“They’ve had a long-game strategy in play and an assassination about to go down, but every intelligence agency is now out for blood, and their go is now no-go. They’re looking for a way to salvage it. Enter Clare’s kids, whom they know how to find—thank you, Dmitry—and whom they feel they have dibs on because of Clare’s past. Not only are these kids American, but they’ve also been trained by one of the best, and Moscow knows this—thank you, renegade sister working favors for the Broker.

“The invitation has been sent. The kids are already on their way to meet a father they’ve never met. So, whoever’s managing the now no-go operation inserts into Dmitry’s business. Dmitry’s not untouchable. He doesn’t have the power to complain, not if he doesn’t want to get dead, too, so the scenario shifts. The guy who metaphorically stood in the midst of a battle and raised a white flag to force a cease-fire so the kids he’s been looking for since birth didn’t die before he had a chance to meet them, has the whole thing yanked out of his hands by overlords who’ve gotten other ideas. What’s someone in a position like that do?”

“I don’t know about him,” Jill said, “but I know Clare would have counted on us being smart enough to figure out what was happening and probably would have found a way to follow close, ready to interfere if things got out of hand.”

“Ergo, Dmitry in Frankfurt,” he said. “But then the Americans showed up, and that complicated things beyond his ability to meddle. I can’t prove it, but I think the Russians waiting at the Berlin airport were his guys, too. That’s as far as he gets.”

“What about Clare?”

“She’s got more vested in finding Dmitry than we ever did. If I had to put money on it, I’d say she’s in Moscow, and the reason we haven’t heard from her is that, well, she’s in Moscow.”

The siblings glanced at each other. A pall fell over the table, and in that break of silence, the server arrived with drinks and appetizers, and Jill’s assessment of Jack filled Holden’s head.

John wants this thing with Dmitry more than he’s ever wanted anything.

He understood now why Jack had gone to the effort of bringing them all together face-to-face. Dmitry, the question the twins had set out to Europe to answer, had become Dmitry the sword hanging over their heads.

Holden said, “Who’s your target, John?”

“Senator Kenyon, but it doesn’t really matter. Moscow sacrificed me as a decoy within hours of touching down. Who they really want dead is”—he looked at Jill—“who exactly?”

“Speaker of the House.”