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Rudzhin was silent. Tony continued.

“General Packard will be disappointed, but she’ll get over it. We both will go back to Washington and think about it a little harder. I will talk to the president about what I know. We’ll let him decide if he wants to deal further with people like you.”

Piotr Rudzhin needed desperately to say something. Anything. But no words left his mouth.

“Good-bye, Mr. Rudzhin. I’m sorry to have missed dinner. Please transmit my apologies to Mr. Zhironovsky.”

MOSCOW
SEPTEMBER 4, 10:15 P.M.
THE CDL RESTAURANT

It took Deputy Minister of the Interior Piotr Rudzhin a full ten minutes to compose himself enough to figure out what to do. Dressed in a business suit and tie, Rudzhin felt small beads of sweat accumulating in his blond hair. One small rivulet of perspiration rolled down his forehead and onto his nose.

Try as he might, he couldn’t figure out how Anthony Ruiz had acquired the information about Peru. He couldn’t connect the dots. But it didn’t matter now.

Ruiz’s call was more than an omen of problems to come. It was a full-scale emergency declaration. There was no way to stop the American. He was a representative of the United States government on an official mission in Moscow. He couldn’t be arrested. He couldn’t be tortured. He couldn’t be exiled to a wintry jail in Siberia. He couldn’t even be thrown out of the country fast enough. Rudzhin could think of no obvious path to derail Tony Ruiz from dictating the terms.

Information was a terrible thing, thought Rudzhin, disgusted. One man. That’s all. One damn man had found out too much and the tables had turned. Try as he might, Rudzhin couldn’t figure out how to rotate the disaster back to neutral. Zhironovsky’s grand plan was draining away. Irretrievably.

His cell phone tossed on the elegant place setting in front of him, Piotr Rudzhin sat in stunned silence at the empty table, staring blankly at the wall. The four well-dressed men having dinner just a few feet away had taken notice of his bewildered demeanor and were talking about him, pointing his way. He recognized one of the diners, a senior official at the justice ministry. Knowing that
his furious glowering would attract further unnecessary attention, Rudzhin forced himself to get up.

Going back into Zhironovsky’s music-laden private dining room was the only option. But the thought of facing Volga Gaz’s chairman with news of Ruiz’s call only agitated him further.

Feeling the underarms of his shirt pasty with dampness, he gathered up the mobile phone and put it back in his pocket. Rudzhin got up, dazed, and stumbled over the chair. He was attracting more attention, but he couldn’t help it.

Opening the door to the Pushkin Room, Rudzhin immediately saw Daniel Uggin’s curious glance. His friend was now occupying the seat next to Stuart Altman. The call and its aftermath had taken a full twenty uncomfortable minutes. During his absence, Daniel had moved to sit next to the deputy CIA director, believing that Rudzhin’s unusual departure had become too noticeable.

The musicians had played their last song and were now pontificating excitedly about the history of gypsy music to Packard and Zhironovksy. Their broken English sounded like Indians talking in a bad cowboy movie. Frozen next to the door, Piotr Rudzhin didn’t know what to do. Sit? Stand? Ask Zhironovsky for a private moment?

Daniel Uggin noticed that something was amiss. He had known Rudzhin long enough to recognize the rare sign of trouble on his friend’s face. Rudzhin saw Uggin getting up, apologetically excusing himself to Altman, to head his way.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Uggin’s brow furrowed as he put a hand on Piotr’s shoulder.

“Worse than a ghost.” Rudzhin’s face was covered in worry. “I’ve just seen the devil himself. We’re in trouble, Daniel.”

“What happened?”

Rudzhin took a moment to tell his friend about Ruiz’s call. As he finished, he looked Uggin straight in the eyes.

“Daniel, I’m not going to sugarcoat this. The leak came from your wife.”

“What? What are you talking about? You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Anne-Sophie told her friend, the environmentalist Blaise Ryan. Ryan confessed it all to Luis Matta.” Rudzhin spat out the chronology with cold precision.

“Who told you this?” Uggin’s tongue swiped over his lips. He had now lost all the saliva in his mouth.

“Our person in Matta’s office told us about Ryan just before the senator went to confront Schutz.” Rudzhin looked sad. “Daniel, Matta is dead. Schutz had to finish him.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Uggin was practically in hysterics. “What are you going to do?”

“What choice is there? We need to talk to Zhironovsky.” Piotr’s voice was leaden with weight. He had included his friend in the coming conversation. Two was better than one. Anything was better than having to face Zhironovsky alone.

