was nervous, slathered in a sort of manic paranoia.

“I’m sorry, who is this?”

“Don’t ask who it is. You called me.”

“I did?”

“You leave number.”

Then it hit her. “Is this Dobrynin? Valery Dobrynin?”

“Who are you?”

“Alex, I—Dan Morgan is my father.”

“How did you get number?”

“I found it in his things.”

The man swore in Russian. “The mudak was supposed to forget me.”

“Well, he didn’t. And you didn’t forget him either.”

“What do you want? You say he needs help?”

The rain started coming down harder and she turned to make her way back home. “He went missing in Russia a couple of weeks ago. I want—I need to find him.”

“And what is this to me?”

“You knew him, didn’t you?”

“A long time ago. I do not know anything about him.”

“You know he needs your help!”

The man muttered something in Russian she did not catch. “What kind of help?”

“He was on a mission to—”

“Stop. Watch what you say over the phone, child. These things I do not need to know.”

“Okay,” she said. “He’s missing. I have a name in connection with it, and not much else.”

“And what do you want me to do about this?”

“I want to find him. I want your help.”

The man did not answer right away, and all Alex heard was water hitting the pavement. “Is not my problem. Forget this name and this number.”

“You owe him!” It was a gamble. She didn’t know if it was even close to true.

“What did you say?”

“I said you owe him.”

“What do you know about that?” he hissed.

Time for another bluff. “I know enough. You want to get even? This is your chance.”

“Der’mo. Get even. Okay. You come here? To Moscow?”

“Yes. I’ll come to Moscow.”

He dictated the address for her in Cyrillic, which she was familiar with enough to write out on her cell phone’s notepad app.

“I will be waiting. If this is trick, I gut you with knife.”

Nice guy.

She went home and made straight for her father’s hiding place. She took out the duffel of cash. Then she looked up flights online. She could leave on one early the next morning. She paid for it with a credit card her father had left behind.

Her mother was out of town for a couple of days, so Alex just left a note.

gone to find dad. be back soon. love you.

–A.

Chapter Eleven

Alex’s plane touched down in Moscow in the late morning. She converted two thousand dollars to rubles and took a cab out of the airport.

She had the cab drop her off a few blocks away from her destination and walked the rest of the way. She was in an old neighborhood, where the buildings were quaint but run-down.

She counted the numbers until she was standing in front of a store window. She didn’t need to read Russian to know what it was. The hanging salamis and two massive pigs’ heads on display announced with crystal clarity that this was a butcher shop. It looked like something that belonged to the Soviet era and had frozen in time in the late eighties.

She checked the address again and walked all the way back to the corner to verify she had the street address right. Then she walked back and checked the number.

There was no doubt. This was the address the man had given her.

Her face burned with embarrassment. Had this been a cruel trick? Something to get her off his back? She might be able to trace the phone number, but what was the point of tracking down a man who wanted nothing to do with her?

Still, she had come this far.

A bell rang when she opened the door. A miasma of butchered meat hit her at once, not helped in the least by the heat of the summer.

A woman of about sixty waddled in from the back, cleaning her hands with a filthy rag, and asked Alex something in Russian.

“Sorry, I don’t . . .” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, swallowing her embarrassment. “I’m looking for Valery Dobrynin?”

She tossed the rag and hollered, “Valyerey!”

A man came out of the back, grumbling under his breath, wearing a bloodstained apron. He had a long face with gray curls that were once black, and a long, thick nose. He exchanged bickers with the woman, and she retreated inside, spitting a last curse at him and slamming the door behind her.

“Chto ty khochesh’?” She could smell the alcohol on his breath from across the counter.

“Ya ishchu kogo-to. My Russian’s not very good. Mr. Dobrynin?”

“That is me. Who are you?”

“Alex. Alexandra.” Dobrynin didn’t make a sign of recognizing her. “Daniel Morgan’s daughter?”

“Ah, the girl,” he said, grumbling some more, and looked over her shoulder at the street behind her. “Did anyone follow you?”

“I don’t think—”

“Never mind. Come in.” He pulled a hinged section of the counter, motioning for her to come in.

They walked into a different door the woman had disappeared into, and emerged in a tiny dark kitchen. Its sink held to chipped ceramic plates, two forks and knives that had seen better days, and two aluminum cups. He sat in one of the two chairs and motioned for her to sit in the other, across a table covered in peeling vinyl.

“Put your suitcase down and sit,” he said.

“Thank you. You have a lovely home.”

He burst out laughing, which transitioned into a hacking cough. “I do not. Agrafena is a worse decorator than I am.”

“Is that your wife?”

“What did you come here for?” Dobrynin asked her.

“I told you,” she said. “I need your help. I need to help my father.”

“And who took your father?”

“I have a name,” said Alex. “Suvorov.”

Dobrynin whistled. “That is quite name. If this is true, then your father is in heavy trouble, little girl.”

“Who is he?”

“General. Very nasty man. Not known for being polite to prisoners.”

Alex felt a lead weight in her chest. “Do you think he’s dead?”

“Most probably.”

“I need to know for sure,” she said. “If there’s even a chance—”

“Will you die for a chance?”

She narrowed her eyes. “If I have to.”

He stood up from his seat and turned his back on her. “Foolish girl.” He turned on the faucet and rinsed the dishes.

“Either you help me, or I’m going on my own.”

He circled his way around her and opened a cabinet behind her back. She watched the dripping faucet, thinking of what she was going to do if he sent her away. And then his thick arm was around her neck, and the point of a thin knife touched her neck. “Do you know what they do to little girls in Moscow?”

Alex squirmed, gasping for air.

“You will be gutted like a pig, girl.”

Alex calmed her panicking lizard brain and assessed the situation. His form was sloppy, and sloppy meant vulnerable.

She kicked herself back in her chair, knocking her head into his chest. The chair tipped over and she fell back, on the chair, on top of him. Before he could recover his bearings, she took the knife that he had dropped on the ground and swung to her right, landing on her feet. She held the knife inches from his face.

“I’d like to see them try.”

“I am old,” he grunted, pushing the knife away from his face and standing up. “Others will not be so easy.”

“I’m ready,” she said.

“You are not. But I will help you with what I can. Daniel Morgan deserves this much.”

Chapter Twelve

Morgan pulled his weight and more in the mines. It was backbreaking work, long hours of breaking and hauling, to the steady sound of pickaxes echoing through the tunnels. Guards would patrol, passing every so often to make sure no one was slacking. Getting caught not working warranted anything from a cuff to the back of the hand to a summary beating, but Morgan, like the others, quickly learned the tricks. Work as slowly as possible while still keeping the quota, listen for the sound of the guards’ boots on the ground, get whatever rest you can when you can.

Weeks passed, although Morgan did not keep count of how many, and Bortsov’s men kept their distance, except for bumping into him on occasion, or pushing him when the guards weren’t looking. One day, they knocked a bowl of stew out of his hand and it went clattering to the ground, spilling its precious contents on the dirt. There were no do-overs at the camp. Morgan went hungry that night.

But Morgan didn’t want to start trouble, and they didn’t seem to want to escalate, for fear of Nevsky’s retaliation. That was a fragile détente, and a reckoning was coming.

One night, the lights went out. It was nearly completely dark by this time, the sun having disappeared in the horizon. There was a commotion among the prisoners, who had been lined up for the evening count, and Morgan’s mind went to escape. But the guards were ready, flashlights in hand, and circled the perimeter, carrying automatic weapons and loosing the dogs, still tethered to their chains but with free rein to run the length of the perimeter fence.

The prisoners were made to kneel with their hands on their heads—Morgan was well familiar with the procedure.

Men were going into the building that housed the generator. Ten minutes passed, then another ten. Nevsky emerged from his building and walked across the yard, swearing in Russian.

“Hey!” Morgan called out to him. “Hey! Is it the generator?”

“Shut your mouth, prisoner!”

“I can fix it!” Nobody responded. “Grushin, tell him I can fix it.”

Grushin did, calling it out in Russian to the warden, who changed his trajectory to stand before Morgan.

“Are you a mechanic, American?”

“I know my way around an engine.”

Nevsky waved him over. “Okay, you try it.” He waved Morgan inside the shed. “If you screw it up any worse, it’s your ass.”

“I need a flashlight,” he said. Nevsky took one from the nearest guard and handed it to Morgan.

The generator reeked of diesel. The make wasn’t one that he recognized. It was Russian (along with any instructions or identifiers) and old. The panel was already open. He went through the troubleshooting checklist, starting with gas and coolant levels. Next he checked the breakers.

“Jesus H. Christ, who’s your mechanics guy? These wires are a goddamn mess.”

“Are they the problem?” Nevsky asked.

“No, electrics look like they’re working. They’re not the issue this time.” He found the problem soon enough. “Fuel line’s blocked. I need to replace it. You got supplies?

“Whatever there is in here.”

He found an old hose that seemed in one piece. It was a simple substitution, something he’d done plenty of times before.

“That should do it,” he said. “Let’s start her up.”

The generator came to rumbling life. The lights in the camp flickered on.

“American,” Nevsky said. “You’re out of the mine. You’re now on mechanic duty.”

Chapter Thirteen

Morgan and Grushin settled into a routine of sitting together at dinner. It was mostly Grushin who spoke, but it made Morgan feel good to talk to him. The journalist reminded him of Alex, who was just as idealistic and headstrong. He missed her so much it hurt physically.

“You got yourself a cushy position,” Grushin said.

“Same as you.” Grushin was on the rotation to work laundry.

“I get to work all day in the stink of men,” he said. “And then the stink of chemicals. They burn my hands and make my eyes water. Not very pleasant.”

“Well, it ain’t the mines.”

Grushin chewed absently. “You know, I think I would actually murder a man for a cigarette and a cup of coffee.”

“I’ve seen some of the inmates with cigarettes,” Morgan said. “I guess they get ’em from the guards.”

“Yeah. And you should hear the things they’ll trade for ’em.” Grushin emitted a hollow laugh. “I would kill a man. But I wouldn’t do that.”

“Can’t say I sympathize. About the coffee and cigarettes, I mean. I don’t partake.”

“What about vodka? Whiskey? My God, a tall glass of German beer.”

“Never been much of a drinker,” Morgan said.

“So what do you miss?”

“I miss my daughter,” he said. “Every single goddamn minute of my existence here. And I miss my wife. I miss how warm and soft she was. The idea of our bed—it seems like another world. Another life.”

“To women,” Grushin said, raising his bowl and clinking it against Morgan’s. “That we might see one again someday.”

“God hear you.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Grushin looked off into the setting sun. “I’m not going to die here.”

“Careful with that,” said Morgan. “They say hope’s what kills you faster. You don’t have hope, despair is just a dull ache. But if you keep that fire alive, it’ll burn you.”

“I’d rather blaze bright, even if it consumes me, than turn to ash in this place.” He stood up, raising his voice. “Look around, Morgan! All these defeated men. All fed and being slowly digested by this place.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m going to escape from this place.”

“You sound like you almost have a plan.”

“I almost have a plan,” Grushin said.

“You’ll die,” said Morgan. “Look.” He gestured to the wastes of the tundra.

“I can’t do it alone. But I wanted to know if I could trust you. I think I can. And you’ve shown yourself to be very resourceful. Seem to know what you’re doing. The kind of guy I’d want at my side for this. You can handle yourself in a fight. You’re quick on your feet. Plus, you’re a good man. Not many to be found around here. And you got one big thing going for you.”

“What’s that?”

“The cars,” Grushin said. “You have access to the motor pool. It might be the only way to escape far enough along the tundra not to get caught by the dogs or the guards coming after us. If we disable the other cars, we got a good shot at getting away.”

“Into the Siberian wilderness, with no food or shelter and one full tank of gas.”

“One step at a time,” said Grushin. “First we get out, then we think about how we survive. I like our chances out there better than in here anyway. Hell, I like the idea of dying out there better than another day in here.”

“Maybe I can do it on my own,” said Morgan. “Maybe I’m the one who doesn’t need you.”

“You can’t,” he said. “Trust me. You need me for this.”

“What makes you think you’re such hot shit?”

“I’ve got a way out of the prisoner barracks,” he said. “Secret way. None of the guards know about it, or, as far as I know, any of the other prisoners.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“I’ll keep that one close to my chest, thank you very much. Plus, there’s something else. A kind of trump card.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Two sticks of dynamite, hidden away safely somewhere here in the camp.”

Morgan raised his eyebrows. “No shit?” Grushin nodded. “And you know where they are? You can get to them?”

“Yeah, I know where they are, and I have access to them any day. They’ve been there a while. No one’s found them, and no one’s going to.”

“How did you happen to come by two sticks of dynamite?”

“There was a prisoner here who was in charge of detonations, down in the mines. Dangerous job. They give it to the people they really don’t like. Anyway, he lifted these two from two separate detonations where they wouldn’t be missed. Tucked them into his uniform, marched all the way back to camp with them, along with a length of detonator fuse, without any of the guards noticing, and then put them away.”

“Won’t he miss them?”

“Wouldn’t think so,” Grushin said. “He died a couple weeks before you got here. Got into some trouble with Bortsov’s men and met with an unfortunate accident in the mines.”

“I see,” said Morgan.

“He never knew how to use them to get out. I don’t either. But I think you might come up with something.”

“Yeah,” said Morgan. “I got some ideas.”

Chapter Fourteen

Working in the garage changed Morgan’s life at the prison. He went from the empty, monotonous drudgery of breaking and carrying stone to something he loved. And the cars needed it. As little as he liked helping his captors, working out clever solutions, fixes, and enhancements with limited materials and tools was a welcome distraction from daily life at the prison.

But as he did, Morgan also compiled a mental inventory on their condition. There were three trucks and two jeeps in the garage, all military, in varying states of disrepair. One of the trucks was broken down. It took Morgan a few minutes to figure out the problem. The fix was simple enough, but no one else needed to know that. One jeep was in good working order, although it was some five years old, and the other was held together with duct tape and a prayer.

The thought of escape filled Morgan with a hopeful energy that he hadn’t had since he’d arrived at the prison. Watching and planning took up every waking moment as he studied the rhythms of the prison, its procedures and inner workings, the dogs that circled the perimeter, the guards in the towers, the patrols. The outlines of a plan were slowly forming in his mind.

But there was one thing he had to talk to Grushin about.

“All right,” said Morgan. “Let’s game this out. We get out of the barracks your secret way. That gets us out in the yard. I can make the generator give out at a crucial moment. This throws us into darkness. Let’s say we have our opening in the confusion. We’re left with two problems.

This was over their morning meal, before work, one of two times they were able to talk with any kind of privacy.

“First, we have to clear the perimeter fence. The gate’s guarded, and the guards have flashlights, and the gate is where they’ll concentrate their force. Plus, they’re going to loose the dogs. Darkness gets us some cover, but not much.

“Second, we need some means of transportation. If we try to run for it, they’ll just come after us as soon as they notice we’re missing. We won’t get twenty miles out.”

“The solution to that is obvious,” said Grushin. “We take one of the cars. You have access to the garage. Can you sabotage the rest so that they can’t follow us?”

Morgan nodded. “Piece of cake. I can make it so that none of the engines have any hope of starting. But we need to get past the gate. That’s where the dynamite comes in.” Morgan ran his fingers through the short bristles growing in on his head. “There’s something I wanted to talk about. I want to get someone else in on the plan. Badri.”

“The Arab?”

“Yeah.”

Grushin frowned. “I don’t want to bring anyone else into this,” he said. “Every person we add to the plan makes it more likely that we will be caught.”

“Let me ask you this. Do you know how to deal with dynamite? Do you think you can get it to do what you want it to do, with certainty, without blowing both of us up?”

Grushin had nothing to say to this.

“I want to bring him in,” Morgan insisted. “We can’t do this without him.”

“I don’t like it,” said Grushin.

“I don’t think we have a choice.”

“Do you trust him?”

“I trust he wants to escape as much as we do. And I trust he wants nothing to do with his interrogators.”

Grushin furrowed his brow, trying to resist the conclusion. “Shit,” he said. “Okay. You’re right. Talk to him. Feel him out first. Don’t reveal more than you have to. But see what he has to say. And I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Chapter Fifteen

The next day was shower day. Grushin told him that parasites had once grown to be a serious problem in the camp, which the guards wouldn’t care about except lice, ticks, and bedbugs weren’t too good about telling who was a prisoner and who was a guard. So they made the prisoners shower every week, along with shearing off all their hair and dusting them with chemical powder. It wasn’t enough to keep the barracks from smelling like a month-old gym sock. But it kept the critters in check.

The men tossed their uniforms and shoes into a series of plastic tubs, to be taken away for laundry, and waited, naked, as men scrubbed themselves under the cold showers with rough lye soap.

Morgan approached Badri there, as they waited in line. The sound of the showers provided cover so that no one would hear them.

“Goddamn smell, huh?” said Morgan.

“In all my time in this prison, this here remains my least favorite part of it.”

“Aren’t you glad you can experience it for the first time again through my eyes?”

Badri chuckled. “Truly, it is like regaining my childlike wonder.”

“So how bad do you wanna get out of this place?”

“You mean the showers? Very, very much.”

“I mean this prison.”

“Who does not want to get out of this prison?”

“Well, let’s suppose we had a way.”

Badri’s eyes narrowed. “Are you making conversation or do you have an actual plan?”

“The beginnings of one,” said Morgan. “Plus a confederate with some cards up his sleeve.”

“Grushin.”

It was obvious, of course. The person Morgan spent most of his time with in the prison. Who else would it be?

“What do you need from me?”

“We might be able to get our hands on some explosives. Dynamite. I want to know if you’d know how to use it to help us get out of here.”

Badri thought about it. “A distraction, of course, could be useful. We could take down the towers. Perhaps open the gate. Yes, I could help with that.”

“Think about it. This isn’t going to be easy, and more likely than not we’ll end up dead.”

“I don’t have to think about it. And perhaps there is more that I can help you with.” Their turn was coming up to shower, and they would be separated, sent by the guard under different shower heads. “We will talk more about this later. But count me in, Morgan.”

