About

Helsinki. November, 1989. The cathedral rose out of the morning like carved ivory, its white façade standing against a hard slate sky. A thin frost clung to the broad stone steps, sparkling beneath the weak northern sun. I'd been on Dmitri Salko for six blocks, keeping my collar turned against the cold and my pace unremarkable. Close enough not to lose him. Far enough to be forgotten. The first rule of surveillance is that if they remember your face, you've already failed. A hand settled firmly around my arm. I turned, more out of instinct than surprise. A leather wallet snapped open. A badge. Finnish Security Intelligence. The woman holding it didn't look anxious, or angry. If anything, she wore the patient expression of someone whose prediction had finally come true. She'd been expecting me. "I've had Salko under observation for three weeks," she said evenly. I'd had him for four days. In that moment, every report I'd read, every briefing I'd trusted, began to feel incomplete. Deliberately so. Someone had fed one of us bad intelligence—perhaps both of us. And in less than forty-eight hours, Helsinki Cathedral would become the stage for an attack carefully arranged to look like Soviet sabotage. Ahead of us, Salko slowed. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Just enough to glance into the reflection of a shop window and confirm what he already suspected. He knew I was behind him. Every passerby, every parked car, every darkened window seemed to carry a question I couldn't answer. Something had gone terribly wrong.