“He uses several.”

Nazari then recited four addresses from memory. They were all random combinations of letters and numerals. It was an impressive feat of recall.

By then, it was approaching eleven. There was just enough time to return Nazari to the InterContinental by his deadline. Gabriel warned the Iranian of the consequences of any breach of their hastily drawn contract. Then he cut him loose from the chair. Nazari looked surprisingly well for a man who had been subjected to a thrashing and a mock execution. The only visible evidence of his ordeal was the small burn in the center of his forehead. “Put some ice on it when you get back to your room,” said Yaakov as he shoved Nazari into the car. “We want you to look your best for the negotiations tomorrow.”

They dropped him at the eastern edge of the Stadtpark, and Mikhail trailed him back to the hotel. The lobby was deserted; Nazari boarded an elevator alone and rode it to the seventh floor, where his compromised room awaited him. Hunched over a laptop computer in the room next door, Eli Lavon listened to what came next. A man being violently sick into the toilet, a man weeping uncontrollably after a phone call to his home in Tehran went unanswered. Lavon lowered the volume and gave his quarry a modicum of privacy. Big boys’ games, he was thinking. Big boys’ rules.

44

SPARROW HILLS, MOSCOW

KATERINA AKULOVA’S DREAM UNFOLDED THE way it always did. She was walking through a birch forest near her old training camp when the trees parted like a curtain and a lake of crystalline blue appeared. She had no need to disrobe; in her dreams she was always unclothed, no matter the situation. She slid beneath the calm flat surface and swam through the streets of her ersatz German village. Then the water turned to blood, and she realized she was drowning in it. Starved of oxygen, her heart banging against her ribs, she kicked wildly toward a pinprick of light. But each time she breached the surface, a hand pushed her down again. It was a woman’s hand, smooth, flawless. Though Katerina had never felt its touch, she knew it to be the hand of her mother.

Finally, she sat upright in bed, gasping for air as though she had not drawn a breath in several minutes. Her hair was damp and limp, her hands were shaking with fear. She reached out for her cigarettes, lit one with difficulty, and drew the smoke deeply into her lungs. The nicotine calmed her, as it always did. She looked at the clock and saw it was approaching noon. Somehow, she’d slept nearly twelve hours. Outside, the previous night’s snow had moved on and a white disk of a sun blazed low in the pale sky. Moscow, it seemed, had been granted a few hours’ reprieve from winter.