She glared. Now he was just being obstinate. The Czech Republic, with its long ties to Moscow, played host to a larger Russian diplomatic mission than any other country in Central Europe, most of it in the capital. Prague was a hotbed of spies and covert operations and about the closest thing they could get to a lion’s den in the West. Whatever they found there wasn’t going to be Dmitry.

Jack reached for the phone, a sealed model that didn’t allow for battery removal. He said, “It’s the only way to find out if he’s alive or even real.”

His thumb caressed the power switch.

She fought the urge to snatch the thing out of his hands.

He pulled a paper clip from his pocket, sprung the SIM free, and held the card between finger and thumb, as if pondering its possibilities.

“You’ve been here before,” she said. “You know exactly how this game is played, and yet you’re letting them rope you in anyway.”

“I refuse to spend the rest of my life repeating Clare’s mistakes,” he said. “I can’t have this hanging over my head like some zombie issue that refuses to die, the way it refused to die for her.”

Jill leaned up on the table and into his line of sight.

He didn’t respond, so she reached for the SIM to take it.

He snatched his hand away, and focusing on the phone, the papers, he said, “You visited the safe house.”

She didn’t really want to have that conversation, but now wasn’t the time to evade or lie. She said, “Yes.”

“How much was left?”

“Pretty much everything.”

“How much did you take?”

“Half the cash. Some costuming. A few weapons.”

He said, “I could use some of the cash.”

She waited.

“Maybe a quarter of what you’ve got.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll trade you cash for that SIM.”

He held up the card, angled it against the sun. “Can’t afford that,” he said. “Too much risk of you losing or misplacing it.”

The words were so much like Clare’s, always assuming the worst, and with so little respect for what she was capable of.

“I’m not going to lose or misplace it,” she said.

“Can’t afford to have you use it against me, either.”

She bit her tongue, drew blood, forced her hands to relax. “The fuck makes you think I’m going to use it against you?”

He raised an eyebrow.

She sighed. “Look, I wasn’t deliberately late for that flight, okay?”

“Then where were you?”

She didn’t want to have this conversation, either, but she was all in now. “On the other side of the terminal,” she said, “trying to see if I could find any more of our Russian friends, and just like I told you on the plane, I fucking lost track of time.”

“And?”