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sunny day in late summer, they put Luis into the ground. Justyna wore a black dress and did not cry. Kay and Christopher stood just slightly behind her, and she did not turn back to look at them during the length of the service. The sermon was flat, given by a clergyman who had never met the deceased. It mentioned his state service, his taking in of Kay and Christopher after the tragic deaths of their parents. The family and friends whom he left behind, bettered by his existence, lamenting his absence, hoping for some future reunion. Kay found herself agreeing with more of it than she would have anticipated. When it was over, they lowered the coffin slowly into its hole, and Kay threw a handful of dirt onto the box, and moved aside for the rest of the mourners to do the same.

Christopher was red-eyed but sober, fingers wearing away at the twenty-four-hour chip he had earned earlier that week at his first Narcotics Anonymous meeting. If Kay had had more energy, she would have been worried about him, even more than usual. He had quit his job as a bartender, moved into a halfway house. There would be no legal repercussions for his brief foray into serious distribution of narcotics, the slate wiped clean by his assistance in bringing to heel a dangerous foreign Illegal, and the man who had come near to ruining his life.

He gave Kay a weak smile when he saw she was watching him, raised two fingers in greeting and then lost himself in the crowd.

And there was a crowd, a throng, a pack, a thick swarm of mourners, old associates and business acquaintances, friends from the building and the neighborhood and the city, and Justyna's own people, bridge-and-tunnel folk mostly, down from their expensive exurbs. If you had been watching over it from a distance, you would have supposed the man's life a happy one, Kay thought. And perhaps it had been, although thinking of him in those last moments, the weight of guilt on his face, Kay was not sure she would have agreed.

“Ms. Malloy?” a voice asked.

“Agent Malloy,” Kay answered before she had turned to see him, a dark-eyed man in a neat suit.

“Forgive me. Of course,” he said, sweeping his hat off his head in an old-fashioned but not unbecoming gesture of apology. “I just wanted to express my condolences for your loss.” He had the faintest trace of a foreign accent, like that of someone who had lived in exile for so long as to have forgotten their native tongue. “Your uncle was a man of . . . great depths.”

“Thank you,” Kay said flatly. It was the tenth or the fiftieth or the hundredth such conversation she had had that day, the butt end of a wave of compliments towards the man who had raised and perhaps loved her and whom she had never really known. Kay snapped herself back into the moment: there would be time enough for consideration, sleepless nights, recriminations if need be. For now there was etiquette, as much defense as obligation, rote words allowing for conversation to continue without conscious thought. “How did you know my uncle, exactly?”

The man's teeth were gray and uneven, but his smile seemed sincere and made up for it. “We were old acquaintances,” he said. “Back in Europe, many years ago.”

Not for the first time, not at all for the first time, it occurred to Kay how much more there had been to her uncle than she had ever known. “He was a man of many parts,” Kay said.

“All of us are—vices and virtues intertwined, inexorably, unknowable even to ourselves.” The man bowed and swept his hat back upon his head. “I hope the Almighty judges him kindly.”

It was only as Kay watched him walk off that she realized she had never learned his name.

There were other concerns that day. Kay had been expecting the funeral to be busy with friends of Luis and her aunt, but she had been surprised to see the Black Bear team show in full strength, dark-suited, looking serious and sad. Jeffries she had half expected, but not Wilson or Marshall or the rest. And Kay had never been the easiest colleague, she could see that now. But they were polite and more so, they were the only people present who knew the entire truth of the situation besides Christopher and Kay. Andrew had sent his condolences, a long e-mail and a short phone call relaying his sympathy, although events in D.C. had kept him from attending in person. Which was just as well, so far as Kay was concerned. There was too much to think about right now to be adding the gray area that was their relationship to the mix.

Jeffries appeared, as she often did, unexpectedly, standing beside Kay's shoulder—a few inches below it, in fact, gray eyes waiting for Kay to notice her.

“Ma'am.”

“Kay,” she said, extending her hand. It was, to the best of her memory, the first time Jeffries had ever used her first name. “Condolences on your loss.”

“Thank you,” Kay said. “And thanks for coming.”

“This was neatly done,” Jeffries said after a long moment. “Even if the ending wasn't quite what we had hoped for.”

“Not quite,” Kay agreed.

“My instincts about people are rarely wrong.”

“I don't doubt it.”

“At least they weren't in your case,” Jeffries said flatly. It was the least emotive compliment that Kay had ever received, and probably the best. “If you need some time off, however long, we can put you on administrative leave. It won't be held against you, I can promise that. And there'll be a spot waiting for you in my program whenever you're ready.”

“Thank you,” Kay said, “but that won't be necessary. I'll be in the office on Monday.”

“That's just as well,” Jeffries said. “I was hoping to have your assistance on something.”

And, despite the emotion of the moment, Kay found her investigative instincts breaking through. “What, exactly?”

Jeffries shrugged, her walls back up as swiftly as they'd come down. “Let's call it Black Bear 2.0,” she said, then nodded and walked off.

Torres proved more talkative, looking awkward in his black suit, the coat ill fitting, his biceps and gut bulging against them.

“How you holding up, Ivy?” he asked.

“All right,” Kay said, realizing to her surprise that it wasn't even a lie.

“I guess it's been hell over the past eighteen months,” he said. “First Williams and then—”

“I remember it,” Kay said, cutting him off.