* * *

They powwowed with Grushin out in the yard at dinnertime, going over the general outline of their escape. Morgan kept an eye on the guards, but mostly they just looked bored. They were just three prisoners talking, after all.

“I was thinking,” said Badri. “We can lay down explosives to bring down the posts holding up the fence, about two hundred meters north of the gate. That way, we can drive the car right over the chain link.”

“I think that’ll work, if you can get the detonation right.”

“There is something else,” Badri said. “A car by itself won’t get us far. They’ll see us from a hundred miles away and come after us. They can send helicopters to smoke us out. It may take a few hours, maybe a day or two, but they will certainly find us if we are in any kind of vehicle.”

“So what do you suggest?” demanded Grushin.

“I have people,” he said. “Friends on the outside. They could bring in transportation. Maybe a small airplane. If they get it within a hundred kilometers or so of the prison, over by the mountains in the horizon, we can drive there and escape before they are able to catch us.”

“How do we contact these people?” said Grushin. “It’s not like we have cell phones. Not even the guards are allowed to have personal communication devices.”

“But there is a communications tower,” said Morgan. “And I know where we can get an Internet connection, if anywhere.” He looked up at the window to Nevsky’s office.

“No,” Grushin said. “We can’t.”

“We must,” said Badri. “There is no other way.”

“You people are crazy.”

“You said you didn’t want to die here,” said Morgan. “Well, it looks like this is our one way out. So. Are you in?”

“Of course I’m in.”

Chapter Sixteen

“Mom, I’m okay.”

Alex held the phone up to her ear with her shoulder as she looked through the viewfinder on the camera. A car pulled up to the mansion she was surveilling.

“I’m keeping safe. I put some professional people on the case. I’m really only overseeing their work.”

“I know you, Alex. I gave you your middle name, and it’s not ‘safe.’”

Alex took a succession of pictures of the man who emerged, bald and tired-looking, until he disappeared into the house seconds later.

“I’m not putting myself in any kind of danger or anything.” She hid her camera back inside her backpack. “Just hanging around Moscow. Taking some pictures to pass the time.”

The mansion in question was a prerevolution urban manor that took up the whole block. The sun was getting low in the sky, and the shadow it cast reached Alex where she sat, in a park across the street.

The front door opened once again, and Alex took a photograph of the person walking out—but it was a security guard, who surveyed the street and closed the door once again.

Alex hid the camera once more and leaned once again against the tree, pretending to be engrossed in a Russian language workbook, early intermediate level.

“How are you holding up, Mom?”

“I wish you were here,” she said. “But I keep busy.”

“How’s Neika?”

“She’s here. Dug up my all my day lilies yesterday. I had to hose her down in the yard, which wasn’t much of a punishment for her, let me tell you.”

“Uh-huh.”

A young woman had knocked at the service entrance of the mansion. Alex picked up the camera once more and photographed her as she turned around and lit a cigarette. She was young and pretty, blond, wearing heavy makeup and a black dress that, while not indecent, didn’t leave much doubt about what kind of service she was there to perform.

“Well, I see you’re otherwise busy, so I’ll let you go.”

The door opened, and the woman dropped her cigarette and ground it into the pavement.

“No, Mom, I—listen, I’ll call you back, okay?”

“If you say so.”

Alex hung up the phone and reviewed the photos. Two clear shots of her face.

The light was growing dim, and she was tired. Time to call it a day.

She packed up the book and the camera and walked away from the mansion, then six blocks south before hailing a cab and telling the driver to take her back to Dobrynin’s.

Alex picked up a baked potato loaded with cheese and mushrooms from a street vendor. She said hello to Agrafena at the counter, receiving a grumble in return, and ate alone in their tiny kitchen.

Dobrynin pushed his way inside as she was washing the dishes. To say that he was in a foul mood would imply that he was ever not in one.

“Anything today?”

She dried her hands and pulled the camera from the bag. He turned his attention to a wall where they had hung photographs Alex had taken on other days.

“Look, this man,” he said, holding up the camera’s viewer and pointing at a picture on the wall. “Same.”

“Wish I knew who he was.” Alex finished drying the dishes as he looked at the rest.

Over the course of the past week, it become obvious that Dobrynin never left the house, or indeed saw anyone. Agrafena, whose relationship with Dobrynin was never made clear—Alex figured wife or sister, but nothing between then suggested any definitive answer—did all the necessary shopping for groceries and other necessities, saw to all of the scant customers in the butcher shop, and also received the meat that arrived on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Dobrynin, meanwhile, cut the meat in the reeking refrigerated room in the back.

“It’s no use,” Alex said as her host cycled through the picture. “Anyone who’s at all important has tinted windows and brings their car in through the garage.”

“Those people have no value to us,” said Dobrynin. “Tell me, is it easy to get to Suvorov?”

“Um, duh. Otherwise what would have been the point of staking him out for fourteen hours a day?”

He belched, and a foul smell of alcohol reached her nostrils. “Do you think it will be any easier to get to someone important?”

“No, I guess not.”

Dobrynin turned the camera’s viewer for her to see. “This is weak spot. This is how we get him.”

She was looking at a pretty girl, smoking, looking worriedly out into the street.

Chapter Seventeen

Morgan lay in bed that night with a sense of accomplishment. Things were lining up, and this escape plan seemed increasingly likely. He stared as the ceiling as the spotlight from the guard tower passed over the wall outside, shining in through the windows, casting a silhouette of the bars.

Men snored and shuffled in fitful dreams. Morgan closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

He was awakened by the opening of the cell door. His eyes opened in a flash.

Something was wrong. It was still dark, no wake-up siren, no nothing.

Other men who slept as lightly as he did also moved in their bunks, turning to see what was going on.

Several shadows came into the barracks. They made straight for Morgan’s bunk. He tried to scramble off it and away from them, but in his sleepy state, he was slow and clumsy. They were on him in seconds.

He was pulled off his bunk and tossed on the floor, hitting it hard with his back.

By the light of the spotlight, Morgan saw Bortsov looming over him, flanked by four of his his henchmen. Who had let him inside? Did he have that much pull with the guards?

Morgan moved to roll under the bed, but the goon was faster, and blocked his way. Together two of them held on to his arms. He tried to wrest himself free, kicking and twisting, but they held firm.

“This is your time to die.”

“I’m protected,” said Morgan.

“I don’t see any protection,” Bortsov said, making a show of looking right and left. “Do you?”

“Nevsky is going to get it from Suvorov, and then he’s going to come after you.”

“Eh, he will give me a few lashes, maybe. It will sting for two weeks. But you, you will be dead.”

He was wrong, but Morgan stood no chance of convincing him. He had one chance to save his life now.

“Help!” Morgan screamed. “Pomogite! Pomo—”

They stuffed a piece of cloth in his mouth, muffling his voice. Others were awake now, but no one moved to help him. They were all too scared.

One of Bortsov’s men handed him a rock almost the size of a basketball. Bortsov took it, his shoulders sagging under its weight. He raised it over his head. When he dropped it, it would come down and crush Morgan’s skull.

“Now you die, Amerikanskyi.”

Two guards burst into the barracks, shouting. They had heard his cries for help! An intense expression came over Bortsov’s face, and he pushed the rock downward.

But the guards had distracted the men who were holding him, and Morgan twisted free, rolling out of the way as the rock hit the floor, breaking tile.

The guards drove Bortsov’s men out first under blows from their nightsticks, then dragged off Bortsov himself. Then they told Morgan to stand and took him outside, across the yard to the place where they had shaved him on his first day there. After a few minutes of sitting under guard, the warden appeared. He was wearing a rumpled shirt and reeked of alcohol.

“You have made yourself very unpopular in your time here. A few weeks and already you have enemies.” He emitted a resounding belch. “I would be happy to throw you to the dogs. Sometimes they even do it in interesting ways. It breaks up the monotony.” He leaned over Morgan menacingly. His breath was heinous. “You see, most people here, nobody cares if they are killed. Me least of all. But General Suvorov has other plans for you. And then you will be regretting that Grushin’s gang did not kill you.”

Morgan didn’t give him the satisfaction of a response.

“I would enjoy breaking you. I would also enjoy seeing what Bortsov’s boys would have done. They can be very creative in their punishments. But you are too valuable to us to let die. That is left to General Suvorov.” He turned and walked away, giving an order to the guard as he left.

They escorted Morgan out of the building and not into the barracks but somewhere else. And Morgan knew where.

It was a small building, one with only a handful of tiny cells in it, each with a heavy steel door with no openings but a slot low near the ground.

Solitary. He was going in the hole.

The guards opened the cell door and he got a peek inside. It was perhaps just big enough for him to lie down, and not comfortably. They shoved him inside and closed the creaky steel door, leaving him in pitch darkness.

Chapter Eighteen

The solitary cell was designed to make men crazy, this Morgan knew. He’d seen plenty in his day, and the concept was well familiar to him.

It doesn’t seem like much, being put in a room by yourself. A naive observer might not even think it would rise to the level of punishment. But Morgan knew. Morgan had experienced it before, and had seen it happen to others. Isolation and sensory deprivation had their way of getting under even the hardest man’s skin.

Silence makes you sensitive to every little noise, and total darkness makes you see shapes, lights and patterns that are not there. Soon you start to think you heard scraps of voices, people talking to you, sometimes even voices you recognize.

Morgan sat up and breathed, trying to hold back against the encroaching madness, trying to center his thoughts on his breathing, on feeling the ground under him, on the aches in his body, on resisting succumbing to the despair of his thirst and hunger. You do not know how fast time goes in the dark, when it’s day and when it’s night, and so time seems not to pass at all.

Thus, Morgan had no idea how much time had passed when the food slot opened and a partial face appeared and whispered, “Hello.” Morgan could just make him out through the slot. He was blond and young, bony and angular, with wispy stubble on his cheek. “Come closer.”

There was something conspiratorial about the way he spoke, not the barking orders he was used to. Morgan crawled toward him, every movement painful.

“I heard about what you did,” he said. “In the mine. I do not know what you did to be in this place, but you do not deserve to be in here.”

Morgan grunted in response.

“They beat Bortsov very bad. Nevsky is very angry.” He pushed a bowl through the slot. “Here. Take it.”

Morgan did. By the dim light he saw that is was filled with stew, not the prisoners’ thin, rancid soup, but something borscht-like, filled with meat and potatoes turned pink from the fragrant paprika. Morgan was salivating at the smell.

“Don’t let anyone see the bowl until I come back tomorrow.”

“Wait,” said Morgan. “Who are you?”

“My name is Filipov.”

Chapter Nineteen

Alex Morgan had been searching through high-end escort service websites for—she checked the clock—seven hours now, and she found she’d become inured to the sleaze covered in a veneer of class that these establishments affected.

She scoured each website. Most had profiles for the girls, and Alex looked through each one, a parade of blondes and brunettes in suggestive poses, faces pancaked with makeup, fake tits in low-cut tops.

The Internet connection didn’t help either. Dobrynin was not exactly what one might call an early adopter. He’d only switched out his rotary phone because the network stopped supporting it. So Alex used her father’s money to buy a 3G modem, and it could take a full ten seconds to load a high-quality image—which didn’t seem like a lot at first, but became an increasing pain as the photos Alex had to look through reached the hundreds.

She was now looking through a website designed in a black and gold theme, everything about it signaling luxury. She didn’t even have to open the girl’s profile. Alex recognized her from the thumbnail on the page.

She called herself Lara.

“Call them,” Dobrynin said when she showed it to him. “Pretend to be secretary of American.”

“What if they don’t speak English?”

“They will.”

Alex took her prepaid Russian cell phone and dialed the number on the website.

“Zdrávstvujte.” A woman’s voice. Young.

“Hello, I need an English speaker, please? Angliyskiy?”

“Yes, hello, I can speak English. How may I help you?” Her voice was accented in Russian with a gentle inflection of Queen’s English.

Alex put on her best secretarial voice. “I’m calling on behalf of my employer, Mr. Phillips. I’d like to engage one of your girls for the evening.”

“Certainly, ma’am. Which girl would that be?”

“Lara? The fourteenth on the website here.”

“I’m afraid Lara is not available for tonight.”

“How about tomorrow?”

“Not for the rest of the week.”

“Mr. Phillips is adamant that he wants this girl,” Alex said. “He is willing to pay.”

“Unfortunately, she is not working tonight,” said the woman. “Mr. Phillips may perhaps be interested in—”

“Listen,” Alex broke in, letting anxiety creep into her voice, “Mr. Phillips is not a very nice man, and when he sets his mind on something, he doesn’t really take excuses, you know? Things could get really bad for me if I don’t get her.”

Alex heard dead air on the line. Then the woman said, “Listen, you can’t tell anyone I did this, okay? She’s taking some time off from us, but I know she does freelance. I can give you her phone number.”

“Really? That would be wonderful.”

Alex wrote down the number on her computer.

“Thank you so much,” Alex said. “You really saved my life today.”

Chapter Twenty

Alex dialed the number for the fifteenth time, and for the fifteenth time the call went straight to voicemail.

“This goddamn technology,” Dobrynin said. “Stay. I will make a phone call.”

He picked up the phone in the shop and dialed. “Let me speak to Sokoloff,” he said in Russian, and she was surprised at the ease with which she understood. The studying was paying off.

Dobrynin tapped his foot and muttered under his breath while he was on hold. The next words out of his mouth were an insult, and then a deep laugh.

“How are you, you bastard?” Dobrynin continued. “I need some information. I have a phone number.” He gave the man the digits. “Yes, that’s right.” He wrote something down on a piece of butcher paper and thanked the man.

“I got a name,” Dobrynin said, now in English, holding out the piece of paper. “Maria Kapustin.”

“Got an address?”

“What, I have to do everything for you?”

* * *

Alex had been waiting for hours outside the lumpen apartment building when Maria Kapustin walked out the front door, wearing sunglasses about two hours too late for them to be of any use.

She decided a head-on approach would be as good as any. Maria was walking fast, and Alex had to jog to catch up with her.

“Maria?” she said. The woman looked at her, and the sunglasses could not hide the panic in her eyes. “Don’t worry,” Alex said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

From up close, Alex saw the edge of a black eye peeking out from under the glasses, and purple marks on her neck not quite covered with makeup.

“Do you speak English?”

“Da. Yes.” Maria did not lessen her pace.

“I’d really like to talk to you. Can I buy you dinner, or a drink?”

“I can buy my own, thank you.”

Alex decided to take a chance. “It’s about the man who did this to you.”

Maria stopped walking and looked Alex straight in the eye. “What do you know about the man who did this?”

“I know he’s a bad man,” said Alex. “And I intend to hurt him back.”

Maria resumed walking. “American girl comes to be a big hero to poor oppressed Russian women?”

Lying wasn’t going to get her anywhere. “I have my own agenda,” said Alex. “I’ll admit that. This isn’t about you. But you can get a bit of revenge.”

Maria stopped and opened the door to a place Alex saw was a dive bar. She held the door open. “Well?” she said. “Are you going to buy me a drink or not?”

They settled into a corner table. The only other customers were the everyday drunks who’d probably already been there for hours. Maria ordered them a couple of beers before Alex could say anything. Then she removed her glasses, setting them on the table, and revealed a dark purple blotch under her left eye.

“Masha,” the girl said. “That is what everyone calls me. Everyone who knows my real name, anyway. So what is your deal?”

Alex opted for full disclosure. “I’m looking for my father. I think Suvorov is the one who took him.”

“If that is true, then I am sorry for your loss,” Masha said.

“I’m not ready to believe that yet,” Alex said. “What do you know about him?”

“I know he is a goddamn bastard,” Masha said with bitterness. “And that all the girls are afraid of him. But when he calls, we cannot refuse. At least the money is good.”

“He does this to all of them?” Alex asked.

Masha nodded. “We all know it. Go to see Suvorov, and you will not work again for two weeks until the bruises fade enough to cover up with makeup. It upsets the other clients, see.” The waitress set down the pints of beer on the table and she downed half of it in the time it took Alex to take one sip.

“He likes us young and meek,” Masha said. “His sick little games are more fun for him that way.”

An idea was forming in Alex’s mind. “Masha,” she said, “do you think I could replace the next girl Suvorov calls?”

Chapter Twenty-one

The guard Filipov gave Morgan food whenever possible, and would sit outside his cell and talk to him whenever he was keeping watch by himself. It was Morgan’s way of keeping time, his conversations with Filipov over rich, flavorful food, in between the long stretches of black nothingness, during which time he exercised as much as he could in the cramped cell to keep up his strength.

Filipov asked about American culture. He loved classic rock and Van Halen, Mad Max, and Die Hard. They even sang Elvis songs together quietly, Filipov with his heavy Russian accent.

By his reckoning, Morgan was in there for two weeks before he was jogged awake by harsh light cast on his face. He squinted, unaccustomed to the brightness.

A guard was standing at the door. “American. Out.”

Morgan picked himself up off the floor. Thanks to the extra food and exercise, he felt better coming out that going in, but he made a show of bracing against the wall and of getting up on shaky legs.

The guard grunted with impatience. “Quickly.”

Morgan emerged outside, feeling the harsh cold wind on his skin for the first time in weeks. The men were lining up for the evening count. Morgan found Grushin and stood next to him.

“So he emerges. Badri and I were beginning to think you were dead.”

“Not dead. Just buried.”

“What was it, two weeks?”

“You know better than I do,” said Morgan.

“I was thrown in solitary once. I was talking to my toes on the second day.” He looked Morgan up and down. “But you look hale and hearty, smell aside.”

“It was all right. A little boring.”

Morgan picked out the men who had attacked him in line. They were giving him stares that could melt steel.

“They are suspicious of you,” said Grushin. “Because you have Nevsky’s support. And people don’t like that.”

Morgan figured as much. Nevsky had bought him temporary safety, at the expense of putting him in greater danger in the long term.

“Badri and I have been talking. Working out the details of the plan. I think this is going to work.”

“We need to put this plan in motion soon,” said Morgan. “We can’t wait any longer.”

The chill set in as the count went on. Afterward, Grushin said, “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

They walked together into the prisoners’ barracks.

It was a grate that looked solidly in place but came loose after Grushin worked it for a few seconds.

