He rolled the small carry-on into the terminal, toiletries and clothing he hadn’t asked for but that the Russians had insisted he take because empty-handed globe-trotting drew attention. He checked his watch and set a five-hour countdown.

That was about how long he figured, give or take, before the Russians who’d been so eager to make friends, provide flawless credentials, and shell out heavy cash to get him into the country, started leaking those same details through the same communications channels they’d used to leak his travel itinerary out of Dallas and put the kill team on his trail.

Life, it seemed, was destined to run on constant replay.

It hadn’t been Clare’s doing, but it was still another damn test.

The Russians had already known what Jill was capable of from her work for the Broker but they’d had no reference point for him. By their reasoning, if he wasn’t skilled enough to outsmart a kill team following him into Europe, he wasn’t smart enough to play decoy for her within the United States.

That’s what he’d been from the moment he checked in solo on that Dallas flight, a political assassin leaked to Washington by supposed Kremlin defectors, an offering borne out of a temporary ideological alliance for the sake of greater global good. And while the US government pursued him, Jill, always the deadlier one, would continue on undetected.

She’d make a kill of her own, and the world would recoil.

The media machine, in a race to be first to report, would rush unverified details into the tinderbox, and the troll farms would feed the partisan frenzy, and the country would devour itself from the inside. Such was the treachery of spies.

Jack exited the building.

A black Yukon waited at the curb, placard with his name on it in the window, a Russian-arranged private car to get him to Detroit, where he’d catch a Russian-booked commercial flight to DC and check into a Russian-booked hotel.

As if he’d be fool enough to put his life in their hands.

As if they were fool enough to believe that he would.

Mental games upon mental games, so easy to get lost among them.

The driver was African American, male, late fifties, shaved head, barrel chest, starched shirt, sharp tie, and shoes mirrored to a high-polish shine. Not the look or feel of an undercover Russian operative, but assumptions were what got a person killed.

He opened the rear door, stashed Jack’s suitcase in the trunk, slid in behind the wheel, and lifted a large manila envelope off the passenger seat. “Delivered by courier about ten minutes ago,” he said. He handed it back.

The envelope was blank.

No name, no address, not that there’d ever be a question as to who’d sent it.

The Yukon pulled away from the curb.