Viktor Petrov sat in the Vienna safe house basement, bound but unharmed, when his phone—which Katarina's team had failed to confiscate—vibrated with incoming message from encrypted network channel. The device was hidden in his shoe's false heel, emergency communication method designed for exactly this scenario.
"Petrov compromised. Location transmitted. Extraction team en route. Eliminate all witnesses," the message read.
Petrov's face remained carefully neutral despite the sick realization flooding through him—his own organization was not coming to rescue him. They were coming to kill everyone, including him, to prevent his intelligence from being exploited further. The network had written him off as acceptable loss.
He was dead regardless of whether he cooperated with his captors or r