“Through here, we can easily get outside,” he said. “I have left the barracks several times in the night to test it. Nobody knows about it. Nobody is watching. We need to get Badri in Nevsky’s office. We can get outside, but I have no idea how to get into the building.”

“I have an idea,” Morgan said.

Chapter Twenty-two

Morgan lay in bed and waited for Grushin’s signal, three taps on the bar to the outer doors. He got out of bed, careful not to wake anyone. Not that it would compromise the mission if he did—men got up to use the head in the middle of the night all the time.

He found Badri and Grushin already waiting for him at their arranged meeting spot. Grushin led the way to their secret passage out. They snuck under the grate, Morgan taking the lead and Grushin bringing up the rear.

Once they were outside, the wind chilled them to the bone. Morgan looked at the four guard towers, each housing a sniper and a spotlight that they shone over the camp in periodic cycles. The cover of the buildings meant that they never had to be in the line of sight of more than two towers, and often not more than one or none, so avoiding them was just a matter of watching out for the lights. Unless they were discovered, in which case it was a matter of luck whether they would survive the night. Then he searched for the dogs that patrolled the perimeter. Their attention wouldn’t necessarily be called by their presence out in the yard, but if they caught their scent and decided to raise the alarm, it was all over.

They ran along the wall to the prisoners’ barracks, keeping to the shadow. This was simple enough, with the light that would normally illuminate this spot burned-out. Once they reached the end, they crossed the short distance to the building that housed the kitchen and laundry.

They heard footsteps coming from around the corner of the laundry building. Morgan held up his hand, then motioned for them to move backward.

They stood, backs glued to the building, as the guards walked past, chatting in Russian and laughing. They weren’t expecting anyone out here. The patrol was a duty and nothing more.

They did not turn their heads, and didn’t see them.

Morgan held his hand up as he waited for them to move away far enough, watching the lights from the towers as he did. Finding an opening, he motioned for Grushin and Badri to follow.

They ran across the gap at the far end of the laundry building. One more gap to cross to reach the door to the administration building, where Nevsky’s office was located.

Behind them at the perimeter fence, a dog started barking.

Morgan had a choice to make. They could retreat to the prisoner barracks, where they could return with relative safety. Or they could press on, trying their luck at the risk of getting caught

Morgan opted to move forward. He took the lead, running full tilt toward their goal, the door two hundred feet away. He felt the two other men close behind him.

They crossed the distance to the sound of the barking dog. The spotlight from the nearest tower missed Badri’s foot by inches, but left them shrouded in darkness. Morgan tried the handle and found the door to the administration building unlocked, as Filipov had promised.

They closed the door and heard the sound of boots outside. Guards. This was the moment of truth. Had they been seen? Would the guards come in after them? Morgan held his breath, listening intently.

They passed, oblivious to the possibility that the two had gone inside. Morgan exhaled in relief.

He heard them talking, and Morgan caught the work krolik. Rabbit. Got the dogs barking wildly sometimes.

Morgan took the lead upstairs. He alone among them knew this building. He led them to the door to Nevsky’s office—locked, as they had anticipated. He took out the improvised lock pick he’d taken from the garage and set to work opening the lock to Nevsky’s door.

Within a couple of seconds, he turned it, hearing the click of the lock. Removing the pick and pulling the knob, he pushed the door open.

“After you.”

The first thing Morgan did was to check that the curtains were closed, so that no one could see them from outside. Badri knelt and turned on the computer. Morgan looked through a crack in the curtains as the machine booted up. Everything outside was as quiet as they had left it.

“There is a password,” said Badri.

Shit. How had Morgan not thought of this?

But someone else had. “I can do this,” said Grushin. “You know those young Russian hackers you keep hearing about? Well, I was one of them when I was a teenager.”

He sat in Nevsky’s chair. “Oh my God, I have not sat in anything so comfortable in months. Seriously, you guys have to try this.”

“Focus,” Morgan said through gritted teeth.

“Cool your horses,” Grushin said, and began typing. “This is going to be a breeze.”

Morgan kept watch outside the door as Grushin did his thing. “Got it.” He asked Badri, “How do you send your messages?”

Badri just shook his head and prodded Grushin off the chair. “I do this part.” Badri typed at the computer, writing the message to his confederates for about two minutes. “Okay,” he whispered. “It’s done.”

“Let me just wipe all records of us being here,” said Grushin.

“Are you sure your people will come?” Morgan asked Badri as the Russian typed.

“They will come. It is only a matter of us being there to meet them.”

Chapter Twenty-three

The call came two days later, when Alex was cooped up in Dobrynin’s dark little kitchen, cramming Russian vocabulary.

“There is a girl,” Masha told her over the phone. “Klara. She was called to Suvorov’s house tonight. He has not met her before.”

Alex checked her watch. It was still just after 3:00 P.M. “Then that’s our opening.”

“She still wants the money,” Masha said. “But she is happy for you to take her place. She is black-haired. But we can resolve that. I will bring some hair dye.”

“Oh, great.” Alex ran her hand through her hair. Black was not going to suit her.

“And you need to be sexy.”

“I can be sexy.”

Masha giggled. Alex couldn’t help feeling offended. “I will be around in a couple of hours,” said Masha. “I will bring the dye and some clothes for you, and I will teach you. Crash course. Oh, and Klara says thank you.”

Alex hung up and went into the refrigerated room to tell Dobrynin the news

“So you are doing this?” he said as he chopped up a hunk of meat with a cleaver.

“I have to,” she said. “It’s my only chance at this.”

“Do not get caught,” he said. “Do not let him know who you are. Get what information you can in his house—anything to trade for your father. That is your only chance. If you are found out, you will not come out of there alive.”

“I know, we’ve been over this,” she said with impatience.

“Insufferable girl. You want my help? This is my help.” He brought the cleaver down hard against the cutting board, splitting a piece of pork loin into three parts. “Do not get yourself killed, okay?”

* * *

Alex knocked at the service entrance where she had first seen Masha days before.

Her hair was black, the smell of the dye still lingering despite her best efforts at washing it. She hoped no one would notice, but then again, Suvorov had not been promised natural hair.

She was wearing more makeup than she’d ever worn in her life, and her skin was exposed in all the wrong places. She liked slight outfits, shorts and tank tops, that gave her freedom of movement, which the dress Masha had lent her did not—not unless she wanted to flash the entire street.

A security guard opened the door and ordered her inside.

Alex had made great strides with her immersion in the language and Dobrynin’s muttering instruction, and she made a particular effort to mimic the accent. She understood the basic orders relayed to her—come, stay, follow me—while keeping quiet and looking down took care of the rest.

She was searched and then moved out of the servants’ area, and Alex realized she was in the most luxurious house she’d ever seen. Everything was marble and carved wood, walls hung with classical paintings with elaborate frames, thick oriental carpets on the floor.

She was shown to a room that wasn’t a bedroom, but rather some kind of parlor appointed with several chaise longues and divans. There she was told to sit and wait.

She examined the room. The paintings on the wall Alex recognized as being nineteenth century by their style. On a side table was a statue of a faun, half man, half goat, made of bronze, and against an opposite wall was another of an angel, wings swept upward.

A set of double doors opened and a man walked in, wearing a suit. Suvorov. He was old, near sixty, although he was still strong and fit. He looked rather like a fish, with shallow eyes and a nose that jutted forward in his face. Alex felt a shiver of revulsion.

“Good evening,” he said in Russian. Alex mumbled a response.

He crossed the room, closing the distance between them. “Speak louder.”

She was afraid to. She was afraid he’d catch her accent, and that’d be the end of it. Masha had told her he liked them shy. So she’d be shy. She mumbled a “Good evening.”

“Look at me. What is your name? Speak up.”

She looked up at him and said, still mumbling, in her best Russian accent, “Alexandra.”

“I said speak—” His open hand flew at her face. On instinct, she raised hers and stopped the blow.

Too fast. Too well-trained. She saw by the way that he was looking at her that she’d given herself away.

Suvorov moved to pin her down against the divan, and she rolled out of the way, onto her feet on the carpet. She brought both elbows down hard on Suvorov’s back and twisted his arm, pulling it upward.

“Dan Morgan,” she said. “Where is he?”

His eyes went wide with surprise. Yeah, weren’t expecting that, were you, asshole?

“What is he to you?”

“Answer me. Where is he?”

“Far beyond your reach, you whore.”

She pulled his arm harder, and he grunted in pain. “Tell me.”

Suvorov whipped his head back, catching her nose. Blood began to flow out. He freed his arm from her grip and he swung, his palm snapping against her cheek so hard it knocked her to her feet.

Stupid. You know how to take a blow better than that.

“Your interest in Morgan . . . I see a resemblance,” he said, standing over her. He stepped on her hand and she cried out in pain. “Maybe it is the blood. What are you? His daughter?”

She gritted her teeth and fumed at him. From her vantage point, his face was wreathed with the clouds painted on the ceiling.

“He came here, you know,” said Suvorov. “Called himself Bevelacqua. Said he wanted to buy guns from me. Got inside my house and tried to steal from me. Maybe deceit runs in the family.” He ground his heel into her hand, and she yelled out in pain.

“What did you do with him?”

“We caught him, you know. When he broke in. He shot two of my security guards, broke the bones of three more. But we cornered him in the basement, finally.” He leaned down and pushed a lock of black hair out of her eyes. “So pretty, too. And now mine. I’m going to have my fun with you, girl.”

“Sorry, General, but I don’t think fun is in the cards.”

With her free hand, she punched him hard in the groin. He bent double in pain, and she pushed him off sideways. She stood and made a run for the door, but he ran after her. She ran for the far side of the room, then turned to face him. He was moving fast, bringing his superior weight to bear against her.

And she was going to use that.

She body checked him, which sent her flying backward, but was just enough to knock his path to the right—into the angel statue with the upswept wings, which were just sharp enough to pierce his belly.

Suvorov hollered in pain.

That was going to attract the guards.

The statue didn’t do much damage, but it was enough for Alex to get back to her feet and run through the double doors he’d come from, into his private chambers—an office, and a bedroom beyond.

She heard the heavy footsteps of Suvorov’s bodyguards, half a dozen at least, approaching from below. They were going to cut off all exits downstairs, so she had to do something they wouldn’t expect.

She went up. She found a narrow staircase that led upstairs, to a long hallway of bedrooms, where the ceiling had the slant of the roof outside. She chose one two thirds down. The window would not open, so she grabbed a heavy brass lamp from the bedside table and shattered the glass, breaking the frames wide enough for her to pass.

Alex walked out onto the roof, bracing against the window frame. She was barefoot, and her dress wafted in a cool breeze, not exactly ideal gear for the situation. But being barefoot was a hidden blessing on the rounded tiles. She walked over the ridge of the roof to the other side.

No one outside seemed to be looking for her yet—they still thought she was inside. She looked over the edge, studying the pattern of the bricks. Yes, she could do it, even in a slutty dress. She sat on the eaves, hidden by darkness from anyone who might see her, and reached for a handhold, easing her way off to hang from the wall.

She climbed down the western wall, which was shrouded in darkness. She waited for the vehicle patrol to pass and jumped over the fence, dashing across the street and out into the night, as far away from Suvorov’s house as her legs could take her.

Chapter Twenty-four

Morning count. Morgan, Grushin, and Badri got together to talk things over for a few minutes before the guards forced them into the line.

“I asked them to signal from the west using lights blinking Morse code,” said Badri. “That’s how we’ll know that they’re there, and where they are.”

“They’ll get us away from here?” said Grushin. “Are you sure?”

“They are loyal, and they have the resources inside Russia. They will be there. They will get all three of us out.”

“If they actually manage to get here,” said Grushin.

“We look to the west,” he said.

“Because if they don’t, then we are liable to be eaten by—”

A siren sounded, the sign for them to line up for the count. They prisoners shuffled into position, making a wide semicircle in the yard. A murmur of activity propagated from one end. Someone was approaching, and the prisoners were turning to look. It was Nevsky, walking down the line.

Morgan’s gut sank. Did he know? Was he coming to kill them?

He stopped in front of him.

“Prisoner Morgan,” he said. “I am surprised at the people you have chosen to be your friends here. But you have my congratulations for managing to stay alive this long.”

Nevsky kicked Morgan in the knees, and he fell on all fours. “Down like the animal you are. So you do not forget your place.”

Morgan’s face burned with rage, but he couldn’t do anything about it without getting it worse. Nevsky was daring him to.

“General Suvorov is coming,” Nevsky said. “He wishes to interrogate you personally. I just wanted to let you know. One more week. And then he will make you talk.”

Chapter Twenty-five

Alex didn’t dare take a taxi. Instead, she walked barefoot for three hours through the streets of Moscow until she arrived at Dobrynin’s butcher shop. The shop was closed for the day, so she knocked, softly at first, but when she got no response, as the stress of the night caught up to her, she slammed her hand against the door harder and harder, as if it were to blame.

Dobrynin opened the door to admit her.

“Did anyone follow you?”

She pushed her way past him. “You aren’t even going to say you’re glad I’m alive?”

Dobrynin shrugged. “I guess I am glad you are alive. Were you followed?”

“No, I wasn’t goddamn followed.”

She grabbed a t-shirt, jeans, shoes and socks from her suitcase and changed out of the dress in the bathroom. When she came out, Dobrynin was waiting for him in the kitchen, a chair pulled out for her. “Sit. Tell me what happened.”

She related to him what had transpired in Suvorov’s mansion and he listened, heavy lidded. When she was finished, he said, “You need to go home, girl. Your little adventure here is finished.”

“I still haven’t found my father. I think he might be alive.”

“He knows your face, and soon, so will every policeman in Moscow, or worse. It is time for you to go.”

“I won’t go.”

“Then you will go from my house,” he said. “I will not have you endanger me and Agrafena with your presence.”

“Fine,” she said, getting up from the table. “I’ll go somewhere else.”

“You do that and you will be killed. And I will not be there to help you.”

“Are you serious, Dobrynin? You haven’t left this goddamn house. Not since I got here. Every moment I’ve been out there so far, I’ve been on my own.”

“And do you know why I do not leave this house?”

“You’re a shut in,” she said. “A coward.”

“I am a dead man. I have been a dead man from the day your father came after me. To kill me.”

She furrowed her brow. “Kill you?”

“Yes! Or do you not know he was an assassin? I was an agent of Russian intelligence. I gave information to the Americans because I was done with this piss pot of a country. They were supposed to get me out. Instead they sent a man to kill me.”

“But he saved you,” she said. “That’s what happened, isn’t it? Instead of killing you, he let you go and told you to disappear.”

“He did. For me to live the rest of my life stuck inside, never going out in the sun. To live in this stinking house!”

Alex slammed her palm down on the table. “He saved your life!”

“Only from himself. I don’t owe you nothing else. Get out. Get out!”

“Fine,” she said, going into the tiny room she had been sleeping in and stuffing her things into her suitcase. “I’ll go, and you can go back to being a miserable old man who isn’t any good to anyone!”

“You are just a goddamn child!” he hollered. “I never asked for you! You came to my door!”

“Well, I won’t make that mistake again.”

She stormed out, slamming the door behind her with a ring of the bell that hung above it.

Chapter Twenty-six

Grushin helped Morgan up. They watched him walk away in his unsteady drunk’s version of a military march, like a rooster surveying his chickens, as the guards resumed the prisoner count.

“He told me just to screw with me,” Morgan told Grushin. “But you know what? It’s not going to work. Because we’re still going to get out of here.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Except we’re going to need to do this in less than seven days.”

“Wait, what?” said Grushin. “No. There’s no way.”

“No choice. After a week they’ll move me to an interrogation cell. And I don’t come out of that alive.”

“Shit.” Grushin rocked back and forth. “Shit. What do we do?”

“We have no choice,” Badri said. “We do this with Morgan or we do not do this at all.”

“Shit!” Grushin yelled. People turned and stared. Morgan hushed him. But it wasn’t too suspicious. Not here. There was plenty to scream and curse about.

“We need to get word to my people,” Badri said. “We need them to be ready in a week’s time. That means—”

“We have to go back into Nevsky’s office,” Morgan said.

* * *

The hallway was dark.

They’d done this before, but there was a nervous energy now that hadn’t been there before.

Morgan picked the lock once more and pushed open the door.

There was light inside the office, pale and dim. The computer was on. And at the desk, asleep, was Nevksy.

He was snoring like a drunkard, a snorting, gasping snore. He smelled of liquor.

Morgan looked at Grushin, who stared back in wide-eyed terror. Badri was calm. He was used to focusing under pressure. He was ready.

Morgan tiptoed to the desk and turned the monitor slowly around. He picked up the keyboard with his right hand, lifting it off the desk. As he carried it, he tipped over the pencil cup. Morgan’s hand shot out and grabbed it before its contents spilled all over the desk.

Nevsky stirred, snorting.

Morgan noticed that he was holding his breath, and started breathing again. He set the keyboard down on the desk for Badri to use.

Badri stood at the desk across from the sleeping Nevsky. Morgan kept his eyes on him, watching him for any twitch that might herald his return to consciousness. He was so vulnerable. It would be so easy to reach out and snuff out this bastard’s life, and end all the evil he would ever do.

Except he couldn’t. Not now. Morgan needed to let him live, so that they would have their chance to escape.

Badri hit send and closed the browser window. He then set the keyboard back where it belonged as Badri turned the monitor back around.

He nodded. Done. Time to get the hell out of there.

They slipped out of the room and Morgan locked the door behind them. The three issued a collective sigh of relief.

“It is sent,” said Badri. “If everything goes to plan, they should be here in three days.”

“If,” said Morgan. “Let’s hope they do. Or else it’s my ass.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

Morgan and Grushin met up at dinner after a day of nervous anticipation. The day’s stew smelled pungently of spoiled potatoes. The wind seemed to have died down, and the weather seemed to be mild, if anything.

“Eat up,” said Morgan. “We don’t know when we’ll have the chance to eat again.”

This was the day.

“Are you both ready?” Badri asked.

“I got the dynamite,” said Grushin. Morgan had already noticed the subtle bulge at his waist.

“The cars are ready,” said Morgan. “I put metal shavings in the oil of all the cars except the newest jeep. If anyone tries to follow us, whatever car they use will run about as well as a brick within a few seconds.”