“Piotr, please. Try to keep the connection with Anne-Sophie out of it. Out of respect for our friendship, don’t ignite Zhironovsky’s rage against me.”

“No choice, Daniel. No choice,” he repeated emptily, not knowing how to accede to Daniel’s request. Rudzhin rubbed his cheeks in preoccupation.

Rudzhin walked over to the chairman, now in animated conversation with Packard. He leaned between them and spoke in formal English, hoping that the demonstration of transparency would reduce Packard’s inevitable suspicions about the coming unusual break in protocol.

“Mr. Chairman, pardon me for breaking in. I just received a worrying communication that requires us to speak privately for a minute.” Looking at Packard, he formally added, “Please forgive the interruption, General.”

She opened her hand in a sign of acknowledgment and Rudzhin could tell she was about to add an elegant “Of course.” But Zhironovsky reached over and brought her extended hand down.

“I’m not a man who leaves the company of beautiful ladies,” Zhironovsky said, his eyes crinkling in a compulsory smile. Glancing at Rudzhin with the same frozen grin, he added in Russian, “Later, Rudzhin.”

Piotr hesitated for a moment.

“Mr. Chairman, we need to talk. Now.” It was an order, not a question.

Viktor Zhironovsky’s head spinned backward. Nobody talked to him that way. Rudzhin thought he was about to be dismissed, like a misbehaving child, but Zhironovsky stopped cold when he caught the young deputy minister’s eyes. The chairman immediately understood that something was seriously amiss.

Excusing himself with florid apologies in Packard’s direction, he walked behind Piotr and Daniel. There was nowhere to go but back into the open dining hall.

As the three men gathered around the same table Piotr had just used to take Ruiz’s phone call, Rudzhin shot a look toward the four diners at the nearby table. They were in full gossip mode, turning their heads and speaking in hushed tones. It was clear to them that Rudzhin’s disconcerting behavior five minutes earlier had resulted in dragging the vaunted chairman of Volga Gaz away from his dinner guests. The four men knew something out of the ordinary was happening; their Russian nose for scandal was on high alert.

“It better be good, Rudzhin,” snapped Zhironovsky.

“Believe me, I would not have interrupted you for something trivial,” Piotr began haltingly. It took him five minutes to relate the details of Ruiz’s call. The connection with Peru. The threat to go to the press.

Rudzhin tried to recount the conversation in a steady voice. He forced his delivery into a flat, emotionless monotone. But the words had their effect. Piotr could see the bulge growing on the vein crossing Zhironovsky’s aging forehead. The more Rudzhin went on, the
more pronounced it became. By the time Piotr wound up his narrative, the swelling above the chairman’s right eye was literally pulsing visible heartbeats.

Rudzhin was desperate to conclude. “I’ve tried as hard as I can, Mr. Chairman, to figure out how he has acquired this knowledge. But I have been unable to find the link.” Rudzhin hoped his pretension of ignorance would work. For Daniel’s sake.

Viktor Zhironovsky silenced him with a long, cold stare. Rudzhin thanked his lucky stars they were in public. He was momentarily safe from physical aggression.

“You stupid boy,” growled the chairman. “It’s obvious how he got the information. It is the woman, the environmentalist. She gave it to him. She has gotten to him.”

“How do you know this, sir? How can you be sure?”

“Did you think I would take your inane advice to let her be until the Americans were gone? I had her tracked, you idiot. It was obvious she was a loose cannon, a free agent who could unravel everything I have put together. Unlike you, I wasn’t going to leave it to chance. And, thank God, this afternoon I found out she had made a long phone call. Now we know with whom she talked.”

Rudzhin ignored the multiple insults that had just been hurled his way. Something was strange about Zhironovsky’s assurance. There was none of this morning’s out-of-control screaming.

“Why do you say thank God? If it’s true that she made the call, we continue to be in danger from her as well. She could tell others.”

“No, Rudzhin, she can’t. She won’t. Ever again. She will be on a plane to Moscow in a few hours.”

“What? You’ve arranged to kidnap an American citizen from American soil?”

Rudzhin knew he shouldn’t have blurted out his aghast surprise. But he hadn’t been able to hold it back. Zhironovsky was out of his mind. Could he not imagine the consequences if something went wrong? Tough tactics were one thing. Rudzhin was fine with
hardheaded tactics. But criminality on foreign soil was something else completely. It was sheer recklessness. It could put the nation in danger.

“Yes, Rudzhin. And you are about to do something worse still. Until a moment ago, I thought she was the only loose end. The last thing that could go wrong. But unfortunately, I was mistaken. Ruiz is now the remaining impediment.”

