Stephanie — J.T. O'Connor

In Krakow, Poland, Rosalie, with her colleague Anton, intercept an arms shipment, conveyed by the arms trading Yanukovych group, that was destined for the Middle East. Rosalie is told that the shipment contains a consignment of radioactive wastes intended for a dirty bomb, but the shipment is split to prevent them from locating the hot part. After uncovering both parts of the shipment, they discover that their handler in Tel Aviv was behind the operation and is now directing his colleagues to hunt them down and kill them. They join up with an independent intelligence agent, Abraham, who has been tracking the radioactive wastes and, together, they map out the identities of the plotters. The threesome flee Krakow in a blizzard on a freight train to Gdansk and escape to Hamburg on a coastal container ship, Stephanie and Anton falling into a hopeless love as they move through the apparently hopeless situation. Stephanie and Anton plan to go public with their information at a press conference in Tel Aviv and make a break for freedom, but their adversaries have other plans. Fleeing Israel, Rosalie joins up with Abraham's intelligence group, White Swan, based in England, to regroup and attack her foes from a different direction. She reverts to her original name, Stephanie, and moves back to her birth country, Guatemala, in order to investigate a small end of the Yanukovych chain. Stephanie becomes ensnared in an unrelated project about natural hazards, directed by her sister's boyfriend, Evan. When the bad guys mistake that couple for their real enemies, they send two assassins, Kravchuk and Dankevych, out to kill them, as described in Favelito (Oskar Pt I). Together, the White Swan agents determine that the small Guatemalan operation is not just about Oskar but, instead, is an enormous money laundering scheme that services arms dealers world-wide. Stephanie photo-IDs members of the cartel and has a series of violent confrontations with their thugs. Using Stephanie's data, her White Swan cyber-wizard colleagues defenestrate the arms dealers' financial system and reveal them to the world. Tel Aviv remains recalcitrant about her status ostensibly to protect its government from falling.. While back in England, writing up reports on the results of their recent effort, Stephanie's boss asks her to help evaluate a ranch in Argentina that could serve as a refuge for beleaguered White Swan agents, such as Stephanie. They meet with Sean, an Aussie ranch manager, and spend a couple of weeks in western Argentina doing the evaluation and discovering an equipment scam centered on the ranch. As the ranch closing nears, Stephanie's colleagues broaden the scope of the arms sales and shift the involvement of different parties. A short assignment to help out an intelligence community associate takes Stephanie, in drag, to Athens. During an uneventful period of surveillance, she goes to a performance by a favored belly dancer, where she has a star-crossed encounter with the chief assassin, Kravchuk, of the Yanukovych group she had frustrated in Krakow. The story ends with a long, fierce, very personal knife fight in an Athens alley from which no more than one, and possibly not even that, could emerge alive.