Corbu gazes out the car windshield down at the city a moment, and then she finally nods. “I help you. I know about the sex trafficking business. I know how the industry operates, how the money is moved. It is my job. I can help with the interrogation.”

“All right, then, let’s do this together,” I say, and I wonder suddenly if she is going to have the stomach for what will happen next.

ELEVEN

   Kostas Kostopoulos looked out over the Adriatic Sea as the first hues of dawn cast flickers on the gently breaking waves. He’d only been up a few minutes, hadn’t yet bothered his cook to bring him his first coffee of the morning. He was awake now, earlier than usual, because he was waiting to hear news from Mostar.

He’d spent the previous day on the phone arranging the hit on the chief of police and having the area searched for the Gray Man. The seventy-two-year-old Greek did not like dissatisfying his superiors with bad news that came out of events taking place in his territory.

Kostopoulos knew his place; he was king of the Consortium here in the Balkans, but he wasn’t one of the Consortium’s top leadership, and just as he’d sent Hungarians to take out the police captain, the Consortium could always send assets from all around the globe to come after him if they chose to do so.

Not that he expected them to. No, Kostopoulos was certain that once Vukovic was dead, the way station was completely sanitized, and a new way station, already under development in Banja Luka, opened for business, the matter would be forgotten.

But first things first. He needed to know that the three Hungarians had completed their mission, and so far, he’d heard nothing.

Just then, the phone rang on the tiled table in front of him. Looking at it, he saw it was his contact with the Pitovci mafia, the Slovakian organization that provided the Hungarian assassins.

Kostopoulos answered. “It’s done?”

The man said, “I just got a call from them. The team failed. All three men were injured and they are fleeing right now.”

The Greek shouted into the phone, all pretense of control lost. “Imbeciles!”

“They claim they were attacked by someone unrelated to Vukovic. He was an American. Alone.”

Just like at the way station, Kostopoulos thought.

The Slovakian added, “They say the man had incredible skill.”

Just like at the way station.

Slowly a panic began welling inside him, and he lashed out at the man on the other end of the phone. “Of course they would say that if he beat their asses, wouldn’t they?” He sat there for a moment, took control of his anger, and suppressed his new fear about the fallout from above from all this. Finally, he asked, “What happened?”

“I only know what I told you. We are already sending another team. Eight men. They’ll be in Mostar late tonight. They’ll take out Vukovic at the first opportunity, and they know to keep an eye out for this American.”

Kostopoulos hung up and thought about the assassin. Belgrade assumed he’d come to kill Babic, but Babic was dead, and now the man was still there in the area, targeting the men who were there to kill Vukovic. What on earth for?

The Greek sex trafficker looked out over the Adriatic again and found it suddenly less beautiful. More ominous. A vessel would arrive here in Hvar the day after tomorrow. He would board and then they would head down the coast, where they would pick up the merchandise. Then he, along with the merchandise, would continue to the next stop in the pipeline, where most of the items would be sold off to other groups.

Everything was still functioning in the system, but Kostopoulos couldn’t shake the worry that this American, whoever the fuck he was, would show up again.

He reached for his phone and dialed the number for his contact with the Consortium. It was a call he didn’t want to make, but it was also a call he knew better than to avoid. “Jaco? It’s Kostas. I’m afraid we’ve more bad news.”

* * *

• • •

It was six a.m. when Talyssa Corbu sat down at the little table in the apartment and lifted the dzezva, a small copper pitcher. She poured thick Bosnian coffee into a chipped ceramic vessel the size of an espresso cup. She would have liked some cream and sugar with it, but she’d only found the coffee setup and an old bag of ground roasted beans in a cabinet, along with three cups and a pair of spoons.

She was glad to find these, actually, as the nearly barren cupboards in the tiny flat didn’t offer up many more options.

As she poured from the dzezva she noticed that her hands were trembling, and she thought it to be less the immediate fear and more the intense anxiety she had been feeling every waking moment for the past week and a half.

Her quest for answers about what happened to her sister was taking a toll on her body; this much was clear to her. And last night, with the plan to confront an evil man, then her subsequent abduction, and then the gun in her face . . . these events hadn’t helped her get over her anxiety, either.

She placed a second small cup on the table, and she looked back over her shoulder to see if she should fill it now with coffee or wait on the American to wake first. She saw him there in the darkness, lying curled up in a closet hardly designed to accommodate a full-sized man.

What a strange individual.

If she knew who he was it would help her trust him, but if she simply knew what he wanted, what his aim was in all this, then she would at least breathe a little easier. Talyssa had not known many good men in her life, and certainly none that were simultaneously as dangerous as this one.

No . . . nothing in her brain lined up right now. She looked at Harry again, watching him sleep. He’d been up most of the night while she rested, and then a couple hours earlier when she woke he told her he’d grab some rest. He’d taken her weapon with him into the closet, along with her phone; he’d left the door open so he could see her, and she had no doubt he was an incredibly light sleeper.

It was odd to her, as scared as she was and as unsure about this man as she felt, that she had no desire to run. She’d been in over her head coming here to Bosnia in the first place, and she also knew in the back of her mind that it was simply a matter of time before one of the evil men involved with Roxana’s abduction would spot her, and then it would be all over for her, too.

She was scared of this Harry, and she certainly didn’t trust him.

But she knew she needed him. He could go places she could not, and he most definitely could do things she could not.

Talyssa wasn’t above using a bad man to help her navigate her way through bad men.

She’d do anything to resolve this situation. Which is why the evening before she had told the American a series of lies about what had happened.