Rudzhin looked at him quizzically. What was Zhironovsky talking about?

“We have to deal with him, Rudzhin.
You
have to deal with him.” Zhironovsky’s voice was now fully in the imperative. “It’s time to show some balls. Tonight you will learn that power isn’t all heaven and joy. It’s also hell. Are you man enough to exercise raw power? He is here, Rudzhin. In Moscow. It can’t be too difficult.”

Rudzhin couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Make him disappear,” Zhironovsky spat out in flat finality.

Piotr looked at the chairman of Volga Gaz. He didn’t need to answer; the distraught look on his face said it all.

Until now, Daniel Uggin had remained quiet, his face white with growing worry. Rudzhin looked at him for support and noticed that his hands shook as he opened his mouth.

“What choice is there, Piotr?” Uggin’s voice was trembling in a near whine. “The chairman is right. If we don’t silence Ruiz, we risk our country’s reputation. It is terrible that things have gone so wrong. Even if the chairman were to desist in the dream of the Bering Strait, we still cannot allow Ruiz out of Moscow. He knows too much. He is a ticking time bomb.”

Rudzhin had trouble forming words. He forgot all pretensions of respect and formality. Until now, he had done his best to protect Uggin. Now Daniel was turning on him, becoming more Catholic than the pope. He was saying anything—doing anything—to save himself with Zhironovsky

“Are you both mad? It’s bad enough to have risked kidnapping a woman in the United States. Now you want to ‘disappear’ a senior
advisor to the president of the United States. Do you think this is so easy? Do you think the Americans will just walk away, smiling, from this? Just think about what you’re asking. It’s preposterous.”

“Rudzhin, you son of a bitch, don’t you dare talk to me like that.” Zhironovsky furiously reached out to grab Rudzhin’s shoulder. But Piotr managed to take a step back in the nick of time.

Rudzhin stared at the chairman. The older man’s breathing was labored, forced. Zhironovsky was out of control.

Uggin made another plea. He was now arguing full force for Zhironovsky.

“Look, Piotr, getting rid of Ruiz is not as outrageous as you say. I have sat through two days of meetings with these people. I have seen how the chairman has intelligently seduced Packard with the excitement of a tunnel. She is now convinced it could open up a whole new moment in our bilateral relations. Packard will not risk the undoing of the Bering Strait deal; she trusts our chairman. As long as we provide a plausible excuse, she won’t rock the boat.”

“Damnit, Daniel, what’s the excuse?” Rudzhin’s question lashed out.

“Nina,” Daniel answered simply. “We’ll invent a love quarrel. We’ll find a former lover of hers who sees them in a bar and, in an attack of insane jealousy, kills her new American lover. We’ll arrest the man. We’ll arrest Nina. We’ll arrest whoever you want. The story doesn’t need to be perfect, just plausible enough. Think about it, Piotr. This is something we can do.”

Zhironovsky looked over at Uggin with newfound admiration.

“Follow your friend’s advice, Piotr. Follow it closely. You are the deputy minister of the interior, boy. You can arrange this.”

The chairman’s face suddenly softened. He reached out for Rudzhin’s arm, but this time it was to pat it softly. Piotr couldn’t tell if this sudden lowering of tension was real or just an act.

“Go, Piotr. Arrange this. Daniel and I will say good-bye to our guests. And then we will both go to my house to wait for your news. Come by whatever the hour.”

Zhironovsky took Uggin by the arm and began making his way back to the waiting guests in the Pushkin Room. He stopped after a few steps and turned around.

“And, Piotr, don’t concern yourself with our harsh words. I’ve already forgotten them.”

CULPEPER, VIRGINIA
SEPTEMBER 4, 6:30 P.M.
THE IT’S ABOUT THYME INN

Blaise awoke to the sound of commotion below her window, abutting Culpeper’s Davis Street. She glanced at the night table’s radio clock and was stunned to find that she had slept nonstop for six hours. Blaise was sure the clock was wrong until she glanced at her window and saw the waning light. Since arriving in Culpeper, apprehension had created sleep-impeding adrenaline over the past two days. Blaise had not been able to close her eyes longer than an hour or two without waking up to the self-absorbing fear that filled her mind.

Slowly kicking back the sheets, it dawned on her that this morning’s phone call to Anna Hardaway must have had a therapeutic effect. It had given Blaise a plan, a direction. A hope. It had been enough to momentarily allow Blaise to tune out. And with that change in frequency, sleep had taken over.

Blaise climbed out of her bed and stepped onto the room’s small, wrought-iron porch. It was twilight. The evening’s cool, early
autumn breezes played with her red hair. A smile slowly grew on Blaise’s lips as she looked down on Davis Street below.

