Dewey watched the Mercedes move toward the line of limousines outside the theater. He heard the old woman on the bench say something. He turned. The couple was holding hands, sitting peacefully, enjoying the warm evening. He watched them for an extra moment, trying to calm down and get his emotions under control.

Polk had been right all along. He did need help. He would've frozen up all over again.

At that moment, Dewey felt self-loathing as powerful and intense as he'd ever felt it before. Everything he'd built, all of it, was gone.

"Thank you, Lieutenant. I'll hit you up when we're go. Out."

Dewey walked away from the scene. He drifted toward the canal, lost in thought, lost in self-hatred and doubt, a knot in his stomach. He would drop his gun in the canal, along with his earbud. He'd find a hotel room, then the bar at the hotel, and drink until he couldn't walk, or think. Tomorrow, he'd fly home. He'd return to Castine. He'd stay there until he was an old man.

He turned back one last time to the theater. At the stage entrance, a commotion ensued as Katya emerged. Autograph seekers, mostly squealing teenage girls, cheered and yelled at the sight of the famous ballerina.

His eyes scanned the scene. He watched as the red Mercedes moved into position.

Then his eyes were drawn to two girls walking along the sidewalk, weaving slightly, alongside the Mercedes. Dewey looked away, thinking nothing of it.

Dewey was now at the granite abutment above the canal. He put his hand inside his jacket and found the butt of his gun. He pulled it out, clutching it by the barrel. He started to toss the gun into the dark water below ...

The sound of screeching brakes was like a thunder clap, interrupting the quiet scene, awakening Dewey from his reverie.

He held on to the gun, then turned.

A cold chill emanated from the base of Dewey's spine. He stared in disbelief, then horror, as one of the girls pretended to slip and fall, then was struck by the limo.

"Decoy," he said.

Bond and Oliveri were in extreme danger.

Dewey moved back toward the theater. A crowd was gathering to help the fallen girl. Bond stepped out of the limo and went to her, helping her up, then led her to the back door of the limo.

Dewey crossed the street, watching as the girl reached her hands out then leapt inside the Mercedes. Just as he reached the corner, blood splashed across the inside of the windshield, like mud being thrown.

A few seconds later, the limo lurched away.

Bond and Oliveri were dead.

The Mercedes sped away from the theater. It was now coming directly toward where Dewey stood. The limo was accelerating, fleeing from the scene. As it was about to reach him, Dewey stepped into the street, directly into the path of oncoming vehicle. His hand was already inside his coat, clutching the hockey-tape-covered grip of his .45-caliber Colt M1911A1. The driver didn't slow down or attempt to avoid him.

Just before the Mercedes struck him, Dewey tore the gun out, then leaned right. He fired the gun as fast as his finger could pump the trigger. Unmuted gunfire punctuated an already chaotic scene. Slug after slug tore into the driver's-side window, shattering glass, then the girl's head; her skull bounced sharply to the right as a bullet entered just above her ear. Blood sprayed across the front seat as the limo sped by, tires screeching, the back bumper barely missing Dewey as it swerved wildly. A moment later, it veered right and smashed violently into a parked delivery truck.

The first sirens sounded from a few blocks away.

Dewey charged, coming from behind the limo, knowing the other assassin would be targeting him. In stride, sprinting for the cover of the back bumper, Dewey popped the mag from his Colt and slammed a new one in just as bullets from the other assassin shattered the back window. Dewey lurched left, then dived to the street just as bullets pocked the tar near his feet.

He scrambled beneath the rear bumper, sheltered from the fusillade. He crawled beneath the car, feeling the heat of the engine on his back. He crawled until he reached the front passenger-side door. He came out from under the limo, then quietly opened the door as sirens grew louder. Two dead bodies, Oliveri and one of the girls, along with a sniper rifle, and a riot of blood covering the white leather seat. He climbed into the vehicle, skulking soundlessly, weapon out, trained at the back of the girl's head, loaded, safety off, and cocked to fire.

