“Mr. Dean?” Taylor said, holding something up as he stepped into the building. “You might be interested in this.”

Dean accepted the device, which looked like a small transistor radio. There was no tuning knob, however, just a knob for volume and on-off. When he turned it on, he could hear a squeal of atmospherics and, just barely, a voice, though the static was too bad to understand the words.

“Where’d you find this?”

“Jones found it underneath that mattress over there,” Taylor said, pointing. “It may be nothing, but…”

“But the fact that it was hidden makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Curious, Dean popped a back panel off and looked at the batteries. They were double-As, but the words printed on the casings were spelled out in Cyrillic letters.

So, what was someone on the NOAA expedition doing with a single-channel radio powered by Russian batteries?

Dean could think of only one reasonable answer to the question.

“Let’s check the personal effects,” Dean told the SEALs. “Whose bunk was this?”

Each of the bunks, racked two high in the cramped sleeping area, had a pair of small steel lockers next to it. Methodically, three of the SEALs began going through each, removing the contents and bagging them.

There wasn’t a lot-wallets, personal items such as rings and jewelry, toiletries, packs of cigarettes, sewing kits, socks and underwear, and the like. The radio had been found under one of the bottom bunks, so the owner had kept his personal items in one of two small lockers close by. ID cards in the wallets gave the names of the owners.

Steven Moore, Dean knew from his briefing, was one of the Greenworld documentary filmmakers.

Randy Haines was one of the NOAA meteorologists.

And one of them, Dean knew, was a traitor…

The Art Room NSA Headquarters Fort Meade, Maryland 1515 hours EDT

William Rubens sat at his desk, staring at the computer screen. The e-mail, on a special, secure feed from Men-with Hill, had come through from decryption only moments before. Lightly he touched the screen, as though wondering if the message would vanish.

“Thank God,” he murmured as he began to read the message again. He shook his head. “Thank God…”

Major Richard Delallo recovered and safe, the decoded message read. He ejected into the sea south of Kotka, Finland. He was unconscious when he hit the water, but he was pulled out by Finnish fishermen, who took him back to their village. There was some delay in getting word back to Lakenheath. Major Delallo’s flight suit was sterile for the op, and the fishermen thought he might be Russian. It was several days before they contacted the UK embassy in Helsinki.

Pilots flying covert ops such as Ghost Blue’s always went in sterile-meaning no flags on their flight suits, no name tags, nothing that could identify them as American or British.

Major Delallo will be flown to USNH Bethesda later today. He is suffering from the effects of exposure, hypothermia, and frostbite but is expected to make a complete recovery…

The message was signed Col. Copely, RAF, the name of the vice commander at Lakenheath Air Base.

Rubens sagged back in his chair, letting the relief wash through his body. It wasn’t the political aspect of Delallo’s rescue that was affecting him… but the knowledge that his decision to send Ghost Blue to St. Petersburg had not resulted in someone’s death.

Outwardly, Rubens always maintained a level of control and composure that some thought cold. He didn’t rattle, he didn’t express his worry, and he didn’t apologize for sending good men and women into harm’s way when the situation demanded it. Composure-even coldness-was part of the territory, the price necessary to keep Desk Three running at peak efficiency.

But he’d also seen Delallo’s personnel file-and knew the man had a wife and two daughters, currently living in base housing at Lakenheath.

Rubens made a mental note to make arrangements to have the family flown back to Washington, so they could be with the major as he recovered at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda.

With a mental sigh, Rubens deleted the message, then checked the time.

One operator had been recovered alive… but two more were about to insert at Solchi.

He wondered for a moment if he should go down to the Art Room and supervise the insert personally but then decided against it. He had good people. They knew what they were doing.

And he couldn’t afford to let them know that he was worried. He worked at his desk for almost an hour before deciding to go down anyway.

Kotenko Dacha Sochi, Russia 2310 hours, GMT + 3

The Kotenko dacha was built on the western face of a mountain overlooking the Black Sea. Llewellyn and an assistant named Vasily had driven Lia and Akulinin to a spot on the road above the Kotenko dacha after it got dark. From the hillside below the road, but well above the eastern side of the property, they could look down on the house and its grounds, which were spread out for their inspection, well lit and apparently well guarded. Lia held a set of electronic binoculars to her eyes and studied the scene. “Okay, people,” she said quietly. “Everybody online? Gordon, do you copy?”

“We copy,” the voice of Jeff Rockman said in her ear from a workstation back at Fort Meade. “Good voice. Good picture.”

“Dragon, do you copy?”

“Copy, Lia,” Llewellyn’s voice said an instant later. “We can see and hear just fine.” Llewellyn and Vasily, with the handle Dragon, had parked the van beneath some trees a quarter of a mile up the road and were linked in through the vehicle’s satellite communications suite. Both the team in the van and the runners back in the Art Room could see the scene transmitted from Lia’s binoculars, as well as hear the two of them through the mikes mounted on the collars of their combat blacks.

“Let’s have a closer look at that gate,” Rockman said.

“Here you are.” Lia pressed the zoom function on the camera, and the scene expanded, centering on the main gate where a paved driveway entered the property. A blond man in civilian clothes, but holding an AKM assault rifle, stood guard. Nearby, another armed guard followed the inside of the perimeter wall, a German Shepherd tugging at the leash in his hand. The gate was open and, as Lia watched, a car drove up and stopped beside the guard, who spoke briefly with the driver before waving him through.

A security camera watched it all from a telephone pole beside the driveway.

“I see two dogs,” Akulinin said, peering through his own binoculars. “The other one’s at the far side of the property, above the cliff.”

“We see him,” Rockman said. “Let’s have a look at the party in the back.”

From the hillside above the east side of the mansion, the two agents could see about half of the back deck, which extended from the west side of the house almost all the way to the cliff above the sea. The swimming pool was brightly lit, the blue light shimmering and wavering as it reflected off trees and walls. A dozen people or so were visible, engaged in laughing conversation. Most were casually dressed, though the people sculling in the pool or lounging in the hot tub were nude.

“I don’t see Kotenko,” Lia said. “Gordon, are you getting IDs on these people?”

“The bald guy talking with the tall blond is Vladymir Malyshkin,” Rockman said. “He runs the exploratory division of Gazprom’s oil subsidiary. The guy with thick glasses and his arm around the brunette over by the diving board is Sergei Poroskov, a member of the St. Petersburg Duma, and a major shareholder in Gazprom.” There was a hesitation as Rockman called up more data on his monitor back in the Art Room. “Yeah… all of the men are movers and shakers, either with the Russian government or in the Russian oil and gas industries. The guy skinny-dipping with the two chicks in the pool is CEO of a major construction company.”