The Virginia piedmont was known as “horse country.” Only four counties—Loudoun, Fauquier, Rappahannock, and Culpeper—claimed the right to host the exclusive clubs of fox hunters, show jumpers, and steeplechasers.

Culpeper had long been the poorest of the four exclusive counties. The wide-hat ladies of Middleburg and The Plains had always sniffed that Culpeper was on the fence, unable to decide if it was horse country or hick country. But while the northern counties pooh-poohed their poorer neighbor, its cheaper real estate prices had brought Culpeper a plethora of spanking-new gastronomic eateries, elegant country shops, and fancy beauty spas.

As Blaise looked below, she considered how lucky she had been to find a room at the inn. The street and the sidewalks below were fast filling up with two seemingly incongruous things. Animated men and women, each dressed to the nines in herringbone and leather, were spilling out of oversize pickups with large, attached trailers.

Blaise understood immediately. Elegance and dirty rural vehicles came together only under one condition. Early September meant one thing in the horse world. The fall steeplechase season—beginning with the Middleburg Classic and ending with the International Gold Cup—was coming. Owners and riders from all over the country—indeed, from all over the world—were now pouring into Virginia horse country.

Blaise chuckled at the scene. She suddenly felt a little life returning to her body. Turning away from the balcony, she quickly showered with the inn’s English lavender soap and dressed. She was going to go down and join the crowds.

She walked out of the inn and looked up and down Davis Street. Crossing to the opposite sidewalk, she entered an odd store with a life-size, stuffed camel in its window and perused the jumbled assortment of artisan shampoos, artsy porcelain, and tweed jackets. The store was filled with horse-show shoppers. One of the out-of-
towners described to his wife a fried egg and Virginia ham sandwich appetizer he would soon be ordering at the recently opened, trendy restaurant down the street.

“Excuse me,” Blaise asked the spiffy gentleman. “I don’t know this town all that well. But the dish you just described sounds delicious. Where is the restaurant?”

“Are you alone?” he asked as she nodded. “Alone on the days before the fall racing season begins is impossible. Come on with us, young lady; we’re heading there now.”

The three men and four women, horse owners from Kentucky in town for the competition, were a lively and happy group. They walked together to the restaurant. As Blaise headed to the bar to eat alone, they insisted she join them at their table. Nothing matched the outgoing nature of horse people before a race.

Sitting in the exposed-brick bistro, Blaise realized it was the first time in days that she would eat a proper meal. She was famished and hugely grateful for the relaxed company.

Two hours later, as the Kentucky crowd ordered their fourth bottle of wine, Blaise decided it was time to go. It was one thing to temporarily forget about Matta, the Russians, and the mysterious White House advisor in Moscow. Quite another was allowing herself to get tipsy with endless bottles of alcohol.

Wrangling for ten minutes about leaving money for her meal, the Kentucky crowd finally accepted a paltry forty dollars for her share of the food and wine. In return for the discount, she had to fib, promising to join their tailgating picnic table this Saturday two furlongs from the cup’s finish line.

Blaise turned left out of the restaurant and slowly walked the two blocks back to her bed-and-breakfast. A quick surge of apprehension jolted through her body. It was 9:30
P.M.
; Blaise didn’t like the fact that Culpeper’s streets were considerably quieter now. Horse people were boisterous, but went to bed early. They tended to get up with the roosters.

There was only one store still open, a chocolate shop called the
Frenchman’s Corner. It was halfway back to the inn. Blaise entered it, feeling the need for one more injection of reassurance before tackling the remaining block to her room. She chose a couple of squares of Belgian black chocolate with hazelnuts that cost a fortune and began to nibble on the dark cocoa. As she walked out, she noticed two men opening the back of a double-parked horse trailer. One of them looked her way and smiled.

“Excuse me, miss. Would you give us a hand closing the trailer door? I’ll get inside and pull Sasha in. He’s seventeen hands and his butt is too big. On top of it, he hates trailers.”

Smiling her assent, she put the chocolate in her purse and swung the bag’s strap over her head. Walking around the open door, Blaise peeked into the trailer to look at the large horse. The trailer was empty.

It took only a split second to realize what was happening, but by then it was too late. She felt the second man reach over her shoulders and cover her mouth. In his hand was a damp cloth that smelled vaguely of solvent. Blaise struggled at first. But she didn’t stand a chance against the chloroform’s vapors. Her heart rate rocketed forward at the same time that she lost her balance. With the cloth still pushing against her nostrils, she felt herself being loaded into the trailer. She heard the man who had first asked her for help barking muffled orders in a foreign language.

