The woman seated beside Vukasin was a Serbian national named Eleana Soberski who was now, thanks to forged documents, a U.S. citizen. Soberski had been a child psychologist before serving as an Intel gatherer assigned to Rugova’s forces. The real Jessica Harris had been a volunteer nurse at the central hospital in Belgrade, a woman without close family in the States. She had become eel food in the Danube, compliments of the woman aspiring to steal her identity.

Soberski’s primary duty with the KLA during the cleansing action had been interrogating captured enemy soldiers and civilians collected by Rugova’s unit. Vukasin, one of Rugova’s lieutenants, had seen her work and admired her interrogation methods and enthusiasm. A beauty without a sympathy gene, she rejected the soldiers’ overtures and Vukasin came to believe she derived sexual pleasure only when she had utterly terrified people lashed to a table, a chair or hanging from the rafters in excruciating pain.

“Your target is here at this hotel?” she asked.

Vukasin took a picture of two men at a table in a restaurant out of his pocket and handed it to her. “The target is this one—Harold Middleton, who led the Volunteers that tracked Agim and found him.”

Her expression hardened. “This is Harold Middleton? I thought he would be more impressive. Where is he?”

“We’re not yet sure.”

“And you believe he will come here. To a bar. In public.”

Vukasin nodded. His ex-wife had been persuaded by his men to list places were Middleton might flee. The St. Regis was one.

“Do you have men inside there?” Harris asked.

“They’re on the way.” Vukasin smiled. “They’re disguised as FBI agents. It will be effective: Middleton is wanted for shooting a policeman at the airport.”

“A policeman?”

Vukasin explained.

“A fiasco,” Harris said. “Where is Dragan now?”

“Deceased. What choice did I have? He put everything at risk.”

“And why do we care about Middleton?”

Vukasin took the picture from her. “This other man is Henryk Jedynak, a collector and expert in rare music documents. Jedynak is no longer with us either. You can ask Middleton why.”

“I will gladly do so,” Harris replied. “But surely there is more to this than the death of music collector . . . ”

Vukasin was tired, but it was the true she needed to know what the mission was. Now was a good time to tell her.

“Middleton was at St. Sophia with the peace keepers and he was among those given the task of cataloguing the musical manuscripts—the ones that remained at the church before we could remove them. Three years ago, Jedynak was asked to authenticate a few of the manuscripts Middleton left behind. When they were to be sold to a private collector, it was discovered that Jedynak replaced the manuscripts with fakes.

“The seller was Rugova,” Vukasin added.

“And he expected a price sufficient to cover his costs of buying his freedom,” Harris said.