He had been sleeping in the back room when he was awakened by the front door slamming open. He cautiously opened the door to the hallway. His gun was in hand as he checked down the hall.

He could hear Doc talking with a couple of other people in English splattered with Russian. Vlad was holding up the American that had helped in the rescue.

He had not seen this American before they linked together after his rescue. Now he was taking the first good look at him. After noticing that he was bleeding from a couple of holds in his chest he looked at the American’s face.

Doc noticed that Vlad and Peter were distracted. He looked up and examined Peter’s and the American’s faces more closely.

"Peter, is this your twin?" Doc said with a jest and a smile.

It was like looking at a twin. The differences were only very slight.

The American finally spoke. "Are you the one we helped out of the Gulag?"

"Yes" he said softly.

He raised his hand feebly. "My name is Greg, some call me George. Pleased to have helped you." After a pause, "What is your name?"

"Peter." And he took Greg’s hand.

Doc broke the meeting up. "We need to get Greg into a decent bed and take a look at his wounds."

Peter and Vlad carried Greg to the back room and left for the kitchen while Doc looked him over.

Peter put a kettle on the wood burning stove to boil water for Doc. He helped Doc to remove the bullet, only he was unable.

"I can’t get the bullet out."

"Why not?"

"It is located too close to the heart. If I try to go in there I could kill him."

"What if you do not get it out?"

"It could kill him, but he could also gain enough strength for us to get him out of here to someplace he can get a real surgeon. We will just have to hope he gets better."

So the days started to pass. Peter would attend to Greg. There was not much to do but talk. That was something that did not come easy to Peter, but he listened. He could do that at least for someone that came to rescue him for no reason but to rescue someone in need. He never saw someone stick his neck out for no reason before for someone else.

Greg talked a lot about his family. After a couple of weeks he could have recognized Greg’s family and told them about themselves.

Greg told him about his work and almost everything about him. He could give so much detail that his descriptions seamed like part of Peter’s own memory.

After four weeks Peter asked Doc about Greg’s lack of progress.

"You are right, he is getting worse rather than better."

"What about operating?"

"That is out of the question. I do not have the skills or anything else I need. If I operated that close to the heart it is certain I would kill him."

"Is there anything you can do?"

"Just make him comfortable."

Peter began to stare out the window. Never before had he felt that he owned someone personally. Greg was going to die because of helping him.

Doc interrupted his thoughts. "Peter, have you ever thought of disappearing?"

"I disappear all of the time."

"I do not mean your usual evasion of the KGB. I mean permanently. So that they never again would be hunting you."

"Of course I had thought of it, but it is impossible. They would never stop until they had my body to prove that I was dead."

"What if we could provide them with a body?"

"We tried that before, remember?"

"I sure do." Doc said with a chuckle. "I could not wash the smell of that blaze from my skin for weeks. We almost did not make it out of the building ourselves."

"But they were a little too thorough on checking the identity of the body. They will not fall for a charred body again."

"They would have to see your face to believe you were dead."

"Wait, you are not suggesting we use Greg?"

"He will be dying anyway. There is no way we can save him. But we might be able to get you out of this life alive. Think about it. I have to check on Greg."

He did think about it. He had lost hope of finding a peaceful end to his life of always being on the run. He was tired of killing, no matter what the cause that he was killing for.

He had grown close to Greg over the weeks. He felt he owed him for his sacrifice. He felt he owed Greg’s parents. Greg cared a lot for them. Maybe this would be a way he could repay Greg and at the same time obtain a real life again. If his parents started to suspect something he could leave and put some distance between them.

It was three weeks latter that Greg did pass away. Peter held his hand as he took his last breaths. He promised him that he would take care of his parents for him.

He took Greg’s passport and everything he had owned. He was now Greg. Peter was only the last of a string of names. There had been so many names before he no longer remembered the name he was born to. For the last few years the closest he had to a real name was Phoenix. Now he had to convince the KGB that this body in front of him was Phoenix. Greg would show up right where he was expected to be with a story of becoming ill and some family helping him.

Doc passed a tip to Coronal Pettov that he had seen someone meeting the description of the person they were looking for. He stayed in the village long enough to find out that they believed the body belonged to Phoenix. It helped that Doc had planned ahead and created a scar on Greg’s head to match the one on Peter’s. The Phoenix was officially dead.