“So we get past the fence and we’re in the clear,” said Grushin.

“Something like that. I also left the crowbar hidden in the grass outside the garage.”

“Then we’re ready,” Grushin said. “All we have to do now is actually do it.”

Morgan leaned back against the concrete wall of the prisoner barracks. “What are you going to do when you get out?”

“I’m going to a bar and I’m going to order myself a beer and a hamburger,” Grushin said in a dreamy tone. “Then I’m going to find my girl. I don’t care if she’s moved on, if she’s with someone else. The moment she sees me—that’s all that’s going to matter.”

Morgan knew the story too well of what so often happened with the guys in the military who left their sweethearts behind. And this one had every reason to think he was dead.

But he needed something to cling to. And who knew. Maybe she was waiting for him after all.

“What about you?”

“I don’t know,” said Morgan. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot. And I don’t know. My organization has a hell of a life insurance policy. My family’s taken care of for life, moneywise. And there’s something else. I’m marked. Suvorov knows who I am. He’s going to leave them alone now that he has me, but if I escape . . . If I go back to them, I’m dooming them to a life on the run. Maybe they’re just better off without me.”

“You do what you have to do,” said Grushin.

Morgan had to steady himself through evening count and the march into the barracks as adrenaline pumped through him in a constant buzz. He was ready. They were going to do this.

Morgan lay in the dark, excitement pounding in his head, until he heard Grushin’s bird call. He met him and Badri outside. In his hands were two objects, long and thin. Two sticks of dynamite, which he handed Badri, who was already holding a length of rusty rebar. “Make it count.”

“Just be ready to do your part.”

They moved together as far as the laundry building. Badri broke away from them there, moving toward the fence, where he would twist the rebar around the cable that tethered the dogs and then drive it into the ground. This would stop any of the dogs circling the perimeter from being able to approach him as he lay down the dynamite.

Morgan and Grushin, meanwhile, made their way across the yard to the garage. Grushin climbed through the unlocked window of the motor hangar and disappeared inside.

Leaving the Russian to do his part of the plan, Morgan made his way along the outer wall of the building. Around the corner was the large door through which the cars came out of the garage.

Morgan watched for the pattern as the spotlight shone around the grounds. He retreated from the corner as it passed, casting a long straight shadow on the ground.

He had to wait before breaking the padlock open with the crowbar. Once he opened the garage, they would have to move fast.

He stayed put and listened for the start of the engine that was the signal for him to spring into action.

Minutes passed, and the tundra wind howled. The light circled back, and then again. Morgan strained to hear, but there was no sign of the engine starting up.

This was taking too long. Badri was going to blow the gate and the truck would still be in the garage.

He couldn’t wait anymore. He readied himself, tightening his grip on the crowbar. He waited until the light passed, then he ran, inserting the crowbar through the padlock and pulling down, using the leverage to break it open. It fell to the ground with a soft thud.

Morgan pulled the door open just enough for him to pass, revealing the dark garage inside, the black shapes of the trucks looming in the murk. He closed the door behind him.

“Grushin?”

The lights came on with a loud crack, and Morgan found himself staring down the muzzles of half a dozen submachine guns. Each was held by a uniformed prison guard.

In the middle was Nevsky, a diabolical smile plastered on his face. Grushin was standing stiffly next to him.

“Do you really think I didn’t see the three of you scheming out in the yard? Do you think I don’t know what goes on in my prison?”

Among the guards was Filipov, holding his rifle nervously, something apologetic in his expression. There was nothing he could do about this, he seemed to say.

“My men are bringing the Arab in as we speak. He, like you, is too valuable to dispose of summarily. I’m afraid I can’t say as much about young Mr. Grushin.”

Nevsky drew a knife and in an unhesitating movement pushed it deep into Grushin’s throat. Grushin’s face contorted in pain and surprise. Nevsky pulled it out with a spurt of blood.

He fell at Nevky’s feet.

“Oh, and before I forget.” Nevsky drew his sidearm. Before anyone could react, he aimed at Filipov’s head and fired. The guard crumpled to the ground on top of his submachine gun.

“See what happens to those who help you? See what happens to the people you rope into your plans?” He wiped his knife on a handkerchief. “I have orders to keep you alive until General Suvorov returns. But believe me. Your end will be much less pleasant than your friend’s here.”

He punched Morgan in his side.

“You will be taken to solitary confinement. And there you will stay until the day you die. Don’t worry. It won’t be too long.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

Alex returned to her cramped room at the Ustritsa Hotel from her morning run. The wallpaper was peeling, the air smelled of mildew, and something that looked like black mold was growing in the corner. But it was a place to sleep. And to plan.

She took a shower and sat down on the hard bed, setting the partial map of Suvorov’s house she had drawn from memory on the bed.

The time was approaching to implement her plan.

She’d been studying the patterns of Suvorov’s security. Two men sat in a car across the street from the mansion, all day, every day. But every night at around two a.m., the car moved out and new guards took their place. This would give her a narrow opening to move in on the house.

She’d wait across the street, hidden in shadows, until they were on the move. Then she’d move across the street, scale the fence, and then climb the wall of his house back to the roof and gain admittance from there. She knew she could do it going down. Going up wouldn’t be any more difficult.

She’d go in through one of the windows that opened to the roof. From there, she traced the route through her map to Suvorov’s private chambers. If she didn’t find what she was looking for, she’d settle for killing him.

Alex got dressed and set out for another day of surveilling the mansion. She needed to make sure everything was according to plan.

She climbed down the stairs and moved out into the street, hailing an approaching taxi. It pulled up to the curb, and the driver stepped out to open the door for her.

Alex was too excited to be suspicious. As she put one leg into the car, she felt a prick in her neck and things started to swim before her eyes. She felt herself falling, and the driver held her, easing her into the seat, and closed the door. She tried to scream but her body was unresponsive. She heard the engine start, and the taxi started moving just as things turned black.

Chapter Twenty-nine

There was no food at all this time. There was nothing, just the blackness of solitary. Morgan had no idea how much time passed before the door opened again. He squinted at the hard light that shone into his cell, hungry, aching, and exhausted.

They yanked him to his feet and pushed him out into the hall. It was night, he saw. They led him down the hall and into a room in the same building that he had not been in before, but he knew it immediately. It was all white tiles. In the middle was a chair, around which the tiles were whiter than the surrounding ones, discolored by bleach. The grout was stained with brown dried blood.

Morgan had been in places like this before, on either side of the divide. He liked the other side better.

They sat him down on the chair and tied his hands around the back. Then they turned their backs and left him alone, locking the door behind them.

Morgan tested the cuffs. They were solid. But he had one last trump card.

He worked his tongue in his mouth until he got his improvised lock pick in between his lips.

Now came the hard part. He needed to get it into his hands, which were currently at his back. He turned his head over his right shoulder, adjusting the pick with his tongue to get the angle just right. He brought his hands as far to the right as he could manage.

He heard the door unlock. No time. He pushed the pick out with his tongue.

It bounced off his outstretched fingers and fell on the floor behind him.

He swore in his mind and turned his head as the door opened, and a man he recognized walked into the room. Alligator shoes, shined to a sheen. Green Russian military uniform, his chest festooned with honors and decorations. Eyes bulging like that of a fish, thick meaty lips, heavy eyebrows.

General Suvorov.

“I hear you have been giving Nevsky some trouble,” he said as he rolled up his sleeves. “He will be glad to be rid of you, I think.”

“I think we can agree on that.”

Suvorov raised an eyebrow. He was a humorless man, grave and unfeeling. “Do you know what they call me in Ukraine?”

Morgan did. “The Barber of Lozhki.”

“And do you understand why they call me that?”

He was known for scalping his victims and then slitting their throats.

“So you are aware of what is to happen to you?”

This Morgan did not answer. He tried to avoid picturing it with too much vividness. It wasn’t good for his mental health.

“You can stop this,” he said. “You can even save yourself. All you have to do is speak.”

“Already? I wouldn’t want to ruin the party. I’m sure you have a lot of exciting surprises in store for me.”

Suvorov swung. He had a hell of a right hook, hitting Morgan in the temple.

“This will be very predictable. I will inflict increasing amounts of pain and mutilate you in increments until you speak.”

“Here I thought the Barber of Lozhki would have a better sense of showmanship.”

Suvorov swung again. This one was hard enough to tip the chair on its back legs.

This one hit him in the face, and he tasted blood in his mouth. “Come on,” he said. “Is that the best you can do?”

“We are just getting started,” said Suvorov, and followed up with an uppercut.

This time, Morgan pushed with his feet, and the chair fell backward. He grunted at the pain as it pinned his hands to the floor. He wriggled to give them some freedom of movement and felt for the lock pick.

“Oh, goodness, look what I’ve done.” He lifted Morgan’s chair by the back, set him right and stepped back. “What I do not understand is why you insist on protecting the people who abandoned you. No one tried to find you, you know. No inquiries or requests to get you back from your government or any agency. Nothing.”

No, he thought. There is one thing. Morgan held the lock pick between his fingers, already working the handcuffs. He had to keep Suvorov busy as he worked them open.

“Has it crossed your mind that maybe I just don’t like you?”

Suvorov drew a military knife. It wasn’t impressive, but it didn’t have to be to cut into the flesh of a man tied to a chair. “Perhaps it’s time to move on to mutilation.” He touched the blade to Morgan’s right shoulder and pushed it in, opening a gash that bled freely. Morgan bellowed in pain. “I find that cutting off parts is what really crosses a line for most people. When they see pieces of them removed, see their own bodies diminished . . .” He touched the edge of the blade to Morgan’s earlobe. “Shall we start here?”

“How about we start here?” Morgan shook off the handcuffs and head-butted Suvorov. As he staggered back, Morgan picked the chair up off the floor and swung at him. He raised his hands in self-defense, dropping the knife in the process, and was knocked against the side wall by the blow.

This gave Morgan the opening to grab the knife. He then pushed Suvorov against the wall and held the blade to his neck.

“Tell the guard to open the door.”

Morgan moved the blade to his eye. “If that door doesn’t open in five seconds, you’re going to be shopping for eye patches for next season.”

Suvorov called out in Russian through the door. They exchanged some words. Suvorov barked exasperated commands.

Morgan heard the deadbolt being undone on the other side of the door, which opened to reveal the single guard keeping watch on the cell.

The guard was holding a nightstick, ready for action. He raised his eyebrows in shock when he saw that Morgan had Suvorov hostage.

“Drop it,” he said. “Slide it over to me.”

Suvorov translated for him. The guard let the nightstick clatter to the ground and kicked it over. Morgan bent to pick it up.

“Inside,” he said, motioning with his head.

The man walked inside the cell.

“Keys,” he said, pointing. The man understood. He hesitated, looking to Suvorov for guidance. Morgan pushed the blade against Suvorov’s neck, just enough to pierce the skin and draw a drop of blood.

The guard unhinged the key ring and tossed it to Morgan.

“Thank you very much. I’m going to be sticking around for a minute. If I hear a peep out of you, the general here loses an ear.”

He pulled Suvorov out of the cell and closed the door, pulling the deadbolt shut.

That was one less to worry about.

He looked down either side of the hallway. No one there.

He looked at the row of other cells. Two of them were padlocked. Two cells containing prisoners.

He pulled Suvorov along with him and unlocked, one-handed, the nearest cell. He pushed the door open.

It wasn’t Badri. Behind the door was Kolya the Cannibal. He stood as the door opened and looked at Morgan, his face expressionless as ever.

Suvorov twisted free of Morgan and slammed the door against him. Morgan was left dazed, which gave Suvorov the opening to twist his arm and wrest the knife away from him.

Regaining his grip, Morgan brought the nightstick hard against Suvorov’s leg. The general screamed and fell on his back, inside the cell.

Morgan took a look at the general’s leg. He had a compound open fracture where the nightstick had connected. At a glance, Morgan could tell wasn’t getting up again, not without some serious surgery.

Suvorov held his knife defensively, wide-eyed with pain and fear. He could barely move from the pain. He couldn’t defend himself, but Morgan didn’t have time for this.

Kolya stared a Morgan. Blank. Empty. Then he looked down at Suvorov.

Morgan stepped out of the cell and closed the door, leaving Suvorov inside with Kolya, whose eyes were already hungry at the prospect of what was about to happen, the only sign of life Morgan had ever seen in them.

Chapter Thirty

Morgan ran to the remaining cells. As he undid the lock, he heard Suvorov screaming from Kolya’s cell and tried not to think about what was happening. He pulled the deadbolt and opened the door.

Badri, haggard and exhausted, was sitting in a corner. He looked up at Morgan, goggle-eyed, blinking as the situation registered in his mind.

“Let’s get out of here,” Morgan said.

“How did you—”

“Let’s go!” He looked up and down the hall for signs of any approaching guards. “I can tell you the story on the way out of this place.”

Morgan didn’t have to say it twice. Badri pushed himself up off the ground. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“We need a plan.” Morgan rubbed his temples. “We’re in a Russian gulag with no plan, no tools, and no weapons but a stick. Any minute now, we’re going to be found.”

Badri worked his muscles, cracking the joints in his neck and arms. “We seem to be at a disadvantage.”

“I’ve been in worse,” said Morgan. “Let’s think.”

“We need transportation out of here.”

“Suvorov’s jeep,” Morgan said. “It’s faster than any of the trucks in this place. That’s our way out of here.”

“They’ll see us.”

Morgan frowned. “Then we need to give them something bigger to distract them. We need something they can’t ignore.”

“You are talking about—”

“Dynamite.”

Badri smiled. “I like how you think. Same plan?”

“No,” said Morgan. “We take out the motor pool. The dynamite added to the gasoline tank . . .”

“Boom,” said Badri. “Enough of a distraction for us to ram the gates.”

“We need to get the dynamite,” said Morgan.

“They still would not have taken the two sticks away from the prison,” Badri said. “It is still on the grounds.”

“And there’s only one safe place to keep them on this camp. They’ll be in the armory.” Morgan held up the key ring. All were the same. He could bet they were all for the solitary cells. Armory access was not something given to any guard.

“Nevsky,” said Badri. “He will have the keys.”

“Then that’s where we go. This way. Side door.”

Having a plan, Morgan held the guard’s billy club in his hand and took the lead down the hall, taking slow, measured steps. Suvorov’s screaming stopped. Morgan wondered whether he was dead. Any alternative he could think of was worse.

As they neared the end of the hall, Morgan heard footsteps, heavy boots echoing around the corner. Morgan held his hand up for Badri to stop and then his finger to his lips. Badri nodded.

As first man rounded the corner, Morgan swung the stick.

He hit the closest guard square in the face. He bent double, clutching his nose, which was now squirting blood.

The second man came right behind. His hand went for his weapon, but Morgan swung again, bringing the club down on the man’s leg. The guard stumbled, and Morgan brought his elbow down on the man’s back. He collapsed face first on the ground.

Badri, meanwhile, lunged on the other guy, bringing a fist to connect with his broken nose and throwing him down next to his companion.

Before either could stir to stand again, Morgan brought his foot down on each of the men’s right legs in turn.

“They’re not coming after us,” he said, moving past them and leaving them screaming in pain.

Badri took the lead now, reaching the side door. Morgan unlocked it and opened it a crack. Badri looked up at the warden’s window. “How do we get up there?”

Morgan looked at one of the watchtowers, which was within view. Waiting for his opening, he ran across the yard, hearing Badri’s footsteps, muffled by the grass, close behind him.

They reached the administration building and went inside.

The place was deserted, all the doors in the central hallway closed. Morgan led the way, running up the stairs.

The double doors to Nevsky’s office. No time to finesse this one. Morgan kicked the door. It caved on the second, swinging open.

“Look in the—”

“There will be no need, Mr. Morgan.”

Nevsky was standing to his right. In his hand was a GSh-18 handgun. Standard Russian military issue. Aimed at Morgan’s face.

Chapter Thirty-one

Nevsky kept the gun aimed at Morgan’s head as he motioned for him to get inside the office. His hand was shaking. He had a drunk’s unstable hands.

“How did you get out? Where is Suvorov?”

“He’s about to die,” said Morgan. “You can save him if you hurry. But you’ll have to leave us here.”

“Perhaps I can come up with a better idea.” He aimed for Morgan’s leg. Before he could shoot, Badri rushed him. Nevsky reacted, but not fast enough. Badri barreled into him. Morgan moved to help him, pinning Nevsky’s arm and taking the gun.

He stepped back, with Nevsky at gunpoint. “Keys,” Morgan said. “Your lighter, too.”

Nevsky took a key ring and tossed it to Morgan, and then the lighter. “Here. I will enjoy your death from the vantage point of my office.”

“You will not.” Badri stabbed Nevsky in the gut with a letter opener from the desk. He pushed the blade in farther and twisted. By the angle, Badri got his kidney, maybe his liver as well.

Nevsky grunted and braced himself on his desk.

“Let us go,” said Badri, pulling the cord from the intercom out of the wall. “He is done.”

Morgan didn’t make a habit of killing men in cold blood. But he had to admit that it was convenient.

They stepped out of the office and closed the door. Morgan took the armory key off the ring and tossed the remaining to Badri. “Get the doors to the prisoner barracks unlocked,” he said. “The alarm is going up any second now. Let’s kick up our distraction a notch.”

Badri nodded.

They parted ways and Morgan made his way down to the underground armory. There was a light on down there. Morgan tiptoed his way downstairs. At the landing, he surveyed the room, hidden around the corner of the wall.

One guard, armed but distracted with a magazine, sat at a table in front of the locked armory cage.

Even one shot fired would attract the attention of every guard in the camp.

He was strategizing his approach when the prison’s general alarm started blaring, deafening even here, underground.

Well. No use being coy now.

Morgan ran. The man saw him, drew his gun, and took aim. Morgan went low. The man fired and the bullet sailed above him. He took a running jump, holding on to the edge of the bed, and swinging his legs to kick the man in the chest. The guard fell backward.

This left him on the desk, sliding to the other side. The guard was reaching for the gun, but Morgan was already bringing the nightstick down to connect with the man’s head. He was knocked out cold.

