One curious feature about the NSA facility at Fort Meade: there were no visible room numbers, no corridor names, nothing to help any visitor who didn’t know exactly where he was going.

They didn’t make it easy to access the Art Room.

And with very good reason.

Akulinin Operation Magpie Waterfront, St. Petersburg 0037 hours

The second gunman ducked behind the corner of the shed, then emerged to trigger another burst of full-auto fire at Akulinin. He was almost invisible against shadows unrelieved by the pale light from the lone street lamp on Kozhevennaya. Akulinin waited, aiming at the point where he’d seen him last; two seconds dragged past, and then he saw movement, a dark shape as the Russian half-emerged from cover once again.

Akulinin squeezed the trigger again and the dark mass vanished. “Art Room!” he whispered. “Did I get him?”

“Both targets are down,” Rockman’s voice replied in his head. “They’re not moving. Can’t tell if they’re KIA or not.”

The sensors scattered by Lia around the building early in the op could pick up remarkably faint noises-breathing, footsteps, even heartbeats at a close enough range. The NSA computers would keep painting the targets where the devices sensed them, only letting the icons fade away some minutes after all motion and sound from the target ceased.

They would have to chance it. “C’mon, Lia!”

He kept his weapon trained on the corner of the shed as Lia scrambled to her feet and dashed for cover. As she reached his position, several more armed men began spilling out of the warehouse through the main door.

There was no time for carefully aimed bursts. He thumbed his weapon’s selector switch to full-auto and mashed down the trigger, sending a second-long volley into the gaping door.

One Russian crumpled on the spot as the others pulled back and bullets banged into the sheet-metal sliding door. Then Akulinin’s weapon ran dry, the slide locking open as the final spent cartridge spun away into the darkness and clinked against the wall to his right.

“You okay?” he asked.

Lia nodded. She was rubbing her arm. “A little scraped up…”

“C’mon. Before these clowns get themselves organized!” Taking her elbow, he guided her past a tangle of discarded and rusted machinery, leading her back toward the alley through which he’d approached the waterfront a few minutes before.

“How about it, Jeff?” he asked aloud. They stopped just short of the alley as Akulinin pocketed the empty clip from his weapon and snapped in a fresh magazine. “Anybody waiting for us around the corner?”

“We’re not picking up any movement in the alley or near the car,” Rockman’s voice replied. “Hostiles are coming out of the warehouse now… but cautiously.”

They ducked into the entrance to the alley and made their way northeast, emerging again on Kozhevennaya Liniya. After a careful look up and down the street and at the staring, empty windows of the buildings towering around them, they crossed the street at a casual stroll to the parked white Citroën. Lia climbed into the back while Akulinin slid in behind the wheel.

“Damn!” he said.

“What’s the matter?” Rockman and Lia answered in almost perfect unison.

“My toolbox,” he said, glancing back across the street. “I left it back there.”

“Leave it,” Lia told him. “The opposition is going to be all over that waterfront.”

“What’s left in the tool kit?” Rockman asked.

“The OVGN6,” he said. “Some rope and climbing gear. Some spare mags for the H and K. Some ground sensors.” He hesitated. “And the satcom.”

That last was not good. The AN/PSC-12 com terminal with its two-foot folded satellite dish was a compact and extremely secret unit small enough to be carried in a small briefcase-or a workman’s toolbox. The black box attached to the terminal contained computer chips and encryption codes that the National Security Agency emphatically did not want to fall into unfriendly hands.

Stupid! Akulinin told himself. Careless, sloppy, and stupid!…

“We’ve alerted your support team,” Rockman’s voice said. “They’ll try to make a recovery when things quiet down.”

“What the hell kept you anyway, Ilya?” she demanded as he started the ignition and pulled out into the street.

“Traffic inspector,” Akulinin replied. “He flagged me over just before the Exchange Bridge and demanded to see my papers. The bastard kept me there cooling my heels for half an hour before he finally agreed to accept a five-hundred-ruble fine for my, ah, violation.”

“Five hundred rubles,” Lia said. “About what… twenty dollars at the current rate? I didn’t realize the local cops were such cheap dates.”

Akulinin drove slowly up the road, passing the warehouse that had been the focus of Operation Magpie. A number of shadowy figures were visible in the parking lot… more than he’d seen originally exit the two cars on the wharf. An open-bed truck was parked on the road in front of the warehouse, suggesting that reinforcements had arrived. How many goons had he and Lia been facing, anyway?

He kept his eyes on the road ahead, not looking at them, and they, apparently, didn’t connect passing traffic on the street with their quarry. By deliberately driving at a sedate and unhurried pace toward, then past the hunters, rather than pulling a U-turn in the middle of the street and rushing off in the opposite direction, Akulinin might throw off any would-be pursuit.

It was a bit of tradecraft Akulinin had learned only recently, during his induction into the secret ranks of Desk Three, and he didn’t yet entirely trust the psychology behind it. What if the opposition had people in some of the surrounding buildings, watching the street? What if they’d seen him and Lia emerge from the alley and get into the car? A quick call over a walkie-talkie from a hidden lookout and that whole pack of Russian gunmen could be swarming after them in an instant.

He drove with one hand, the other gripping the MP5K on his lap, out of sight but ready for action.

Several of the men glanced at the Citroën as it cruised past, but there was no other reaction.

“Okay, I guess they didn’t track us,” he said.

“They’re not pros,” Lia said. “All muscle, no brain.”

He set his loaded weapon on the seat beside him, relaxing slightly… but only slightly. “Your fancy duds are in a bag on the floor of the backseat,” he told her.

“I see it.”

For the next several blocks, Akulinin was treated to the sounds of tantalizing rustles, snapping elastic, and shifting movements in the backseat. Determined to maintain a professional bearing, he kept his eyes rigidly on the road, not even checking the rearview mirror.

Professional or not, though, nothing said he couldn’t try to imagine the scene at his back. Lia was an extremely attractive young woman…

Soon Kozhevennaya came to a T at Bol’shoy Prospekt, and Akulinin turned left, then began hunting for the entrance to a parking lot. The cruise ship terminal was just ahead. The atmosphere of their surroundings, he noticed, had changed dramatically, clean, well kept, well lit, and open, where only a few blocks away the decrepit warehouses and abandoned machine shops brooded over fog-shrouded darkness.

St. Petersburg, Akulinin knew, depended these days upon making a good impression on tourists for its economic survival.

Pulling the Citroën into an empty space in the parking lot, Akulinin took a moment to peel off his worker’s coveralls. These went on the floor under the passenger side seat, leaving him in a suitably tacky short-sleeved shirt that fairly shouted “American tourist.” The MP5K, along with Lia’s SOCOM pistol, went under the seat. Pulling a small stack of papers and booklets from the glove box, he stepped out of the car. Lia was transformed, wearing a pale blouse displaying significant cleavage over a short black skirt and heels, with a sweater over her shoulders to keep off the night chill.