“I’m sorry. What the hell are you talking about?”

“It turns out Cage’s Romanian prize Maja, seated two rows behind us, has herself a sister.”

“And?”

“She’s the fooking Europol analyst who went to the police in Dubrovnik two days ago.”

Riesling sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she said, “Why is it you are just now finding out about this? The recruiters and groomers are supposed to look into the items before they are collected.”

“Half sisters. Different last names. Our Romanian recruiter missed it. The way Cage demanded the bitch be slotted into the next shipment meant they were pressed for time.” He added, “Our whore is named Roxana Vaduva and the Europol bitch is named Talyssa Corbu.”

Riesling said, “And this Corbu, she’s working with the assassin that’s been chasing us?”

“Unquestionably.”

“But Maja can’t possibly know what her sister is doing. She’s been strip-searched multiple times; she doesn’t have a way to communicate.”

“She could know what her sister is doing if she talked to Gentry while on board La Primarosa.”

Riesling blinked hard at this allegation. “What, and then he just beat her up?”

“Was the only way we wouldn’t suspect her, wasn’t it?”

“But . . . why didn’t he take her with him?”

Verdoorn looked out the window. “Either he couldn’t pull that off, or she didn’t want to go because she’s on the job, working for her sister. I don’t know which, but either way, she’s bloody dangerous.”

Riesling looked over her shoulder at Cage, who was openly eyeing Maja right now with a look like a fox staring into a henhouse. She said to Verdoorn, “Why are you telling me? Aren’t you going to tell the Director?”

Verdoorn shook his head. “It won’t change anything. He wants this one back at the Ranch, more than I’ve ever seen him want any of the merchandise in the years I’ve worked for him. Telling him she poses a threat to him will only create more trouble for us. Not for him. Not for her. For us.”

Riesling said, “I don’t really understand your reasoning.”

“He’ll be pissed we didn’t figure out the relationship, he’ll be more pissed than he already is that we didn’t bag Gentry in Venice or Croatia or Bosnia, and he won’t dispose of her until he’s done what he wants with her.”

“So . . . what do we do?”

“I prefer to see this new development as an opportunity.”

“To do what?”

Verdoorn pointed to his tablet computer. On it was the LinkedIn profile of Talyssa Corbu, including contact information and a photo of a waifishly thin smiling blonde in business attire. “For me to make contact with my enemy.”

Verdoorn grinned, and Riesling saw it as an especially sinister expression on the man’s normally cruel and hard face.

* * *

• • •

I’ve caught a couple hours’ sleep on the CIA Falcon 50 as we cross the Atlantic, but I wake when my phone begins buzzing in my hand. I look around quickly; it’s daylight, and a quick check of the monitor at the front bulkhead tells me we’re forty minutes away from landing at Andrews in D.C.

I rub my eyes and snatch up my phone.

“Talyssa? You okay?”

Her voice is unsure. “I’m okay. I’m at the airport. I’ll be in Los Angeles in twelve hours.”

“I don’t want you flying to the—”

“Harry. Listen. Someone called me.”

This sounds bad. “Who?”

“He didn’t say . . . He wants to talk to someone called Gentry. Is that your last name, Harry?”

And now it sounds worse. I close my eyes and lean my head back. “Let me guess. He’s South African.”

“I believe that he is. I can transfer him from my phone to yours.”

“All right. Do it.”

I look around the cabin and see that Sharon is up and moving around, but everyone else is still racked out. Men and women in this line of work become experts at grabbing rest whenever and wherever they can. Hightower’s head is hanging back off the side of the couch and he’s snoring a snore I spent years listening to almost every night when I served under him in the Goon Squad.

I hear a few clicks over the satellite connection, and then a low, gravelly voice starts up in my ear.

“Well hello there, mate.”

“Hello, Jaco.” It was an educated guess, but the hesitation on the other end tips me off that I hit the nail on the head.

Finally he says, “Impressive. Bladdy impressive. Should have known you’d be doin’ your due diligence. Just like I am.”

“What do you want?”

“Two things. One, I wanted to introduce myself, but now I see introductions are unnecessary. And two, I’m just calling to let you know that we’ve figured out who your informant is.”

“My . . . informant?” I say, but the instant Talyssa told me Jaco was on the phone, I knew that he knew about Roxana.

“Yes, your informant. The lovely sister of your associate.”

I don’t speak. I knew it was always possible they could connect these dots, but I hoped they wouldn’t. I don’t know what this means for Roxana now, but it can’t be good.

“Don’t you worry,” Jaco says. “We haven’t touched a hair on her head. Yet.”

I try to help her situation in the only way I can think of. “I didn’t know who she was when I punched her lights out on the boat. Thought she was just some whore. Corbu showed me a picture of her after. We thought she was dead. Corbu’s still pissed off I left her there.”

“You’re trying too hard, mate. I know you and Roxana talked after you killed Kostopoulos.”

“Kostopoulos? Oh, yeah. I only knew him as ‘the old pervert in the bathrobe.’ But no, I didn’t talk to her.”

Verdoorn sniffs out a laugh. I wait to hear whatever his pitch is.

He says, “You’re good, mate. You know you are good.”

“And you’re bad. You know that, too, right?”

“Guilty as charged. But me and my boys will be around Roxana from here on out, and we can’t wait for you to come and try again.”

I find this intriguing. “So . . . you aren’t warning me to back off, you’re hoping I’ll keep coming.”