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list.”
    â€œNo, there is a way,” Jon disagreed. Barron looked up, hopeful. “Figure out who ordered Strelnikov’s execution and what he’s trying to protect. Do that and you can identify which remaining assets are his biggest threats. But . . .” He trailed off.
    â€œYes?”
    Jon hesitated, then looked to Kyra. He doesn’t know how to say it gently , she realized. Kyra tumbled the thought about in her mind for a few moments before deciding that there were no gentle words for it. “We can start with Strelnikov’s file. That might give us an idea of where to start. But after that . . . dead assets might be the only other clues we’ll get to answer the question.”
    â€œThat’s not acceptable,” Barron said, his voice turning cold.
    â€œThe only other option is to talk to Maines,” Jon said. “If the Russians have pulled a bait and switch on him, he might not be happy about his current situation.”
    â€œAnd how, exactly, would we get in the same room with him?” Barron asked.
    â€œIf Maines really is in town, he’s either at the Russian Embassy or a safe house,” Kyra said, thinking aloud. “If it’s a safe house, someone at the embassy will know where. So we go to the embassy.”
    â€œGood luck even getting the Russians to admit they have anyone in our business at the embassy,” Jon mused.
    â€œThey can do a lot worse than say no,” Barron warned. “If the Russians really are desperate to use Maines’s information to plug some leaks, there’s no telling how they might react when you show up asking for him.”
    â€œI don’t think,” Jon said, his mind engaged now. “They were the ones who told us where he was. They had to expect that we’d come asking about him. They might even be planning on it.”
    â€œAnd it might offer some clues besides dead bodies that will help us figure this out,” Kyra added. “So let’s go knock on the door.”
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    Kyra sat in the empty conference room, focused on Maines’s file to distract herself. She’d read it twice already, and had found it surreal to read about the operation he’d led to save her from the Venezuelan SEBIN. Moving on, she saw that Barron’s clinical words about narcissism and sadism had softened his description of the true problem. She’d only known Maines a few months before she’d been pulled from the country, had liked him well enough. He’d been a decisive leader, amiable, with a concern for his subordinates that she’d thought genuine at the time. The papers on the table had shaken that conclusion.
    On the first reading, the file seemed nothing more than the record of a solid career, with no obvious signs of personal or professional distress. Her second review revealed that the high marks and bureaucratic language used to avoid legal issues were hiding a flawed man. There were no reprimands or disciplinary actions in the records, but performance covered a multitude of sins. Case officers considered sin itself a tool for plying their trade, and if the practitioners indulged on occasion, that was the price of business so long as they didn’t cross certain lines. But pride and wrath were capital vices too, and Alden Maines’s arrogance and temper both had bloated until he couldn’t accept that his decisions could be faulty or see any better way to deal with his failures than making his staff into targets.
    The file had been thin, which Kyra hoped was the result of some nervous counterintelligence manager’s fear that giving away too much would jeopardize the investigation. There were less noble reasons why such files often were thin. Information was the life’s blood of intelligence, but it was also the black-market currency of bureaucrats and only reluctantly did they give it away for free if they thought it had