“Hi, Zoya.”

The younger woman sat down across the small table. “You’re late, Suzanne. Of course I can’t say how late, because I haven’t been trusted with access to a clock, but it’s dark outside. Usually you are here earlier.”

“You have a date?”

Zoya reached for her tea. “Maybe.”

Brewer replied, “I’d have to sign you out for that, and I haven’t seen any paperwork.” When Zoya did not respond she added, “Traffic was shit. Even more so than usual. Shall we begin?”

The brunette nodded, then looked out the window at the rain in the swaying trees.

Brewer turned on a small digital recorder lying on the table. “Tonight will be interview number ninety-four. Should just take a couple of hours, and then you can go back to your room.”

“My cell, you mean?”

Brewer sighed a little. “The basement was designed as a holding center, true, but there are no bars. We lock you down at night, for your own safety, but during the day you have the run of the house.”

“With security watching my every move.”

“Ah, glad you mentioned the security. I’m told you’ve been surly with the guards.”

“Not all of them. Just the ones who won’t stop making passes at me.”

Suzanne frowned at this. “Well, that’s unprofessional of them. Who are they? I’ll have them removed.”

Zoya waved a hand in front of her. “Not necessary. They’re harmless.”

“If they’re on my security staff I don’t want them to be harmless. I also don’t want them hitting on the guests.”

Zoya sniffed. “Guests.”

“Listen, we’ve been through this. This isn’t a prison. It’s a safe house. The guards are here to keep you safe. You are an asset in the making, and we’re protecting our investment.”

Zoya gazed out the window.

Brewer added, “Look. I wasn’t going to tell you tonight, but since you’re obviously in a mood, I will. I have some good news. You’ve been assigned an operational code name.”

“How many guesses do I get?”

Brewer was confused. “I don’t know what you—”

Still looking past Brewer to the rain, she said, “Anthem. My code name with CIA is Anthem.”

Brewer blinked hard, and then her shoulders sagged. “Which one of these bozos around here let that slip?”

“I hear things. That’s all.”

The older woman closed her eyes in frustration now. “Idiots.” Opening them again, she asked, “What else have you heard them say?”

“The short version is you and I have about the same approval numbers with the security boys here”—Zoya smiled a little—“and I come from an enemy service.”

Brewer didn’t seem to give a damn that she wasn’t well liked by the detail at this safe house. Instead she said, “Again, Anthem, no one thinks of you as enemy. You came in willingly, you’ve endured months of debriefs, psych evals, testing, polygraphs. We’re weeks away from cutting you loose so you can serve as a detached agent of our service.”

Zoya nodded slowly, still looking out the window at the rain falling in the woods behind the house. “I have been well flipped.”

The comment hung in the air a long time, until Brewer said, “I thought you’d like to know. I finally heard from Violator. He’s fine.”

Zoya stared back at her now. “You mean Court.”

“Correct.”

The Russian woman cocked her head a little. “Have I asked you anything about him in the months I’ve been here?”

“No . . . but I am aware of the feelings you two had for one another. Beneath your hard exterior I’m sure those feelings remain. I just wanted to tell you he checked in safe today.”

Zoya nodded distractedly, then looked down to the folder on the table. “What do you have there?”

Brewer pulled out a sheaf of papers, facedown, and Zoya’s dispassionate demeanor broke a moment as she looked at it in silence.

“You’ve been asking me to show you the file regarding the death of your father. I was hesitant . . . We have no questions or suspicions about the matter, so there’s nothing we need from you. On top of this . . . the photographs and details in the file could be quite . . . upsetting, especially to the child of the victim.”

“I am not a normal child of a victim, am I? I spent ten years in Russia’s foreign security services myself, and my father was—”

“Your father,” Suzanne Brewer interrupted, “was General Feodor Zakharov, the head of Russian military intelligence. Yes . . . you are an exceptional case, to say the least.”

Brewer paused for a sip of tea, and Zoya took the opportunity to glance down again at the stack of papers.

The American woman lowered her thermos and said, “Here’s what we’ve established from our debriefs. You were away in college in California when you learned he’d been killed in a mortar attack in Dagestan along with several other GRU men. After graduating UCLA you returned to Russia, following your late father into the intelligence services, but with SVR, not GRU.”

After Zoya nodded, Brewer added, “Your father would have been proud of you.”

The Russian woman did not return the smile. “Not for defecting. He was a true believer in the motherland. I’m a true believer in myself. Not the same.”

Brewer kept looking at the Russian national for several more seconds, then tapped the file with the tip of her pen. “Again, this . . . information, these pictures. They will be disturbing to you.”

“I can handle it. May I see them, please?” There was a small hint of emotion in Zoya’s voice now, even though she tried to hide it.

After another moment’s pause, Suzanne Brewer turned over the papers and spun them around on the table.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

* * *

• • •

It was one thirty a.m. in the tony London neighborhood of Notting Hill when a sixty-two-year-old man with a thick dark beard and mustache lifted his head slowly and looked at his nightstand. He blinked out the fog, scanned the row of five mobile phones lying there in a charging cradle, and snatched up the one whose buzzing had woken him from a deep sleep.

He rolled onto his back again and rubbed his eyes as he answered in a heavy British accent.

“Who’s calling, please?”