Torres realized midway through his laugh that he was at a funeral, then managed to swallow most of it. “How's your brother?”

“I'm not sure.”

“How are
you
?”

“I have no idea,” Kay admitted.

“You did the right thing here, Kay,” Torres said, and suddenly he was no longer smiling; he was covering her upper arm between his thick, worn hands and looking down at her with adamant seriousness. “You did the right thing. You ought to be proud of yourself. I'm proud of you. For whatever it's worth, I'm proud of you.”

“It's worth something,” Kay said, leaning into Torres for a moment. Just a moment—Kay did not need it for very long, but all of us need it now and again.

The funeral was starting to break up: there would be no reception afterward—Justyna's decision, although Kay was happy she had made it. This had been enough—more than enough. Kay saw her brother slip away from the crowd and walk slowly east, up the manicured greenery and away from the funeral. She knew where he was going and decided to give him a few minutes before she went to find him. Justyna had returned to the graveside, staring at the coffin as if it might tell her something.

“How are you holding up, Auntie?”

“All right,” she said, eyes still on the box that held her husband of forty years.

Kay wanted to say something but wasn't sure what.

“Luis was better than the worst thing he did.” Justyna pulled away as soon as she said it, as if she couldn't bear to look at Kay any longer, the shame or despair too great.

Kay watched her aunt walk off towards the parking lot. Justyna was right, of course—as close as she had come to the edge these last few weeks, she knew her aunt was right. What if Christopher hadn't come to her? What if her instincts had not been sharpened by working counterintelligence? What if she had not been able to sniff out the SVR plot behind it? What if she had walked into the meeting with her uncle innocent as a lamb, without the understanding and weight of the FBI behind her? Would
she have turned traitor, if the alternative had been the death or imprisonment of her brother? Would she have been strong enough to hold to the code and the mission against everything?

Paul and Anne Malloy were buried at the other end of the cemetery, a fifteen-minute walk and not an unpleasant one, the evening beginning its certain if temporary victory over the day. When she came in sight, she saw that Christopher had carried two roses from the shrine of flowers that had been left for their uncle, and when she arrived he had just finished placing them over their parents' graves.

“I suppose I wasn't very decent to Luis,” Christopher said finally.

In spite of herself, unexpectedly, Kay found herself chuckling. “I suppose you weren't, exactly. Though I'm surprised to find you only realizing it at this belated moment.”

“He did his best with us,” Christopher said. “Raising us, I mean. Do you remember when I stole his car and drove it up to Cape Cod for the weekend?”

“You were all of seventeen.”

“Still sixteen,” Christopher informed her. “How many parents would put up with that kind of thing? You know, he never once hit me,” Christopher said with unexpected seriousness. “Never even raised a hand.”

“I know.”

“He did his best with us,” Christopher said again. “That still means something, I think.”

Kay pursed her lips but didn't say anything. “I'm not sure what it means.”

“I spent twenty years being angry at him without much reason,” Christopher said absently. “And now that I have one I feel . . . empty.”

“He made his choices,” Kay said.

Christopher shrugged. “It's not that simple,” he said. “I think maybe I understand him better than you do. Better than you can, maybe.”

“Maybe.”

“What would you have done to get Justyna free? What would you have sacrificed? What is right and wrong, measured against the life of someone you love?”

“I don't know,” Kay admitted. “But afterward, once it was through, he could have gone to the authorities. He could have come clean.”

“It takes a lot to throw your life away on a point of principle,” Christopher said. “Easier to keep your head down and hope things improve. It wasn't like it was an everyday thing. Probably there were weeks, months, maybe even years when he forgot that he had done what he did, forgot that his life was in hock, forgot that he was living on borrowed time . . .” Christopher shrugged.

“Forgot that he'd murdered our parents?” Kay asked, waving a hand at the gravestones and what lay beneath them.

“No,” Christopher admitted. “I don't suppose he ever forgot that.”

They stayed like that for a long time, the two of them, the last of the Malloy clan, standing over the corpses of their parents, silence hanging over them, the sunlight beginning to dim. “Sin is sin, Christopher,” Kay said finally. “Even if we regret it, even if we were forced into it, even if it's understandable, it marks us. It stains us, corrodes and corrupts. Innocence is a precious thing and needs to be guarded.”

“Then I suppose it's a good thing that you're around to protect it,” Christopher said, taking her hand in his, staring east towards the river, and the skyline of Manhattan, and the vast world beyond it. Kay smiled and squeezed herself against him, and they stayed like that for a time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T
HIS BOOK
exists because of the support and guidance of two people, Jonathan Karp and Marysue Rucci, who gave me the opportunity to tell a story. You're both amazing. I still marvel at the serendipitous way in which my path intersected with Jonathan's, and from that intersection, the concept for this book was born. His enthusiasm has been inspiring. I owe Marysue a debt of gratitude for her patient and insightful editorial guidance throughout the process. I consider myself extraordinarily lucky that she took this project on personally.

Thanks to all the wonderful people at Simon & Schuster who fielded my many questions and made the publishing process look so easy when it seemed so overwhelming.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude and sincere appreciation to Daniel Polansky. Your expert guidance and willingness to listen were very special to me. I learned much from you and can only hope I was a good student of the art. Till we meet again, good writing and good fortune.

And finally, to the men and women of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who keep our nation safe.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR