Someone had to do something.

Tatyana had always known that.

She knew it when Sofia gave her the vial.

The two women never discussed it. They’d never explicitly agreed they were going to do something. It was just somehow understood between them. They were going to resist. They were going to fight back.

No explanation was necessary.

They were going to get that virus out of the hands of the men who thought they owned them.

Sofia had two vials that night at the institute.

One of them, she gave to Tatyana. That was the one Tatyana left at the consulate in Istanbul.

The reason she was here now, sitting outside this apartment, was because no one knew what had happened to the second vial.

The lab was gone.

The research strains were gone.

The research itself had been destroyed.

But what of that second vial?

Sofia had turned it over to Yevchenko. Yevchenko passed it up the line to Moscow. But where was it now?

Tatyana lit a cigarette and cracked open the window.

Her cell began to ring and she looked at the screen. It was Roth’s CIA operator. She wondered if it was worth the risk to answer it. She’d been told the communications system ran on US military satellites and was as secure as any system anywhere, but she also knew there was no such thing as a completely safe call, especially when you were sitting in a car in Central Moscow.

She looked again at the apartment building. Still nothing. She wondered if the call was because they’d found Igor.

She picked up.

A computerized voice said, “Please hold for local connection.”

That was strange. Who could be calling her locally? A man’s voice, hoarse and breathless, gasped at her.

“Tatyana Aleksandrova?”

She recognized it instantly. It was a voice she hadn’t heard since her first overseas mission, not since that fateful day in Damascus. But in all the years that had passed, she remembered him as if she’d seen him yesterday.

“Lance Spector,” she said.

“I was told you were in Moscow.”

“You sound hurt.”

“I need your help.”

“Of course.”

“I haven’t completed the mission. The vial, it’s still out there.”

“I’m at Igor’s apartment building now,” she said.

“Is he there?”

“Not yet.”

She looked at her watch.

“You should get to the extraction point,” she said. “You could still make it.”

He was breathing very heavily and there was definitely something wrong with him.

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” he said.

“This is no time for chivalry, Lance.”

“It’s not chivalry,” he said, his voice so weak she had trouble hearing him. “I’m hurt, Tatyana. Badly. I won’t be making it to the extraction point.”

His voice was so groggy she could barely understand him.

“Lance. You sound drugged. What did you take?”

“My leg is a mess.”

“Where are you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”