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He pulls another leaf from a tree as we pass it. His fingers, I notice, are shaking faintly.

“My parents were opposed to Ekaterina and me marrying. I was too young; my father had a military career planned out for me, one that didn’t include a teenage wedding.

We married anyway. My parents threw us out of the house.

The only thing my father gave me were two matching peacock wall hangings.

They’d been handed down through his family—the only thing left of the peacock egg that family legend said had been gifted to Mariya Stenyavina.

” Leon gives a silent huff of laughter. “I’d always loved that story, but my father thought it was hogwash.

He was a very practical man, and ruthlessly loyal to the Russian regime.

He told me that since I was a romantic fool, I could take the myth with me.

He said if I was so intent on chasing fantasies, the hangings and the dream were the only damned inheritance I’d ever see from him. ”

He shakes his head. “Shortly after that—and, I suspected at the time, at my father’s request—I was recruited by the KGB.

I didn’t want it. But back then, it wasn’t something you could say no to.

And besides, by then you were on the way.

” He gives me a brief smile. “I needed to take care of my family. I was posted to Israel, given a cover name. It was only when I got there that I discovered Yakov was part of the team, too. I thought it was a coincidence. It wasn’t, of course.

It was Yakov, not my father, who was behind my recruitment and my posting, but I didn’t know that.

” His face darkens. “I thought Yakov had come to terms with Ekaterina and me. He was like he used to be, the friend I’d always had.

After losing contact with my parents, I was so relieved to have something like family that I never really questioned what had caused him to change.

“We worked together for several years. That was when I met Mak; he was working for the KGB too back then. You and your mother were still in Russia. I’d visit when I could.

” He smiles in reminiscence. “I left one of the peacock hangings on her wall, in our home, and kept the other with me, no matter where I was. We used to joke that one day we’d find the fabled egg and run away together, live like kings.

It was a dream, our private fantasy. Until that day came, we said, we’d keep the peacocks close, so the egg would always know how to find its way home to us.

” He glances at me. “Fanciful. But it was the way we were. We’d jumped off a cliff together, and back then, we were so young and in love that it still felt like anything was possible. ”

He gives me a small smile. “It was when you made the comment about that hanging in my house that I had my first suspicion about who you might be. You said you thought they were common enough—they weren’t. Those hangings were hand painted by a Chinese artist and extremely rare.”

“She never lost that hanging.” I look at him. “She carried it everywhere we ever went. It was the only thing we had that meant home to me. ”

I take a deep breath, afraid emotion will betray me. “That night on the yacht, I was glad you threw that hanging into the ocean. I think... I know she would have had hers the night she died. I guess that now they’re together again.”

Leon swallows, looking away. “I hoped,” he says roughly, “that maybe she was still alive. That’s why I brought it with me.”

I nod. “I know.”

He doesn’t answer, and I don’t expect him to. We walk in silence for a time.

“The world was changing,” he continues eventually, his voice a little uneven.

“The USSR had opened up, and Russia was in chaos. I wanted out, wanted a new life for our family, far away from the corruption that was already taking over. Yakov wanted the same thing, or at least he said he did. We had good contacts in Israel and a lot of opportunities. We planned to defect to Mossad together. I was going to go back and get you and your mother first. I told Yakov that if anything went wrong, if by some chance I was caught, that I wanted him to make sure you and your mother were safe. He swore he would.” He shoots me a grim smile.

“The KGB took me the minute I crossed the border into Russia.”

“He betrayed you,” I say slowly.

“Oh, yes. He did more than just that. He’d been lying to the Russians for months, telling them I was a double agent. It was how he bought his own freedom—and how he managed to smuggle you and Ekaterina out of Russia.”

My head swirls, and I feel faintly sick.

Running in the darkness. Room after room, smuggled across country after country.

“He might have got us out,” I say harshly, “but then he locked us up. And he told us you were dead.”

Leon sucks in his breath, his face white. For all I’ve been avoiding this conversation, I can suddenly understand why he has, too.

“I was in prison.” His voice cracks on the words.

“In Siberia. For a decade. It was Mak who eventually got me out, and still another decade before I was able to negotiate my way out of Russia altogether. By the time I started searching for you, the trail had long gone cold.” He pauses.

“What happened to you both in the years after Yakov took you out of Russia?”

Part of me doesn’t want to tell him. I know it will only bring pain; even remembering it now hurts me inside.

But we’ve come this far.

