The man beside the Major lifted his machine pistol so that the muzzle pointed at Uncle Jasha’s chest. Jasha shrugged. “I was curious. What’s the harm? I tell you, what you want is still there.”

Again the Major said something into his cell phone. After a moment, he smiled. “You’re right. It is.” He nodded to the man beside him. “Kill him. Kill them all.”

Stefan sucked in a gasp of air, the betraying sound lost in the rattle of submachine-gun fire. A line of bullets ripped across Jasha Baklanov’s thick torso, his arms flying up, his body jerking repeatedly as a bloody spray filled the air. Stefan had to squeeze his eyes shut and sink his teeth deep into his lower lip to stop himself from crying out.

He heard another sharp, staccato burst of gunfire from somewhere below, followed by another and another. He bit down harder on his lip, his mouth filling with the metallic taste of his own blood as the killing went on and on.

When the quiet finally came, it sounded eerie, unnatural. Stefan could hear the gentle slop of the waves against the Yalena’s sides and the surge of his own blood pulsing through his veins. He had to force himself to open his eyes.

Uncle Jasha lay sprawled on the deck. As Stefan watched, the Major walked over to stand looking down at what was left of the Yalena’s captain. In a welling of raw grief and fury, Stefan willed himself to remember each detail of the man’s full face, the thick lips that pulled into another tight smile. “Stupid greedy Russian,” said the Major in his own language, a language that made Stefan shudder.

The Major glanced back at the man still cradling the extended stock of the machine pistol against his shoulder. “Search the ship. Make sure we have everyone.”

Stefan flattened his hands against the cold steel behind him, not daring to breathe as the man brushed past. He was hideously conscious of his rough work boots visible beneath the loose edge of the tarp. When they searched the ship, they would find him. Christ, he thought; all they’d need do is stand still and listen, and surely they’d hear the pounding of his heart.

He watched, shivering, as the Major headed aft, his footfalls echoing on the silent deck. Dropping to his belly, Stefan wiggled out from under the tarp, darted across the deck, and climbed the rail in one frantic scramble. He heard a shout, but he was already pushing off, his body arching effortlessly into a long, flawless dive honed by years of practice. Once, it had been Stefan’s dream to make Russia ’s Olympic swim team. Like so much else, that dream had died along with Stefan’s father. But it had left him with the confidence to view the sea as an ally rather than another enemy-although in that, he had reckoned without the cold.

The water was an icy, cutting shock that drove the air from his body and all thought from his brain. Gasping with agony and fear, he surfaced more by habit than by conscious volition. He heard a shout, and dove again as bullets slapped into the water around him.

A pearlescent cave of icy soundless death, the sea cocooned him in crystalline suspension. He stayed down until his lungs burned and his vision dimmed and he knew he had to either risk being shot at again or die. He thrust his head up into the air, his body aching and shuddering as he drew breath. He was so cold his skin burned and his body jerked like a man caught in a hail of bullets. Swinging around, he realized with a new jolt of terror he’d become disoriented in the mist. Was he still headed toward the shore? What if he was swimming out to sea? Or what if-Oh, God-what if he was swimming back toward the Yalena?

Behind him, the outboard motor coughed to life, the sound magnified and distorted by the softly drifting fog. Kicking hard, Stefan struck out in the opposite direction, toward what he hoped was a rocky point crowned by the dark, twisted silhouettes of wind-tortured pines.

New Orleans, Louisiana: Saturday 24 October

3:25 P.M. local time

October Guinness stood in the small side yard of her Uptown cottage, her fists resting against the stiff white cotton of her dobuk. She could hear the chatter of the finches in the limbs of the old live oaks that lined the narrow street, feel the warmth of the honeysuckle-scented breeze against her cheek. Her breathing slowed, became even.

In some ways, Tae Kwon Do was like meditation and remote viewing: each in its own way came down to this, this ability to move into stillness, to connect with the vibrating energy of the universe. She opened her eyes and stepped left into a cat stance, arms flashing down into twin lower knifehand blocks in the beginning of the Taebaek third black belt pattern. She moved effortlessly through side kicks and thrusts, backhand strikes and reverse punches. Turning, she pulled her left foot back to her right and relaxed into the final stance with a smile. She was about to begin her practice again when she heard the first bars of Anchors Away floating through the open door from the kitchen.

Her cell phone. Shit.

If the call had been from anyone else, she would have ignored it. But that particular ringtone meant one thing and one thing only. Scooping up her bottle of water from the nearby garden bench, she raced up the steps to the kitchen stoop, banged open the screen door, and dove for the phone on the counter. “Hello?”

“Tobie. Glad I caught you.” Colonel F. Scott McClintock’s normally mellow voice resonated with barely contained excitement. “I just got off the phone with Washington. They’re finally giving us a tasking.”

She took a quick gulp of water and choked. “You’re kidding, right?”

Under the patronage of Vice President T. J. Beckham, Tobie and McClintock had spent the last four months setting up a small remote viewing program at the Algiers Naval Support Facility across the river from the French Quarter. But up until now, their viewing sessions had all been training exercises. Not even the Vice President’s patronage could keep the project from being regarded by the few people in the intelligence community who knew about it as a waste of money and an embarrassment, rather than as an asset. The assignments she and the retired Army Colonel had been hoping for had never materialized. Lately, the Navy had been making noises about closing down the program and transferring Tobie to a different assignment. In Iraq.

“It’s no joke, Tobie. When can you come in?”

Yanking at the knot in her black belt, Tobie headed for the bedroom, the phone wedged between her ear and one shoulder of her dobuk. “Are you kidding? I’ll be there as soon as I get changed.”

Executive Office Building, Washington, D.C.

“I take it you’ve seen the Navy’s report?” said T. J. Beckham, buttoning the neck of his dress shirt and turning up its collar. The reception at the White House for the Prime Minister of Australia was set to start in fifteen minutes, and the Vice President was not the kind of man to be late.

Once a simple pharmacist at a corner drugstore, he’d entered local politics almost by accident and advanced by what he privately considered a series of flukes, first to the state capitol, and then on to Washington, D.C. Even as the distinguished senior senator from Kentucky, Beckham had nourished no secret aspirations for higher office. But Beckham was a patriot, the kind of man who always did his duty, whether volunteering to serve in Vietnam, or rising from a sickbed to attend an important vote on the Senate floor. When the sudden death of the elected vice president left the office vacant, and his squabbling colleagues could agree on no one but the congenial Senator from Kentucky, Beckham saw his duty clearly and accepted the appointment.

“I’ve seen it,” said the man who now stood in the middle of the Vice President’s office. Tall and lanky, with the long, prominent bones of his New England ancestors, Gordon Chandler had been the DCI-the Director of Central Intelligence-for about as long as Beckham had served as vice president. But unlike Beckham, the DCI was a ruthlessly ambitious man.