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  BOOKS BY DANA HAYNES

  THE ST. NICHOLAS SALVAGE & WRECKING SERIES

  St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking

  Sirocco

  The Saint of Thieves

  THE CRASHERS SERIES

  Crashers

  Breaking Point

  THE DARIA GIBRON SERIES

  Ice Cold Kill

  Gun Metal Heart

  THE PROFESSOR HARRY BISHOP SERIES

  (WRITING AS CONRAD HAYNES)

  Bishop’s Gambit, Declined

  Perpetual Check

  Sacrifice Play

  ANTHOLOGIES

  Denim, Diamonds and Death (edited by Rick Ollerman)

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  The Gatekeeper (writing as James Byrne)

  Copyright © 2023 by Dana Haynes

  E-book published in 2023 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover design by Luis Alejandro Cruz Castillo

  Series design by Blackstone Publishing

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion

  thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner

  whatsoever without the express written permission

  of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations

  in a book review.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental

  and not intended by the author.

  Trade e-book ISBN 979-8-200-79323-5

  Library e-book ISBN 979-8-200-79322-8

  Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense

  CIP data for this book is available

  from the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  To Janet Reid and the inexplicable alchemy of sorcery,

  science and psychology that makes a great literary agent.

  To Vikki Warner, Josie Woodbridge, Ember Hood,

  Hannah Ohlmann, Jeffrey Yamaguchi, Jesse Bickford,

  Lauren Maturo, Sean Thomas, Ananda Finwall,

  Alex Cruz, Joe Garcia, and everyone else at

  Blackstone Publishing. And to the late Peggy Hageman.

  Thank you for your thoughtful dedication to the

  books and audio books you create.

  It’s a blessing to work with such dedicated folks.

  And of course to Katy King. I fall back on Cole Porter,

  because who wouldn’t?

  “Night and day, you are the one

  Only you beneath the moon and under the sun

  Whether near to me or far

  It’s no matter darling where you are

  I think of you

  Night and day.”

  C01

  Latitude 61°3′ north, longitude 28°11′ east,

  23,000 feet above sea level

  Maksim Tsygan slept on the flight home from Chechnya.

  He hated these fast turnaround trips—ten hours in the air, fourteen straight hours of negotiating with arms buyers who were all far too big for their britches, and eleven hours to get back home to Russia. Flying was an agony. Tsygan had fractured his left hip four years earlier while ice skating with his granddaughters, and sitting on airplanes, even well-appointed ones like a de Havilland DHC-6-300 Twin Otter, was excruciating.

  At least his newly hired bodyguards made the trip bearable. The mute—a man with wavy, coal-black hair and a constant smile—had stocked the airplane with exceptional vodka, plus a freezer to keep the liquor at near zero degrees, just the way Tsygan liked it. And the lean Spanish woman was—well, breathtaking. She wore her hair up in a low chignon, parted in the middle, and had snugged herself into chocolate leather pants, a tight-fitting leather jacket that zipped to her throat, and high boots. She was tall and trim and moved athletically. She had kept a raptor’s eye on the ruthless Chechen buyers and their burly, bearded thugs in a way that made Tsygan feel safer.

  Maksim Tsygan never mixed business with pleasure, especially when dealing with uncultured animals like the Chechens. But once he was home and safe, he intended to bed this woman. If she protested, he’d double the payment for the job. In Tsygan’s experience, most women were whores at heart.

  He woke up when his ears popped. The Spanish beauty leaned forward in her seat. “We’re landing.” She spoke French, which wasn’t his best language. But she spoke neither Russian nor English, in which Tsygan was fluent. The dark-haired bodyguard never spoke at all.

  The man stood and poured Tsygan more vodka.

  He accepted. Why not? He’d just sold more than 1.7 million euros worth of antiaircraft weapons to Chechen criminals. A good day’s work.

