"Nyet, Tanya," called Boris, waving her off. He rushed a few words in Russian that Gavallan took as a caution.

Tatiana inched toward the closet. Boris, a hand assaying his bruised jaw, held his ground next to the desk. Gavallan shifted his eyes from one side of the room to the other, from the lithe blond to the hulking thug. He felt tingly and alert and unafraid.

"You, be calm, okay?" said Boris.

"I'm fine. Why don't you two just turn around and leave. This is not your home. You shouldn't be here." His hands tightened on the club. "Just go… I wouldn't want to hurt you."

"You, hurt us?" Boris wiped at the blood and drool leaking from his mouth. The bastard was smiling.

And then, the telephone rang, an old-fashioned jangle that in the tense silence practically blew the roof right off the house. Boris's eyes shot to the phone. Tanya shifted her head. And in that instant, Gavallan moved. Jumping forward, he drove the iron hard into the soldier's ribs.

"Boris!" screamed the girl as the flat top collapsed to a knee.

Gavallan kept the iron in motion. It rose into the air, then dove in a silver arc, the shaft striking Tanya's hands, sending the pistol pinwheeling across the carpet. The girl registered no disappointment. Planting her feet, she came out swinging. One fist darted at his head, another at his gut. Gavallan sidestepped the blows, and as the girl's momentum carried her by him, he dropped the club and drove an elbow into her back. When she rose from the floor, Gavallan had the automatic in his grasp- a Glock 9mm, he now recognized.

"Freeze," he said, one eye scanning the room for Boris. "Don't move a mus-"

The blow hit him low in the back, a kidney punch delivered with ferocious verve. He wanted to cry, but no sound escaped him. His body was paralyzed. The cords of his neck flexed, his shoulders bowed, his lips bared over screaming teeth. The whole of his being grimaced with a pain it had never known. He collapsed, first to his knees, then to his chest, his arms and hands ignoring his every reflex to cushion his fall.

He wasn't sure how long he was unconscious. A minute. Maybe two. Boris stood by the desk, dumping the last of Ray Luca's papers into his duffel. The computer had been turned off. Tatiana kneeled close by, smelling pleasantly of lilacs and rosewater, the gun once again in her possession. Her head was tilted, and seeing his eyes open, she smiled. "Allo, Mr. Jett."

Hearing Tatiana speak, Boris abandoned his duties. "I'm sorry, sir, but we will kill you now," he said, turning toward Gavallan. "Mr. Kirov, he insists. He says to tell you, it is business only."

"You mean, 'It's only business,' " said Gavallan.

Boris shrugged. "My English is not so good as should be."

Gavallan lifted his head. Watching the blond cock the hammer and level the barrel at his forehead, he felt like a spectator to his own death. He wasn't frightened; he was too groggy for that, too fatigued by pain. He felt only disappointment, a terrible sense of letting Graf Byrnes down, of sentencing his company to an unknown fate, of allowing life to get the better of him.

"Ray? Ray, you home? What's going on back there?"

The voice came from inside the house. Boris whispered something to Tanya and she moved toward Gavallan.

"Ray? That you?"

Gavallan opened his mouth to cry out, but at the same instant, Tatiana brought the butt of the gun crashing onto his head. The last thought to pass through his mind, even as he drifted into darkness, was that he knew the voice.

Cate.

What the hell are you doing here?

31

General Kirov, some mail."

Major General Leonid Kirov glanced up from his work to see Levchenko, the department's newest probationer, advancing across his office, a small parcel wrapped in brown wax paper in one hand.

"From Belgium," Levchenko announced. He was whey-faced and chubby, more boy than man, and he was wearing the kind of sharp blue Italian suit that passed for a uniform these days among rising members of the service.

"Belgium, eh?" Kirov covered the timetables, bus schedules, and flight itineraries he had been studying, then stood and accepted the package. "What could it be, then? Chocolate? Some Flemish lace?"

He, too, was wearing a blue suit, but its boxy cut, worn serge, and frayed sleeves identified it as a trophy of Soviet tailoring. Still, the creases were razor-sharp and the jacket spotless and wrinkle-free, the result of habit, discipline, and his grandmother's three-kilo iron.

Turning the package over, he checked the franking. The postmark revealed it to have been mailed from Amsterdam the first of May, six weeks earlier. Amsterdam was, of course, in Holland, not Belgium, but he didn't feel like burdening Levchenko with the information. The caliber of probationers being what it was, Kirov supposed he should be grateful the fool hadn't thought Amsterdam in Africa.

"Sign here, General."

As Leonid Kirov scribbled his signature on the clipboard, he could not help but feel bitter and shortchanged. Twenty years earlier, the nation's top graduates had clamored to join the KGB. To say one worked for the komitet gave one a prestige no amount of money could buy. No more. Enterprise, not espionage, had become the career of choice among tomorrow's leaders. Money was what mattered. The crème de la crème of Moscow University and its brethren was not impressed by a starting salary of $150 a month. Waiters at the Marriott Grand Hotel on Tverskaya Ulitsa earned more.

A last look at the deliveries prompted a sigh of disgust. Only two other names were listed on the delivery sheet. One was his own, dated two weeks earlier, signifying receipt of a reconditioned toner cartridge he'd purchased with his own money. Handing back the clipboard, he grunted his thanks. "You may go."

Levchenko gave a flaccid salute and exited the office, slamming the door behind him. Instead of firing off a rebuke, Kirov merely sighed with disgust. Very soon all this would change. Men like Levchenko would be shown the door. Fresh toner cartridges would be found in every laser printer. The Service would cast off its dusty veils and reclaim its proud birthright. And in his new mood of cautious optimism, Leonid Kirov decided the Service wasn't dead. It was just sleeping.

With a few crisp strokes, he gathered the paperwork for his upcoming trip, slipped it into his briefcase, then tucked the briefcase under his desk. Then he patted his breast pocket. The plane ticket was there. Sunday, 11 A.M. Novastar Flight 44. Moscow to Perm. A top-secret trip to the Arctic Circle.

Only then did Kirov's eyes return to the glossy brown parcel.

"Lapis," he whispered. Finally!

Lapis was the work name of an agent he had inserted into Philips, the Dutch electronics behemoth, three years earlier. In early May, Lapis had called in a state of high excitement. He had managed to photograph documents relating to a new eavesdropping technology Philips was developing for the Dutch Intelligence Service. Within Philips, the project was graded "eyes only," and its timely exploitation would allow his department to hack into the Dutch spy service's mainframe and read its take as if it were their own. Six weeks later, the film had arrived. Kirov couldn't help but shake his head. Gone were the days of the diplomatic pouch and emergency couriers. There was no cash in the budget for private jets or even economy-class tickets on KLM. As for commercial courier service, Federal Express had canceled its account two years back on grounds of nonpayment. These days, the Service sent and received its mail through the Russian post, like anyone else.

Six weeks!