เข้าสู่ระบบ"Catherine." The Director's voice did not rise. "You are disobeying.""Yes.""Explain.""He was my friend." Her voice shook, just once. "He was my friend for eleven years, and she shot him in the road like a dog. I won't carry her out of here alive.""That is not your decision.""It is now."She raised the pistol.The plane came in overhead....DIMITRI'S POVThe noise hit like a wall.It rolled through the corridor, through the stone, through the soles of his boots, and in the same instant the lights went out.Absolute black.The whole world was sound. The roar of the engine. The crash of something heavy above. A man shouting. A single flat crack, a muzzle flash that lit the corridor in a white strobe, and Dimitri was already moving.He drove forward, low, into the place where Reeves had been. His shoulder hit her hip. She fell back with a grunt, and a second shot went off beside his ear, and the bullet tore a chunk of plaster from the wall. His hand closed on her wrist. He twisted.
"What rest?""What I've prepared for you." She stepped aside, one hand outstretched toward the dark doorway of the pump house. "Please."He looked at her. He looked at the door.He had stood in a great many doorways in his life.He went in....DANTE'S POVThe culvert stank of rust and cold water.Dante crawled on his elbows through the dark with a pistol in his right hand and a flashlight clamped in his teeth. The concrete pressed on three sides. It was cold under his palms and slimed with a decade of leaf mold. Behind him, in the narrow throat of the pipe, he could hear the others breathing. Luca, wheezing slightly, one arm held tight to his chest. Two of Marco's men, silent as stones. And two more behind.He did not look back.The pipe had narrowed. For forty meters, he had been dragging himself forward on his belly, with the roof grazing his shoulders, and every breath tasted of stagnant air. His own heartbeat was loud in his ears.Don't think. Count.Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.It
No one moved."Nine minutes," Dimitri said."She counted the planes.""She counted the planes." His voice cracked on the last word. He steadied it. "In a basement, in the dark, with a camera on her, she counted the planes. And then she found a way to tell me."Mike was laughing, short and helpless, and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand."God," he said. "God, she's....""Yes," Dimitri said.He stood in front of the map with his hand against the paper, over a small red mark beneath the flight path of an airport he had flown over a hundred times. He could not remember when he had last felt so many things at once.Eve.I'm coming."Marco," he said."Boss.""Call Dante."***DIMITRI'S POVThe address arrived at four in the afternoon, in a single line of text on the burner phone.Station Road, Ciampino. Dusk. Alone.Dimitri read it standing at the study window. Behind him, the room was silent. Marco stood by the desk. Mike was a face on the laptop. And in the doorway, with a bandage
"It could be. It's also the farmhouse. They're about four kilometers apart." Mike rubbed his eyes. "I can't separate them. I need something more.""Both are close to the airport," Marco said."They're both close to the airport."Dimitri looked at the map. He looked at the two red marks, the small gap between them. He had stood over maps like this in rooms like this for most of his adult life, and he had never once had the sensation that a single choice could cost him everything."We wait for the call," he said.Marco glanced at him. "They said tonight.""They'll call before that. They always do. They'll want me to hear her.""And if she says nothing?""Then we choose." Dimitri's voice was very even. "And we pray we choose right."The phone on the desk rang....It was not his phone.It was a small black burner, no bigger than a deck of cards. It had been left at the front door at half past eight, in a plain brown box, by a courier who had vanished before the guards could stop him. Mar
Dimitri said nothing."Reeves keeps three places in Rome," Dante said. "I've been to all of them. Once each, years ago, when I was still useful. She doesn't move people often. She likes a place she knows.""Names.""A farmhouse off the Via Appia Nuova, south of the city. Stone, two stories, a barn behind it. Owned through a Cypriot shell. A decommissioned pumping station near Ciampino, below ground, with a concrete yard. And a house in Anzio, on the water, that I've only seen from the road."Marco had already pulled a pad toward him. He wrote as Dante spoke."Which?""I don't know. That's the problem." A breath. "The farmhouse is big, and visible, and it's where she'd keep a team. The pumping station is where she'd keep a person. It's small, it's quiet, and it has one way in.""And Anzio?""Anzio is where she'd go if she wanted to leave the country."Dimitri said nothing for a moment. He looked at the three words on Marco's page."Luca pulled the addresses," Dante added. "He's in Rome
"Can I ask you something?" she said."You may.""Why does it matter to you who I am? A lever is a lever. Any woman he loved would do.""Not any.""Why me?""Because you are not afraid of him."She blinked."Most people are," the voice said. "His enemies. His allies. His family. They have watched him for years, and they have learned what he can do. It has made them careful. It has made them cautious, and cautious people can be predicted." A pause. "You are not careful. You fell in love with him in a single season, knowing exactly what he was. You went to Rome. You stood in a city that belongs to his father and refused to be afraid of it. You killed a man this afternoon with a stolen gun in a road.""That wasn't brave.""It was something.""It was terrible.""Yes." The voice was quiet. "That is also true."Eve looked at her hands.They were not shaking. She noticed it, with distant surprise. She had thought they would be."I would like to ask you a question," the Director said."Go on."