Morgan had seconds before guards would start streaming in.

He opened the lock to the gun cage.

He found a duffel bag under the shelves. He picked the dynamite sticks up carefully, putting them in the bag.

Since he was here . . .

He looked over the guns. Half a dozen Saiga 12-gauge shotguns, twenty Vityaz-SN submachine guns, two Dragunov SVD sniper rifles, and three racks of MP-443 pistols.

He loaded two of each of the SMGs, shotguns, and pistols into the bag, plus ammo. He slung it over his shoulder. He took an additional handgun.

He broke the key in the lock. No big guns for the guards. That should help even the odds for the prisoners.

He heard footsteps coming down the stairs. They would have handguns. Morgan drew a shotgun from his duffel and whispered to himself, “Time to make some noise.”

Chapter Thirty-two

Morgan held on to the shotgun, Saiga 12, twenty-round detachable magazine, and waited for the two men to come down.

The first wasn’t expecting him, and didn’t have time to react before Morgan fired, the gunshot reverberating in the cramped, windowless space. The second went for his gun. A second shell, and he was down.

Two more were at the landing above. If they consolidated their position, if enough guards amassed up there, Morgan would be trapped no matter how much firepower he could muster.

He cast down the shotgun and drew out a Vityaz SMG. Thirty-round box magazine. If he held down the trigger on automatic mode, he’d drain it within three seconds.

Morgan aimed blindly around the corner and fired off a burst upstairs. This gave him the opening to move up the stairs as the men took cover on either side. One of them made his move when Morgan was halfway up. Morgan loosed another burst, which caught him in the chest.

He slowed down as he approached the upper landing and listened. What he heard was boots running away. The other man was beating a prudent retreat.

Morgan needed to get out of the building, fast. He ran in the opposite direction of the guard.

Outside, the siren alarm was blaring. The perimeter guard towers, the biggest danger at the moment, the only ones who would be armed, were flashing their lights wildly, looking for the source of trouble. Outside was a bad place to be. Too exposed.

Morgan saw Badri hiding in the shadows across the yard. Badri pointed to the car. Morgan signaled for him to go ahead, and then took off running at an angle. A light caught him, then moved to shine right on him. Shots fired, whizzing past him.

He pushed himself harder, staggering his pace to avoid sniper fire. He didn’t stop until he the garage was between him and the shooter.

He moved along the wall until he found the window in the northwest corner, the one Grushin has used to gain access. On the other side of this was the gasoline tank that fed the generator and the trucks.

This was going to make a splash.

He picked up a rock and hurled it through a windowpane. Glass shattered and clinked on the floor inside.

That’s when he heard barking.

Dogs. Let loose and running toward him, fast.

If he ran now, he didn’t have a chance in hell of getting away.

So he tried to concentrate. He balanced both sticks of dynamite on his left hand and drew out Nevsky’s lighter with his right. He struck, and it did not light.

Two dogs were running toward him, heavy paws beating the pavement. He had seconds to get this done.

He struck the lighter again, and this time a flame emerged. He held it under the fuses on the two sticks of dynamite, which hissed and sputtered as they caught fire.

He tossed the two sticks of dynamite inside through the pane and turned to run. The dogs were right behind him within a fraction of a second. And then he emerged out in the open yard, and a light was on him almost immediately. It was only a race now to see which would get him first, the sniper on the tower or the dogs snapping at his heels.

The explosion was more than he’d anticipated.

The corner of the concrete building shattered into rubble, and the fuel tank exploded in a ball of flame that rose upward, lighting the camp in bright orange before consuming itself.

It rocked the ground, knocking Morgan off his feet. Windows exploded in a rain of glass.

Morgan raised his head. The guards were no longer much preoccupied with him, and he found no sign of the dogs behind him. By the light of the fire—all electric lights had gone out with the destruction of the generator—he saw prisoners coming out of the barracks, taking their first tentative steps outside.

He heard the rumble of an engine, and then the bright white headlights. It was Badri with the jeep, speeding across the yard. He came to a skidding stop next to Morgan.

“Move over,” Morgan said. Badri complied, and Morgan sat behind the wheel.

The windshield cracked. Sniper bullet. Morgan glanced at Badri, saw that he was unhurt, and gunned the accelerator. They were an easy target.

Morgan saw prisoners pouring out of the barracks now. He passed them in the jeep.

“How are we going to get through the gate?” Badri demanded.

A group of guards who had seen which way the wind was blowing had opened a pedestrian gate to the outside. It was too narrow for the jeep, but the gate was held up by thin, hollow steel poles, surrounded by chain link. Unlike the main gain, this he had a hope of ramming.

Morgan aligned the car with the gate. Guards scattered.

“Hold on to your butt.”

They hit the gate full force. The windshield and driver’s side window shattered, but the gate gave way, and with a terrible scraping sound the vehicle made it through.

The jeep skidded, and Morgan struggled until it steadied. He veered a sharp right, and within a few seconds they hit the road.

The wind blowing hard in their faces, Morgan and Badri looked at each other and laughed with the exhilaration of freedom. They took off into the night, toward their rendezvous point, as the prison behind them popped with gunfire.

Chapter Thirty-three

Morgan drove off the road after about an hour in the car. They were one hundred miles away, near the foot of the mountains. The terrain there became rocky and uneven. He had to move slowly. They might easily hit a rock and get stuck, and that might well be a death sentence for them out here.

“The light signal came from somewhere around here,” Badri said.

Morgan looked back on the road behind them, lit by the predawn glow. The prison lay in the distance, a thin line of smoke rising from it. He wondered what the prisoners were burning.

He shuddered, trying not to think about the fate of the guards.

“Stop the car,” Badri said.

Morgan parked, looking for a sign of what Badri might have seen. It took a few seconds for them to reveal themselves. Three men, Arabs with trim beards, swaddled in winter clothes. In their arms were Kalashnikov automatic rifles.

Morgan turned off the headlights and Badri opened the door to the jeep to show himself. The men lowered their weapons. Badri walked toward them like the prodigal son and embraced them one by one, kissing their cheeks.

Morgan emerged from the car. The three men got one look at him and pointed their rifles at him.

Morgan was getting really goddamn tired of staring down the barrels of guns.

One of them asked Badri a question in harsh Arabic.

Moment of truth. Either they would accept him or they would kill him.

“He is a friend,” said Badri in English, for Morgan’s benefit. “He helped me escape.”

They did not lower their guns. “He is American,” one said. “He is the enemy.”

Morgan took a step away from the car, toward them. They tensed their grips on their weapons. “I have no more love for my country. They are murderers without honor.”

They talked among themselves, and finally Badri yelled at them. The boss, laying down the law.

“Come on,” said Badri. “They have an airplane hidden on the other side of the mountains. They’re going to get us out of here.”

Chapter Thirty-four

Alex woke up to a slap in the face. She opened her eyes, woozy, trying to get her bearings, and realized she was in the trunk of a car. It was open, and above her, silhouetted against the bright blue sky, stood a man. The taxi driver. A man some ten years older than her, green eyed, with black hair cropped short. He was a man she might have called handsome, in different circumstances.

She tried to get up out of the trunk and found she’d been tied up. She tried to wriggle free and her arm chafed against the scratchy felt interior.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“No one important,” he said. Russian, definitely, but his English was more than passable.

“You work for Suvorov?”

“You have other people in your life who would abduct you off the streets?”

“Real wise guy.” She shifted her weight, trying to find a more comfortable position. She looked out, trying to get a feel for their surroundings. She could see trees, evergreens, but no buildings. “What happens now?”

“What happens is, I don’t know,” he said, throwing up his hands. “They tell me to take you, so I do, and then I find out Suvorov is dead—”

“He’s dead?”

“—and now I have a girl in my trunk I have no use for.”

“Then let me go!”

He smirked. “It’s not that easy.”

“I have money!”

“I took your money already. Come.” He took her by the armpits and shifted her weight, getting a stable hold on her. “Don’t move too much. The only reason I did not kill you right there in the trunk is that I hate moving dead weight. That and the blood. You know what blood smells when it stays in the trunk in the hot sun? I know. It is terrible.”

He pulled her up and out of the trunk. She swung her feet, trying to hit him in the groin and missing. He released her, and she fell to the hard-packed dirt of the ground. She shook off her daze and took in her surroundings. She saw a barn some two hundred feet away that looked as if it hadn’t been used in a long time. Back the way they came was a dirt road, overgrown grass intruding upon it from both sides. It was deserted for about a mile, where it bent out of sight.

“You had to make it hard, didn’t you?” he said. “You could have had a little more time, it could have been pleasant. Maybe we have a little conversation, some last words for you. But no. You had to be a bitch.”

Alex squirmed, trying to move into a position where she could see more than his feet.

“Now I have to kill you here and haul you all the way to hurk—”

A thump as the man’s body hit the ground next to her. His face was inches from hers, a blank expression on his face. Blood was pooling around him, and sticking out of the back of his head was a massive meat cleaver. And she saw legs in leather boots, moving toward her and then behind her, and then rough man’s hands holding her wrists and the scritch scritch of a serrated knife, and her ties were loose.

With her arms free, she turned her body to look up and see Dobrynin unbinding her feet.

“Come on, girl,” he said in his weary, guttural voice. “Let us get you home.”

He drew out the meat cleaver, cursing as he shook off the blood, and then wiped it off with a handkerchief. He made a face and cast the handkerchief aside. Alex wondered whether he’d use the knife at the shop again. She felt certain the answer was yes.

Alex stood, rubbing her wrists to get rid of the soreness.

“Come, girl,” he said, motioning for her to follow him. “Car is down the road.”

“How did you find me?” she asked as she caught up to him.

“I called friend, told him stupid girl was going to get in trouble. He watched you. He saw you taken and followed the car. And he called me. So I am here.”

She moved ahead of him and stopped him with two hands. And then she gave him a tight hug, resting the side of her head against his bloody shirt. She knew he was mortified. But she didn’t care.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You want to thank me? Go home.”

Chapter Thirty-five

They flew low until they cleared any reasonable search radius. The men ignored Morgan and spoke quietly to Badri. Morgan instead looked out the window on the Russian countryside, gaming out what his next steps would be.

With the riot at the camp, there would be chaos for a long time even after the Russian authorities managed to regain control from the prisoners. Hell, with weapons, they were practically in a fortress, and would be able to hold out for days, unless the Russians chose to bomb the place to oblivion, in which case they’d probably never be done sorting the body parts and would never find out there was anyone missing at all, except for a jeep, abandoned at the foot of a nearby mountain.

In any case, nobody would know to look for these two missing prisoners for a long time, which gave them plenty to get the hell out of Dodge.

They switched planes in an airfield a few hours out, then crossed the border to Kazakhstan in the back of a truck, squeezed in between bales of hay, daylight filtering through only in tiny pinpoints. And then Morgan slept.

When he woke up, to the sound of the truck’s driver’s side door opening, those pinpoints of light had grown dark. Morgan heard the tailgate being opened, and the bales of hay at the back were removed one by one.

They emerged into a dirt yard of a house surrounded by high walls on all sides. The sky was clear, and Morgan figured they must be in a small town, because he could see the stars with a clarity that’s impossible near a city.

A man standing at the door embraced Badri and watched Morgan with suspicion. They exchanged some angry words, of which Badri had the last, and he called Morgan to come in.

In the small, sparse dining room, the rich smell of meat wafted through the air. They ate a meal of lamb and flatbread, which, after weeks of almost nothing but spoiled potatoes and onions, seemed like the best thing he’d ever tasted. After they finished, Morgan wiping the last of the sauce off his plate and popping it into his mouth, a woman in a niqab served them black tea. Morgan said, “So what happens now?”

The Arab grimaced. “I don’t know.”

“I didn’t really ever think we’d get this far. You dream of freedom for so long, of getting out, and now that I’m here, it’s not . . . I don’t have a life to go back to anymore, Badri. Even if I did go back, if they find out I helped you escape, or that you helped me—well, I can tell you they’ll put me somewhere that’s not any better than where we just got out of.” He sat back in his chair. “Not that I’d want to. They abandoned me. Screwed me. So screw them.”

“What about your family?”

“Better that they think I’m dead. They got a good payout from it.” He drank tea from his cup, hot and bitter. “Won’t do any good to anyone, my coming back.”

“And your future? I could take you somewhere. Drop you off. We never have to see each other again. I may even be able to give you some money. You saved my life and won me my freedom. I owe you that much.”

Morgan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He found Badri looking at him expectantly. “What about if I help you?”

A heavy silence hung between them. Morgan studied Badri’s face. He was looking off to the side, avoiding eye contact. “You are not even Muslim,” he said. “Why—”

“—would I want to join the effort? I got screwed, Badri. I got no home, no family, nothing to live for. The only thing I got is this rage at the people who did this to me.”

“I am sorry,” said Badri. “I am grateful to you. But we cannot allow—”

“I can offer you something no one else can,” Morgan said. “Information. Insight. On the inside, you told me you had something planned. Something big. I can help you with that. I know the vulnerabilities. I know how to cause damage.”

“I don’t know,” said Badri.

“You don’t trust me.”

“I have put my life in your hands,” said Badri. “In there. Out here, things are different. We are not joined by a common purpose.”

“I’m telling you we are.”

“No,” said Badri. “Tomorrow, we have a long drive into Uzbekistan. But for tonight, we rest. It has been a long road.”

Chapter Thirty-six

They arrived in Tashkent in Uzbekistan in the early morning, a driver taking the wheel and Morgan and Badri riding in the backseat. The car had no air conditioning, and the ride under the central-Asian sun turned into a hotbox.

Badri talked to Morgan like they were old friends, telling him about his childhood in Abu Dhabi, prosperous but not rich, and about his education in London. His family was made up of devout Muslims, but not radicals. His eyes were opened, he said, after he came back from college. It was not only the wars of imperialism, the meddling of the United States in the lives of Muslims, the deaths wreaked by bombs and soldiers and drones. He saw what Westernization was doing to his country, to all of the Arab world. Changing it, eroding their character.

Morgan listened in spite of the heat as Badri told him about getting married and the joy of having children. And he spoke about adopting the radical fundamentalist faith of the Wahhabists and its return to a true Islam.

“The entire world is becoming decadent,” he said. “They need a wake-up call. And talk cannot bring the change that is needed. That is why I fight. That is why we must kill.”

They entered the city of Tashkent in the middle of the afternoon. Like most ancient cities, it was marked by the juxtaposition of the old and the new. The city was sprinkled with old Soviet monuments, and many of the streets were lined with trees.

The driver pulled into a parking lot adjoining a large sky-blue dome. Chorsu Bazaar, their destination, was where they were to meet Badri’s contact, who would sent the terrorist along to his mission and arrange for Morgan to be transported where he wished.

“It’s a pretty goddamn open space,” said Morgan. “Lots of people, too.”

“My contact insisted we meet here,” Badri said. “He wanted a public place. He is wary of you.”

Morgan and Badri walked together into the bazaar, a round area under the dome, arranged in concentric circles of wares. The butchers were along the outer rim in enclosed refrigerated shops. The floor held a wealth of foodstuffs, nuts and dried fruit and spices, pungent and rich, ranging from the vivid yellow of turmeric through the red of paprika to the black of pepper.

Morgan took in the space with trained eyes as they rounded the bazaar, Badri looking for his contact.

After they’d completed a full circle, Morgan leaned close to Badri. “We’re being followed,” he whispered.

Badri’s eyes widened, but then returned to a neutral state. He was well practiced, Morgan saw, and knew how to keep his cool in a dangerous situation.

“Look, but use your peripheral vision. Pretend we’re looking for our contact. Guy over on the other aisle holding the briefcase. Guy looking at meats over at the butcher. Man leaning against the wall near the bathroom.”

“We are surrounded,” said Badri.

“It appears so.”

“They do not look Uzbek. Nor Russian, I believe.”

“Might be American,” Morgan said. “Doesn’t really matter.”

“What does?”

“Getting out of here. Keep your eyes out and follow my lead.”

They continued their way around, the men following them moving along to maintain a line of sight. The nearest one, now examining a table of nuts, began his approach.

“They’re making their move,” said Morgan. “Wait for my mark.”

“What will that be?”

“You can’t miss it.”

The man was close now. He was wearing a baggy Hawaiian shirt, open over an undershirt, than covered a concealed-carry shoulder holster.

Morgan bided his time, waiting as the man approached from the side. When he was five feet away, Morgan turned and hit him with a head butt. As the man staggered back, Morgan reached into his shirt and drew out his gun. He turned to see the others closing in from the periphery of the domed market, three by his count.

Morgan aimed at the chest of the nearest one. A woman spotted his gun and screamed.

Morgan aimed down. He fired twice into a row of bags of spice.

A plume of red and yellow shot into the air. People were coughing. The man covered his eyes, hollering in pain.

And people were running, panicked, away from the gunshot.

“Run!”

Keeping low, they ran under the cover of the spices and blended into the crowd. Morgan jumped over a stall, overturning a bucket of pistachios. Badri was at his heels. Morgan turned to look at their pursuers. At least one had spotted them, but the rest were running around trying to navigate the crowd.

There would be more waiting for them outside.

Morgan and Badri ran out into the hot sunlight along with the rest of the crowd. Morgan hid the gun in his waistband. Blending in might give them a few precious seconds.

He saw them—men dressed in various different guises as tourists, standing at the edges of the court that surrounded the bazaar, looking through the crowd.

No way out but through it.

He ran with the crowd as long as they were not spotted. And then the nearest agent looked into his eyes, and Morgan saw the expression of recognition.

He lowered his torso and hit the man full force, lifting him clear off the ground before sending him sailing on his back. He took off running with desperate speed, Badri behind him, as the other agents moved toward them. But they had broken the cordon, and now the agents were behind them.

Morgan and Badri were in the parking lot now. Morgan spotted a man getting into a Daewoo sedan. He pulled out the gun and pointed it at the driver.

“Out!”

The man stepped away from the car, his hands up, holding his keys. Morgan grabbed them and jumped into the driver’s seat.

“Get in!”

