Nick had filled her head with instructions, but she hadn’t absorbed much beyond not turning her back, not letting material rub against the mike and not scratching herself.

She jolted at the sound of the front doorbell. Vassily’s driver, come to pick her up.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She was about to betray Vassily, something that she would have thought herself incapable of. She thought of the fake medicine, the counterfeit bolts, and what Nick had told her about the human trafficking Vassily’s organization engaged in.

And then she thought of Nick.

Two men. She’d loved both of them, in her way, and she never really knew either of them.

The doorbell rang again and she picked up her coat. Taking a deep breath, she walked to the door.

Showtime.

Al-Banna was late. But Vassily had learned patience at a hard school. The hardest. He wasn’t worried. Al-Banna would come. He was too invested not to. Vassily had something al-Banna wanted very, very badly, with more on the way.

In the meantime, Vassily chatted amiably with his old friend, Arkady, over tea and vodka. They didn’t reminisce about days gone by, as old friends usually did. The past was much too painful. No, music and books wove their usual magic.

Finally, Ilya stood in the doorway. “He’s coming, Vor,” he said quietly. “He’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

“Did you tell him to come alone?” Vassily asked sharply.

“Yes. He wasn’t happy about it, but he’s coming alone. Only the driver and him.”

Vassily didn’t care whether he was happy or not. All he cared about was that a new and safe route had been found and that al-Banna would be bringing ten million dollars.

And that afterward, he would be celebrating with Katya. Together. At long, long last.

Five clicks. The prearranged signal that someone was coming. A sentry was posted two miles up the road, well camouflaged, with powerful binoculars.

“Al-Banna,” Di Stefano mouthed. Nick nodded.

Word must have been given to Worontzoff, too. On the screen, Nick could see him and the Russian who’d brought the container and who was called Arkady enter the study.

They were speaking softly, calmly.

“They’re talking about books,” Alexei’s voice sounded clear as a bell in his ears. “Nothing important. Worontzoff just made a joke about Arabs being late. Used a term for Arab that is very politically incorrect.”

It was almost completely dark, which helped their concealment. The floodlights were on a timer, which hadn’t been changed since summer. They would be turned on in an hour. In an hour and a half, Charity would be safely out of the way and everyone in the mansion would be in restraints. Or dead. Nick didn’t much care either way, as long as Charity was safe.

Nick and Di Stefano held their position, barely breathing. Every once in a while Alexei would give them the gist of the conversation going on in the study.

With a loud clanking sound, the big front gates started opening, exactly in time for a black Mercedes with tinted windows to pass through them and drive up to the front steps without slowing down. An act of pure arrogance.

Two men got out, the driver and a passenger. Nick stared hard at the man who emerged from the passenger side. He’d studied the fucker’s file until it was burned into his brain.

He looked older than the pictures in the file, thinner. There’d been some plastic surgery done. The nose was narrower, cheekbones higher. His hair was pewter gray instead of midnight black.

But Nick would recognize him anywhere.

Hassad al-Banna, the man who’d masterminded the attack against the USS Cole, once Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man, now setting up a terror franchise all his own.

Di Stefano clicked once on his lip mike. Nick could almost feel the tension of the invisible team.

He watched al-Banna climb the big granite stairs, the driver right behind him, carrying a large suitcase. Big, beefy guy. Clearly a bodyguard doubling as driver.

A few minutes later, they were walking into the study and Nick and Di Stefano bent over the small screen, watching as if lives depended on it. Which they did.

Vassily got up to greet the Arab. Luckily, there would be no niceties, no pretending at social politeness. This was a business transaction between two men and two organizations that wanted nothing to do with each other, besides exchanging money for a commodity.

This suited him. The quicker this was over with, the faster he could be with Katya. He felt her presence very strongly, even if she hadn’t arrived yet.

There was power in this room, great power. In the hidden history of the world, what happened tonight in this small town in northern Vermont would change the course of human affairs. Vassily felt that fate had deemed that he should live, though he should have died a thousand times over in Kolyma. A powerful force had led him to this point, and to his reclaiming of his lost love.

From this day forward, there would be no more pretense. He and Katya would be reunited and rich and powerful. No one would ever—could ever—harm them, ever again.

Nick and Di Stefano watched it all on the small screen. Worontzoff limping across the study to greet al-Banna, whose bodyguard was wheeling in a large suitcase. Worontzoff stopped right in front of him and gave a brief nod.

Nobody offered to shake hands.

Al-Banna was followed by his bodyguard. The man was carrying. The bulge under his left armpit was clear. Nick could only imagine that Worontzoff’s bodyguard, Ilya, was also carrying. It was entirely possible that if Worontzoff had tried to have al-Banna disarmed, a firefight would break out. Both Ilya and the bodyguard looked tough and proficient.

Mutual assured destruction. It worked. For fifty years it kept the United States and the Soviet Union from bombing each other into oblivion.

There were five men in the room. Worontzoff, al-Banna, his bodyguard, Arkady, and Ilya.

“I don’t think we need to waste time,” Worontzoff said and Hammad nodded. “You go first.”

Hammad looked at his bodyguard. The big man lifted the huge suitcase onto Worontzoff’s desk and opened it. It was filled with bricks of dollars. Everyone in the room froze.

Hell, even Nick and Di Stefano froze.

The camera was at floor level, but the suitcase was so packed with money, it overflowed. The big bodyguard picked up one banded brick and rifled through it. Nick could clearly see Benjamin Franklin’s likeness. One-hundred-dollar-bill denominations. Nick tried to think how much money could possibly be contained in that big suitcase. Millions and millions.

“Ten million dollars,” al-Banna said, his voice tinny in Nick’s earbud. Well, that answered that question. “What does it buy me?”

Worontzoff nodded and the man called Arkady walked over to a large container. It had a complicated closure system, but finally he opened it and lifted the lid.

He stepped back and gestured with his arm at the contents. “A canister with one hundred kilos of cesium 137. Given the temperature, it is currently in a liquid state. There is enough cesium in this canister for one large dirty bomb or several smaller ones. You can irradiate central Manhattan, say the Wall Street district, or several military bases, as you please. We have more than one hundred other canisters, ready for shipment.”

A wintry smile creased al-Banna lips. “Excellent.”

Nick and Di Stefano exchanged grim, startled looks. This was way worse than Nick’s worst imaginings. Thank God they were here and were going to stop the transaction. The mere idea that one hundred canisters of cesium 137 were back in Russia, waiting for shipment to terrorists, was terrifying.

They weren’t going to take down a transaction, they were taking down a network. Ordinarily, this would have filled Nick with satisfaction, but his whole head was taken up with worry about Charity. There wasn’t room for satisfaction, only room for terror that she’d be hurt.