The prisoner sat upright behind the passenger seat, hands and feet tied. This was unusual. Standard operating procedure would have him relegated to the rear compartment, but during his capture he sustained several blows to the head, and these men were concerned about a concussion. They did not want him to fall asleep. SOP also would have him blindfolded, but for the same reasons, the prisoner was not. The killers had to make sure the bastard didn’t pass out.

  The man they worked for, Konstantin Egorov, wanted him alive. And what Konstantin Egorov wanted, Konstantin Egorov got.

  Ahead loomed a single gray spot on the field of white. Over the next five minutes, the spot expanded into a mansion, a palace so ostentatious it was thought to mimic the Winter Palace itself. The man sitting beside the prisoner checked on him, roughly forcing his head to look his way, checking his eyes for responsiveness. He didn’t know the prisoner’s name. He was not directly involved in his capture. His orders were simply to deliver him here, alive.

  The prisoner smiled at him, as though he found this all amusing. The soldier hated this man, hated his insolence. He slammed the prisoner’s head into a metal post, breaking his nose. A moment later, the soldier grew worried. Their boss was notoriously violent; one could never be sure what concerns he might fixate upon. Roughing the prisoner up, while not exactly prohibited, was not in his orders. Luckily for him, the prisoner seemed no worse for wear. His smile remained.

  He said, “You. You will die in the next hour for what you’ve done.” Then he looked at the soldier seated in front of him, the one who had watched it all happen. “As will you, for doing nothing to stop him.”

  The soldier laughed. The man was deranged. Still, there was something about him that unnerved the soldier. Like he was sure of what he said.

  The UAZ pulled around the wide circular drive of the Siberian palace. The soldier in the back could count a dozen guards: four visible on the parapets, four out in the fields, and four standing in the drive, guarding the front door. If these guards were at all concerned about the prisoner’s condition, they didn’t show it. They took him out without a word and headed inside.

  The men from the UAZ followed. They had only been in this palace twice before: once to interview, and once more to be notified of their hiring. Konstantin Egorov occupied the Great Room. This white-marble space, which could house a 747, contained statuary and Renaissance paintings in ornate golden frames. Egorov, a short, fat man with a bald head, wore only a pristine white robe. He had his back to the men and the prisoner, staring out at the endless field of white that stretched beyond forever.

  Egorov’s guards threw the prisoner onto the white marble floor for effect.

  Egorov turned and grinned, revealing nicotine-stained teeth. “Pietr Chaban, have you lost your mind? You must be crazy to come back to Russia. And yet somehow I always knew you would.”

  The prisoner looked up at Egorov, blood still leaking from his nose and mouth onto the brilliant white marble. He said nothing. His expression was strangely blank. Not fearful, not angry, not even resigned.

  Egorov either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He continued, “I suppose we were always to be at odds. To end like this. It is even in our names. Egorov means farmer. Chaban means shepherd. The sons of Adam. Abel, the shepherd. Cain, the farmer. Cain worked and toiled, staring at the ground, eking out a meager existence. Abel lay on his back and stared up at the sky, lazily watching over his flock. Of course, we all know how that story ended.”

  Chaban coughed up a bit more blood, then spoke. “Do you think you will murder me, old friend?”

  Egorov laughed. “Did you think I would not? You always were an optimist, Chaban. It is your least Russian trait—to fail to see things as they are.”

  Chaban smiled. “No, old friend. I see everything. I see you freeing me in less than five minutes. I see you killing these two behind me for breaking my nose.”

  Egorov laughed. “They must’ve broken your brain. You used to have such promise. My best sleeper in my days at the SVR. The sleeper who never awoke⁠—”

  “Oh, but I did, Egorov. I awoke to the possibilities of this new world. As did you. You reinvented yourself, one of our new oligarchs. Like you, I saw a future unchained from the past, and my intelligence training as a valuable asset. While the West was focused on signals intelligence, technology, I focused on human intelligence. You know what a human is?”

  Egorov found it amusing when a prisoner on his knees lectured him, so he entertained the prisoner. “No. What?”