I take a deep breath.

“The first thing I remember,” I say, “is the peacock hanging on our wall.”

Leon and I talk until dusk falls over Hyde Park, and then we go back to his house and keep talking, this time over a lot of wine. Abby and I are flying back to Spain tomorrow with her parents, and this is the last chance we’ll have, for a while, at least.

“Yakov was still living as Jacob Cohen to the outside world when you knew him,” Leon tells me as the night grows deep.

“But by then, he’d made a small fortune selling intelligence.

” He gives me a rueful smile. “Not unlike I do now, but where I tend to deal with different agencies, Jacob sold highly classified secrets to dangerous, very greedy men. Eventually, he became a liability to several of them, which is when he decided it was time to cash in and disappear.”

His smile fades, and the stark grief that never seems far away steals back into his eyes.

“Your mother’s last letter didn’t say much,” he says quietly.

“She didn’t know if I was alive or dead, or if it would ever reach me, so it was deliberately cryptic.

And I didn’t even receive it until many years after it was written.

She told me the name of the orphanage where she’d left you, and the name of the yacht she was going to find.

Despite the cryptic language, I understood that the yacht belonged to Yakov and that she intended to kill him.

Ekaterina—” His voice stumbles on her name, and he swallows.

“She was always fierce. And she had a lot of reasons to hate Yakov, more than I even understood then, from everything you have told me. I don’t doubt that she would have found a way to end his life.

” The lethal undertone in his voice doesn’t escape me.

“I wonder often, now, if maybe she wasn’t telling me the truth when we were younger, about what he did to her before she ran to me in the night. ”

“She hated him.” I say it bluntly. “We both did. But she never let him get to her, no matter how hard he hit or what he did to her. She always told me never to run from hardship or hide from pain.”

Leon winces. “I wonder sometimes if that’s what caused all of this,” he says sadly. “Running. Perhaps your mother was right. Maybe if we’d stayed, talked it through with Yakov back in the beginning, none of it would have happened.”

I shake my head slowly. “Yakov was a sadistic bastard, Leon. He was when I met him, and from what you’re saying, he was long before that.

And now he’s dead.” My mouth tightens as I stare into the fire, seeing Yakov’s face dissolve under our bullets.

“I don’t regret killing him,” I say softly. “I just wish I’d done it sooner.”

I glance at Leon, and he nods.

“Has there ever been anyone else for you?” I ask. “My mother... It was a long time ago.”

“No.” His answer is short, his mouth hard.

“No, I don’t think there ever will be.” He looks at me, and though he tries to smile, it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“There are some people who love lightly,” he says quietly.

“Then there is... what your mother and I had.” He shakes his head.

“You can’t replace that kind of love. And I’ve never wanted to. ”

He rubs a hand over his face. “I always thought I’d know if she was dead.

” He says it into the fire, as if he’s talking to himself, rather than me.

“All this time, I always thought I’d find her again.

That she had to be alive somewhere.” He looks down into his glass. “I guess I was wrong,” he says softly.

We drink for a time in silence.

“One thing I keep forgetting to ask you,” I say, frowning.

Leon raises his eyebrows.

“Did you know Juan Cardenas before all of this?”

He grins. “Juan and I crossed paths long ago, in the art world. Then later, when he came to Thailand, looking for the daughter of his friend, I suspected we were on the same trail. Zinaida got word from a contact that he might be in danger, and I got word to Juan just in time for him to avoid being blown up. That made us firm allies. Several more months of hunting Jacey together made us friends.”

“No wonder you were so fucking keen when I called for help,” I say, giving him a dry look.

Leon inclines his head. “True. But by then, I had more than one reason to be interested in you, too. So there’s that.” His smile fades as fast as it arrived. “The girl that went missing was Juan’s goddaughter, did you know that?”

I shake my head. “No wonder he wanted Yakov.”

“He hated him.” Leon drinks. “And now the bastard is dead.”

I lift my own glass. “And now the bastard is dead,” I echo.

We drink, and I feel nothing but relief that it’s over.

It’s the early hours of the morning when I finally put my head down for some sleep, but I don’t feel tired.

I know my mother a little better now than I did .

And while I’m never going to forgive Yakov for what he did to us, at least now I understand why. It won’t ever change the hellish torture he put me through. But it helps, in some strange way, to know it wasn’t my fault.

The future stretches in front of me.

A future I don’t plan to run from, ever again.