Page 146 of Protecting You

A frown. “I haven’t talked to her.”

“If it was Ghazi, then he’s a very good liar.”

“Who do you suspect?”

“Either rivals of his or an agency trying to make it look like a burglary.”

“I’ll find out if it was us. Go on.”

“Even without her high-tech equipment, she uncovered the Russian’s name that night.”

“Did she give it to Ghazi?”

“She told him she’s still looking, and he seems satisfied with that answer.”

“The name?”

“Yefim Lavrentiy.”

If Callan hadn’t been watching very closely, he might’ve missed the slight widening of Gavin’s eyes, a microsecond of his mouth opening.

“Who is he?” Gavin asked.

Callan sat back, resting his elbows on the armrests. “You tell me.”

Gavin schooled his features. After a moment, he smiled. “Sputnik.”

“The satellite?”

“It was his codename.”

Callan thought it through. “Because he’s always watching?”

That earned a quick grin. “Precisely. Sputnik was a low-level SVR agent in Iraq, tasked with discovering and relating the locations of American personnel to his higher-ups, who passed them on to enemy forces. But while he was serving his country, his wife got pneumonia. Easily cured, but the doctors near their country house where she was staying missed it. By the time he learned about it, it was too late. She was dead. I’d heard rumblings that he was furious, believing his country should’ve taken better care of her. It’s a long story, as these things tend to be, but we turned him.”

Bywe,Callan guessedGavin meantI.

Impressive.

“Sputnik has remained with the SVR all these years, moving up in the ranks, passing intel to us. Good intel, mostly.”

“Mostly?”

He wagged his head. “A few times, he’s given us faulty intel, but he had to do it to throw off suspicion.”

“Any chance one of those times led to a bombing in Kirkuk?”

Gavin straightened. “How do you know about that?”

“That bombing killed Dariush Ghazi’s girlfriend.”

Gavin took that information in. Callan imagined the man flipping through file folders in his head, filling in blanks. Making connections.

Callan had heard a lot of stories about Gavin Wright. What he knew, and what he saw now, was that the man was very, very good at what he did. Hopefully, he was also trustworthy.

“How do you know?” Gavin asked.

“What else can you tell me about Lavrentiy?”

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