  “We are need machines, and if you can fulfill a person’s deepest need, they are yours.”

  Egorov shrugged. “So is this why I am to let you go? Because you know my deepest need and can fulfill it?”

  He was toying with Chaban, but Chaban’s face betrayed no levity. He was deadly serious. “Exactly.”

  Anger rose in Egorov. “Then you are a fool. I don’t have a need in the world.”

  Chaban leaned forward just an inch or two. It was nothing in the Great Room, and yet it spoke volumes. It said Chaban had a secret to tell. “You have a mesenchymal glioblastoma about the size of a hen’s egg. A month ago, it caused headaches. Now you can’t see out of your right eye. You have been to Shanghai, London, Dubai, New York, and Minnesota for the Mayo Clinic. They’ve all said the same thing. There is no treatment, and no cure.”

  Egorov’s right-hand man stepped beside his boss, ready to pounce. This was information only the most privileged circles of Egorov’s organization knew, and to share it with common foot soldiers was blasphemy.

  Egorov put out his hand and held his man back. Chaban’s knowledge surprised him, shocked him even. But still amused by the man on his knees before him. “Then what? If what you’re saying is true, then I still have no need, because I have no hope.”

  It was true. Egorov had long since given up hope for himself. He found his new state of hopelessness very freeing indeed.

  Chaban nodded, as if everything that happened was leading to this moment, as he knew it would. “Do you honestly think I would be so easily captured by your men? I came to see you, Konstantin. I came to help—no, I came to save you. If you accept my offer, in a week your tumor will be the size of a quail’s egg. In three, it will be an ancient memory, never to return.”

  The second in command couldn’t help himself. “He’s lying to save his own skin.”

  Egorov stuck out his hand again, silencing the man. “I tell you this, Chaban. If you are playing on my last hope, the three months of torture before your death will be written about in legend.”

  Chaban looked up into Egorov’s eyes. “There is no lie here, but a deal must be struck.”

  Egorov met his gaze. In it, he saw something unexpected. He saw—certainty. “What is it you are after, Chaban?”

  The men standing behind the prisoner shifted uncomfortably. They sensed things were in flux, and a creeping dread settled upon them.

  Chaban spoke. “Krasnaya Zmeya.”

  The words echoed ever so slightly in the cavernous space. Egorov did not reply. He did not move. It was as if a spell had been cast that rooted him in place. All eyes fell on him, waiting for some reaction.

  Egorov inhaled, slow and long, measuring his response. “There is no Red Serpent. Decades ago, they destroyed the last of it.

  Chaban smiled. “That is the thing about our glorious Soviet past. None of it is ever gone.”

  Egorov shrugged and turned to his number two. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps he is lying to save his own skin.”

  Egorov took the gold-plated pistol from his number two’s waistband and aimed it at Chaban’s forehead. “How will you convince me, little shepherd? How will you sell that which you wish me to buy?”

  “Natalia Volkov.” Chaban said it in a whisper, but it echoed in the Great Room all the same.

  Egorov’s eyes narrowed. “Where did you hear that name?”

  “It’s not important. What is important is that she has your same condition. You met her in Shanghai during one of your failed treatments, and she is someone you have grown close to. Is that not so?”

  Egorov did not like this. This feeling of—vulnerability. All amusement at this encounter left him at once. “What of her?”

  “Call her. "Inquire about her condition.”

  Egorov’s gold pistol did not waver. But his free hand did fish a phone from his pocket, a tiny gold-adorned bauble hiding a sophisticated encryption device. He pressed two buttons and put it to his ear. “Natalia?”

  Egorov said nothing more. He simply listened. As he did, his jaw tightened, and the gun in his hand wavered, ever so slightly. Chaban watched for more of a reaction, but Egorov’s lifetime of training allowed no such betrayal of emotion.

  “Spasiba,” said Egorov, and he hung up the phone. He took a step forward, putting the gun to Chaban’s head.

  Chaban closed his eyes, resigned to the outcome at hand.

  Two shots rang out, echoing in the Great Hall. Chaban opened his eyes and saw two pools of blood converging at his knees, one on his left and one on his right. The man who had broken his nose, and the man who had sat on the other side of Chaban in the UAZ—the man who did nothing to stop him: both fell dead on the white marble floor beside Chaban.

  Egorov tossed the pistol back to his second. “Clean him up! It is time to celebrate my brother’s return!”

  CHAPTER 2

  The email was terse. It said:

  You will talk to me now.

  The next line was a link for a Zoom call.

  Malcolm Chaucer sat in his pristine Lower East Side apartment and stared at the email for several minutes, trying to pry its secrets loose. In intelligence circles, Malcolm Chaucer was known as the Oracle—an interrogator of legendary ability, capable of wrestling every secret from even the most hardened operative.

  But all of his skills of observation meant nothing when staring at this simple email.

  The sender was Ludvine Roche.

  Ludvine Roche was a Paris-based psychologist who contracted often with the French Intelligence Service. A short time ago, Chaucer had visited her office and, essentially, forced his way into a brief therapy session. He had not expected to hear from her again.

  He glimpsed himself in a wall mirror on the other side of the room. He wondered what Madame Roche would think of him. Would she see he was doing better? Mostly. He certainly looked healthier than when she had seen him. He had begun a practice of daily running. Not only did that improve his general bearing and muscle tone, but it gave his normally pale skin a hint of color. His dark hair had recently been cut, more evidence of Chaucer taking care of himself. He even looked taller. He was six foot two, but he used to carry himself with a perpetual hunched posture that diminished him. That was beginning to change.

  Chaucer couldn’t lie to himself. She would look into his eyes and she would know. If he was better than when she saw him, it was by micro-increments.

  He went back to the email.

  You will talk to me now.

  It was not a request. It was a command. Its terseness sounded more than a little angry. Chaucer wondered if this was a cultural difference—whether in French, it would sound quite different.

  He suspected it would not.

  The reason Chaucer had sought Ludvine Roche was the same reason he did not want to click the Zoom link: he was a torture survivor. Having spent eight years at the hands of a North Korean madman, he suffered from profound CPTSD—complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

  One way that manifested was hypervigilance. His brain’s danger tripwire never quite shut off.

  It made him hyper-aware of everything around him and was part of the reason he was such an exceptional interrogator. It also meant Malcolm Chaucer was more than a bit of a mess. He had profound difficulty with many basic aspects of daily life. For instance, only a year ago he found it virtually impossible to lie. For his recovery, he had placed himself on a required “one lie a day” maintenance program. He also went in and out of phases where physical touch was exceedingly painful to him.

  But these thoughts were simply procrastination. Chaucer realized he really didn’t have any options.

  He clicked the link.

  A moment later, Ludvine Roche appeared on the screen. She was exactly as he remembered her: seated at the desk in her well-appointed office, tasteful wallpaper behind her.

  But her face looked different.

  She had dispensed with the therapist’s mask of neutrality.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Chaucer?” she said.

  Chaucer was taken aback. During their brief meeting, this woman was the model of French propriety. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your ex-wife just paid me a visit,” Ludvine said. “An armed visit. She was ranting about—well, frankly, I don’t even know what. She blamed me for fucking you up, her words. She had a pistol in her hand, Mr. Chaucer.”

  Chaucer felt his stomach sink as the situation became clear.

  Tempest MacLaren—his ex-wife—was one of the deadliest women in the world. Quite possibly the deadliest. She was, to put it mildly, a handful.

  He knew she had gone to Paris, but he thought it was to take her young son, Tyler, on vacation to Disneyland Paris. The more he thought about it, though, the more he realized Tempest often had ulterior motives.

  “I’m so sorry, Ludvine,” Chaucer said. “I had no idea.”

  Ludvine’s expression didn’t soften. Her anger was palpable. “What the hell is she talking about?”

