Chapter 2
Zinal, Switzerland
One month earlier
Mac looked at the sky.
Dark clouds tumbled over the mountaintops and advanced across the valley, an ominous gray blanket slowly blocking out the sun. He felt a drop of rain. A storm was moving in.
“Slow down, Kat,” he shouted. “Let Papa catch up.”
He continued down the hill, doing his best to keep up with the little girl. They were off trail, and he had to be watchful for gopher holes and clumps of heather.
“Another one!” His granddaughter, Katya, ran ahead, calling out whenever she spotted an edelweiss. She was four years old, blond, and endlessly inquisitive.
“Good for you,” said Mac, but all the while his eyes scanned the slopes. It was his sniper’s gaze. Focused, suspicious, wary. He wasn’t concerned about the storm. He gave it a quarter of an hour until it started coming down. There was something else.
They were being watched.
He hadn’t seen anyone, not yet, but he knew all the same. The hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention, as if an electric current pulsed through the air. He’d had the feeling too many times to count.Ignore at your peril.
“Papa, here! Look!” The little girl stooped to pluck a flower. Mac marveled at how he’d come to love her so. Barely twelve months had passed since she’d come into his life. It hadn’t been easy at first. Up at the crack of dawn. Constant supervision. Endless engagement. “Oh really? Is that right? Good for you, sweetheart.” Now he couldn’t imagine his life without her. He’d been a lousy father the first time around, absent for months at a time; absent in a different way when he’d been at home. Katya was his second chance.
Her mother had been Russian, an officer in the SVR, Russia’s spy service. Like his son, Will, she had been betrayed by a mole inside the CIA. Like his son, she had died on the Matterhorn.
Katya ran to him, proudly displaying a fistful of flowers. Mac scooped her up into his arms and counted the edelweiss in her hand. “Four,” he said. “One more than yesterday.”
“Tomorrow I’ll find five.”
“I’m counting on it,” said Mac, kissing her on the cheek and setting her down.
That was when he saw him. A short, portly man, more or less his age, navy jacket, new hiking boots, walking sticks. A day tourist like any other who came up on weekends. Except today was Wednesday, and they weren’t anywhere near the marked trails. And besides, Mac recognized him.
They’d finally come for him.
“Hello, Mac. Long time, no see.” The man threw off a casual salute. His name was Don Baker. Back in the day, he’d been Mac’s boss. Deputy assistant director of special operations or something like that.
“Hello, Don.” Mac waved and gave a look around. Two women had taken up positions behind him. Both were dressed in jeans and sweaters, worn boots; locals, to look at. Mac knew better.
“Don’t just stand there like a stranger,” growled Baker. “Get over here. I want a handshake and a hug.”
Mac wasn’t afraid. Baker hadn’t ventured all this way to Switzerland to kill him. Not here. Not at three o’clock in the afternoon on a rainyautumn day, a stone’s throw from the town’s main drag. This was about something else.
He took Katya’s hand. Together they approached the visitor. Baker hadn’t aged well. Heavy jowls. Bulbous nose. Rheumy eyes and bags heavy enough to anchor a carrier. The only thing that hadn’t changed was his hair, an impressive reddish-brown thatch that better belonged on a college undergrad.
“You found me,” said Mac. As ordered, he shook Baker’s hand. The hug could wait.
“You didn’t make it hard,” said Baker. “Lit up a lot of screens.”
“What took you so long?”
“We’ll come to that.” Baker leaned down to address the little girl. “Your name is Katya, right? I’m a friend of your grandfather. We used to work together.”
“Did you take care of the cows too?” asked Katya.
“Cows?” Baker asked Mac, alarmed.
“I look after them during the summer,” Mac explained. “Up on the alp.” He gestured to the hillside behind them. “Swiss brown. About sixty of them. There’s a dairy up there and ... ah, forget it.”
