“Before we begin,” Yuri said with that same delighted smile, “I must confess—I have admired your work for many years!”
Henry blinked at him, surprised. “So you know who I am?”
Yuri laughed. “‘Long-time listener, first-time caller,’ as they say in your country. I would congratulate you on your retirement but your last job has some loose ends, yes?”
“Well…” Henry tried not to squirm. “My government lied to me and tried to kill me, if that’s what you mean.”
Yuri laughed again. “In Russia, we call this ‘Tuesday.’ But you Americans—it hurts your feelings. So…?” He raised his eyebrows.
“So why was Dormov going back to Russia?” Henry asked.
“Yes, down to business! Very American—you are a very busy man!” Yuri’s delighted smile faded and his expression became thoughtful as he looked up and down the hallway. It was empty except for the two of them. “We were both friends with Jack Willis,” he went on after a moment. “He was a good man, and like you, I mourn his death. The reason you are here and I have not killed you—yet—” there was a brief hint of a smile on Yuri’s face, “—is, we share a common enemy.”
“Clay Verris?” Henry guessed.
Yuri nodded, his face solemn. “He lured Dormov to the West. Funded his lab. And now you’ve met the fruits of their labor. Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1996. And in ’97…”
“I was the sheep,” Henry said. It still seemed unbelievable but now he was starting to feel less astonished and more like he’d had something stolen from him, something both enormously significant and priceless that he would never get back.
“Perhaps you should take it as a compliment. Verris took your DNA and raised the boy as his own son, trained him to be the perfect assassin.”
“So why did Dormov leave?” Henry asked, even though he was pretty sure he knew the answer, at least in part.
“We tried for years to lure him back home,” Yuri said. “Nothing worked. Then last year, Dormov and Verris had a falling-out. Dormov became frightened; he reached out to me. We had indications that Dormov had made a breakthrough with modified human DNA that could lead to mass production. But Dormov wanted soldiers who were both stronger and smarter. Verris wanted—” Yuri paused, looking troubled. “Something else,” he said finally.
“Something else,” Henry echoed. He had no idea what that meant but he was sure it was nothing good.
Yuri looked into his face and now the cheerfully corrupt, pragmatically treacherous spy was gone, replaced by a man who had encountered something he could not bring himself to justify or accept. If it was true that everyone had a price, it was also true that everyone had a line they wouldn’t cross for any price.
“Mr. Brogan, you are the best at what you do,” Yuri said earnestly. “But you’re still a man. You get tired, you have doubts, fears—you feel pain, even remorse because you have a conscience. This makes you sub-optimal as a soldier. You’re less than perfect and so less profitable.” Yuri leaned toward him and lowered his voice. “Clayton Verris is playing God with DNA. He must be stopped.”
Henry sat in silence. A few days ago, he had understood the basic structure of the world. It was a messy, unhappy, dangerous place and he had chosen to spend his life working to alleviate those things, or at the very least, to keep them from worsening.
But then he had come home from Liège and retired and suddenly the world was upside down and inside out, and everything he knew was wrong. He’d killed a good man and his younger self was trying to kill him to cover it up—sent by the bastard who’d tricked him into killing a good guy in the first place. Henry wondered what Verris had told his clone. Dormov’s spiked file had said he was a bioterrorist. Verris had probably told the clone Henry ate young children alive. Hell, in his early twenties, he might have bought that himself.
Henry was quiet for a long moment, letting the other man’s words sink in. “If this is as dangerous as you say, why not just send a missile? Take out the whole lab?”
Yuri gave a single, humorless laugh. “That is what we are doing—except you are the missile! I wish you luck!”
The Russian stood up, stretched, and tightened the belt on his bathrobe. “And now, you’ll have to excuse me, I must go kill a Ukrainian oligarch.” He looked up and down the empty hallway. “Just kidding!” he added loudly, then winked at Henry as he drew his finger across his own throat, mouthing, No joke.
Yuri turned to leave, then stopped. “One last thing I meant to tell you. Your escape from your home two days ago? Amazing work! I was on the edge of my seat the whole time!”
Henry’s jaw dropped. “How do you even know about that?”
Yuri shrugged good-naturedly. “What can I say? I’m a super-fan.” He ambled up the hallway, his flip-flops smacking against the soles of his feet.
Damn, Henry thought, staring after him; the Ukrainians just couldn’t get a break, either.
Danny and Baron were waiting for him on the balcony. They listened intently as he told them what he’d found out from Yuri.
“Do you believe him?” Danny asked when he’d finished.
Henry nodded. “I’d trust him more than anyone at the agency right now.”
“Well that’s sobering,” Baron said. “You guys up for defecting?”
Danny elbowed him in the ribs. “We just have to find that kid.” Her eyes were large and serious. “You aren’t going to be safe until we do, Henry. None of us are.”
Who are you calling a kid? Henry barely managed not to say it aloud. “Okay, we find him. Then what?”
“You talk to him,” Danny replied, as if this should have been obvious. “He doesn’t know what he is; he doesn’t know who you are to him. Maybe you’ll get through.”
“Seriously?” Henry gave a short, hard laugh. “If a fifty-year-old version of you suddenly shows up saying you’re her clone, that would calm you down?”
“Fifty-one,” Baron put in.
Henry turned to give him a death-ray glare.
“Just sayin’.” Baron shrugged.
Danny touched Henry’s arm gently. “Maybe he’s the mirror you don’t want to look into, Henry. But he’s our best shot at getting to Verris.”
Henry couldn’t decide whether he wanted to hug her or shake her till her eyeballs rattled. Then he grinned as a better idea occurred to him.
“Let’s go get a cup of coffee,” he said.
“Where?” Baron asked.
Henry looked down at himself. He was still in the bathrobe and trunks. “Anywhere we don’t have to take off our clothes.”
CHAPTER 15
“Janet Lassiter?”
Lassiter was sitting at her usual table in the Copper Ground coffee shop, staring out at Savannah’s early morning traffic while she waited for her usual order, which seemed to be taking more than the usual amount of time today. She turned to find a tall, dark-skinned man who looked vaguely familiar standing over her. He wore a narrow blue bike helmet, a tight, colorful shirt, dark shorts, and had a worn canvas bag slung across the front of his body.
Of course he looked familiar, Lassiter realized; he was a bike messenger, most likely the one who almost ran her down every other day.
“Who wants to know?” she asked, knowing full well she wasn’t going to like the answer. No one she had any use for would trust anything important to a bike messenger.