  Chaucer hesitated. “After our one session, there was… an incident. I was in a Brazilian mine and had a flashback to the cave where I was tortured. I thought it was a one-time episode, but a week later it happened again. I backslid.”

  “Backslid?” Ludvine asked.

  Chaucer could see the therapist in her spark with curiosity.

  “Physical touch,” he said. “I regressed to being unable to tolerate it. Tempest and I had begun to rekindle… something. And she took the no-touching situation hard.”

  “I would imagine so,” Ludvine said. “Do I need more context?”

  Chaucer contemplated his answer. Tempest was one of the most dangerous people on the planet—but she was also relatively sane, and unlikely to harm a civilian needlessly.

  “I don’t think she’d hurt you,” he said. “But maybe a week’s vacation wouldn’t be the worst idea.”

  “Noted,” Ludvine said. Nostril flare. Brow tension. She wasn’t done. “Now explain something else. What was this about you lying to her about me?”

  Chaucer blinked. “I don’t understand.”

  “When she stormed into my office—gun in her hand—the first thing she said was that I was beautiful. That I was fucking beautiful. And that you, Chaucer, are a fucking liar.”

  Now Chaucer understood.

  “You remember our brief session,” he said slowly.

  Ludvine waited.

  “I told you I needed help with the ‘Lie-a-Day’ program I put myself on. You said the lie had to count—it had to be meaningful.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well… the day I met you, Tempest asked if you were pretty. I said no.”

  Ludvine stared at him.

  “In my defense,” Chaucer added, “I was following my therapist’s instructions.”

  “I am not your fucking therapist!” Ludvine snapped.

  “Chaucer 3.0 is—complicated.”

  “Three point what?”

  Chaucer looked sheepish. “Oh, sorry. It’s something Tempest says. The old me, before the torture? That’s Chaucer 1.0. The Chaucer of the last eight years, broken, unable to lie, barely functioning: that’s 2.0. And this new me? 3.0.”

  “That—actually—makes some sense.” She leaned back, straightened her hair, and visibly composed herself.

  “I may not be your therapist, but,” she continued, “for today, I suppose I am—if only to get you and your psychotic wife out of my life. Now tell me, Malcolm Chaucer… what is the problem?”

  Chaucer was caught flat-footed. He didn’t know how to respond.

  “Not sure I understand.”

  Ludvine frowned. “Your wife thinks I fucked you up. It means you are hurting. And if you are in worse shape than you were when we last met… it is clear to me that this could grow into an existential threat. Oui?”

  Chaucer got where she was going. He wasn’t expecting a therapy session today, but the more he thought about it, the better the idea sat with him.

  “I can handle physical touch again. That was just a momentary blip.”

  “And yet, there is a problem. No?”

  “There is a problem,” he said. “The setback showed me something. My hopes for a meaningful relationship—well, they took a hit. When I couldn’t get Tempest to understand, when I couldn’t get her to see me as I am… it showed me how alone I really am.”

  Ludvine nodded. “I would have thought alone is a feeling you had grown quite comfortable with?”

  “This was different,” Chaucer said. “I stepped back into the world of the living, so to speak. I had that horrible, horrible thing people call hope. And then I realized… maybe there really is none for me.”

  “Because?” Ludvine asked.

  Chaucer cleared his throat, surprised at the emotions welling up inside him. “Because I think I may be un-understandable. No one in the world has ever gone through what I have gone through. Eight years of constant torture—of ego destruction. It’s all just too much. I’ve been to PTSD groups, but I can’t share there. They don’t understand me. How could they?”

  Ludvine just stared at him through her laptop camera. No judgement. Entirely receptive.

  “They experienced horrors,” he continued. “But not what I went through. Not total and systematic destruction. Not experimentation. Even I don’t fully understand it—so how could I expect anyone else to?”

  Ludvine put a finger to her chin, contemplating. “There is a school of thought that says true understanding is a false goal—that we are all alone in this world. All castaways on our own deserted islands. That the more meaningful goal is connection.” She paused. “But I don’t know if I fully believe this either.”