  Twenty minutes later, the de Havilland landed on an isolated airfield well outside St. Petersburg. Tsygan’s watch said it was two thirty in the morning. He’d already paid all the necessary bribes for permission to transit Russian airspace, but he didn’t particularly want to haggle with the provincial police as his chauffeur drove Tsygan’s armored Humvee into the city. At this hour, he anticipated a quiet drive home.

  He’d get a few hours’ sleep and then call for the Spanish bodyguard. He was sure she’d be impressed by his stamina in bed. All women were.

  The dark-haired man cracked open the amidships hatch: the upper half rising, the lower half transforming into stairs. Icy air blasted into the cabin. Despite all the vodka he’d consumed, Tsygan’s hip began to ache again.

  They bundled up in fur-collared coats with fur hats and thick gloves. Tsygan guessed it was fifteen degrees Fahrenheit on the ground, give or take.

  The man stepped out first, looked both ways, then turned and nodded. Professionals, even here on safe soil. Tsygan hadn’t used this firm before but decided to put them on retainer.

  He deplaned, his breath pluming, his travel bag over his right shoulder. The Spaniard stepped down next.

  Tsygan didn’t see his armored, chrome-colored Humvee.

  He did see three SUVs with official-looking light bars, currently unlit, and a half dozen soldiers in winter gear. Each of them carried a rifle.

  “What’s all this, then?”

  A man with a walrus mustache stepped forward and into the light coming from the de Havilland’s windows and open hatch. “Maksim Tsygan? I am Majuri Akseli Vesialho. I have in my possession an arrest warrant for you, sir. Please come with us.”

  “Arrest warrant? What the fuck is this?” Tsygan peered at the insignia on the man’s fur hat. “You’re Finnish! You have no authority here!”

  A smile bloomed beneath the ridiculous mustache. “In Finland? We have plenty of authority in Finland, sir.”

  “This is Russian soil!”

  Tsygan turned to his bodyguards, his eyes wild.

  The black-haired man stomped a boot on the ground. “Is this Russia? It doesn’t feel like Russia.” It was the first time he’d spoken in three days. He spoke in English. He sounded American. He turned to the tall Spaniard. “This feel like Russia to you?”

  She held up her hand, palm up, as if catching rain. “You know, it really doesn’t.”

  She, too, spoke English.

  Maksim Tsygan felt his world spin. He nearly vomited. Someone took his shoulder bag. Someone else handcuffed him. Someone helped him into the caged rear seat of an SUV.

  Michael Patrick Finnigan used his teeth to remove his right glove and stretched out his hand. “Majuri.”

  The major removed his glove and shook.

  Katalin Fiero Dahar just nodded to the officer.

  “The paperwork is all prepared,” said the Finnish major, grinning. “That bastard has sold explosives to half the world’s terrorists. The International Criminal Court has a cell all warmed up for him. Don’t know how you did it. Don’t care. But you two are heroes. Who are you?”

  Finnigan tugged his glove back on. “Phil Rizzuto. This is Mel Allen. Just doing our job, sir.”

  “Rizzuto. Allen.” The major nodded. “I’ll make sure you get the credit for this. Well done. Well done, indeed.”

  He turned back to the SUVs. Finnigan and Fiero climbed back into the Twin Otter. Fiero removed her gloves and banged on the flight deck door, then opened it.

  Their pilot, Lachlan Sumner, grinned over his shoulder.

  “Give me twenty to refuel, and we’ll be home before you know it.”

  She smiled at him. “Flying with a false flight plan over Russian airspace is risky. Never, ever tell your wife we did this.”

  “Trust me,” the New Zealander said, “she’s far scarier than you. We’re wheels-up in thirty.”

  Back in the main cabin, Finnigan poured more vodka into two glasses and handed one over. “Shame to waste it.”

  They touched glasses and sipped. It really was damn fine vodka.

  Finnigan shivered. “We were outside for two minutes and I lost all feeling in my scrotum. Let’s get to Cyprus before we freeze to death.”

