“Might have done.” The fellow held out a hand. “Barclay Pearce. That was clever, using that passel of girls as a cover. But where’d you go in the alley? I didn’t see anywhere to hide, but you couldn’t have reached the end before I got there.”

Later, he would probably find it odd that his tail wanted to have a conversation on his failed pursuit. At the moment, that was the least shocking of the events that had transpired in the last twenty-four hours. “I could, actually. Sprinting is not my preferred pace, but I practice it to increase my endurance for long distances.”

“Runner. That’s right. Well.” Pearce motioned him onward, toward the OB. “Hall’s going to be livid with me, but at least I have a good excuse.” He nodded toward where the other man had gone. “I trust you noticed that bloke too, then.”

“In seconds.”

“Quite sloppy. Definitely not one of ours. Tell you what—you go and let Hall know you caught on to me, and I’ll pick up his trail and see who else had the same idea. Deal?”

As if it were his call? But given the choice, that was exactly what Zivon would have recommended. “Deal.”

A few minutes later, he was past the guards and jogging up the stairs toward his floor. Given the time, he ought to hurry to his desk and get to work.

Given the circumstances, he hurried instead to Hall’s office. The door was closed, but voices came from within, so the admiral hadn’t taken the morning off, despite the late night. Zivon settled in a chair outside the room to wait.

He could see the threads unraveling. But until he knew what had tugged at them, he couldn’t plan how to stop it. Not when another tug could simply loosen another thread while he was at work on the first. He must discover the source, the root.

After a minute, he opened his briefcase, pulled out Evgeni’s passport. His brother was gone. He must accept that. Were he alive, even if injured, he would have found a way to get in touch by now. Silence in this case must mean the worst. Evgeni was gone, and someone was still at work against him. He was alone. Utterly alone.

His fingers traced the familiar contours of the passport, opened it even though Evgeni’s face was no longer there to stare back at him. If Hall dismissed him, would he at least return that? It was the only image he had of him.

He hadn’t bothered flipping through the rest of the pages before. There were no stamps to remind him of places they’d gone together, not in this one. Other than taking out the too-large photo of the German officers, he’d not examined the pages too closely.