Badri got into the passenger seat and Morgan gunned the reverse before his door was closed. He cleared the parking space and put the car in first, accelerating, tires screeching, as their pursuers drew their weapons and readied to shoot. They accelerated away as gunshots hit the trunk. One bullet shattered the rear window.

Morgan turned at the end of the row and saw more trouble ahead. The exit to the parking lot was blocked by two cars. There were more agents there, guns already drawn and trained on their car.

He turned with squealing tires into the next row and gamed the situation out in his head. The exit was blocked, and the lot was separated from the street by a low wall that was probably too solid to ram.

That left one possibility.

He turned the car back toward the bazaar.

“What are you doing?” Badri yelled.

“Getting us out of here!”

He drove onto the pedestrian walkways toward the dome of the Chorsu Bazaar. The pedestrians had cleared it by now, and the door was wide, more than enough for the car to pass. Just one obstacle stood between them—a staircase, some twelve or fifteen short steps.

The car wasn’t going to like it. But it would have to do. The Daewoo lurched as they hit the steps, and then climbed, heaving, until they were level with the bazaar.

Morgan felt the tires low, blown out by the impact. And then they crashed through the doors of the bazaar, sending glass flying in every direction. Morgan maneuvered around the space, deserted of people, sending up clouds of spices and rain of nuts and dried fruit.

They crashed through the door on the other side, bulldozing through an aisle of the covered vegetable market. No one waiting for them there. No one thought they’d be crazy enough to make the maneuver.

They came out amid a crowd of screaming people, who parted for them to pass. And then Morgan drove the car onto the street, with the two front wheels scraping the ground and the windshield cracked from end to end. But it was whole enough to carry them away from the bazaar, and from their pursuers.

Chapter Thirty-seven

“How did they find us?” said Badri in a fevered panic.

Morgan was driving the car away from the populated, tourist-thick area of the bazaar toward the outskirts of the city. They needed to ditch the car soon. They were attracting attention, with its front tires in rags and entire front scratched and bent.

“They must have made your contact.” Morgan’s heart was still pounding, adrenaline still coursing through his veins, but he was calm. This was just another problem to be solved. “We need to get out of town. But we need a new car first. This car is going to get stopped as soon as a policeman sees us.”

Morgan turned into a side street and parked the car. They got out on a street that bordered a series of office buildings, all concrete and reflective glass. Morgan took a tire iron from the trunk and led the way to the nearest parking lot. He checked that they were not being seen and shattered the driver’s side window of a Chevy Cobalt. He motioned for Badri to get inside.

“We need somewhere to go,” Morgan said as he pulled open the panel under the steering column and reached in for the wires.

“I have more people I can call. It is a greater risk. But it can be done.”

Morgan touched the ignition wire to the power wire, and the engine came to life. He maneuvered the car out of its spot and drove through the parking lot and onto the street, wind blowing in through the broken window.

“They were American, weren’t they?” said Badri.

“The agents? Yeah. I think so. Something about the way they carried themselves, the way they held their guns.”

“You could have given me up, turned yourself over. They probably would’ve taken you back. You could’ve given them a story about using me to escape. Wouldn’t even be too far from the truth. But instead you risked your life to escape with me.”

“I told you,” said Morgan. “I’m done with them. All of ’em.”

“I think I didn’t quite believe you until now.” Badri looked out at the industrial suburbs of the city. “Okay,” he said. “If you wish to join with us, I will stand by you.”

Morgan turned to look at him to make sure he was serious. “You mean it?”

“Yes. I mean it. And I will tell you about this. I have something. We have had it since before I was captured. I will not tell you what, not yet, but I will tell you that it can kill thousands. Tens of thousands.”

“I see. And this weapon—how will you get it into the United States?”

“It is already there,” said Badri. “With some allies from my organization. But my people did not know how to deploy it effectively.”

“But now that you’re out, you can guide them.”

“This can be a new 9/11,” Badri said. His eyes shone with the fire of fanaticism.

Morgan’s voice lowered to hardly more than a whisper. “You want to make this a new 9/11. I want to help you make this something greater. I can give you the means to cripple the US government in a way that they will not be able to recover for decades.”

Badri smiled. “Welcome to the cause.”

Chapter Thirty-eight

Alex returned to an empty house in Andover, Massachusetts.

Night had fallen, too late for any kids to be out in the now silent streets. She got out of the cab and unlocked the front door, dropping her bag in the foyer and making straight for the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator, but there was no food, just a few condiments on the door, a half stick of butter and a little bit of cranberry juice in a container. Her mother was off in Martha’s Vineyard consulting on the house of a client who was summering on the island. Alex figured she must’ve cleared out the fridge before she went.

So very practical, her mother.

She checked the freezer. In there Alex found a Tupperware of frozen ravioli with a note.

Welcome home, honey. Forty minutes in oven at 350 degrees. Sauce in the pantry.

Yes. Quite practical. Alex smirked in appreciation.

She set the ravioli in a porcelain dish and poured in half a jar of her mother’s homemade tomato sauce, made and canned for an entire year at a time. Then she set the oven to 350, set a timer for fifty minutes, and put the dish in without preheating.

Leaving the oven to do its work, she went to the living room, flopped on the couch, and turned on the TV. This she hadn’t done in a long time, but it was so easy to fall into old habits when she was at home. Especially when she was feeling as forlorn and defeated as she was then.

She clicked through the channels and settled on infomercials. She couldn’t concentrate on anything anyway. The chipper chatter at least served as appropriate background noise for her wallowing.

She pulled out her phone and looked at the messages that had accumulated in her absence. Loads of junk email, a couple hellos from her friends Simon and Katie from her brief stint in college—Katie’s more insistent and offended by her lack of response—and one from Karen O’Neal, some canned words of concern from a couple of weeks ago.

Alex checked the clock. Just past eleven at night. On impulse, Alex called her. The phone rang only once before she picked up.

“Alex?” She sounded awake, at least.

“Hi, Karen. I was, uh, out of town for a while. I hope it’s not too late to call.”

“Please. Sleep doesn’t even cross my mind before midnight. What’s up? Are you okay?”

“I, uh, I’ve been out of town. I was wondering if there was any news about my father.”

The question hung on the line. Crickets chirped in the hot night.

“I’m sorry,” Karen said finally. “We haven’t had any luck finding him.”

“Right. Yeah.”

“Do you want to grab coffee sometime this week?”

“Yeah. Sure. I’ll text you.”

She threw her phone across the living room to land on the couch and groaned. The absence of her father was a keen, stabbing pain. The past weeks had kept her busy, on track, doing something. Now that she stopped, all that she had left was the reality that he wasn’t there and wasn’t coming back.

What was life going to be without him? What was her life going to be at all? She felt like this changed everything.

She had done depression, and didn’t care for a repeat. Would she go back to training? Follow in his footsteps? Would that bring her some sense of fulfillment, keep him alive in her somehow?

Then there was revenge. That might keep her going. But she’d read enough to know where that led. Death or disappointment.

But what else was there for her? How was she going to deal with life now?

The same way she’d dealt with the rigors of training, she told herself. One day at a time. One minute at a time, when necessary. Just the next push-up, the next ten feet of running, the next five minutes awake. This was just like that. Do what you have to do not to die right now.

So she wept, not caring how loud she was in the empty house, and buried her head in a pillow, screaming, and punching the couch cushions. She didn’t know how long she was at it, but when the oven dinged, announcing that her ravioli was ready, she stopped, panting, drying her eyes, and stoop up. One day at a time started right now.

Alex picked herself up off the couch. The smell of basil and tomato wafted to her nose, the comforting fragrance of her mother’s cooking.

A warm meal at home. Seemed like a fine first step.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Morgan and Badri landed in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, in the late morning, bearing fake passports. The bored-looking immigration agent didn’t give them a second glance as she entered their data on her computer.

They picked up a rental Kia hatchback at the airport that they had no intention of ever returning and drove west together, along the coastal highways under the noontime tropical sun. Morgan’s hair, half an inch grown in, flowed like a field of wheat in the wind streaming in through the car window. On their right, the sea would sometimes peek through the dense jungle.

Once they had driven for two and a half hours, Morgan checked their position on the handheld GPS. He parked the Kia on the shoulder of the road and plunged into the woods, through the dense underbrush, slapping at the mosquitoes that harried them the whole way.

They trekked for hours under the shade of the green canopy, Morgan correcting their course using the GPS every few minutes.

“The jungle turns you around,” he told Badri. “Stop paying attention for a minute and you’re lost.”

The sun was low in the horizon by the time they reached the shore, where the rickety wooden fishing boat was already waiting for them. On it was a weather-worn Dominican man, skin browned by the sun, shirtless and in ragged shorts, and a younger man in a wife-beater shirt and faded baseball cap. He tensed when he saw them at first, looking with especial wariness at Morgan, before Badri spoke.

“Señor Batista?”

“Sí,” he said, nodding his head and grinning.

Batista waved them on board. Morgan took stock of the boat as he stepped onto the deck. The wood looked more deteriorated than Morgan liked for any boat going on the open sea, and everything from the hull to the cabin seemed cobbled together and patched over many times.

They set off without ceremony, leaving the island of Hispaniola behind and moving north. Morgan pulled on a Panama hat he’d bought at the airport to protect against the sun.

The two men stared at him openly as the boat chugged along, and Morgan understood very well why. He was not the kind of person they would normally carry across, not the kind of person who’d normally enter the country illegally. But an explanation was not forthcoming. Morgan was a paying customer, so he didn’t have to explain a goddamn thing.

Morgan and Badri had brought along cereal bars to tide them through the passage, but the younger man, Diego, who Morgan learned was Batista’s son, had caught some fish earlier that day. They grilled it on deck in a makeshift barbecue pit made out of a paint can and what might have been part of a dish rack. Morgan ate with relish, with his hands, the fish resting on a piece of banana leaf.

The hold was full of fuel canisters to get the boat through the long journey and back, so they had to sleep on deck, out in the open. Which suited Morgan fine enough—out there, they had at least a light breeze to combat the stifling heat.

They spoke little during the journey. Before, driving through Uzbekistan, Badri would talk freely about his family and his life outside the organization, and even a few stories of terrorism, of narrow escapes from the CIA, and his capture by the Russians. But now, the weight of their mission was bearing down on them, and they couldn’t bring themselves to say anything about anything else. They did not even discuss the ultimate mission itself, instead focusing on the details of their passage, and then only so far as it was necessary. Mostly, Morgan looked out into the dark water as it disappeared far in the horizon, or in the dark of the night, lit by stars and a sliver of moon.

It took a day and two nights to come with sight of the shore, and then they spent a day of waiting because they couldn’t approach in daylight. So they waited, the boat bobbing on the gentle sea, just far enough from the continent that they would not have to worry about the American Coast Guard finding them and either arresting them or escorting them back to their place of origin.

The boat started moving again at dusk, all lights off to avoid detection. They landed in the dead of night at a deserted bayou beach in Louisiana, where an ally of Badri’s was waiting with an inconspicuous seven-year-old VW Jetta.

Chapter Forty

Morgan’s confederate drove them into the night and past dawn, stopping only to refuel. The driver was a taciturn, grave man of few words, so they rode in silence almost the entire way, until they pulled into a country house in rural Virginia. There they were greeted by a soft-spoken young man with a shaved face. He introduced himself as Rasheed. Like everyone else along the way, he regarded Morgan with nothing short of total suspicion.

“He is an ally,” Badri said.

He wanted to get them situated, but Badri was impatient. “Where are they?”

The young man, deferential, led the way down a solid old wooden staircase to the basement. Among the abandoned appliances, tools, and building materials, he walked to a working chest freezer and pulled it open. The top was layered with meats in grocery store trays and frozen vegetables. He removed them, setting them aside, to reveal a steel box underneath.

“Here they are,” Rasheed said. He opened the box without removing it from the freezer to reveal six plain steel canisters, about as big as tennis-ball containers. Badri looked at them with ravenous eyes, filled with the destruction that they would cause.

“Novichok,” he said, his voice a whisper. “Russian nerve agent. The deadliest ever made. Not a gas, but a powder. Causes all muscles in the body to seize and contract. You cannot breathe, and your heart stops pumping blood. You die within minutes. Perhaps seconds.”

He drew out a canister and held it out for Morgan to see. “Here is our instrument of destruction,” he said. “Here is how we will bring America to its knees.”

Chapter Forty-one

The farmhouse they occupied was old and two-storied, built of horizontal slats that were once whitewashed but now showed the faded gray of the wood underneath. The grounds were modest, but the house was shielded from view of its surroundings by trees. They were a few miles from Palmyra, the nearest one-horse town.

It was a spot well chosen for its isolation. You could spend months in here without anyone so much as sighting the house from the road.

Morgan heard the Chevy beater truck before he saw it coming up the driveway, carrying Rasheed. He got out of the car holding bags from the thrift store in one hand and Burger King in the other. Badri was out of the house, in the nearby woods, making a call to his associates in the organization.

Devout as he was, Rasheed was a slob. From the looks of it, he subsisted on mostly snack foods, and empty bags of chips and fast food were strewn about the living room, which held nothing but one ratty couch. It was some kind of warped jihadi version of a filthy bachelor pad.

Rasheed slammed the screen door open and set the bags down on the Formica table in the dining room. He greeted Morgan with undisguised disdain.

“Lunch,” he said, tossing a paper-wrapped Whopper into Morgan’s lap.

Not exactly his favorite—Morgan hadn’t eaten fast food in years, at least not voluntarily—but he was famished. Even with Diego’s fishing, food on the boat had been slim pickings. He unwrapped it and took a large bite out of it.

“I brought clothes,” Rasheed said, dropping a thrift store bag at Morgan’s feet. Eating the burger with one hand, Morgan sifted through the clothes with the other. Rasheed had an impeccable sense of style. Among the pickings were a shirt from a company barbecue so big that it wouldn’t look out of place resting on a tent pole and a lime green button-down. But the clothes on Morgan’s back were starting to get ripe, and this was what he had.

Morgan looked up from the bag to find Rasheed staring at him.

“I do not know what you did to fool Badri,” he said. “But I do not believe you are here to help.”

Morgan stood to confront him, chest out, hands balled into fists. “Badri believes me. And he’s your boss. So I don’t much care what you think.”

“Infidel!” Rasheed spat on the floor.

“And what are you gonna do about it?”

Rasheed narrowed his eyes, and then drew a gun from his waistband. Magnum Big Frame revolver, .44 magnum. Talking about stopping power would be damning with faint praise. At this range, it would be a question of how much of Morgan’s face would remain afterward.

“Big man with a big gun,” said Morgan. “Let’s game this out. You blow me away. Then what? What do you tell your boss?”

“It does not matter. You will be dead, and no longer willing to betray us.”

Morgan’s voice dropped an octave. “He trusts me. I’ve saved his life more than once, so maybe he trusts me more than he trusts you. And he wants what I have to offer. Kill me, and your punishment will come.”

“Not as swiftly as yours,” Rasheed said. But Morgan could tell he was shaken.

“Your plan will fail without me,” Morgan said. “They’ll catch you, and best case scenario is that you die in the process. You won’t have another 9/11 on your hands. You’ll have another underwear bomber.”

Rasheed gritted his teeth and grimaced. “You are lying.”

“Then pay the price and kill me.”

Rasheed cocked the gun. Morgan got ready to make a grab for it. Rasheed was brave but untrained. Morgan might be able to get the best of him.

“Rasheed!”

It was Badri, standing outside the screen door. He walked into the house speaking in harsh Arabic, and Rasheed, hissing, uncocked the gun and tucked it back into his waistband.

“What happened?” Badri demanded, in English.

“Friendly disagreement,” said Morgan, turning away and heading for the stairs. “I’m going to take a shower. I have some clothes I can’t wait to try on.”

Chapter Forty-two

Morgan locked his door that night and braced the handle with an old wooden chair. He then set the moldy mattress on the floor against the wall. He wasn’t going to risk Rasheed getting any ideas in the middle of the night.

He woke up with the cock’s crow, but stayed in his room, stretching and doing his morning exercise. An hour later, he unblocked the door and walked out. The house was still, the other two still sleeping.

Morgan went downstairs and looked for something to eat for breakfast, but all he found were potato chips and packaged cake, so he settled for a glass of tap water instead.

Carrying the cup in his hand, Morgan walked to the basement door. He looked down, at the freezer, thinking of all the destructive power it contained. He felt chills as he considered it.

“See something you like, American?”

It was Rasheed, from the top of the stairs.

“Just thinking about the plan,” said Morgan. “We’re going to have to devise a strategy sometime soon.”

“We will set them off in the White House,” Rasheed said. “And we will kill the President of the United States.”

Morgan chuckled at the notion. “You won’t make it ten feet into the White House. You’ll be shot down in the entrance hall. The best you can hope to achieve there is to kill a handful of tourists and security guards.”

“Then you have a better idea?”

They were interrupted by the sound of Badri coming downstairs.

“Morning,” said Morgan. “I was just about to tell Rasheed here that we need groceries and supplies. Proper food. Eating all this junk is expensive, too. We shouldn’t be wasting the little money we have.”

Rasheed leered at him, but Badri cut in. “What do you suggest?”

“Some beef, vegetables. The electric stove works, I checked, and there are a couple of iron pots we could use. No reason we have to live like animals here.”

Rasheed opened his mouth to speak, but Badri cut in. “You are right. Make a list. Rasheed will get it for us.”

“Don’t you think it’d be better for me to go?” said Morgan. “I’m American. Nobody’s going to think anything of my being there.”

“Fine,” said Badri.

“He will take our car and escape!” Rasheed bellowed. “He will send the police after us.”

“He will not,” Badri said with finality. Then he turned to Morgan. “I will get you the money.”

Badri sent him out with twenty dollars. Morgan drove into Palmyra and parked outside the town’s one modest grocery store. At the single register was a bored teen who didn’t pry his eyes away from his phone for one second when Morgan came in.

He scoped the store, looking for the cameras. There were none. He walked to the refrigerator and picked up a tray of beef and another of chicken thighs. He looked back at the teen, who spared him not so much as a glance, and then tucked them in his waistband, one in front and one in the back, well covered by his loose T-shirt. He winced as the cold came into contact with his skin.

