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Zakayev waited until he saw the man’s outline back lighted from reflections off the BMW’s gleaming finish. He rested his cupped left hand, which steadied his right hand gripping the P7, on the top step.

When he had the man in his sights, he fired twice. The first bullet pierced the BMW’s windshield. The second bullet struck the shooter in the head like a trip-hammer. His body crashed against the car, then sprawled out into the street, weapon clattering after him.

The two remaining shooters crouched behind the car fired wildly, hosing down the street. Zakayev and the girl hugged the ground as bullets ripped overhead.

“Shit!” Litvanov scuttled backward from his hide like a crab until his feet contacted the base of the concrete steps opposite where Zakayev and the girl had taken cover.

More sirens. Somewhere a watchdog barked.

“Ali!” It was Serov. “I’m going to finish our business.” His voice resonated with loathing and resignation.

Zakayev looked around. The truck was too far away. Serov was too close. The police were getting closer.

“Ali? Do you hear me? We can’t sit here all night. I’ll make a deal with you. A mutually beneficial deal.”

Zakayev reached back and grabbed the girl’s arm. “Give it to me.”

“The girl can go free. But not Litvanov. He stays and we finish it.”

“How does he know…?” the girl said.

But Zakayev’s hand closed around the Czech grenade. A URG-86, it had a four-and-a-half-second fuse.

If he did it right, he could skip the grenade over the icy street and under the BMW.

He gave the pistol to the girl. “When I tell you, empty the magazine.”

“Yes.”

“Georgi,” Zakayev called. “Stay down but be ready to run.”

“What are you doing?”

“Do as I say.”

“Ali?”

He nudged the girl. “Now!”

She opened fire, the bullets ricocheting off the car and howling away into the night.

Zakayev pulled the pin on the grenade, released the spoon, and, with a delicate underhand toss around the staircase, sent it skipping across the icy street toward the car.

The pistol’s magazine ran dry. Zakayev hauled the girl down behind the steps as Serov and his man, ignoring the approaching police cars, opened fire with their automatic weapons.

A pinprick of light appeared under the BMW. A split second later the vehicle exploded in a huge ball of flaming gasoline. Red-hot shards of metal pinwheeled into the air and over the tops of the warehouses.

The deafening explosion rocked the confined space they were in. The searing fireball rolling out of the alley forced policemen jumping out of their cars with guns drawn to dive for cover.

Zakayev, ears ringing, staggered to his feet and saw a burning shell of a car and flames licking up the side of the warehouse and curling over the roof parapet where large pieces of burning wreckage had landed. A few feet from where Zakayev stood was a smoldering tire still mounted on an alloy wheel.

More police cars arrived, but the fire that had engulfed buildings on both sides of the alley kept the officers at bay.

Zakayev, Litvanov, and the girl dashed for the truck and piled in.

“We’ll take backstreets and work our way around the harbor,” Litvanov said. “The main streets will soon be blocked off by the police.”

A fire truck screamed by in the opposite direction, then another with police cars following.

Zakayev looked back and saw flames leaping skyward, turning the bottoms of low clouds over the harbor red.

“Anyone behind us?” Litvanov asked.

“We’re clear.”

Litvanov found the intersection he wanted and turned right to head north against the Tuloma River.

Hunched over the wheel, Litvanov blew through his teeth and said, “General, I thought Serov was dead.”

The girl, seated between them, said, “He is now.”

The truck ground north, toward Olenya Bay.

* * *

Paul Friedman, the national security advisor, signaled with a subtle toss of his head and thrust of jaw, that the president of the United States was displeased.

Karl Radford entered the Oval Office and slipped into a wing chair beside the president. Friedman sat on a sofa, his knees pressed awkwardly together supporting a bundle of battered folders stamped Top Secret. The only sound in the Oval Office came from a ticking desk clock that had once belonged to Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. An inaugural gift from Radford to the president, a Nimitz admirer, it sat on a Duncan Phyfe end table next to a bust of Nimitz.

Friedman and Radford waited while the president read a document. Radford assumed it was the briefing summary he had prepared at Friedman’s direction the night before. Without looking up, the president, a handsome black man wearing a double-breasted charcoal suit, said, “Good morning, Karl.”

“Good morning, Mr. President,” said Radford.

The Nimitz clock ticked toward seven A.M.

The president finished reading. He put his elbows on the chair arms and made a steeple with his fingers. “This fellow, Scott,” he said, speaking to Radford over the steeple top. “I thought he had orders to escort Drummond’s body home, not open an independent investigation. I see here that you spoke to him.”

“Yes, sir. Last night.”

“What’s he up to?”

“Wants to prove that Drummond was murdered. He doesn’t believe the FSB report and wants to clear the man’s name.”

Friedman, heavyset with a head of thick, unruly hair that curled over his shirt collar, said, “I’m surprised you authorized his trip to Murmansk. Isn’t that risky?”

“If I had ordered Scott to stay out of Murmansk, it would only make him suspicious,” Radford said. “I felt a trip there would prove he’s on a wild-goose chase. After all, there’s nothing to see.”

The president said, “This science attaché, Dr. Thorne. What do you know about him?”

“It’s a ‘her,’ Mr. President,” Radford replied. “I was fooled too. She worked with Drummond, knows the ropes up there on the Kola Peninsula.”

“Can she be trusted?” the president asked.

“Scott vouched for her.”

Friedman said, “I read Scott’s file: It says he’s got a reputation for taking matters into his own hands.

Sounds like that’s what he’s doing now.”

The president collapsed his steeple. “What’s that all about, Karl?”

“Sir, Paul’s referring to a submarine recon mission Scott undertook a year ago for the SRO into the Yellow Sea. You may remember that your predecessor ordered a special-ops team into North Korea in preparation for a preemptive strike on the Yongbyon nuclear complex. The NKs stumbled on the op before we could execute. Scott almost lost his ship trying to save a SEAL team that the NKs had trapped. He had explicit orders that if something went wrong he was to pull out and leave the team behind but didn’t.”

The president nodded. “I remember. Pretty gutsy, I’d say.”

“But a direct violation of orders. We almost lost a Los Angeles — class nuke to the NKs. It would have been a propaganda coup for them if we had and a hell of a provocation too.”

“To say nothing of the NK ship he torpedoed,” Friedman added.

The president waved that aside and moved on. “I don’t want this Drummond affair blowing up in my face while I’m in St. Petersburg. I’m facing some difficult negotiations, and the Russians have been playing hard ball on every issue we need to resolve.”

“Scott will have departed Russia before you arrive, Mr. President. I guarantee it.”

The president erected his steeple again. “See that he does, Karl,” he said in a measured tone.