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Special Agent Stephanie Trombley’s hair had gone gray since Paul last saw her in New York City five years ago, with Special Agent Addison, just before the massacre at the FBI office. Her hair was longer than it had been last time. Her face had aged more than you’d expect. But she had been through a harrowing time, seeing her colleague and friend, Mark Addison, murdered along with the others at the satellite FBI office on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The stress alone must have aged her more than five years.

They met at a Chipotle on Tenth Street, in D.C., across from the FBI headquarters. She came alone, as she promised she would.

She had wanted Paul to meet her in her office inside the FBI building, but he had refused. Too risky. Now she stared at him as she entered the restaurant. When she sat down at his table, she said, “So you are alive.”

“For now, anyway.”

“I wondered. The best law enforcement agents in the country couldn’t find you. What happened?”

“Some bad luck.”

“Explain.”

For a moment, he hesitated. How much could he tell her about how he’d killed an assassin, a man who’d come to kill him?

“I was spotted in a small town in New Hampshire,” he said.

“How?” She tucked her hair behind her ears.

“I think a traffic camera captured my face.”

She nodded. “So, that’s how Dempsey and Berzin found you. And sent one of their killers after you. But you—”

“A little good luck. Killed him first.” He explained about the speargun. “I wondered at first if it was Galkin who was after me. For running out on his daughter. But I guess his investment firm is shuttered.” Paul had googled “Galkin” and read that he, like all the other Russian oligarchs, had been sanctioned after the Ukraine invasion. His yacht, his real estate around the world, his assets—everything confiscated. His firm dissolved. But after a few articles about Galkin’s sanctioning, there was nothing further about him at all. Where he lived now, several years after the invasion; where he’d gone in the past year—a complete mystery.

“He’s no longer a rich man. No longer in the position to offer a bounty on your head. Not that he would have. But you’re still on the run.”

“Right. And I need your help.”

“I don’t know what I can do for you, but go ahead and tell me what’s on your mind.”

“Who was after me in New Hampshire? I saw Berzin. Then I saw an FBI team.”

“Well, it’s complicated. Since the massacre of the FBI agents, Dempsey’s unit was shut down, and an internal probe was launched inside CIA. Geraldine Dempsey and her team have methodically erased records of the operation, knowing that if the truth about the massacre came out, she’d be toast. There was just one dangling thread to be snipped off—and that was you. And when Berzin learned you were in New Hampshire—”

“But Berzin . . .”

“Berzin has been a longtime employee and asset controlled by Dempsey at CIA.”

“Berzin! So he was working for Dempsey the whole time—not for Galkin?”

She nodded.

“Explain.”

She did.

The pieces were coming together now. He listened impassively, not showing his surprise. Finally, he said, “She cooked up these intelligence charges against me. They’re bogus. I want you to get your colleagues to drop the charges against me.”

“That’s not so easy. It’s in fact incredibly complicated.”

“Aren’t you a supervisory special agent?”

“One of hundreds.”

“I know you can do it. Did you guys ever figure out who this Natasha Obolensky is?”

Trombley smiled. “A closely held secret. Took us forever to crack it.”

“But you did?”

“She doesn’t exist. The CIA created her out of whole cloth, out of rumors and gossamer, and they used her to funnel billions into Galkin’s fund when it was just starting. To the rest of the intelligence community, it looked like Natasha Obolensky was a wealthy, reclusive Russian living abroad, in Ireland. It looked like Kremlin money. But it was the CIA’s.”

“And all that insider trading at Galkin’s firm?”

“All of it was based on top-secret defense-related government intelligence that Dempsey passed to Galkin. A major no-no.”

Then Paul explained to her what he wanted to do.

Trombley looked around the shop, made sure no one was within earshot. “What you want to do is impossible.”

“Impossible?”

“ Nearly impossible.”

“It will make your career.”

“Undoubtedly. But do you think I can just snap my fingers, and—”

“I don’t doubt it’s complicated, that it’ll require someone who’s really good at working the law enforcement system. That’s why I’m talking to you.”

“I know damned well why you’re talking to me. Because of what happened to Mark Addison.”

Paul raised his eyebrows, then pulled a rueful smile. “Because I knew you’d care. And because you’re the only FBI agent I know. There’s that, too.”

Trombley just looked at him, but in her eyes, he could see a world of hurt.

“Wait. If Dempsey’s unit was shut down,” he said, “how could she be sending people after me?”

She hesitated a long while. “That’s a mystery, I’ll admit. I’m in touch with the CIA’s counterespionage unit—the mole hunters—which is a small, tightly compartmented group. We have an FBI officer embedded in that unit. We’re taking the lead, but we have to coordinate with them. And they say we’re going to need to get Dempsey on tape. And good luck with that. She’s as smart as they come. Russian studies major at Swarthmore, PhD from Georgetown. Knows more than anyone—or so she believes. How do we get her to incriminate herself? Because until we do, we’ve got nothing. FBI won’t do a thing.”

“The Phantom memory stick isn’t enough?”

“No. They need her on tape admitting responsibility for the FBI massacre.”

A long pause, then Paul said, “I think I have a way.”

“I’m all ears,” said Stephanie Trombley.