He heard the door swing open, and turned to see a policeman walk inside. Morgan went stiff, then forced himself back to relaxation.

“Mornin’,” said the cop. He wore a white Stetson, and had eyes that were constantly narrowed.

“Mornin’,” Morgan said, picking up a head of broccoli and some potatoes.

“Sheriff Anderson,” he said, lifting his hat.

“Dan. Dan Morgan.”

“Just passing through?”

“That’s right.” Morgan took his groceries to the cashier, wondering whether the sheriff had noticed the bulges under his shirt.

But instead the sheriff looked outside. “Say, I’ve seen that car before.” The sheriff pointed at the truck Morgan had driven in, parked outside the door. “You out there at the old Peterson place?”

“Four seventy-one,” said the listless teen. Morgan dug into his pocket for the money, careful not to disturb the meat.

“I have no idea,” Morgan said. “I’m staying with a friend.”

“Young Middle Eastern fella?”

“The same,” Morgan said. “Rasheed. A friend’s nephew, actually. House sitting for his uncle. He’s worried about the boy, asked me to come down and have a look-see. Find out if he’s all right. But I’m really just dropping in for a day or two.”

“He looks a little perturbed,” Sheriff Anderson said.

“He’s got some issues. You know.” He made a couple of circles with his index finger around his ear. “But he’s a good kid. Harmless.”

“Well. That’s good to know.”

“And he seems okay, all things considered. So I’m eager to tell his father that.”

Sheriff Anderson frowned. “Wasn’t it his uncle?”

Morgan cursed in his mind. “I know them both. His father is worried about him, too.” God damn it. He was better than this.

“Well, you do that,” Anderson said.

The cashier handed Morgan his change. “Here you go, sir.”

Morgan walked out and started his truck. When he was out of sight of the store, he pulled the meat out from under his shirt and tossed it in the passenger seat.

He had one more stop to make.

He cruised the town until he found a mom-and-pop electronics store, Bob’s TV and Radio. He went inside to find a balding middle-aged man he figured was Bob standing behind the counter. It was a small store, and it took him under a minute to find what he was looking for.

“I’ll take one of these,” said Morgan, setting the item on the counter.

“Prepaid cell phone?”

“Yeah. My phone got bricked. Need something to tide me over until I can get back home.”

“I gotcha,” said Bob. “That’ll be nineteen ninety nine.”

“All I got is fifteen,” Morgan said, making a show of being flustered. “Fifteen dollars and . . . twenty-nine cents.”

Bob raised a suspicious eyebrow. “Is that right?”

“Any chance I can get you to do a stranger a solid?” Please.

Bob rubbed his chin between his fingers. “Well, all right,” he said. “Give me what you got. Still makes me a profit, if you can call that a profit. And I’m a good Christian man. I can help a brother out. Let’s ring you up.”

God bless you, Bob.

Morgan set the bills on the counter, and then dropped the coins. He walked to the truck on trembling legs, turning on the ignition and driving away. He waited until he was in the highway before turning the phone on and making a call.

“Hello?” A woman’s voice.

“Bloch? It’s me.”

Chapter Forty-three

When Morgan arrived at the house, he hid the phone, still on, under a brick that was resting against the foundation. Then he went inside, grocery bags in hand.

“I brought a good haul,” said Morgan, setting them on the table. “I’ll whip us up some steaks on the iron skillet.”

“We need to talk about our plan,” said Badri. “We cannot stay here long. Every minute is a moment when we could be found out.”

They sat down together around the table to discuss the plan. “Our target,” he said, “needs to be symbolic, and it needs to kill a lot of people. There’s one day that’s better than any other if you want to do this.”

“What’s that?” Badri asked.

“The Fourth of July. The most patriotic of holidays. The parades attract enormous crowds. You can kill thousands upon thousands on the day when Americans get together to celebrate this country. We’re two weeks away, which means we can organize attacks on more than one city. New York, Chicago, Washington.”

“I like what I hear,” said Badri.

“Police won’t be able to check everyone. They’ll have bomb-sniffing dogs, but we won’t need explosives. Those canisters have rapid release mechanisms that can send up a cloud of the powder in something like a fifty-foot radius. Rasheed, do you have paper?”

They spent hours strategizing. Morgan drew the parade routes from memory as best he could, saying that they could check it online as soon as they had a connection, and marked likely spots, places that would cause the most deaths, the most panic, and how to set off a second device to target a wave of fleeing pedestrians.

It was late afternoon by the time they decided to break, and Morgan left Badri and Rashid to cook their dinner of steak and potatoes. He had long known that to impress people in the kitchen, you only need to do one or two things well, and this was his. The smell of searing meat filled the house. They ate together at the table. After the planning and the meal, even Rasheed seemed to be warming up to him.

After dinner, Morgan sat down on the couch and Badri pulled up a chair across from him. Rasheed went outside for a walk.

“I will be honest,” said Badri, “I had my doubts about you, even until today. But your plan—I finally believe you are one of us, without reservation. We will do great things together, Morgan. You will be part of something here that will be remembered for generations, a definite blow to—”

Rasheed burst into the house, slamming the screen door open, gun drawn and pointed at Morgan. In his other hand was a cell phone.

“What is the meaning of this, Rasheed?” Badri demanded.

“When the American arrived, I saw him through the window. I saw him bend down and hide something. So I went out to see what it was. I found this. A phone, Badri. Still on. He is a filthy traitor!” Rasheed tightened the grip on his pistol.

Badri raised his hand for Rasheed to stop. “Explain yourself, Morgan.”

“I wanted to call my family,” Morgan said. “I’m sorry. I know that I shouldn’t have. But I couldn’t resist. I bought this phone when I went into town. It’s a burner. Untraceable. It won’t compromise us. Please. I know how to be anonymous.”

“He is lying,” said Rasheed.

“I’m not,” said Morgan. “Badri. I swear I’m not.”

Badri struggled with this in his mind, and then his expression set, cool and stony. “I was deluded,” he said. “I thought it could not be possible. But now I see that I was a fool to trust an American. Do not move! Rasheed, do not shoot him. We will find out what he knows.”

Badri took one of the knives from the table, still wet with the juices from the steak.

“Badri, come on. After all we shared, you think I’d betray you?”

Rasheed laughed. “You will get what you deserve now, American.”

Badri approached with the knife in hand. Morgan was seated, with a gun on him. Circumstances were not smiling on him.

But Badri was interrupted by a car, coming up the driveway.

“Who is it?” he demanded.

“Police!” Rasheed exclaimed. “I told you he was a traitor!”

“I promise, I did not tell anyone about you!” Morgan insisted. “He’s probably just checking up on the house.”

“He is alone,” said Rasheed.

Badri frowned. He said to Rasheed, “Hide behind the front door. Morgan, you will stand there next to him. I will talk to the policeman. If you do anything to call his attention, Morgan, both of you die. Understand? Now come.”

At gunpoint, Morgan moved to stand next to the front door, so that he would be hidden when it opened. Rasheed stood next to him, out of sight, gun pointed at his head.

“Keep your mouth shut,” Rasheed growled.

They heard the boots on the porch steps, then there was a knock on the door. Badri opened.

“Good evening, officer. Can I help you?”

“Lots of people up in this old house, ain’t there? I met a fella that drove this truck into town this morning, and I figured the young man would still be here.”

“They are out,” Badri said. “What can I do for you?”

“Just checking to see if you folks are all right,” he said.

“Just fine,” said Badri

“Now, you said they were gone, but I see three plates on the table,” Anderson said. “Doesn’t look like you’ve finished eating very long ago. And there’s one road out of here, and I didn’t see anyone driving past me.”

“They are on an after-dinner walk. Now if there is nothing else—”

“I’d ask you for a glass of water, if it’s acceptable to you. It’s a hot day, and I’m parched.”

Badri narrowed his eyes. “Of course. Please, come in.”

Rasheed turned his gun to fire at Anderson as he walked in.

“No!” Morgan cried as he brought Rasheed down with a full-body tackle, sending the gun sliding across the floor. Sheriff Anderson went for his sidearm, but Badri swung the knife and buried it in the policeman’s throat. Anderson fell on the floor, gasping. Badri took up his Colt revolver and pointed it at Morgan, who held up his hands. Rasheed stood and grabbed his own gun from the floor where it lay.

“We need to go,” said Rasheed. “They will be looking for the policemen.”

“Yes,” said Badri, “we do.”

“Then we need to take care of this filth right here,” Rasheed said, meaning Morgan.

“Yes. We do. Please, Rasheed. Do the honors.”

Rasheed grinned, triumphant. “Any last words?”

The sound of broken glass, and Rasheed’s chest burst in a mist of blood.

Badri scarcely had time to react before a bullet hit him in the shoulder. He fell, dropping his gun with the force and shock of it. Then he looked at Morgan with anger.

“What did you do?” Badri demanded. “You traitor, what did you do?”

“What I had to do to protect my country.” He heard the sound of men approaching, rustling in the foliage surrounding the house. “I want the end of this fight, Badri. I want my people to be safe.”

“What about my people?”

“Do you think you’re making them safer by attacking the US? By extending this goddamned war?”

“I do what I do for the righteousness of God.”

Badri scrambled down the stairs to the basement. Morgan ran after him, but couldn’t reach him before Badri had the freezer open and a canister in his hand, ready to release.

“You’ll die,” said Morgan.

“And maybe I will take you with me.”

“You can still survive,” Morgan said.

“And go to Guantanamo Bay for the rest of my life?”

“I really am sorry,” he said. “I wish we’d have met under other circumstances. I wish you weren’t who you were. I wish you hadn’t made yourself my enemy. But you can live. That’s something. It’s something I can offer you.”

Badri pushed the button and the canister burst in a plume of fine white powder. Badri fell almost immediately, convulsing on the floor of the basement.

Holding his breath, Morgan ran upstairs, doing some mental math on the rate of dispersion. He reached the upper landing as the tactical team rammed the door, sending splinters flying into the foyer. They filed inside in formation, all wearing tactical gear and gas masks.

“Clear the area! Get as far from here as you can!”

He was feeling the weight in his chest as he ran out of the house. He stumbled within a few feet of the door, lightheaded, and then the world began growing dark. He hardly felt himself hitting the floor, and had the vague impression of someone slipping a gas mask over his face, and he saw one pull out a syringe with a gigantic hypodermic needle before he lost consciousness.

Chapter Forty-four

Alex Morgan walked into Diana Bloch’s apartment with plodding steps. She had descended into a haze of gloom ever since returning home, crying herself to sleep every night. One day at a time worked, but it didn’t make it any easier.

“Make yourself at home,” Bloch said.

Alex collapsed on a white leather couch. “Did you make me chamomile tea again?”

Bloch sat cross-legged on a Barcelona chair, facing Alex. “I have something rather more potent. I’d like to tell you a story.”

“Yippee.”

Bloch cleared her throat. “Eight months ago, a cache of Novichok nerve agent was stolen as it was transported from a military research lab in Russia. This Novichok is really nasty stuff. It will destroy your lungs and make you drown on dry land.

“The group that took it was an al-Qaeda splinter group named Shining Jihad. But that’s all we knew. We exhausted our resources trying to find the agent, or the group’s leadership.

“Then, some five months ago, the Russians captured the group’s mastermind, a man named Muhammad Badri. A clever and resourceful man, and certainly the one who planned the heist of the gas in the first place.

“The Russians knew he was a terrorist, but they didn’t quite know what they had on their hands. So they sent him to a secret prison in Siberia, an old gulag camp where the Russian government keeps the people they want to forget.

“We knew it was a matter of time before Badri’s people used the Novichok against us somehow. We needed to find the gas. And our only link was him. The Russian government was not forthcoming with aid, so we had to take it into our own hands. We had to send someone into the prison. And that meant letting someone get captured.”

“Are you telling me—”

“The odds were always slim,” Bloch said. “He had to escape from the prison with Badri, while gaining his trust enough to find out where the Novichok was. The mission rested on a razor’s edge.”

“Well?” Alex urged. “What happened?”

She heard footsteps coming from the inner hallway of the apartment. Heavy. A man’s.

She knew him by his silhouette in the dim light even before his features resolved in her eyes.

“Dad!”

She leapt off the couch and at him, hugging him as hard as he could.

“I apologize,” said Bloch. “I wish we could have told you. But it was imperative for his mission to remain in total secrecy.”

“But I’m back.” He squeezed her tight. “I’m back. That’s what matters.”

She released him, tears flowing from her eyes, and punched him in the chest. “How could you do that to me?” she demanded, in anger mixed with joy.

“I had to do it,” he said. “My country needed me.”

“Yeah. You had to go off and be a hero.” She buried her face in his chest. “The world needs heroes like you. But Mom and I need you more.” She raised her head. “We have to tell her! You don’t know how sick she’s been over this.”

“I’d just like to remind you,” said Bloch, “that all this is highly classified.”

Alex wiped away her tears and looked at her father. He looked thin, haggard, and exhausted. “So did you have a nice vacation?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Morgan. “Got some exercise, some cultural immersion, met all sorts of different kinds of people.”

Alex couldn’t contain herself and gave him another hug.

Bloch interrupted their reunion. “By the way, Alex, we know all about your little Russian adventure.”

Alex blushed with shame. “I got captured, would’ve been killed if Valery hadn’t been there to save me, and I didn’t come close to finding you.”

“How is old Valery?” Morgan asked.

“Miserable,” said Alex.

“That’s Valery all right.”

“I’m so embarrassed,” she said. “It was a complete failure.”

“Funny,” said Bloch. “That’s not what I heard. I heard that a budding young operative was resourceful and quick-thinking. I heard she used her assets, faced danger head-on, managed to infiltrate the house of a Russian general and escape with her life. What I read in my reports indicated that you show enough promise to surpass your father someday. And I expect you to report back for training Monday at oh-five hundred hours.”

Alex’s cheeks flushed, now with joy.

“And Morgan,” said Bloch, “We’re going to need an in-depth debrief from you.”

“Later,” Morgan said, holding his hand up. “Come on, Alex. Let’s go home.”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I must thank my immensely talented team at Kensington Publishing Corp., who work tirelessly to help make my novels the best they can be and are there whenever I have questions or concerns. Thank you to Steve Zacharius, owner of Kensington, who has made me part of the Kensington “family.” There are just not enough words to convey how fortunate I am to have Michaela Hamilton as my editor. Her patience and guidance have been invaluable—she is a very special person.

I also want to express my appreciation to my literary agent, Doug Grad, as well as to Mayur Gudka, my webmaster and social media consultant. I also want to thank my partner in writing and creating my novels, Caio Camargo. I am so fortunate that you are members of my team and, more important, friends.

My wife, Lynn, continues to encourage me to pursue my writing career.

Lastly, I want to thank all of my very loyal fans whose support has helped grow the Dan Morgan series from one novel to six and still writing . . .

Don’t miss the next exciting thriller starring Zeta operative Dan Morgan

ROGUE COMMANDER

Coming soon from Lyrical Underground, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.

Chapter One

Dan Morgan stood against the stone back of the Church of Our Lady Before Týn, a lit cigarette dangling between his fingers.

He didn’t smoke—couldn’t stand the smell, really—but nothing gave him better cover to stand around in the street, out of the way of most people. So he let the reeking thing burn, pretending to puff every few seconds to avert suspicion, and shielding the ember from the autumn wind. It was early October, and the sun was low in the sky even though it was half past ten a.m. None of its rays made it down to the level of Prague’s narrow streets.

He was in an area reserved for parking, which held the sorts of establishments that grow like weeds on the periphery of the big tourist sites, selling cheap souvenirs and small necessities like water and smokes.

“Morgan, report in.” This was the voice of Diana Bloch coming over the wireless transmitter in his right ear, terse and all business. The head of Zeta Division, Bloch carried the authority of a natural leader. She was a pain in his ass, but mostly in a good way.

“Nothing yet.”

A group of four American college kids stopped as one of them took a picture of the back of the church. One of the couples stood close together, with a sort of awkwardness that told Morgan theirs was a new relationship. The other couple had been together long enough to be more interested in other things, but shared a kiss before they moved along.

They didn’t give him a second glance. Good. Being invisible had its perks in the business.

Morgan buzzed with energy, as he always did before a mission. He felt the reassuring weight of his black Walther PPK in its shoulder holster, well hidden under his black trench coat. It wasn’t a popular concealed-carry weapon anymore—too heavy, and not as much firepower as the polymer nine-millimeter pieces that took its place. But he was a man with classic tastes, and he had a soft spot for the gun. It felt solid in his hand, nicely balanced, with light recoil. That, and he could hit a fly in the air at ten paces with it.

Morgan stood back against the stone of the centuries-old Gothic church, and feigned drawing in smoke from his Marlboro when he caught movement in his peripheral vision. Across the small parking lot, a man emerged from the front door of the Ventana hotel. He had an unhandsome face topped with a receding head of blond hair, with a strong nose but a weak chin that he hid, badly, with a goatee.

“That’s Pulnik,” said Morgan. “Moving west from the hotel.”

“Keep your distance,” said Bloch over the comm. “Team, get moving. Stick to the plan. Morgan, do I have to remind you—”

“You don’t. It’s my damn plan. I’m sticking to it.” Morgan dropped the half-burned cigarette, ground it against the pavement, and set off after the man.

Their quarry was Havel Pulnik, a sleazy small-time underworld businessman who happened to be second cousin to Enver Lukacs, the evasive big fish they were really after. With no other leads to finding Lukacs, Zeta division had kept Pulnik under surveillance for months. Their persistence finally paid off when one of Lukacs’s people set a meeting with Pulnik in Prague.

“We’re on the move.” That was Bishop, the leader of the Zeta Tactical Team, somewhere within a two-block radius.

Morgan walked thirty feet behind Pulnik. The streets were teeming with tourists from all nations. He could recognize the people from warmer climates because they were bundled up as if they were in the Himalayas in the dead of winter. As he passed a souvenir shop, Morgan caught sight of Spartan. She had a good four inches on him, her close-cropped blond hair hidden by a dark gray beanie. She was looking through postcards from a rack, oriented so she could steal glances at their quarry. He then caught sight of Bishop, walking a distance ahead of Pulnik. Spartan set off a few seconds after Morgan had passed, walking on pace with a group of Germans who seemed to be going out for a stroll rather than oohing and aahing at the sights.

