---

Tarmo waited until Mikael’s breathing settled before reaching for the secure channel.

The suite felt smaller with the door closed. He poured a glass he wouldn’t drink—habit, not thirst—and keyed in the feed.

Karim’s face bloomed first, grainy. Then Mitra’s, backlit by amber.

“The codes,” Tarmo said. “You have them.”

Not a question. Karim inclined his head once.

“And Tabriz? I heard Erdogan’s men were close.”

Karim’s eyes gave nothing. “They were. We were closer.”

Mitra leaned in. “The keeper won’t be a problem.”

Tarmo let the silence stretch. “So you have the pouch.”

Karim shifted—minutely, but enough. “We lost track of it. I gave it to Asdar in the mountains.”

“Lost track of Asdar,” Mitra added.

The admission sat between them like a body no one wanted to move.

Tarmo nodded slowly. The nod of a man who’s stopped counting messes.

Then Karim’s voice, cool as steel on glass: “We didn’t do it for you. We did it for Elena.”

Mitra’s smile was thin. “Boswell asked me to keep an eye on her. I didn’t expect a geopolitical hurricane.” She shrugged. “Here I am.”

Tarmo sat back. The vodka in his glass trembled, almost imperceptibly.

Karim—Hasna Bilal’s man.
Mitra—Boswell’s asset.
All of them circling Elena like she was a flame he’d lit himself.

“Then we’re in the same storm,” he said.

No one spoke. The feed ended with two curt nods—no allegiance, no open betrayal. Just the thin strip of ground between them.

Karim’s hand moved toward the disconnect. Mitra’s fingers hovered at the edge of her screen.

The door swung open. No knock.

Mikael stepped in, no coat, no preamble. “Sandi’s not in her suite. Bed’s unslept.”

Karim and Mitra went still—blade-still—but said nothing.

Tarmo rose slowly, the air thickening around him. His gaze fell on them both like a judge weighing sentence.

“I can guess where she is.”

The look he gave them could have pinned bodies to walls.

He crossed the suite without another word. Mikael fell in behind, moving with a precision that felt older now—sentinel, not just soldier.

---

The corridor at the far end swallowed sound.

They stopped at Elena’s door.

Tarmo didn’t knock. He met Mikael’s eyes, gave a faint nod.

Mikael slipped a thin tool from his jacket. Metal whispered. The lock clicked—ritual in the hands of a man who’d made a life of crossing thresholds uninvited.

The door edged inward.

Under amber light: Elena and Sandi, naked, limbs tangled in white sheets.

Two sets of eyes flashed open. Locked on the doorway.

No one breathed.

At first it was just the sight—skin on skin, lamplight pooling in the hollow of a throat.

Then the meaning landed: they’d been here hours. Maybe longer. While he’d been arranging her interrogation.

The knot in Tarmo’s chest tightened—primitive, prophecy-thick, every warning Mikael had ever spoken crawling out of the shadows to grin.

He stared. Then turned. Walked away.

I.Ph.