He did and Roberta’s voice filled the room. “We intercepted a call an hour ago between Otto Becker and the guy who runs the prison in Siberia, a guy called Werner Kraus.” She played a recording and two German voices filled the room. One was quick and brutally clinical: Becker, I decided. The other was nervous: I could almost hear him sweating. Kraus.

Roberta spoke over the voices, translating for us. “Kraus is saying that the German authorities are coming to inspect the prison in three days. So I need to clear out those personal effects I’m looking after. Becker asks him to delay, Kraus says he can’t. Kraus says Arrive by nine and you can have one last listen to your records, then we’ll have to throw them in the trash.”

“They’re talking about JD,” said Kian. “They can’t have the authorities ask why an American’s being held there. So Becker’s going to go there and interrogate JD one last time and then they’re going to kill him and get rid of the body before the prison inspectors arrive.” He turned to me. “We only have three days to get him out of there.”

* * *

Three hours later, I was sitting at the big table in the briefing room, wired from too much coffee but glad that I hadn’t drunk the night before. Kian had left to go and chase up some lead while the rest of us planned. “Okay, let’s go over it,” I said. “Remember, we’ve got to do this without killing anyone: it’s German soldiers guarding this place, they’re not our enemies. Plus, if we kill one, the whole of Europe is going to be hunting us as terrorists and we’ll never get home.”

“We fly commercial to Latvia,” said Gabriel. “The CIA won’t help us officially but Roberta’s letting us use one of their safehouses to prep. I’ll use my contacts to get us guns and uniforms.”

“We rent a chopper and I fly us over the border into Russia and all the way to the prison,” said Gina.

“We’ll use tranquilizer darts on the guards,” said Colton. “They’ll be out for an hour.”

“We find JD’s cell and I pick the lock,” said Gabriel.

“We put a virus the Sisters are sending in the prison’s computer and it wipes the cameras,” said Bradan.

It sounded like we had a plan. But then Kian marched in. “We have a problem,” he said, and threw something on the table. We all stared: it was a thick metal ring with a box attached to the side.

“It’s an ankle bracelet,” Kian told us bitterly. “The prisoners all wear one. If JD leaves his cell with that on, the alarms go off.”

“So we’ll get the Sisters to hack it,” said Gabriel. “They can hack anything.”