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“I’m from the Russian Embassy. She must come,” he repeated sullenly.

The captain’s look sharpened. “Sir, I’m ordering you off this aircraft. This is a United States flag carrier. I am the captain of this ship. Under international treaty, I’m under no obligation to give over a U.S. national to anybody once they are on this airplane. This is as good as United States territory.

“Back away,” the captain barked loudly.

Once the man was off, the captain turned around to the small gaggle of flight attendants who had gathered.

“How many more to board?” he snapped at the senior purser.

“None, sir. Boarding is complete.”

“Then close this goddamn door and cross-check.”

Blaise gave the captain a sad smile of appreciation. Her gray eyes communicated a deep gratitude.

“My pleasure, ma’am. He didn’t look like a nice guy, not at all. Take care of yourself,” he said, winking as he crouched back into the flight deck.

Blaise walked slowly back to her aisle seat. She should have felt a
deep, overwhelming sense of relief. But she didn’t. How could she? The man from the Russian Embassy had known Anne-Sophie’s name. Blaise had revealed it yesterday to Matta. And now Anne-Sophie was in real danger.

Her trip to Peru had been an utter failure.

MOSCOW
SEPTEMBER 2, 5:00 P.M.
VOLGA GAZ HEADQUARTERS

As Blaise Ryan’s jet headed north to Miami, Viktor Zhironovsky was in his office literally screaming at the top of his lungs. There was no real need for Volga Gaz’s chairman to shout; Piotr Rudzhin was barely two feet away. Nonetheless, Rudzhin had concluded that it would not be prudent to interrupt. He couldn’t recall ever seeing Zhironovsky so upset.

“How the hell did this happen?” Zhironovsky roared, his face red with rage. “I want answers. Mark my words, Rudzhin. Heads will roll. And the first one will be your damn friend’s.”

“Mr. Chairman, please,” pleaded Piotr Rudzhin. What has happened is unfortunate, but—”

“Unfortunate! You call what occurred unfortunate? Is that the only word you can think of? Don’t patronize me with quiet, rational understatements. It is a full-scale, one-hundred-percent disaster. Do you hear me? What has happened is a calamity.”

Zhironovsky wasn’t done. His bloodshot eyes spat fury.

“Listen to me, Rudzhin. There is no way to parse the blow. Packard and the Americans arrive this evening. And we will begin our meetings tomorrow with one hand behind our backs. Half of our plan has become unworkable. Compromised. We were discovered in Peru. And by whom?”

The chairman answered his own question.

“By the wife of your friend Uggin. The national policies of the Russian Federation have fallen victim to his stupid marital problems. Do you realize the ridiculousness of this? Somehow his German bitch got information out to a friend of hers who leaked it to Senator Matta. And, on top of it, we have been forced to take severe emergency measures against a foreign official. There will be investigations. Inquiries. Medical and police reports. I’ve ordered Schutz and Stradius to clear out of Peru on the first possible flight. Humboldt is finished; the project will be delayed God knows how long. Now we may never get it.”

Piotr Rudzhin called forth every possible ounce of patience. He had been in Zhironovsky’s office for an hour and a half and the chairman had, by now, repeated the same rant three or four times. Yes, of course the situation in Lima was nothing less than a disaster. But the Americans were arriving in a few hours and Zhironovsky was refusing to think rationally. The man who had, only a few weeks ago, lectured him on strategy was now unable to keep his eye on the ball.

Rudzhin had to force the old man to prioritize.

“Chairman Zhironovsky, there is no doubt that what happened in Peru is a huge problem. But let’s thank God that Schutz made the right decision last night. And, while it is true that Volga Gaz may not have a future in Peru, the important thing is that we have prevented the information from going any further. The real disaster would have been a public disclosure. That could have even derailed General Packard’s visit.”

Piotr Rudzhin lowered his voice to a quiet admonition. “Sir, there will be a lot of noise about Humboldt in the coming days. We must
not let it distract us. We cannot lose sight of the fact that the Bering Strait is the truly big prize. We must concentrate on the arrival of the Americans.”

Hearing Rudzhin actually say that the decision to kill Matta and his press secretary was the right one seemed to calm Zhironovsky down a bit. The balding old man leaned over his desk.

“What about the American environmentalist woman? We have to do something about her.”

“Yes, we must,” Rudzhin agreed. At the moment, he had no idea what to do about Blaise Ryan. But there was no doubt that the woman was a loose cannon who had to be silenced. He guessed that they would have only a few days to figure that out.

