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investigation into the matter, but found nothing. Like ghosts, the story remained unsubstantiated.
    But they were real. They paid attention. They found us. We are not alone.
    Artur found himself wishing they were.
    “You are so stubborn,” Graves said, studying his face. “So delightfully obtuse. You are an interesting man, Mr. Loginov. So much potential wasted. An entire lifetime of misdirection and failed ambition. I wonder if you ever feel sorry for yourself?”
    “Not particularly,” he replied. “But thank you for the compliments.”
    Her smile was cold. “I need an answer, Mr. Loginov.”
    “You have given me nothing to answer with. Do you think I should run into the arms of your Consortium simply because it exists, because you have brought me here under duress?” His head pounded; something was digging, still digging at the back of his skull. A dart, with teeth. “Show me something, Ms. Graves. Give me a real reason.” Give me something I can use against you .
    “How about your life?” she said quietly. “You can join us or die. It’s simple, really. I don’t need to give you anything, because here I hold all the leverage. Make your leap or don’t. The choice is yours.”
    “You did not go to all this trouble just to kill me.”
    “No, we went to all this trouble for a resource that would pay itself out in spades. You have a lucrative gift, Mr. Loginov. Not only that, but you know much about Dirk and Steele, our surprise rival. That is worth something all by itself. But you are worthless if you will not cooperate. A liability. Do you want to be a liability, Mr. Loginov?”
    For a moment he considered playing her game, saying yes and offering himself up like a lamb. Making the sacrifice of his dignity so that he could learn something—learn something and then take the chance to escape. Patience, perseverance, survival.
    “All I need is a word,” Graves whispered. “A verbal signed-on-the-dotted-line. We will do the rest, Mr. Loginov. Never you fear. We will do the rest.”
    The pain intensified, cracking through his head with such intensity he almost imagined voices—one voice, a woman whispering. All the ghosts of his past rose up to drown him in one last shout of agony. Endless. lean make this endless .
    “No,” Artur said, forcing that word past his closing throat. “My answer is no.”
    No more games, no more pretending. He had left that world—left behind the man who put on a mask before his superiors, who said what they wanted to hear or said nothing at all when silence meant the difference between life and a very painful death. He had lived for years as a coward pretending to be a strong man, hating every moment of that existence but powerless to change his circumstances. Drawn in slowly, bit by bit, caught in the sticky web until there was no room to run, no way to leave the violence and death without suffering the same fate.
    No more. Artur had finally found a way to live as an honorable man. He would not give that up again, not even as a lie to save his life. One crack, one sign of weakness—sometimes that was all it took to slide down that slippery path to hell. He could not believe he had contemplated a return to that existence for even one moment.
    Graves sat back. Shadows hid her eyes, but not her mouth: hard, narrow, her lips suddenly gray. Artur stared at that strange mouth, at the sharp lines of her slender body.
    His old bosses and the men they dealt with had always been of two kinds: blustering men, the kind for big gestures—big gifts, big cars, big violence—and the quiet kind, watchful and intelligent, men for whom gestures meant nothing, who could wait and wait, patient in the knowledge that everything they did would tick-tock its way like clockwork into success.
    Quiet now , he remembered Nikolai Petrovona whispering, when one of his brothers grew angry at not being allowed a cut of a new arms shipment. Hush now. Gentle .
    This Graves was the same. A “hush”