Weaving, Dewey started to move back toward the explosion. He pushed through a line of bystanders, knowing the agents inside were dead yet needing to get back there. As he reached the corner, the first police car arrived, followed by several fire trucks.

Dewey moved up the sidewalk toward the safe house, delirious with shock, his head concussed. He pulled out his cell phone. The glass was shattered. When he tried to turn it on, nothing happened.

He felt for his gun. It was gone.

Dewey turned back toward where he’d landed on the ground.

A woman was pointing at him. She was speaking to a police officer who, Dewey could see, was holding the gun. The officer yelled something in Russian. Dewey turned again. He continued toward the safe house, now blocked by a pair of police cars, their blue and red lights flashing through the rain. He registered two policemen climbing from the first cruiser, looking in his direction.

Dewey turned again. The first officer—the one with Dewey’s pistol—was sprinting toward him.

He turned yet again. The two officers from in front of the safe house were also running toward him, weapons out and raised.

He was hemmed in.

Dewey cut abruptly left, away from the two converging lines of policemen.

They were yelling at him, barking at him in Russian, telling him to stop. But he kept moving.

Dewey ran, limping, still weaving, toward a side street, as the officers closed in on him.

He reached the corner of the side street. A block away, he saw lights from a passing car. Suddenly, the car stopped, paused, then jacked right, directly toward him, bursting up the street at high speed.

Dewey heard a gunshot from behind him as the low red sports car ripped up the cross street directly for him. Dewey kept running as the car flew down the thin lane. At the last second, the driver of the car swerved left and slammed the brakes, just feet away. Dewey heard yelling from inside the car. He went to the open passenger window and looked in.

The muzzle of a gun was aimed at him.

“Duck,” the man said.

Dewey moved down just as the driver fired. The bullet struck the closest policeman in the head, kicking him to the ground two car lengths away.

“Get in,” came the thick Russian accent inside the sports car.

Dewey climbed in as gunfire erupted from behind him.

“Hold on.”

The driver put the car in reverse and slammed the gas, tearing backward as, with his left hand, he fired his gun at the line of policemen now charging on foot. The car sped backwards up the street. When the mag was spent, he dropped the gun. In one fluid motion, he jacked the wheel and with his other hand pulled the emergency brake. The car flipped one-eighty. He released the brake, then slammed the gas. Soon he had the car speeding away from the scene, moving rapidly away from the chaotic scene.

“You must be Dewey,” he said as he steered without looking up. “I’m Alexei Malnikov. Welcome to Moscow.”

81

CAPE ANN MARINE COMPANY

GLOUCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS

“There’s a guy out on the dock.”

Saxby looked up.

“Should we call the cops?” he asked.

If Scranton understood the sarcasm in Saxby’s voice, he didn’t let on.

“Or should we perhaps ask him if we can help him?” continued Saxby. “You are aware that we sell boats, aren’t you, Jack?”

“This guy ain’t buying a boat. He looks suspicious. That’s all I’m saying.”

Saxby shook his head. He went out the side door of the marina building and walked to the long pier in back, on the harbor. It was crowded with a variety of boats moored along the teak pier.

When he got to the middle of the pier, he saw the individual. He was on one of the boats, a dark green forty-four-foot Hinckley Talaria. As much as he doubted Scranton, he had to admit the man did look suspect. His hair was long and dark, stubble covered his face. He was Arab. He looked ill, like he was going to get sick right there on the boat.

“Can I help you?” asked Saxby.

“Good morning. I would like to buy this boat.”

“You are aware of the cost?” asked Saxby. “That’s a four-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar boat right there. Now we do offer financing, but the approval process can take a while.”

“I’ll pay cash,” he said.

“Cash like a check? I can call Mr. Gardiner and ask—”

“Cash like cash,” the stranger interrupted. “And I would like it right now.”

82

LE DIPLOMATE

I4TH STREET NW

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The cell made an incessant high-pitched beeping noise, startling Gant as he ate.

He was alone. Le Diplomate was his favorite restaurant. It brought back memories of different postings in his career. Paris was the most obvious, but for some reason the cozy, eclectic European ambience reminded him of Prague, where he met his first wife.

Gant was feeling sentimental, even sad. He’d been sidelined from the Agency’s most important operation in years. When he’d attempted to access status files earlier, he had not been allowed in. He was shut off.

But if he thought Le Diplomate would help, he was wrong. If anything, it only made him realize what he was about to lose.

Or maybe it was guilt finally catching up to him.

His phone started to ring. He looked down at the phone number. It was him, the man who started it all, the one who killed a kindly Soviet scientist as his only child watched.

He picked up the phone.

“Hi, Sage.”

“That’s not my name anymore.”

“Maybe not on that fantasy island where you live, but you’ll always be Sage Roberts to me.”

“What do you want?”

“Something’s happening.”

“What’s that, Josh? Did you finally worm your way to the director’s job?”

“I called to warn you.”

“You’ve never done a fucking thing your whole entire life for anyone other than Josh Gant, so let’s cut the bullshit. What is it?”

“Vargarin.”

The word shut Roberts up. He was quiet for several moments. Then he let out a loud sigh.

“Oh, boy.”

“Boy is right,” said Gant. “The son you had me stick in the orphanage.”

“Pyotr. Smart kid.”

“He’s a terrorist now.”

“I knew I should’ve put a bullet in his head,” said Roberts. “Why are you calling? To ‘warn me’? Because you’re such a nice fucking guy?”

“Why did you do it?” asked Gant.

“Do what?”

“Why couldn’t you just let the family stay? They wanted to stay in their country, you sick fuck.”

“The answer to that question was wired into your bank account fifteen years ago, Josh. Grow up. That’s the way the world works.”

“All I can say is, you better hope he fails at what he’s trying to do. Because if this thing unwinds, they’ll be sending the Killer Kanes after you.”

83

SHENNAMERE ROAD

DARIEN, CONNECTICUT

Igor knew something was happening. In a tight geographic area east of Moscow, the level of defensive activity was spiking. It meant that his target’s automated countermeasures were fighting back.

Igor’s server farm was pounding against Cloud’s 128-bit encryption key, hitting it with attempt after attempt as they enumerated every possible combination of characters. Cloud had embedded logic bombs within the encryption algorithm, so that as someone trying to break the key came closer, countermeasures were instigated. Like a wounded animal, Cloud’s defenses were doing what they could to kill, delay, and misdirect the onslaught that was coming from Iceland. A normal attempt at breaking Cloud’s key would have long since been stopped. But a warehouse full of single-purpose attackers was not normal in any sense. They smelled blood. They could not be stopped.

Igor had two of his three screens focused on the hunt. One screen showed packet activity in real time—the granular communications between his servers and the servers running Cloud’s defenses. At the beginning of the process, those servers running Cloud’s protections were distributed all over the world, striking back at the earliest attempts at finding the root line in. But as Igor’s overwhelming wall of computing power discovered shortcuts and ways around those first defenses, Cloud’s power retreated and focused in a concentric circle. Igor watched the punch-counterpunch in real time, like watching a tennis match in digital form.