Lugovoy often wondered what he was doing here in this land of glass buildings, uncountable automobiles, people always rushing, restaurants and grocery stores in every block. It was not his kind of world.
He showed his identification to a guard standing by a private express elevator in the south tower and took it to the one hundredth floor. The doors parted and he entered the open lobby of the Bougainville Maritime Lines, Inc., whose offices covered the entire floor. His shoes sank into a thick white carpet. The walls were paneled in a gleaming hand-rubbed rosewood, and the room was richly decorated in Oriental antiques. Curio cases containing exquisite ceramic horses stood in the corners, and rare examples of Japanese-designed textiles hung from the ceiling.
An attractive woman with large dark eyes, a delicate oval Asian face and smooth amber skin smiled as he approached. “May I help you, sir?”
“My name is Lugovoy.”
“Yes, Mr. Lugovoy,” she said, pronouncing his name correctly. “Madame Bougainville is expecting you.”
She spoke softly into an intercom and a tall raven-haired woman with Eurasian features appeared in a high-arched doorway.
“If you will please follow me, Mr. Lugovoy.”
Lugovoy was impressed. Like many Russians he was naive in Western business methods and wrongly assumed the office employees had stayed late for his benefit. He trailed the woman down a long corridor hung with paintings of cargo ships flying the Bougainville Maritime flag, their bows surging through turquoise seas. The guide knocked lightly on an arched door, opened it and stepped aside.
Lugovoy crossed the threshold and stiffened in astonishment. The room was vast — mosaic floor in blue and gold floral patterns, massive conference table supported by ten carved dragons that seemed to stretch into infinity. But it was the life-size terra-cotta warriors in armor and prancing horses standing in silent splendor under soft spotlights in alcoves that held him in awe.
He instantly recognized them as the tomb guardians of China’s early emperor Ch’in Shin Huang Ti. The effect was dazzling. He marveled that they had somehow slipped through the Chinese government’s fingers into private hands.
“Please come forward and sit down, Mr. Lugovoy.”
He was so taken aback by the magnificence of the room that he failed to notice a frail Oriental woman sitting in a wheelchair. In front of her was an ebony chair with gold silk cushions and a small table with a teapot and cups.
“Madame Bougainville,” he said. “We meet at last.”
The matriarch of the Bougainville shipping dynasty was eighty-nine years old and weighed about the same number of pounds. Her glistening gray hair was pulled back from her temples in a bun. Her face was strangely unlined, but her body looked ancient and frail. It was her eyes that absorbed Lugovoy. They were an intense blue and blazed with a ferocity that made him uncomfortable.
“You are prompt,” she said simply. Her voice was soft and clear without the usual hesitation of advanced age.
“I came as soon as I received the coded telephone call.”
“Are you prepared to conduct your brainwashing project?”
“Brainwashing is an ugly term. I prefer mind intervention.”
“Academic terminology is irrelevant,” she said indifferently.
“My staff has been assembled for months. With the proper facilities we can begin in two days.”
“You’ll begin tomorrow morning.”
“So soon?”
“I’ve been informed by my grandson that ideal conditions have turned in our favor. The transfer will take place tonight.”
Lugovoy instinctively looked at his watch. “You don’t give me much time.”
“The opportunity has to be snatched when it arrives,” she said firmly. “I made a bargain with your government, and I am about to fulfill the first half of it. Everything depends on speed. You and your staff have ten days to finish your part of the project—”
“Ten days!” he gasped.
“Ten days,” she repeated. “That is your deadline. Beyond that I will cast you adrift.”
A shiver ran up Lugovoy’s spine. He didn’t need a detailed picture. It was plain that if something went wrong, he and his people would conveniently vanish— probably in the ocean.
A quiet muffled the huge boardroom. Then Madame Bougainville leaned forward in the wheelchair. “Would you like some tea?”
Lugovoy hated tea, but he nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
“The finest blend of Chinese herbs. It costs over a hundred dollars a pound on the retail market.”
He took the offered cup and made a polite sip before he set it on the table. “You’ve been informed, I assume, that my work is still in the research stage. My experiments have only been proven successful eleven times out of fifteen. I cannot guarantee perfect results within a set time limit.”
“Smarter minds than yours have calculated how long White House advisers can stall the news media.”
Lugovoy’s eyebrows rose. “My understanding was that my subject was to be a minor American congressman whose temporary disappearance would go unnoticed.”
“You were misled,” she explained matter-of-factly. “Your General Secretary and President thought it best you should not know your subject’s identity until we were ready.”
“If I’d been given time to study his personality traits, I could have been better prepared.”
“I shouldn’t have to lecture on security requirements to a Russian,” she said, her eyes burning into him. “Why do you think we’ve had no contact between us until tonight?”
Unsure of what to answer, Lugovoy took a long swallow of the tea. To his peasant taste it was like drinking watered-down perfume.
“I must know who my subject is,” he said finally, mustering his courage and returning her stare.
Her answer burst like a bomb in the cavernous room, reverberated in Lugovoy’s brain and left him stunned. He felt as though he’d been thrown into a bottomless pit with no hope of escape.
10
After years of buffeting by storms at sea, the drums containing the nerve agent had broken the chains holding them to wooden cradles and now they lay scattered about the deck of the cargo hold. The one-ton standard shipping containers, as approved by the Department of Transportation, measured exactly 81½ inches in length by 30½ inches in diameter. They had concave ends and were silver in color. Neatly stenciled on the sides in green paint were the Army code letters “GS.”
“I make the count twenty drums,” said Pitt.
“That tallies with the inventory of the missing shipment,” Mendoza said, the relief audible in her voice.
They stood in the hold’s depths, now brightly lit by floodlights connected to a portable generator from the Catawba. Nearly a foot of water flooded the deck, and the sloshing sounds as they waded between the deadly containers echoed off the rusting sides of the hold.
An EPA chemist made a violent pointing motion with his gloved hand. “Here’s the drum responsible for the leak!” he said excitedly. “The valve is broken off its threads.”
“Satisfied, Mendoza?” Pitt asked her.
“You bet your sweet ass,” she exclaimed happily. Pitt moved toward her until their faceplates were almost touching. “Have you given any thought to my reward?”
“Reward?”
“Our bargain,” he said, trying to sound earnest. “I found your nerve agent thirty-six hours ahead of schedule.”
“You’re not going to hold me to a silly proposition?”
“I’d be foolish not to.”
She was glad he couldn’t see her face redden under the helmet. They were on an open radio frequency and every man in the room could hear what they were saying.
“You pick strange places to make a date.”
“What I thought,” Pitt continued, “was dinner in Anchorage, cocktails chilled by glacier ice, smoked salmon, elk Remington, baked Alaska. After that—”