“Gross negligence?” Marshall blinked. “I don’t understand.”

The president sighed. “Clue him in, Chris.”

“As of five days ago, the Chinese slashed their export quotas of rare earth oxides by seventy percent. They are stockpiling rare earths for their own use, just as I predicted they’d do in my second Pentagon memo thirteen months ago.”

“Because no action was taken,” the president said, “we’re now good and screwed.”

“Tomahawk cruise missiles, the XM982 Excalibur Precision Guided Extended Range Artillery Projectile, the GBU-28 Bunker Buster smart bomb”—Hendricks counted the weaponry off on his fingers—“fiber optics, night-vision technology, the Multipurpose Integrated Chemical Agent Detector known as MICAD and used to detect chemical poisons, Saint-Gobain Crystals for enhanced radiation detection, sonar and radar transducers…” He cocked his head. “Shall I go on?”

The general glared at him but wisely kept his venomous thoughts to himself.

“So.” The president’s fingers drummed a tattoo on his desk. “How do we get out of this mess?” He did not want an answer. Depressing a button on his intercom, he said, “Send him in.”

A moment later a small, round, balding man bustled into the Oval Office. If he was intimidated by all the power in the room, he didn’t show it. Instead he gave a little head bow, much as someone would when addressing a European monarch. “Mr. President, Christopher.”

The president smiled. “This, gentlemen, is Roy FitzWilliams. He’s in charge of Indigo Ridge. Besides Chris, any of you heard of Indigo Ridge? I thought not.” He nodded. “Fitz, if you would.”

“Absolutely, sir.” FitzWilliams’s head bounced up and down like a bobblehead. “In 1978 Unocal bought Indigo Ridge, an area in California with the largest deposit of rare earths outside of China. The oil giant wanted to exploit the element deposits, but with one thing and another they never got around to it. In 2005 a Chinese company made a bid for Unocal, which Congress stopped because of security concerns.” He cleared his throat. “Congress was worried about oil refining getting into Chinese hands; it had never heard of Indigo Ridge or, for that matter, rare earths.”

“So,” the president said, “simply by the grace of God, we retained control of Indigo Ridge.”

“Which brings us to the present,” Fitz said. “Through the efforts of you, Mr. President, and Mr. Hendricks, we have formed a company, called NeoDyme. So much money is needed that NeoDyme is being taken public tomorrow in an enormous IPO. Some of what I’ve told you is, of course, in the public domain. Interest in rare earths has quickened with the Chinese announcement. We’ve also been taking the NeoDyme story on the road, talking the IPO up to key securities analysts, so we hope that they will be recommending the stock to their clients.

“NeoDyme will not only begin the mining of Indigo Ridge, which should have begun decades ago, but also ensure the future security of the country.” He pulled out a note card. “To date, we have identified thirteen rare earth elements in the Indigo Ridge property, including the vital heavy rare earths. Shall I list them?”

He looked up. “Ah, no, maybe not.” He cleared his throat again. “Just this week our geologists delivered even better news. The latest test bores have given indications of the presence of a number of socalled green rare earths, a tremendously significant find for the future, because even the Chinese mines don’t contain these metals.”

The president rolled his shoulders, which he did when coming to the crux of the matter at hand. “Bottom line, gentlemen, NeoDyme is going to become the most important company in America, and possibly—I assure you this is not an overstatement—in the entire world.” His piercing gaze rested on everyone in the room in turn. “It goes without saying that security at Indigo Ridge is a top priority for us now and into the foreseeable future.”

He turned to Hendricks. “Accordingly, I am this day creating a topsecret task force, code-named Samaritan, which will be headed by Christopher. He will liaise with all of you, draw resources as he sees fit from your domains. You will cooperate with him in every way.”

The president stood. “I want to make this crystal clear, gentlemen. Because the security of America—its very future—is at stake, we cannot afford even one mistake, one miscommunication, one dropped ball.” His eyes caught those of General Marshall. “I will have zero tolerance for turf wars, backbiting, or interagency jealousies. Anyone holding back intelligence or personnel from Samaritan will be severely disciplined. Consider yourselves warned. Now go forth and multiply.”

Boris Illyich Karpov broke the arm of one man and jammed his elbow into the eye socket of the second. Blood spurted and heads hung. The stink of sweat and animal fear rose heavily from the two prisoners. They were bound to metal chairs bolted to the rough concrete floor. Between them was a drain, ominous in its circumference.

“Repeat your stories,” Karpov said. “Now.”

As newly appointed head of FSB-2, the Russian secret police arm built by Viktor Cherkesov from an anti-narcotics squad into a rival of Russia’s FSB, inheritor of the KGB’s mantle, Karpov was cleaning house. This was something he had longed to do for many years. Now, through a deal made in strictest confidence, Cherkesov had given him the chance.

Karpov, leaning forward, slapped them both. The normal procedure was to isolate suspects in order to ferret out discrepancies in their answers, but this was different. Karpov already knew the answers; Cherkesov had told him all he needed to know about not only the bad apples in FSB-2—those on the take from certain grupperovka families or what business oligarchs remained after the Kremlin crackdown of the last several years—but also the officers who would seek to undermine Karpov’s authority.

No one was speaking, so Karpov stood up and exited the prison cell. He stood alone in the sub-basement of the yellow-brick building just down the road from Lubyanka Square, where the rival FSB was still headquartered, just as it had been since the time when it was overseen by the terrifying Lavrentiy Beria.

Karpov shook out a cigarette and lit it. Leaning against a dank wall, he smoked, a silent, solitary figure, locked within thoughts of how he would redirect FSB-2’s energies, how he could build it into a force that would find permanent favor with President Imov.

When his fingers began to burn he dropped the butt, ground it beneath his heel, and strode into the neighboring cell, where a rotten officer of FSB-2 sat, broken. Karpov hauled him up and dragged him into the cell with the two officers. The scuffling commotion caused them to lift their heads and stare at the new prisoner.

Without a word, Karpov drew his Makarov and shot the man he was holding in the back of the head. The percussion was such that the bullet exited the brain through the forehead in a spray of blood and brains that spattered the two men bound to their chairs. The corpse pitched forward, sprawled between them.

Karpov called out and two guards appeared. One carried a large reinforced black plastic lawn bag, the other a chain saw, which, at Karpov’s direction, he started up. A puff of oily blue smoke rose from the machine, and then the two men went to work on the corpse, beheading then dismembering it. On either side, the two officers looked down, unable to tear their eyes away from the grisly sight. When Karpov’s men were finished, they gathered up the pieces and dropped them into the lawn bag. Then they left.

“He didn’t answer questions.” Karpov looked hard from one officer to the other. “His fate is your fate, most certainly, unless…” He allowed his voice to die off like smoke rising from a fire that was only just starting.

“Unless what?” Anton, one of the officers, said.