The Shadow Friends

The third installment in the Martini Club series follows a group of retired CIA operatives in the small coastal town of Purity, Maine, as a global affairs conference brings murder, political assassination, and long-buried secrets to their doorstep.

The novel opens 28 years in the past, in Provence. Ingrid, a CIA operative, is guarding Sophie Benoit, who infiltrated a Russian crime syndicate, at a safe house. Two fellow agents, Gordon and Simon, man a guardhouse up the road. When an SUV approaches and Ingrid cannot reach them by radio, she calls for backup. Through her scope, she counts five silhouettes, but only four armed men emerge. She shoots one, but return fire fatally wounds Sophie and injures Ingrid. The attackers breach the door with explosives, knocking her unconscious. Her colleague Rodrigo Estrada arrives with backup and kills the remaining attackers. Gordon was killed by a stiletto, a narrow thrusting blade, driven through his left eye and engraved with a circle-and-dot symbol. Simon's throat was slashed. Ingrid insists she counted five people, but Rodrigo dismisses her, noting only four bodies were found. She ends their romantic relationship and returns home to marry Lloyd, a CIA analyst.

In the present day, the annual Stone Coast Conference convenes at the Cod Cove Resort in Purity. Ingrid, now married to Lloyd Slocum, serves as emcee and travel coordinator. Her closest friends from CIA training, Maggie Bird, Ben Diamond, and Declan Rose, sit in the audience. All retired operatives, they form a social group called the Martini Club. Rodrigo appears unexpectedly at the reception. He reveals he has founded Argus, a private intelligence firm, and tries to recruit Ingrid. He also wants to meet Dr. Maslov, a Russian defector and bioweapons expert speaking at the conference.

Saturday morning, Maslov fails to appear for his panel. In his room, housekeeper Hannah Murray lets Maggie in. Maggie finds Maslov unconscious and performs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Dr. Cornell Stamoran, a virologist who delivered the conference keynote, warns that Maslov recently worked in an Ebola hot zone and orders Maggie quarantined. Meanwhile, Police Chief Jo Thibodeau responds to a welfare check for Karen O'Brien, a waitress who missed her shift. The hotel's security cameras partially failed the previous evening. In the employee parking lot, Jo and Ingrid find Karen's body in her car trunk, killed by a stiletto thrust through her left eye.

From quarantine, Maggie suspects the two events are connected. Ingrid meets Rodrigo secretly and tells him the stiletto matches the one used to kill Gordon in Provence. Rodrigo's Argus sources have linked similar killings across decades and countries, all targeting people who angered Moscow. The circle-and-dot symbol belongs to the Vory, a Russian organized crime brotherhood Moscow uses for deniable assassinations. Rodrigo now believes the fifth attacker from Provence is still active.

At Karen's autopsy, the medical examiner confirms the stiletto as the cause of death, with only minor bruising around the neck. Then Maggie calls: Maslov has died. By midweek, the diagnosis shifts. A Department of Energy team tests Maggie with a Geiger counter and clears her. Maggie deduces that Maslov was poisoned with polonium-210, a lethal radioactive substance produced only in Russia.

Ingrid grows secretive. She sends Lloyd on a fruitless errand and, while he is away, leaves a note and vanishes. Her car turns up at the Belfast airport, where footage shows an unannounced plane departing minutes after landing. Maggie receives a self-destructing text from Ingrid marked "Eyes Only": "Will explain later. Keep him safe. Counting on you" (129). She keeps the message from the others. FBI Special Agent Tanner Minnihan, a physicist investigating the polonium poisoning, arrives in Purity and asks Jo about Dr. Stamoran's and Ingrid's whereabouts.

Lloyd discovers a deleted email on Ingrid's computer containing a surveillance photo of a man at an Amsterdam bus stop. He traces the location and flies there with Maggie. They locate the apartment, but at midnight a Vory gunman and an accomplice ambush them. CIA operative Jon Marcus and a Dutch intelligence colleague intervene, killing both captors. Marcus reveals the man is Dmitry Surikov, a Russian defector living under a false identity. A mole inside the CIA has been exposing defectors through a dark web kill list. Marcus confirms Ingrid is alive and traveling with Rodrigo.

Declan and Ben discover the kill list names eight defectors, six already dead. One survivor is a woman living in Madrid under a false identity. Lloyd flies there with Maggie. He spots the woman being trailed and a van positioning for abduction, so he intervenes. The woman turns out to be Ingrid in disguise, acting as bait in an Argus sting designed to intercept Moscow's assassination teams. Rodrigo's team tracks the van to a house outside Madrid and finds two dead Vory operatives killed by someone else but no stiletto, meaning the fifth attacker remains at large. Ingrid, moved by Lloyd's devotion, agrees to go home.

At the Boston airport, Ben delivers alarming news: Ingrid's name has been added to the kill list, misidentified as a deceased Russian defector. The Slocums take refuge at Maggie's Blackberry Farm. The Martini Club leaves the Slocums' phones at their empty house as bait, but the intruder they catch is Agent Minnihan tracking the signals.

The FBI suspects Andrei, who served Maslov dinner and traveled through Moscow. Jo remains unconvinced. After Hannah abruptly leaves the hotel and stops answering calls, Jo tracks her address to a fortified house in Amesbury, Massachusetts. There, she, Ben, and Declan find a communications hub and stilettos identical to the one that killed Karen. The FBI confirms the real Hannah Murray died as an infant; the woman using her name is a Russian deep-cover operative.

Hannah ambushes Maggie in a parking lot and drives her to a lakeside cottage where Andrei's body already lies. Hannah killed him after he spotted Russian-language text on her phone. She manacles Maggie and demands information about Ingrid and the farm's security. Maggie refuses. Hannah photographs Maggie's battered face and sends the image to the farm with geolocation data pointing to the cottage, luring the group toward a rescue while she infiltrates the farmhouse.

Rodrigo's team realizes the photo was sent from within the farm and dispatches operatives to the cottage. Inside the farmhouse, Hannah presses a gun to Ingrid's head. Ingrid realizes the "fifth man" from Provence was a woman: Hannah's ordinariness let her approach Gordon unnoticed at the guardhouse 28 years earlier. Lloyd bursts through the back door, and Hannah fires, hitting him at the edge of his Kevlar vest. Rodrigo fires through the kitchen window, striking Hannah. Jon Marcus enters and executes her, avenging the murder of his father, Gordon.

Maggie is rescued, and Lloyd is hospitalized but expected to recover. Rodrigo reveals that Marcus is Gordon's son, who joined the CIA to hunt his father's killer. Marcus orchestrated the operation through Argus, feeding disinformation through the Agency's identified mole to lure Moscow's assassins. The group gives the FBI a vague account of Hannah's death, protecting Marcus and preserving deniability. Lloyd, the lifelong analyst who always valued accuracy, consents to the deception. One week later, at the airport, Rodrigo makes a final appeal and kisses Ingrid. She pulls away, watches his plane leave, and drives home to Lloyd, who has two martini glasses chilling in the freezer. She does not look back.