  They settled in two of the cabins’ four seats. “We just paid the bills for half the year,” Fiero said, settling back and savoring the drink.

  “Nice work if you can get it.”

  She said, “Phil Rizzuto and Mel Al
len?”

  “Do you care?”

  “Not even a little.”

  “Excellent.”

  They savored the win and the vodka and waited for their plane to take them back home to Cyprus.

  C02

  Three weeks passed pleasantly in the Cypriot town of Kyrenia.

  Michael Finnigan parked the Jeep in the company slot just off Erdal Aksa. The downtown core was built on the slopes of a cauldron, rising steeply from the Girne Marina with its gaily bobbing boats of rich Turks and Russians and from the east the massive Venetian castle looming over everything.

  He’d have their living quarters—above the office—to himself because Fiero had taken up a new hobby, shooting photos. She’d spent the previous day in Famagusta, another coastal town, this one on the island’s east coast, famed for its fifteenth century Venetian-walled inner city—although that wasn’t what she planned to photograph.

  Famagusta’s weirdest feature was its ghost town: the southeastern quadrant of the city, known as Varosha, had once been a thriving tourist mecca thanks to its sandy white beaches. It featured more than a mile of tall, expensive hotels that had once catered to Hollywood stars and European elites. But during the war in 1974, the Turkish military had taken the town and about forty thousand Greeks had fled overnight. A United Nations declaration at the time said the Turks couldn’t operate the resort sector without paying off the Greeks who owned the land. Rather than do that, the Turks built a chain-link fence around an area more than a mile long and a few blocks wide. Dozens of three- to five-star hotels, featuring nearly twelve thousand guest rooms, were abandoned. And five decades later, they still were. The glass was gone, the roofs caved in, the once-stately hotels sagging and gutted. And nobody but Turkish soldiers were allowed inside the grounds.

  Which is why Fiero wanted to shoot photos there: Turks with military weapons waved off all tourists who tried to take images of the ghost town. Fiero’s new hobby allowed her to express her artistic side while playing hide-and-seek with dozens of armed men.

  She’d return with thousands of images, Finnigan assumed, and nobody would have ever seen her.

  From Famagusta—the Greek name for the town; the Turks call it Gazimagusta—Fiero would ride her motorcycle to Larnaca, which has the island’s only good commercial airport. Fiero planned to travel to Spain to see her parents.

  Finnigan grabbed both bags of groceries, stopping to chat with a couple of the local shopkeepers. He had never had a knack for foreign languages, and everyone on Cyprus spoke fluent English—the island still held two British Royal Air Force bases and plenty of expat retirees—but to his surprise, he was learning to chat, at least a few polite words, in Turkish and Greek.

  He was trying to learn some polite expressions in Spanish too. Mostly because he’d been making friends with Katalin Fiero’s parents, up until a few months ago.

  That was the last time either of them had spoken to her parents.

  He entered their tall, narrow building from the southern side. Because downtown Kyrenia was a maze of hairpin streets, he entered on the third floor. The other face of the four-story building—the north face—loomed over the marina and the lovely, romantic Kordonboyu Caddesi boardwalk that skirted the water.

  In their living quarters, Finnigan was surprised to find Fiero out on the small balcony off the main office. She sat on an old boat cushion, back against the slatted iron balcony railing, her bare feet up on the far balcony railing, her heels higher than her head. She wore perfectly round, blue reflective sunglasses, cutoffs, and an ancient Metallica T-shirt. She was reading a paperback propped up against her mahogany-tanned knees.

  Finnigan put the groceries away—he always did the shopping, as well as the cooking. As he worked, a black cat walked into the kitchen. Finnigan stared at it. The cat stared back. He put two martini glasses in the freezer. He retrieved a little leftover chicken from the fridge, shredded it with two forks, put it on a plate, and set it on the floor.

