She stooped to hug the girl.

She still had her clasped in an embrace as she reached her right hand back into her pocket and took out the rest of the notes that she had brought with her. There were five or six hundred dollars in all, Beatrix couldn’t remember how much exactly. She flicked the tight roll with her index finger and propelled it onto the chair in which she had been sitting. It bumped once, twice, and settled against the cushion. Mysha was still in her embrace and didn’t notice. Beatrix put her hands on the girl’s shoulders and moved her a step backwards.

“If I get your brother, you have to promise me something.”

“Yes?”

“Stay away from the protest. It isn’t safe. Do you promise?”

“Yes,” she said. “I promise.” She looked up at her with hopeful eyes. “When will you be able to find Faik?”

“I’m going to start right away.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Duffy shut the door to his office and opened the encrypted videoconferencing app on his laptop. There was a delay of a few seconds as the connection was made, and then the screen showed the inside of another office, bright sunshine streaming through an open window. He waited for moment, listening to the sound of conversation off-camera, until the man he wanted to speak to sat down at the chair in front of the camera. He was a little plump, with bushy eyebrows that topped eyes that seemed caught in a perpetual glower. His face was lined and worn, and the beard that he wore was shot through with more grey than Duffy could remember. He did not know the man’s real name. None of them did. His designation within Group Fifteen had always been Control, and it had stayed the same despite the fact that he had fled his previous employment in disgrace.

They all had that much in common, at least.

“Yes?” he said curtly. There was something of the public schoolmaster in the way he spoke to his agents. He was supercilious, abrupt and short of patience. Duffy did not like him, but he did respect him. He was an operator of the highest order, a master strategist, and he had connections throughout the world. Colonels and admirals, spies and spymasters, they all answered his calls.

Duffy was not afraid of many people.

Control was different.

He spoke carefully. “We may have a problem.”

“I hope not,” Control said irritably. “We’re coming up to renewal. That nonsense with the protesters hasn’t gone down well with the Iraqis. We cannot afford to have anything else like that.”

“I know,” he said, taking a deep breath. “That is under control, I told you.”

“You said that before.”

“It was then, and it is now. That’s not why we need to speak. It’s something else.”

Worse than that.

“Out with it.”

“It’s Rose.”

Even with the buffering on the call, it was obvious that this had rattled Control. “Why do you say that?”