Through a crack in the seat, Dewey could see the other girl's back as she searched frantically for him behind the limo.

Dewey leapt over the seat and smashed the girl's head down. With his other hand, he grabbed her shooting arm, yanking it behind her back.

"Where's Katya going?"

"I don't know."

Dewey yanked up her arm until it snapped. She screamed.

The sirens were within a block now.

"Where is Katya going?"

Dewey grabbed the woman's neck and choked her. Her face turned bright red.

"Tell me where and I won't kill you."

"Four..." she groaned.

"Seasons?"

She nodded.

Dewey snapped the girl's neck, ripped open the door, and jumped out, running, just as police cruisers descended upon the scene.

He disappeared down Reki Fontanki, blending into the crowds that were fleeing the crash scene, making their way toward Nevsky Prospekt.

37.

MISSION THEATER TARGA.

LANGLEY.

The mission room was eerily quiet. No one said a word. Calibrisi stood silently at the front of the room, arms crossed. Like everyone else, he looked dazed.

On the screen, a live satellite feed showed the chaos in Saint Petersburg in real time, captured by a thermal-imaging camera that was attached to a satellite several miles above the earth's surface. The images were very grainy and rendered in black, white, and gray. Heat from human beings and cars showed up as white exoskeletons. People looked like ghosts. But after observing hundreds of night operations, everyone inside the command center knew how to parse the video and, for the most part, understood what was happening.

They knew which vehicle the Mercedes was. They knew precisely where Bond and Oliveri were. They watched the collision with the girl, Bond's movement to her, then her intrusion into the Mercedes. The flash of the assassin's muzzle inside the vehicle looked like silent fireworks. They all watched as the thermal outlines of Bond and Oliveri went dim.

In less than fifteen minutes, the CIA had suffered its worst one-day casualty loss in the history of the Agency. Yet nobody was thinking about the loss of a group of operators. Rather, it was the human loss that hurt them all. Every person in the room knew the five dead agents.

It was Polk who brought everyone back. He stepped to the rear wall, where a whiteboard, unused in months or perhaps years, sat blank. He took a pen and started writing: Cut all signals outside this room.

We are contaminated.

A case officer near the front of the room held his thumb up, indicating he understood the order. He typed furiously into his computer, then hit Enter.

"We are now a closed loop," he announced. "Targa is quarantined. All commo is off-line."

"Now play the video again," said Polk. "I want to watch from the moment the limo starts moving again."

The screen replayed the limo lurching away, fleeing the scene, the bodies of the two assassins white apparitions against the dark street. As the limo barreled down and was about to strike a pedestrian, Polk snapped his fingers.

"Freeze it there," he said. "Slow-frame it."

In painstakingly slow motion, the next few moments of the video played frame by frame. A pedestrian about to get run over. Stepping to the side to avoid the limo. Arm extending. The muzzle flash of automatic weapon fire outside the limo. The driver kicked violently to the right. The limo careening out of control and crashing. The gunman charging toward the back of the limo, disappearing underneath it, then reemerging at the passenger door, going inside, and killing the last remaining occupant of the limousine.

"What the hell just happened?" asked Calibrisi.

Polk turned to him.

"I don't know."

38.

FOUR SEASONS LION PALACE.

SAINT PETERSBURG.

Dewey entered the lobby of the Four Seasons Lion Palace. His heart was thumping fast. It felt like it was in his throat.

Calm down.

The .45 was inside his jacket, and so was his hand, on the gun's grip, ready to swing it out at the smallest provocation.

The lobby's walls shimmered as light from the chandeliers refracted off walls and floors of polished marble. It was crowded: a couple on a sofa at the center of the lobby; three businessmen in suits to the left, talking loudly; a family of four, two adults and two girls, at the front desk checking in. Several uniformed bellmen stood nearby. Straight ahead, a tall woman was waiting behind the front desk. Dewey crossed the black-and-white-checked marble floor and approached her.