  The cat sniffed it, looked at him, then almost shrugged and started eating.

  He gathered ice, plus a bottle of limoncello, gin, and lemon juice. He mixed the drinks, shook them, poured them into the frosted glasses.

  He opened the door to the balcony and stepped out, leaning against the railing by Fiero’s bare, tanned feet. He lowered one of the cocktails and she reached up, beaming.

  “Oh my God. Perfect. Thank you.”

  “How was the ghost town?”

  “Eerie. Totally abandoned, except for the Turkish garrison. I got some lovely images. I’ll show you at dinner.”

  Finnigan said, “There’s a cat in there.”

  “I noticed. Earlier.”

  “You let it in?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “But you didn’t kick it out.”

  “It wasn’t bothering me.”

  They sipped their drinks, enjoyed the breeze.

  “You’re supposed to be at your folks’ place.”

  She sipped. “God. This is lovely.”

  “Earth to Katalin. You’re supposed to be visiting your folks.”

  “There was a change of plan.”

  Finnigan sipped his drink and looked out at the marina, at the eastern Mediterranean beyond, and at the smudge of the Turkish coast, just barely visible on the horizon. Weird trade winds made the island of Cyprus pleasantly warm when the countries nearest it—Turkey, Syria, Israel, Egypt—were baking.

  He said, “Change of plan?”

  “Something came up.”

  “Something.”

  “As things are wont to do, Michael. Yes.”

  Finnigan leaned against the railing, waiting. Fiero sat on the iron-slat floor of the balcony. He could see his own reflection in her round sunglasses.

  He said, “Braaa buk buk buk . . .”

  She smiled up at him. “I know one hundred and thirteen ways to kill you.”

  “Only half of which involve your cooking.”

  “I know one hundred and fourteen ways to kill you.”

  “You’re supposed to be meeting Alexandro and Khadija.”

  Which, of course, she knew. And had been avoiding.

  Katalin Fiero Dahar had grown up rich and privileged. Her father, Alexandro Fiero, was a third cousin of the king of Spain. He was an entrepreneur and philanthropist, a beacon of Europe’s sometimes-fragile liberal left. Khadija Fiero was Algerian. She was an academic, an activist, a popular TV news commentator and a darling of the media.

  Katalin had grown up rich and privileged, yes, but not pampered. She’d been a star athlete. She’d crewed racing yachts. She competed for Spain at the Olympics in the biathlon. And when terrorists attacked public transportation in Madrid, she’d joined the army.

  It hadn’t taken long for the powers that be to realize they had a superb athlete and an excellent marksman on their hands. They also found out she had no qualms about killing for king and country. When Fiero first met Finnigan, she’d been one of her country’s assassins.

  Her parents never knew. They would have been devastated.

  It was Finnigan—ex-cop and ex–US Marshal, looking for a better way to get the bad guys—who suggested they quit their jobs and work together. They formed a partnership whose mission was to break the rules and to bring the worst-of-the-worst people to justice. Sometimes that meant delivering people illegally to the International Criminal Court or other courts. (German courts, for instance, were beginning to make a name for themselves in the realm of international crime.) They formed St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking as a false front to hide the money they were raking in. The company allegedly worked in marine salvage. Cypriot banks are notoriously crooked, so Cyprus became their home and headquarters. Their cover was good enough for local banking authorities.

  Neither of their families would believe they’d become maritime salvage experts. So, for them, Finnigan and Fiero created a second fiction: they told their families they were low-level bureaucrats, pumping out boring economic reports for the European Union; like soybean harvests and the compatibility of Eastern European auto parts and Western European cars.

  The ruse had worked. For a while.

  Until a bomber began leaving bodies and wreckage throughout Europe. Finnigan and Fiero had tracked down the bomber after American and Spanish intelligence had failed. Fiero’s own parents had been swept into the insanity. Fiero had shot and killed the bomber in plain sight of her mother and father.