The traitor was not Natasha.
It took Jane three days of thinking, two long conversations with Dimitri, and one crucial piece of information she'd stored without knowing she was storing it — a detail from Natasha's visit, a word she'd caught in Russian from the corridor, a photograph she'd glimpsed on Anton's tablet that had nothing to do with the map but that her brain had filed anyway.
"The photograph Anton had on his tablet when he arrived," she said, on the third evening. "The headshot. Who was that?"
Dimitri was still. "What photograph?"
"I only saw it for a second — when he was walking through the hall and I was coming down the stairs. A headshot, formal. A man in his fifties, grey hair, very precise-looking."
Dimitri looked at her with an expression she couldn't read. "Describe him more precisely."
She did.
The silence that followed was very particular.
"That," Dimitri said slowly, "is Marcus Holt. My legal director. Twenty years with the organisation. He handles all the legitimate business infrastructure — contracts, property, the foundation." He paused. "He is not on the list of three."
"No," Jane said. "But he should be. Because the night of the power cut — when I couldn't sleep, I went to the kitchen for water, and I heard someone in the study using the satellite phone. I assumed it was one of your night security. But the voice—" She pressed her hand flat on the table. "I didn't think about it at the time because I didn't know what I was hearing. But I've been going back through it. The voice had an accent. Not Russian, not Italian. South English. Very precise diction."
Dimitri looked at her. Something had gone very still in him.
"He was at the estate?" he said. "Holt was at the estate during Natasha's visit?"
"He flew in with her," Jane said. "I saw him get off the helicopter. I assumed he was one of Natasha's staff — I didn't know who he was. But Natasha knew. She brought him."
"Natasha brought Marcus Holt to my estate," Dimitri said. Very quietly. Very carefully. "During a critical operational period."
"And then the intruders arrived four days later," Jane said. "With information precise enough to find the estate within a forty-kilometre radius."
A silence so complete it had weight.
"She didn't do it herself," Dimitri said. And then, more quietly, with something that wasn't anger but was the cold that lived under anger: "She handed Holt access and let him do it."
Jane looked at this man across the table and thought about the intricacy of it — the deniability, the careful arm's-length construction. Not a betrayal committed. A betrayal enabled. Natasha, who was too clever to leave her own fingerprints on anything.
"She loves you," Jane said. "I believe that. What she wants and what she feels are two separate things, and she's found a way to have both."
Dimitri was very quiet for a long time.
"She always was," he said at last, "the best chess player in the family."
Jane thought about what came next. About a game played through three countries, through kidnapping and snowfields and Italian sunsets, by people who thought in years and moved in shadows. About a woman who had told her, with extraordinary honesty, to be careful of her.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"What I always do," he said. And then, with something new in his voice — something that was neither cold nor warm but was, perhaps, both: "But first, I'm going to make sure you're safe."
"I'm beginning to suspect," Jane said, very quietly, "that those two things might be the same thing."
He looked at her.
"Yes," he said. "They might be."