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“I work alone. There’s only one thing I need to know.”
The ambassador nodded.
“Dead or alive?”
He smiled. “Most certainly alive.”
—:—
“Good to see you, Doc,” said Gunner when his partner walked through the front door of his house and into his wife’s arms.
“Where’s Orlov?” she asked him.
“I can’t answer that.” Doc looked over at Gunner. “There’s a possibility he was headed to the opposite coast. I’m sorry, Gunner.”
Fuck. Orlov hadn’t been after Merrigan at all. It was a ruse to get to Raketa. If she were still on the island, he wouldn’t be worried. There was no way he’d get through the security grid he’d had Striker activate once he and Mantis had left. But she wasn’t on the island. If she wasn’t on her own, she was being accompanied by a team of Armenians, which essentially amounted to the same thing.
“Shiv should be here any minute, and we’ll talk this through.”
What Gunner wanted more than anything was to walk out the door of Doc and Merrigan’s house and begin the search for Raketa. He didn’t want to wait for the MI6 agent to arrive, and he didn’t want to talk anything through, but he had to. He had no idea where she was or where she might be headed. For all he knew, she was already in Iran.
—:—
A chill went up her spine when she answered the burner phone she got from the embassy and heard a voice say, “Zaryana.”
She didn’t respond.
“If you want to see your precious mama again, you’ll follow my instructions very carefully. First, you will tell no one what I tell you, or your mother will die. Do you understand?”
There was no way for her to determine who the voice belonged to; it was being enhanced by a modulator. It sounded like a man, but it could very well be a woman calling. “Yes,” she answered.
“Your theory was incorrect. Petrov is not in Iran.”
“Where—”
“Silence. You will listen and not ask any questions. I will be in contact again.”
“Wait—” Raketa knew there was really no point in trying to stop the person from ending the call.
The only thing she knew for sure was she could no longer operate under the assumption that no one had tracked her yet. More likely, United Russia, Petrov, and K19 knew exactly where she was. That they knew she would only listen and do as they wanted if they used her mother as bait, was more chilling than the phone call itself.
—:—
The first thing Shiv said when he walked in was how sorry he was about the bad intel on Orlov.
Gunner got right in his face. “I don’t give a shit about Orlov. What I want to know is where Ivashov is. Is that something you can help me with or not?”
“Yes.”
Gunner was ready to choke the man. “Do I need to keep asking, Shiv? Really?”
“We know exactly where she is.”
“How?”
“Grigor Bedrossian’s right hand is MI6.”
Gunner felt Doc’s hand on his shoulder, and it was a good thing because he was ready to go down Shiv’s throat. “You couldn’t have told me that before now?”