“All right, Rudzhin, we will postpone a discussion of what went wrong until after the Americans leave. The minute Packard gets on the plane to go back to America, I want to hear a plan about what to do with this woman Ryan. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“One more thing, Rudzhin,” growled Zhironovsky. “I want Uggin off the case. I don’t want him in our meetings. He can’t be trusted.”

“I don’t think that is a good idea, Mr. Chairman.”

“Why the hell not?” Zhironovsky’s eyes began to bulge again.

“Because there is nobody else to do his job. He has studied for the meeting. He knows what he has to do with the young man from the White House. It’s too late to change him for somebody else. Is he guilty of carelessness? Yes. Of not controlling what happens in his own house? Yes. But I am convinced—totally convinced—that he is dedicated to his job and to our cause.”

Zhironovsky knew that Rudzhin was right. “Then at least, at the very least, arrest the wife,” snapped the chairman.

“With all due respect, sir, that too would be a mistake. All that would do would be to distract Uggin from his mission. You have my word; I will give immediate orders to transfer a team from Moscow to Kursk. They will keep Anne-Sophie Perlmutter under surveil
lance. She will not make one phone call that we do not hear. She will not send an e-mail we do not read. If she attempts to leave the country, we will stop her. Is this satisfactory?”

Zhironovsky just grunted. Rudzhin didn’t know what that grunt meant.

“Do I have your approval?” Rudzhin insisted.

“Yes, it’s enough.” Zhironovsky slammed his fist on the table, his eyes boring into Rudzhin’s. “For now.”

MOSCOW
SEPTEMBER 2, 10:05 P.M.
THE METROPOL HOTEL

Anthony Ruiz walked around his hotel suite in disbelief at the opulence of his surroundings.

The Metropol Hotel was one of Moscow’s longest-running bastions of luxury. The historic building, built in 1904 by the last of Russia’s czarist art patrons, was one of the best-known addresses in town. The hotel had long served as the destination of choice for kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers.

Tony Ruiz’s room was huge—the living area had two turn-of-the century, brick-colored sofas and three large Louis XIV classical chairs arrayed in a room big enough to entertain ten visitors. The young White House advisor’s lips curled into a wry grin as he pushed aside the elegant plush curtains to look out over the illuminated spires of the Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel.

He knew what his father would say. What the hell is a Latino cop from Chelan County doing in a place like this?

The Metropol’s suite was perfectly in tune with everything else that had occurred since his arrival at Vnukovo airport. Only ninety minutes earlier, Tony had been staring out the airplane window as the CIA’s triple-engined jet wound down its motors. On the tarmac
below, he had noticed a group of men lining up just in front of the airport terminal to greet the four-member American delegation.

Tony had pored over his briefing books on the flight. So, hurrying down the staircase ten steps behind General Martha Packard, he had recognized most of the members of the Russian greeting committee.

Viktor Zhironovsky, CEO of Russia’s natural gas conglomerate, and Arkadi Semiant, director-general of the FSB, Russia’s intelligence agency, were slightly ahead of the others. Third after Semiant was Piotr Rudzhin, the deputy minister of the interior. The next two were men whose faces Tony remembered as foreign ministry officials, but he could not remember their names. Last in the six-person line, looking slightly out of place, was a younger, dark-haired man whom Tony did not recognize. He had been absent from the CIA briefing book.

It had been hard to follow each heavily accented introduction, so Ruiz had paid particular attention to catch the last official’s name. The man stretched out one hand in Tony’s direction while holding an elegantly wrapped package against his chest with the other. But just as Tony took the dark-haired man’s hand, the deafening roll of a snare drum drowned out the words.

Surprised by the noise, Ruiz had swung his head around to see a military band in the full regalia of the Hussar regiment marching toward them in goose step across the airport tarmac. Once the soldiers, outfitted in the corps’ traditional enormous fur hats, had come to a halt in front of the visitors, the national anthems of Russia and the United States began to play.

The seven-car motorcade of window-darkened black Audi A8s, followed by Mercedes G-class wagons with flashing blue lights, had sped into the city with an official escort. Blaring two-toned sirens, motorcycle police had struggled to open Moscow’s streets to their passing. It wasn’t an easy job. Traffic was heavy with cars and buses; people were everywhere.

The slow slog through Moscow’s center allowed Ruiz the time
to get a good look at the bars, restaurants, cafés, and shops. All of them were open, crammed with humanity. Tony was amazed by how attractive people were. Gorgeous women in miniskirts—nearly all in unusually high heels—sat at outside tables across from handsome men—nearly all with uniformly slicked-back hair. As the caravan neared the hotel, the cars swerved left, to reveal the wondrous expanse of Red Square. Tony stared out the car window, amazed by the turrets of the Kremlin’s brilliantly illuminated facade.

