The thickset man in the hallway smiled, revealing yellowed teeth nestled in a gray, well-groomed beard that matched his well-cut slacks and suit jacket. The top left corner of his forehead was hidden by a green felt fedora with a wide brim, pulled low and angled steeply.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

Rhodes recognized the heavy Bulgarian accent, but it was Zvezdev’s black, piercing eyes he most remembered.

Where the hell is my SIG? Rhodes asked himself, his mind fogged and frightened all at once. In the bedroom, he remembered.

Too far away.

Zvezdev read his mind. His smile faded, his eyes hardened. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.”

Rhodes swallowed hard. “The last time I saw you, you were dead.”

Zvezdev smiled again. “I thought so, too. Fix me a drink and I’ll tell you the story.”

Rhodes hesitated. Tervel Zvezdev was a dangerous man, and he’d found Rhodes, after all these years. Rhodes wanted to run or, better yet, strike him down.

But how do you kill a ghost?

—

They sat on the white modular couch across from each other, separated by a teak-and-glass coffee table. Rhodes absentmindedly rubbed the couch fabric with one hand, a subconscious reminder of what could have been.

Zvezdev lifted the tall glass to his lips for another sip of gin and tonic. His green felt hat sat on the couch next to him. The massive divot in the man’s forehead where his skull had been caved in at the hairline and repaired—inexpertly, in Rhodes’s mind—was now clearly revealed. The puckered skin looked like melted plastic. Rhodes tried not to stare at it. His eyes flitted between the golf ball–sized divot and the USB drive on the table glass.

“I can’t work for you,” Rhodes finally said, trying to be firm. But he saw the look in Zvezdev’s narrowing eyes and quailed. “I’m sorry.”

“Perhaps I wasn’t clear. I only need you to do just this one thing.” He smiled. “And did I mention it will make you very rich?”

“I’m a lot of things, but a traitor isn’t one of them.”

Zvezdev shook his head. “This has nothing to do with your government, nor does it affect American national security. It’s purely business.”

“So you’re a businessman now? I remember you being a Communist, working for the Second Directorate of the Committee for State Security for the People’s Republic of Bulgaria.”

Zvezdev set his glass down. “Then you weren’t paying attention. Yes, I was a Party man with a license to kill the enemies of the state. But all that meant was that I was a businessman with a gun.”

“You mean a gangster.”

“Ha! Exactly!” Zvezdev leaned forward. “But you never really caught on, though, did you?”

“In the end I did.” Rhodes’s eyes shifted involuntarily to Zvezdev’s divot. “Obviously.”