“Score one for the CIA,” Taylor said with a slight smile.

Absentmindedly, Murphy rubbed at his chin, frowning a little when he felt the patches of stubble his quick shave on the way to the Pentagon had missed. “There are a lot of pluses,” he said carefully. “Sure Petrov’s asking for a lot of money, but conventional intelligence efforts to acquire accurate data on Russia’s stealth bomber program could easily end up costing us nearly as much over time. Not to mention taking years to produce results . . . and, in all probability, yielding far less useful information. The same goes for those advanced cruise missiles he says are aboard. Not only that, but just knowing that we’ve got their prototype, its electronics, and its weapons payload would compel Moscow to dramatically reengineer their stealth bomber and missile programs—at a huge expenditure in time and money.” He turned to General Neary. “How much did the B-2 Spirit program cost us?”

“Somewhere north of forty billion in current dollars, not counting procurement,” the Air Force chief of staff told him.

Murphy nodded. “Exactly. So by spending what’s basically pocket change in the context of the federal budget, we could force the Russians to pony up billions more for a whole new bomber design. It’s a win-win for us.”

Neary frowned deeply.

“You have a problem with the director’s analysis, General?” Taylor asked.

“Yes, sir, I do,” Neary said. “What if we’re wrong about this? What if Petrov didn’t steal the PAK-DA bomber prototype at all? What if this is just an elaborate ruse orchestrated by Russian intelligence . . . and the aircraft that we’re supposedly buying is still sitting safely inside a hangar on some Russian air base?”

“Jesus,” Taylor muttered. “That would be . . . bad. Very bad.”

Neary nodded. “We’d get caught paying billions of taxpayer dollars to Moscow for nothing. Not only would that inflict a lethal political blow to the president and his administration, it would humiliate the entire U.S. national security establishment as well. We’d be the laughingstock of the whole world.” He shrugged. “Sure, the video sent to Ms. Reynolds shows this guy Petrov in some kind of fancy cockpit. But none of us knows what the inside of the real PAK-DA bomber looks like. Nor are there any shots of the outside. For all we really know, the whole thing could easily have been shot on a GRU- or SVR-built film set.”

“There is another problem, even if Petrov’s offer is genuine,” Rear Admiral Chao commented. “It’s pretty clear that he’s getting a lot of help from someone we don’t know anything about. If it turns out he’s in league with Russian organized crime, or drug lords, or maybe even terrorists, the blowback from our funneling so much U.S. government money to them could be horrific.”

Taylor winced, obviously imagining how that would play out in Congress and the press. The defense secretary wasn’t a Washington insider by experience or inclination, but even a few short months on the job had taught him the savagery with which political war was waged in the nation’s capital. He sighed. “Okay, it looks like whether or not we meet Colonel Petrov’s demands is a decision that’s way above all our pay grades. I’ll brief the president as soon as I can, but my bet is that nobody in the White House is going to want to jump in with both feet on this. Not without a hell of a lot more information than we can give them right now.”