He needed time to think, to plan. Everything had backfired and was destroyed, and now he needed time to plan what would be a very ad hoc operation. What just happened?

"Dobro pozhalovat'v Four Seasons-"

"I don't speak Russian," Dewey interrupted quietly.

"My apologies," she said. "Welcome to the Four Seasons. How may I be of service to you?"

Dewey checked his watch. It was 9:45 P.M.

"I need a room," he said.

"Yes, of course," she said, typing into the computer. "A royal suite overlooking Saint Isaac's Cathedral? I'm afraid it's all we have left."

"That's fine."

He handed her an alias credit card tied to his CIA cover before he was taken off the operation. It would set off alarm bells back at Langley, but that didn't matter now. A moment later, after swiping it, she handed Dewey a small folder with keys.

"Is the restaurant still open?" he asked.

"Of course, Mr. Sullivan," she said, pointing to a door across the lobby. "The veal is excellent, by the way. Can I let the matre d' know you'll be coming?"

"Please," said Dewey. "A booth. Out of the way."

Dewey went to the lobby restroom. Looking for the first time at his coat, he saw a patch of blood streaking the sleeve. He wiped it off, washed his hands, then looked in the mirror. Other than a slight blush to his cheeks, he appeared calm, even normal. The area above his eye was healing. The remnant blackness had dissipated, though there was still enough to hint at the violence from which it had come.

Dewey stared into the mirror, trying to collect his thoughts, contemplating his next move. He pictured Dowling, one of the commandos who'd been on Phase Line One, Moscow. Dowling had saved Dewey's life in Portugal the year before. Now he was dead. Or maybe he wasn't. Maybe Cloud just wasn't at the dacha? Yet somehow Dewey felt a cold chill deep inside. It was in Polk's voice over commo. It had about it a hint of desperation.

It seemed clear to Dewey. The fact that Cloud knew about Saint Petersburg meant that he probably also knew about Moscow. He'd probably done the exact same thing: lured them in, then murdered them in cold blood.

It was obvious that Cloud had known about Saint Petersburg long before Bond and Oliveri stepped foot in-country. The girls were operatives, most likely government trained. The strike itself had been masterful. Bond and Oliveri had stepped right into a well-choreographed play.

"He ratfucked us," whispered Dewey, to no one.

How did Cloud know? That was the question. Had he been listening in? Watching? The only other explanation was that someone inside Langley had tipped him off; Dewey dismissed that possibility out of hand.

The hit on Pete and Joe had been architected. Like a play, it had its acts, its stars. If Dewey had an advantage, it was that he'd arrived in Saint Petersburg off the grid. He'd punctured the phase line midstream. The subterfuge with the stumbling girls was planned out, but their deaths were not, and now Dewey was inside, rewriting Cloud's play. Cloud thought the final curtain had been lowered, but Dewey had slipped beneath it.

Now he needed to act.

If Cloud didn't already know about the dead women, he would soon enough. When he did, he'd remove Katya from the city. Dewey needed to act quickly. He needed to find Katya and extract her before Cloud himself did it.

Suddenly, the restroom door opened and a tall man stepped in. Dewey turned. He was older, a businessman, and he nodded hello at Dewey. Dewey moved past him, heading for the restaurant.

The restaurant was softly lit, intimate, and warm, its walls a beautiful deep crimson, four crystal chandeliers hanging from a low, louvered ceiling decorated in ornately patterned green-and-white toile paper.

Dewey looked quickly about the room; most of the tables were occupied. A pretty red-haired hostess led him to a booth on the right. A minute later, a waiter approached and handed him a thick leather-bound menu across the table.

"Chto-nibud' vypit', ser?" he asked.

"I-"

"Something to drink, sir?"

"Whiskey, neat. Bourbon if you have it."

"Anything to eat?"

Dewey glanced around, trying to be calm.

"A steak, please. Rare. A bottle of wine, something red and expensive."

"Very good."