“Looks like he’s moving toward the plaza,” said Spartan. “Good call.”

Morgan walked on the cobblestones, worn smooth over the years. Prague had the old world elegance of Europe, with its picturesque hodgepodge of architectural styles—all of them, unlike the utilitarian bent of American engineering, with an eye for beauty. The condition of the buildings, however, betrayed the country’s Soviet past. They did not have the polish, the fresh paint and recent renovations, found in England or Germany.

Morgan liked Prague, though. The city had character. A gloomy character, sure. Nothing more appropriate for the city of Franz Kafka. But anywhere he went, at least in the old city, he felt yes, I am in Prague.

After a short walk Morgan followed Pulnik into the historic Old Town Square. Now, here was a main attraction. The perimeter of the sprawling square was lined with restaurants with outdoor tables, where tourists braved the cold and sat with hot drinks. Others sat on the ground of the square. One young woman was drawing the Old Town Hall, its gothic spires reaching toward the sky. Most were standing around, listening to guides, reading stuff on their cell phones, taking pictures. A band was setting up, with a standing bass, a clarinet, a banjo, and a washboard. Half a dozen people were already sitting in a semicircle, waiting for them to begin playing. A handful of protesters were there, too, demonstrating on the issue of refugees from the Middle East. The younger and more diverse crowd was for; the older and local, against. They kept a tense peace, but Morgan had a feeling things might break out in violence quickly.

Pulnik was making his way toward the green bronze statue of Jan Hus at the center of the square.

“Fan out,” Morgan said. “I want people on all sides. We need to see Lukacs coming.”

“Moving in, northwest corner.” The voice belonged to Peter Conley, Morgan’s old partner from his days in the CIA. There was no one Morgan would sooner trust with his life.

Morgan walked to the middle of the east side of the square and watched as the others got into position. He surveyed the tourists, who were oblivious to the importance of this moment. The wheels of their world turned, and they were none the wiser. They didn’t know anything about the silent machinery hidden deep in the bowels of their world. All they saw was the surface.

Morgan was here today to stop one of these cogs from turning. Enver Lukacs was the name of this particular cog—a shadowy underworld player with a finger in every pie. His currency was contacts, joining people who were selling black market items and services with those who would buy them. Weapons, drugs, mercenaries, slaves—Lukacs had it all. If the Zeta operatives got him to turn over what he knew, even just a fraction, they could bring down dozens of illegal operations.

Everything depended on their success on that day.

“Hello! American!” It was a slight young man with a local accent. His baby face was draped with scraggly hair, and he had on a dirty red coat over a stained T-shirt.

Shit. This was all Morgan needed. “I don’t have any money.”

The man smiled with mock offense. “No! Come on, American friend! I just want to have a conversation!”

“I don’t have any of that either. Now scram, kid.”

He went off to bother someone else. Morgan looked at Pulnik, standing by the statue with his hands in his pockets, looking around at the crowd for the man he was there to meet.

It was Conley who spoke first. “I have eyes on the target. Approaching from my corner.”

“Keep your distance,” said Bloch. “I want confirmation before we do anything.”

Morgan leaned against a lamppost at looked at the man now crossing the plaza. He looked like a fashion designer, with a svelte silver-fox thing going on and a stylish designer suit.

“Positive ID,” said Morgan. “That’s him. That’s Lukacs.”

“Get in position,” said Bloch. “Diesel, I want you on alert. You need to arrive with the van just as they reach the street with Lukacs while Lily provides a distraction.” That would be young, green-eyed Lily Randall, femme fatale. Morgan caught sight of her coming in from the far side, her auburn hair glistening in the morning sun. “We need to attract as little attention as possible.”

The jazz band broke out into a Dixieland rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The singer’s voice suggested he’d been a heavy smoker since age five. The effect wasn’t exactly beautiful, but hell if it didn’t work.

A semicircle of tourists formed, although most went about their business without a glance at the musicians. Something nagged at the corner of Morgan’s mind before he was fully conscious of what it was.

“Hold positions,” he said. “Lukacs’s got company.”

“Where?” Bishop asked.

“Tall bearded guy over by the church. Short and stocky next to the tour group on the north side. Red hair by the lamppost, near the southwest corner. And another sitting on the far side of the statue.”

“The bastard brought a security detail.”

“Bishop. Conley.” It was Bloch. “Scan the windows for snipers. If he brought this much backup, I get a feeling he won’t be stopping there.”

Morgan looked at the rows of windows that surrounded the plaza. Two churches, two hotels, a museum, and a government building. All old and elegant.

“Got one,” Bishop said. “White building, north side, fourth floor. Third window from the left.”

“That’s bad news,” said Lily.

Morgan watched the band as they launched into a rollicking performance of “Mack the Knife.” “The sniper’s in a hotel,” he said. “Shepard, think you can get me room access?”

Shepard was their resident computer genius. There was hardly any computer system he couldn’t crack. “Already working on it,” came his cocky, insouciant voice.

“Conley—”

“On my way.” Peter Conley moved toward the hotel entrance. After working together so many years, he and Morgan had a nearly psychic connection.

“I don’t like this.” It was Bishop. “The mission is getting riskier by the second. I think we need to call it off.”

“You’re running point on this, Morgan,” said Bloch. “It’s your call.”

Morgan squinted into the cloudless blue sky. Then he looked at Lukacs, who was talking closely with Pulnik.

“Everyone get in position,” Morgan said. “We’re moving in as soon as Lukacs breaks away from Pulnik.”

“What about his security people?” Bishop demanded.

“You fan out with the team. I want one of us on every guard. Bind their hands with disposable cuffs and drop them. Lily, you go ahead with the distraction on my mark. We’re going to need perfect timing on this.”

“And Lukacs?” Bishop asked.

“I’ll take care of Lukacs,” said Morgan. “Extraction van ready?”

“I’ll move out on your mark,” Diesel answered. “Pick you up on the southeast corner.”

Morgan watched as the team moved through the crowd as naturally as any tourists, betraying no sign of their purpose.

“I’m in position at the sniper’s door,” said Conley. “Shepard, how close are you to getting access?”

Shepard scoffed. “I’m in, big guy.”

“Morgan, we’re waiting for your signal,” said Bloch.

“Hold. Not yet.” Morgan kept his eyes on Lukacs and Pulnik, having their conversation. Then Lukacs pulled his companion in close, and Pulnik gasped, eyes wide, grabbing his belly.

Morgan couldn’t see it clearly, but there was no doubt. Lukacs had stabbed him. Blood seeped out as Pulnik bent double. Lukacs eased him to sit against the low ledge around the statue.

“Are you seeing this?” said Spartan.

“This is not right,” said Bishop. “Morgan, call this off.”

“The mission doesn’t change.” Morgan was not going to let Lukacs get away. “He’s moving out. Lily, that’s your cue.”

On the far side of the plaza, Lily drew a megaphone from her pack and turned it on with an earsplitting whine.

“Wake up, sheeple!” she screeched, her voice amplified and flattened by the megaphone. “The Illuminati run your lives!” Lily was really selling the insanity, and people took notice. “The reptilians have invaded the highest level of government!” Tourists moved toward her or rubbernecked to get a look at the crazy lady. “They want us for our blood!”

Now it was their turn to take action. The Zeta team moved in on Lukacs’s security. Lukacs had left Pulnik on the ground and was moving back from the direction he had come from. As he turned, Lukacs’s eyes met Morgan’s, and he held his stare long enough for the message to come across as clear as a tall glass of water.

“God damn it! They know we’re here! Fall back!”

“I told you this was a bad idea,” said Bishop. “Didn’t I goddamn tell you?”

“Too late now,” Morgan said. “Let’s move!”

They’d lost the element of surprise. Morgan heard the sound of Conley kicking the door in as Lukacs’s security drew their guns. Morgan couldn’t spare the attention to see what was going on. He heard gunfire, then screaming, as he ran straight for Lukacs.

Two guards were converging on him, fast, from the left and right. Morgan turned his run evasive, reaching for his Walther.

Lily, having cast off her megaphone, came dashing from the left and tripped one man, sending him reeling to the ground. This gave Morgan the distraction and the opening he needed to fire at the other guard. Three bullets in the chest, and he was down.

He took the man’s gun and tossed it to Lily, who had come weaponless.

“I owe you!” she said, and ran off to help out Spartan, who was struggling to fight off two of Lukacs’s security guards. Then he took off running again toward Lukacs, who was by now at the edge of the square.

Morgan took off at a dead run, pushing as hard as he could. Someone crashed into him, sending his Walther flying, and him almost to the pavement. Morgan spared him a glance before diving for his gun.

It was the young man in the red coat. His smile was gone. He was holding a Beretta M9, and that Beretta M9 was pointed at Morgan’s chest.

“Do not even think about going for the weapon,” he said. “Hands up.”

Morgan’s eyes scanned his surroundings. His team was scattered. None of them could come to his rescue. The man was too close for him to run, but too far for him to attack and survive.

“Any last words?”

Morgan turned his hand and raised his middle finger.

“Eloquent. Now you die.” He aimed the Beretta at Morgan’s heart.

The sound of a gunshot filled Morgan’s ears.

Chapter Two

From the window of her hotel room, Alex Morgan grimaced at the sharp smell of gunpowder. Body still humming from the shot she’d just fired, she watched through the scope of her rifle as the man’s eyes widened in surprise, and he fell to the ground. The blood from his chest wound mingled with the red of his coat and spilled onto the cobblestones.

“Hell of a shot, Alex.” She heard her father through the comm, but she couldn’t see his lips move.

“Thank me later, Dad. Right now, we need to find Lukacs.”

As people drained from the square, Alex scanned the space, looking for their target or his men, but they blended in with the tourists. She’d taken out two of the guards already before Red Coat. Bloch had been worried about putting a sniper rifle in her hands in the field, ordering her to nest in the hotel room overlooking the square, where, Alex suspected, Bloch did not think she’d see any action.

Ales was going to enjoy making the boss eat her words.

“Anyone got eyes on him?” Morgan asked.

A chorus of negatives came over the radio. Alex made one last survey of the square. “I’m no good up here anymore. I’m moving out.”

“You stay where you are,” her father said.

“Make me.” She set her Heckler & Koch MSG90 on the carpet. She wiped her fingerprints, stowed her gun in its holster and her stun gun in one of her pockets. Then she pulled on her coat, drawing up the lapels to hide her face, and ran out of the room and down the hall and downstairs.

She pushed against the flow of people seeking refuge inside, squeezing her way out into the chill air. She couldn’t pick out Lukacs or his men. Every panicked face in the crowd could conceal an enemy.

“I have eyes on Lukacs.” It was Peter Conley. “He’s moving past the astronomical clock as we speak.”

Alex took a left from the hotel and ran toward the square’s old clock. As far as she could tell, her position put her ahead of everyone else. A fantasy flashed before her eyes—Lukacs, in handcuffs, and her, Alex Morgan, bringing him in.

“We have police incoming!” said Shepard. To this prompt, Alex picked out the sirens approaching from the distance.

“This mission is already a shit show!” came Bishop’s deep voice. “We need to call this off.”

“It’s your mission, Morgan,” said Bloch. “The call is yours.”

It didn’t matter what he said. Alex wasn’t about to stop.

“If we don’t get him now, we’ll never catch him,” her father said. “We’re moving forward.”

“I just spotted a secondary security team coming in from the southeast,” said Spartan. “I can keep them busy, but I need some help.”

“On my way,” Lily said. Alex heard gunshots behind her as she ran out of the Old Town Square alongside the historic town hall. Its bell was ringing ten a.m. as she passed. Alex spared a glance at the figurine of death coming out, animated by the mechanism.

Up ahead, she caught sight of Lukacs getting into the backseat of a Mercedes C-Class. She noted the license plate and ran toward him, elbowing past people as the car pulled out, but it was too far away. She’d never make it.

Spotting a man starting his motorcycle, she pulled her Taurus nine-millimeter compact and tugged on his leather jacket.

“I’m going to need the bike,” she said. “Sorry.”

The man raised his hands and backed away, leaving the Honda 250 to topple over the cobblestones. Alex pulled it upright, hopped on, and kick-started it. The bike rumbled between her legs and she took off, beeping the horn to get the frenzied crowd to part.

The little Honda was light and maneuverable, and with Alex’s slim body in the seat, it moved fast.

“Spartan, cover me!” Alex heard gunfire over the comm. She maneuvered around the people until she cleared the crowd enough to gain some momentum, bike jolting on the uneven ground. Lukacs’s car was widening the distance between them.

And now she saw there wasn’t just one, but two cars, same make, model, and color—black. “He’s got a decoy!” she said, straining to see the numbers and letters on the second vehicle’s license plate as she weaved through traffic. “Lukacs is in the front car!”

The right back window of the second car rolled down and a man lifted himself out so that his upper torso was free in the air. His right hand held on to the hood of the car. In his hand was a Glock semiautomatic.

She banked left hard as he fired, shattering a store window behind her, and had to make a tight right to avoid a post on the edge of the sidewalk.

She zigzagged as he tried to aim. He fired off another shot, which ricocheted off a metal lamppost.

The Zeta tactical van merged with the street they were on and hit the second car, which spun out to the left and crashed into the storefront of a butcher shop.

Alex drifted right, just missing the van. She lost speed with the maneuver, but she picked up again once she was clear of the crash.

“Everyone all right back there?” she asked.

“In one piece,” said Diesel. “Keep moving after Lukacs!”

Alex heard the insistent blare of a car horn coming from behind her, getting louder. A maroon Toyota Camry came speeding down the road, weaving through people and traffic to catch up to her.

That would be her father.

“Alex, fall back!”

“You fall back!”

“I outrank you. Do as I say!”

Yeah, right. She pushed harder, and pedestrians leapt out of the way. Traffic was light, and Lukacs managed to move fast even in the narrow streets of Prague. Alex followed suit, the old pastel-colored buildings that lined the street blurring with the speed. Her father kept up behind her.

Police cars turned into the street three hundred yards down. The Mercedes hung a squealing right into a pedestrian-only boardwalk, sending passersby scrambling. Alex made the turn, nearly toppling over as the Honda’s front tire collided with the curb. Recovering, she picked up speed, went through a stone archway under a tower, and then out into the Charles Bridge, which had crossed the Vltava River since the late Middle Ages. Her father was still tailing her. Pedestrians parted like the Red Sea to hug the stone guard walls that protected its edge.

“Out of the way!” he yelled over the communicator.

Her father had his hand out of the car window, his Walther in his hand. Alex banked right, and he fired four times at Lukacs’s car.

One of his bullets hit home. The back left tire burst, left in rags. The car swerved left and right, then plowed straight into the side of the bridge. The heavy stone held firm, crumpling the frame of the Mercedes like it was wrapping paper. Her father brought his Toyota to a screeching halt. Alex drove past Lukacs’s car and stopped on the far side. Her father took cover behind the door of his sedan, Walther in hand. They had their quarry boxed in.

The two front doors opened and a security guard emerged from each one, wearing black suits and ties, Glocks in hand. They opened fire against her father.

Alex was about to move to help him when Lukacs stumbled out of the car on the other side—her side.

She let him come a short distance away from the Mercedes, just so he couldn’t disappear back inside. Then she stood up and drew her Taurus revolver.

“Freeze!”

He looked at her, first in shock, then with amusement.

They kept underestimating her. That’s why she won.

“Hands up!”

The bastard smirked and set off walking in her direction. “I do not think you have what it takes to shoot me.”

“Don’t test me,” she said. But her hands were trembling. He kept walking toward her.

“Stop, or I swear I’ll shoot.”

“Will you now? Your people could have sniped me from a window, but you went through all this trouble to catch me alive. So no, I don’t think you will.”

“Do not shoot him, Alex.” It was Bloch. “He’s no use to us dead.”

Alex glanced at her father. He had taken down one of Lukacs’s men, but was pinned by the other. Alex had a clear shot to the remaining bodyguard, but she didn’t think she could hit home at this distance, and she was even less protected than he was.

“So? What’s it going to be?” said Lukacs. “Are you going to shoot me now?”

Movement in her peripheral vision attracted her attention. The Zeta tactical van was barreling down the bridge, its front bumper in splinters from the crash.

Lukacs was close now, within grabbing distance of her Taurus. “Now give me the gun,” he said, reaching out and grasping it by the barrel.

But Alex was ready. With her left hand, she drew the stun gun out of her jacket pocket and pushed it against his chest, pumping more than fifty thousand volts into his body. Lukacs convulsed and dropped to the cobblestones of the bridge just as the Zeta tactical van came to a skidding halt alongside her and Lukacs. The door slid open before it were fully stopped. Spartan took care of Lukacs’s final security guard with a salvo of bullets from her MP5 while Alex and Bishop hauled Lukacs into the cargo area.

Spartan hopped back inside and they pulled the door shut as Diesel peeled off toward the far end of the bridge.

“Team, report in,” said Bloch. “What’s going on?”

“Bishop here, with Diesel, Spartan, and Morgan, Jr., safe and in possession of package. We’re on our way to switch out this car.”

“Morgan safe.”

“Conley safe.

Silence over the radio ensued as Diesel turned into a cross street, cutting off a surprised driver who leaned into his horn. Lily hadn’t reported.

“Lily, come in,” said Bloch.

But there was no answer. Only silence.

Photo by Kippy Goldfarb, Carolle Photography

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

L EO J. MALONEY is the author of the acclaimed thrillers Termination Orders, Silent Assassin, Black Skies, Twelve Hours, and Arch Enemy. He was born in Massachusetts, where he spent his childhood, and graduated from Northeastern University. He spent over thirty years in black ops, accepting highly secretive missions that would put him in the most dangerous hot spots in the world. Since leaving that career, he has had the opportunity to try his hand at acting in independent films and television commercials. He has ten movies to his credit, both as an actor and behind the camera as a producer, technical advisor, and assistant director. He lives in the Boston area and in Florida.

Visit him at www.leojmaloney.com or on Facebook or Twitter.