He scanned the water again for Jacobsson and Katya. He would stay in Russia, yet the SDV offered the chance to pick up a medical kit so he could bandage up his leg later.

In the murky water, his eyes suddenly caught a flash of white beneath him. He dived down toward it. It was the white of Katya’s jeans. Jacobsson was pulling her down to the SDV.

He swam after them. As he went lower, the darkness became like the blackest of tunnels. Katya’s white pants remained the only thing that wasn’t black, but they were fading.

Then she disappeared.

Dewey found himself deep in the water, unable to discern which direction was up. He was out of breath.

Let it go.

Dewey stopped swimming. For several seconds, he didn’t move. Slowly, he felt his buoyancy pulling him up. Blackness turned into a light-speckled greenish blur.

He knew the Russians would be waiting, their weapons trained at the surface of the water. But there was nothing he could do now. He breached the surface, gasping for air, then ducked back below the surface, diving down. He waited for the dull staccato of gunfire but heard none. He remained below water for nearly a minute, then surfaced again.

When he looked around, what he saw shocked him. The canal had opened up. The channel’s current had taken him several hundred feet away from the scene. He was thirty feet from shore, along a marina whose wharves were lined with boats.

Dewey struggled to catch his breath. He side-paddled to the far end of a dock that jutted out into the water. On both sides of the wooden jetty, small sailboats were moored, empty and quiet.

Dewey placed his hand on the top of the dock, holding on to it, remaining there for several minutes as he caught his breath and stared at the brightly lit scene up the canal, where a helicopter now hovered, its spotlights scouring the surface of the water. Both sides of the canal were alight with spotlights and the flashing strobes of police cruisers. From the other side of the canal, Dewey saw police speedboats, sirens roaring as they approached the disordered scene. He turned at a sudden noise. Behind him sped another police boat, its spotlights scanning the surface of the water, moving rapidly across the marina. Soon it would be at him. As the light hit the sailboat to Dewey’s right, lighting it up, he dived again, using the bottom of the jetty to hold himself just below the surface. After a half minute, he resurfaced. The police boat was creeping along the canal, toward the Four Seasons, its spotlight panning the canal wall, hunting.

Dewey’s eyes shot to the Four Seasons. Along the terraces, at least a dozen gunmen swept the water with guns, searching. He watched the chaotic scene as several scuba divers entered the water, looking for Katya. Looking for him.

*   *   *

Jacobsson swam into a small compartment at the aft of the SDV, pulling Katya in with him. He pressed a button inside the compartment. The door shut tight, then locked.

“Go!” barked Jacobsson, still on commo, speaking into his mask to Wray, who was in a separate compartment just a few feet from him, dry.

The SDV moved out, its nearly silent propulsion system sending it forward into the darkness, away from the Griboyedov Canal and toward the open water.

The compartment still filled with water. Jacobsson pressed another button, and a small but powerful pump came to life, pumping out water. Soon the water level in the SDV started dropping. In less than ten seconds, it was empty.

Jacobsson laid Katya on her back. He felt her carotid artery at the side of her neck for a pulse. There was nothing.

He pulled off his mask, arched Katya’s neck gently, and plugged her nose. He started breathing hard into her mouth, in timed puffs, trying to push air back into her water-choked lungs. After more than a minute, she made a soft moaning noise, then started vomiting water.

Slowly, Katya opened her eyes. She looked frightened and confused. She looked slowly around the tiny compartment. Then she started bawling uncontrollably.

The SDV moved quietly through the water, aiming deeper, speeding at fifteen knots toward the USS Hartford.

Jacobsson knocked on the glass, getting Wray’s attention.

“Heat,” he said, asking Wray to crank up the heat inside the compartment.

Jacobsson placed his hand on Katya’s forearm, attempting to calm her down. After several minutes of sobbing, she put her first words together.

“Where am I?” she asked.

Jacobsson said nothing.

*   *   *

Twenty minutes later, the SDV locked in place against the submarine. Jacobsson opened the hatch, picked up the barrel of his gun, and rapped the steel grip against the sub. A moment later, a round hatch lowered, opening.

Halogen lights, beamed up from the sub, made the light blue and eerie. Jacobsson crawled down first, followed by a pair of bare feet beneath soaked white denim jeans. Katya climbed down the ladder, sopping wet and dripping. She was placed on a stretcher and carried to the quarterdeck, her eyes scanning the inside of the submarine, then the half dozen men standing in front of her.

“Bring her to the officers’ quarters,” said Montgomery Thomas, the Hartford’s captain. “Get her some dry clothes. Something to drink if she wants it. Do not let her out of your sight.”

After Katya was led out of the compartment, Thomas looked at Jacobsson.

“What happened to Andreas?”

“I don’t know,” said Jacobsson.

46

MISSION THEATER TARGA

LANGLEY

Calibrisi looked at one of the NCS case officers.

“Get me Montgomery Thomas on the USS Hartford. Use a clean uplink.”

“Yes, sir.”

A few seconds later, Calibrisi’s cell buzzed.

“Monty?”

“Hector,” said Thomas, “I was wondering how long it would take you to call.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Fine. She’s a bit terrified, but we’ve got her in some warm clothing. You need to know something. Andreas didn’t make it out.”

“I know,” said Calibrisi. “We need him in-country. We have a problem.”

“You want to talk to the lady?”

“Yeah,” answered Calibrisi. “I need live stream as she’s speaking, along with your EKG.”

“Hold on.”

Calibrisi put his hand over the phone, then looked at an analyst.

“I want this run through FACS along with the VRA module,” said Calibrisi.

Calibrisi, in shorthand, was instructing the NCS analyst to quickly set up two forms of remote lie detection technology for use on Katya. FACS stood for Facial Action Coding System, in which Katya’s facial movements would be quickly cataloged, creating a digital bookmark of what Katya looked like when she was telling the truth and when she was lying.

The VRA was voice risk analysis, a CIA-developed remote lie detection technology. At the same time Langley’s computers were aggregating Katya’s facial movements, a separate software module would attempt to read the inflections in her voice against her heart rate, breathing pattern, and blood pressure.

Together, they would provide a down-and-dirty lie detector, less effective than a classic interrogation setting, but with Katya on a submarine thousands of miles away, it was Calibrisi’s only option.

“Park it on line four, sir,” said the young woman.

“Starting with a baseline,” said Calibrisi. “When you have it, let me know.”

“Roger.”

A few moments later, a soft female voice came over the speaker system.

“Hello?”

The plasma at the front of Targa abruptly cut to Katya’s face. She was seated in front of a steel table. Her hair was slightly messed up, though her beauty was obvious. EKG wires on her arm and neck were visible.

“Miss Basaeyev, my name is Hector Calibrisi. I work for the U.S. government. You were taken out of Russia on my authority. I want you to know that you’ll be treated as fairly and respectfully as you treat us. Which means answering our questions truthfully. We mean you no harm. You know who we’re after.”