I hear the echo of Fox’s words in my head. If I fail and you fail, I sure as the devil don’t want you to die for it.

But I’m sitting in a carful of precious children. I can’t take that chance.

Outside the window, a light jogs toward us.

“Thank God,” I whisper.

Fox comes right up to the rear door, where I’m sitting, and opens it. “Come out,” he says.

But there’s something funny about his voice, and when I look up, I realize this man isn’t Fox at all. He holds a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other, which he points at my head.

Sasha

JULY 1952

Near Riga, Latvia

He recognizes the woman across the table, though he can’t remember where or how. Some debriefing, perhaps, when they first arrived in the Soviet Union? Or later—some lecture or training session? Or both. She’s extremely attractive in an unremarkable way, like a woman in a magazine advertisement, each feature flawless and bland. She’s not wearing cosmetics, not even lipstick, and her dark hair sits in a tidy knot at the nape of her neck. Not the tiniest emotion manifests itself on her face—maybe that’s why it’s so forgettable. An asset in her line of work, he reminds himself, and a skill he was never able to master. He always had to get by on his other strengths.

“Mr. Dubinin,” she says in English. “Or should I say Digby? Welcome.”

“Welcome to what? What the devil’s going on?”

“It’s funny, I was going to ask the same of you. This is not what we expected of you, Comrade, when we extended the arm of friendship to you and your family four years ago. We did not expect betrayal.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I’ve never once betrayed my loyalty to the Soviet Union.”

She allows a hint of inquiry to dent the space between her eyebrows. “Then why are we here? In Latvia?”

“I was kidnapped. My family and I, we were kidnapped by some kind of enemy operative, probably CIA—”

“You did not go willingly? You were not, perhaps, in the very act of returning to the protection of the US government?” She takes some documents out of the folder at her elbow and lays them out before him. “These passports, identification papers—they are not for you and your family?”

“I’ve never seen them before in my life. I don’t know where they came from, or who arranged it, but it wasn’t me. It’s someone trying to frame me, and I can’t begin to imagine why. Where’s my family? My wife and children? My wife’s just given birth, she might be ill—”

“Don’t worry about your wife and children, Comrade. Let us concentrate first on the matter at hand.”