Sitting on his suite’s bed, it occurred to Ruiz that all the stereotypes of graying Soviet decay had been wiped away in that one car ride. It took just one and a half hours to convince Tony that Russia was a country in bloom, hopping with life.

As Ruiz changed into blue jeans and began to unpack, he thanked God for his hosts’ warm welcome. The Russian greeting had been a pleasant contrast to the previous eleven hours. The trip over from the United States had seemed a cold hell.

In the days prior to their departure, Tony had struggled to keep an open mind about the notion of a Bering Strait link. Yet he couldn’t get over his profound belief that everything about the idea was preposterous. He had seen firsthand what energy dependency had wrought in California. In the course of the last twenty years, America’s foreign-energy addiction had risen from a barely manageable 27 percent to 60 percent—most of it from regions of severe instability hostile to the United States. Now he was going to embark on a fact-finding mission designed to heighten his country’s enslavement to foreign energy sources. The whole thing was wrong.

It sure didn’t help that General Martha Packard was to be his boss over the next four days. From the moment Tony had pulled up in a taxi at Washington’s Andrews Air Force Base, the director of Central Intelligence had done everything possible to make Tony Ruiz understand that his presence in the delegation was unwelcome.

“Hello, Mr. Ruiz.” The CIA director had hardly deigned to look at him as he entered the air force base’s VIP lounge. Those were the
first and only words Martha Packard would send in his direction during the entire eleven-hour flight.

Once on the airplane, General Packard and her deputy, Stuart Altman, were shown two of the four sleeping quarters on the aircraft. Altman was also the agency’s senior energy expert; he would play an important role on the trip. But somebody had decided that neither Tony Ruiz nor Betty Angler, Packard’s hugely overweight, dark-haired personal assistant, merited the remaining two private rooms. Instead, they were directed to separate seats in the plane’s main section. Any excitement Tony might have felt about international travel on a government jet evaporated with one look at the modest, economy-class surroundings of the CIA plane’s cabin.

Ruiz tried twice—once an hour after takeoff and again an hour before landing—to meet with the CIA director. Both times the purser had delivered Tony’s request to the forward cabin. And twice he had returned with a rebuff. The first because the director was “resting.” The second because the director was “preparing herself for the arrival.”

What a bitch, thought Tony.

The hotel phone’s shrill electronic tones jolted Tony out of his frustrated reveries just as he was debating whether to take a shower now or wait until his 7:00
A.M.
wake-up call in the morning. He reached across the bed to grab the receiver.

“Hello, Tony, this is Daniel Uggin. I’m the international director of Volga Gaz.”

Ruiz was momentarily confused. His silence prompted the caller to explain further.

“We met at the airport, remember? Right as the band began to play.”

“Yes, yes, of course. How are you?” Tony answered quickly, momentarily embarrassed by his forgetfulness. A picture of the last man in the greeting line formed in his head.

“I’m sorry to bother you at this late hour. You must be tired from
your trip. I had a welcoming present for you, but these military guys were too anxious to show their stuff,” Uggin chuckled over the phone line. “They were supposed to wait for a signal before beginning to play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ But you know what the military is like; they never follow orders.”

Tony was grateful for the gesture.

“I will give it to the concierge. Is that okay?” the caller asked.

“Sure, that is great. Very kind of you.”

“Good. I’ll ask the hotel personnel to take it upstairs.”

“Wait, wait, umm…Daniel.” Struggling to remember the man’s name, Tony thought he should be polite and extend an invitation. “Why don’t you come up and I’ll give you a drink. I have an enormous suite and the company will do me some good.”

“Well, of course. But you are our guest. I should be the one buying the drinks.” Uggin laughed. “I’ll be right up.”

Minutes later, the suite’s bell rang. Tony opened the door, clothed in blue jeans, a green T-shirt, and sneakers. He was embarrassed to see his visitor dressed in a stiff suit and tie. Shit, thought Ruiz, I should have thought to change my clothes. This international diplomatic stuff was hard.

Uggin gave Tony the present. A bottle of Beluga Gold Line vodka. Retail price was $150 a bottle.

“Unlike the French, we don’t export our best products. This is liquid gold. We keep it right here. Close by.” Uggin grinned.

This time Ruiz was not going to be outdone. Before leaving Washington, Mary Jane Pfeiffer, Tolberg’s southern-tongued secretary, had suggested bringing along a few bottles of Jack Daniel’s bourbon to pass out as gifts. “You know, those Russian good ol’ boys over there really know how to throw it down. You’re gonna get a lot of vodka. Let ’em taste some of our better moonshine,” Mary Jane had said to him.