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“No!” echoed from both Gray and Rosauro

With a wounded frown, Kowalski returned and ducked into the back of the limo Rosauro followed

Before joining them, Gray searched the sidewalks, the streets No one see attention Hopefully they’d shaken their tail completely He craned around and stared across the curve of the river

Off in the distance, the white ht, peaceful and eternal, sluht water

Gray turned his back on the Taj Mahal

Only the dead slept so peacefully

As he entered the back of the lie “What did you do to my cane?”

Gray fell into his seat The eighteenth-century ivory handle was bloody The fine detail of the carved crane had been ground smooth from its ride across the braided wire

“The cane is the least of your worries, Professor,” Gray said

Masterson glowered at him as the limo pulled from the curb

Gray pointed to theto kill you The question, Dr Masterson, is why”

10

September 6, 7:45 AM

Washington, DC

“Loose ends,” Trent McBride explained “There are too many of them”

Yuri saw the lance in his direction, but he didn’t flinch Let them kill him It did not matter Yuri sat in an office chair They’d allowed hi the electrodes His fiery torture had continued for another twenty ed enetics of the children, the secret he and Savina had kept from the Americans

He even admitted why the Russians had not objected to Dr Archibald Polk’s recruit too close to the heart of the genetic secret Savina had already planned to orchestrate an accident while the man was at the Warren, to silence him

But in this gained that Polk’s own colleague and friend would arrange his escape, all to lure one of their children out into the open

And Savina had taken the bait She cared little that Polk had escaped with the skull, which McBride had given hienetic secret he held that had panicked Savina into sending Yuri and Sasha into the hunt for the man She had fallen cleanly into the American’s trap

“Loose ends?” Mapplethorpe asked, drawing back his attention He shook his head, unconcerned “I see only three The girl, the skull, and Polk’s trail in India The last is already being handled And I’ve heard ru skull ht mysteriously turn up”

“How did you e that?” McBride asked

“Get waters boiling just right, and you’ll be surprised ill come to the surface”

“And the girl?”

Yuri paid aze flicked to him Yuri knew the only reason he was still alive was because of Sasha Mapplethorpe needed him, knew about her medical condition, about a problem seen in all the children The stress of the mental manipulation was not without physical consequences to the subjects In fact, few lived far into their twenties, especially those with theeggs and sperenetic line viable

Mapplethorpe sighed “We should have the girl before the sun sets…if not sooner”

And you’ll still be too late, Yuri thought

So simple these Americans, so quick to assume that as tortured testimony was the whole story While Yuri had not lied, he had committed one sin: a sin of omission In fact, McBride hadn’t even known the question to ask, so secure was he in his superiority and his sadistic trust in the power of pain