Page 74 of Winterveil

“Do you know what the prisoner’s dilemma is?” she asked, voice low.

Nadiya and Julian both nodded, but Giselle looked confused.

“It’s a scenario in game theory,” said Klaudia. “Two members of the same criminal group are arrested. Each is placed in solitary confinement, unable to communicate with the other. The police offer each a bargain: If they testify against their ally, they will go free, while their partner is imprisoned. But if they both testify against the other, they will receive the same sentence. Each prisoner is told that their partner has received the offer and they are given time to think it over.”

“All right,” Giselle said nervously.

“There are three possible outcomes to this scenario,” Klaudia continued. “If both prisoners remain silent, they each serve one year in prison. If one testifies against the other, that one will go free while the other serves three years in prison. And if they both testify against the other, they each serve two years.”

“Both should always testify,” said Julian. “It’s the dominant strategy. Defection has a better payoff than cooperation.”

“Theoretically.” Klaudia lowered her voice even further. “But that’s assuming the police are truthful about their intentions. And in this scenario, it’s never safe to assume that.”

Nadiya’s stomach knotted. “So . . .”

“So cooperation is the dominant strategy.” Klaudia’s gray eyes were icy and sharp. “No matter what they offer you, never defect. Trying to pit us against each other is only to their benefit. This is not a zero-sum game. Not anymore.”

Klaudia looked at each of them in turn. Her gaze was intense, unflinching. And, one by one, they all nodded.

“Good,” she said, lifting her head and stepping back from the table. “Then we’re ready.”

Deckard returned with two briefcases of supplies. The first contained cell phones, credit cards, and rolls of marks and rubles. The second—

“L-pills,” Deckard said, indicating the bottles of white tablets. “Cyanide capsules. These are just for show, of course—not deadly, but they’ll give you a blackout and the worst hangover of your life when you wake up. Don’t take them unless you have no other choice.”

Nadiya accepted her bottle grimly. But the implication that their mission had a suicide option wasn’t her foremost concern.

“No weapons?” she asked Deckard.

“Typically, clandestine officers don’t carry weapons,” he replied. “It’s too dangerous. How would you explain why a college student on vacation is packing a pistol in her suitcase?”

“It seems more dangerous to be without a weapon,” Nadiya said, her apprehension growing.

“You have everything you need to successfully complete the mission,” Deckard said. “It will require flexibility. Ingenuity. Think outside the box. The world of a clandestine officer is not black-and-white. From now on, you exist only in the gray.”

With that, he stepped through the door of the ski lodge, into a flurry of false snow, and was gone.

Twenty-Six

Spring 2037

Camp Peary, Virginia

Early the next morning, before the simulated sun even rose, Klaudia woke. At first she was slightly panicked to find herself in a strange place, but as her eyes adjusted to the semidarkness she saw Nadiya turned on her side in a bed a few feet away and heard Giselle’s soft breathing, and a feeling of relief settled in her chest.

She hadn’t had a roommate since her first year at Valeran. Klaudia found it oddly comforting not to wake up alone. She was careful to be quiet as she showered and dressed, so as not to disturb Nadiya and Giselle, and then she took the files and slipped out the door.

Klaudia made her way downstairs to a small library off the main room. It had a shelf of aged books and faded board games, including a chess set. She made note of that as she sat down to read.

Deckard had not given them so much information as to be overwhelming in volume alone, but what did exist was so information-dense that it took nearly an hour just to arrange the papers into useful piles. Klaudia decided to work backward. If she figured out why each of them had been chosen, she could understand how they were meant to execute the mission.

Her own file contained a number of newspaper clippings pertaining to her trial, copies of her original visa and Soviet passport, and courtroom transcripts. She was unnerved to see them there, and slightly embarrassed to have to confront her previous words, Siegel’s fumbling defenses, and the prosecution’s pitiless lines of questioning. But her inclusion was easiest to explain, if only because the mission would obviously require a fluent Russian speaker. She set the SHIMONOVA, KLAUDIA file aside.

She took Julian’s file next. It contained numerous supplementary documents: family trees, transcribed speeches, and even a chart that tracked the stock prices of the companies owned by various Joyce-Youngs, past and present. It suggested to her that his name and illustrious lineage were somehow crucial to the mission.

Klaudia let her gaze linger on one particular document, a transcript of his first police interview. Too vain—or perhaps too flustered—to allow the opportunity to explain himself to pass, Julian had spoken briefly to the arresting officer before clamming up and demanding his lawyer.

DET. MAHONEY: Was it worth it?