She was still awake when she hit the floor of the hay-strewn horse transport, but her auditory perception was almost gone. The world was going nearly silent. Just as Blaise felt her body going under, she made one final effort against her waning consciousness to identify the language.

It was Russian.

DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
SEPTEMBER 5, 6:25 A.M.
A PARKING LOT

Lying on her side on the trailer floor, Blaise came to slowly. A strip of weak sunlight was streaking in from the left-hand window. As her mind struggled to reconstruct what had happened, she felt a searing pain deep in her nostrils.

She tried to make the profound mental fog dissipate. But she had trouble beating back the double strain of the chloroform’s aftereffects and the stabbing hurt deep inside her nose. The acute pain seemed like a dagger into her sinuses. Overcome with terror that the men were subjecting her to some type of torture, Blaise jerked her head backward in a violent panic.

The movement of Blaise’s face against the trailer floor matted her eyes with dry grass. The dusty, broken hay encrusted every millimeter of her eyelid, blinding her momentarily. As painful as that was, it made her realize that the sharp object stabbing her nostril was nothing other than a large stem of hay. She slowly moved her hands to remove the sticklike grass from her nose and was surprised to find them free.

Gathering her wits about her, she swiveled her head imperceptibly from side to side to inspect the inside of the trailer. This time she ignored the rough scratching of the hay on her face and eyes. There was nobody in sight.

She now strained to listen for any sounds and heard nothing. Still, Blaise decided not to move. The men might be just outside. She was lying there for a moment considering what she should do when she heard the loud, mechanical noise. The roar of the machine gathered and accumulated into a deafening pitch. She inadvertently closed her eyes, bracing herself for some type of impact.

But as the noise passed overhead, it converted into the recogniz
able whine of a jet engine. The realization that she was at an airport filled her with a trembling terror. There was only one possible conclusion. Her kidnappers were taking her to Russia.

Jumping to her feet, she heard the telltale sound of the jet’s wheels skidding onto the ground. Blaise moved to the sunlit window and saw a long runway behind a chain-link fence. Two planes were at the top of the runway, awaiting takeoff clearance. She couldn’t see a single human being.

Blaise was now fully awake. Wiping more grass from her eyes, she ducked across the trailer’s separation barrier and looked out the other window. Peering out the left side of the trailer, all she could see was a large parking lot full of cars, still awash in darkness.

She didn’t hesitate. She had to escape. Pushing on the trailer’s rear gates, she could tell the doors were locked from the outside. Blaise looked at the narrow windows, calculating whether her body would fit through the small, rectangular opening. Not a chance.

She suddenly remembered that horse trailers usually had an opening at the front where owners could provide hay for the animal at mouth height. Scrambling forward, she saw a door handle and pulled slowly. It opened. There was no way to avoid the loud noise of heavy metal parts scraping against each other. To Blaise’s jumpy ears, the noise seemed almost as loud as the passing airplane.

She slipped out. Keeping as low as she could, she crouched for a moment to get her bearings. Now she could see the airport buildings. She knew where she was instantaneously. The prizewinning architecture of Washington’s Dulles International Airport’s undulating roof was unmistakable.

Questions started to pop up in Blaise’s head, but she shook them away. She had only one mission. She had to get to the passenger terminal. Watching the sun slowly rise in the eastern sky, she knew that the airport would be packed. Dawn brought an early morning rush hour to Dulles. And those crowds meant safety.

Swinging around the trailer, she began moving—still crouched, slowly at first and then gathering speed—among the rows of parked
cars. This couldn’t be one of the airport’s main parking lots because there were no travelers getting in or out of their vehicles. Blaise figured it must be an employee parking area.

Reaching a grassy knoll, Blaise crawled up the side of the hill and, at the top, saw the expanse of the passenger lot below her. People were everywhere, snaking their way to the terminal’s check-in counters. She began to descend, still bent over. By the time she’d reached the concrete of the parking area, Blaise had broken into a full-scale run.

She didn’t slow down until reaching the walking passengers. Only when she was strategically placed between a family of four with a trolley full of vacation-bound suitcases and a businessman pulling a rolling bag, did she dare ask herself the only question now forming over and over in her mind.

It was clear to Blaise that the two men who had taken and drugged her last night were professionals. They had probably stolen the trailer from the streets of downtown Culpeper. People like this did not make mistakes. She hadn’t escaped. Not at all.

Instead, something had clearly caused them to abandon their plans. They had just walked away.

The question was, why?