“I hope you’re right,” Petrov said tightly.

Voronin laughed. “Don’t worry, Alexei. All you and the others need to do right now is keep your heads down for a little while longer. Except for those couple of minor glitches in the beginning, everything’s gone according to plan.” His expression turned slightly more serious. “Along those lines, though, has your unwanted passenger General Mavrichev’s body turned up yet?”

Petrov shook his head. “Not yet. We took advantage of a short break in the storm yesterday to mount a quick search. Unfortunately, Bondarovich’s men couldn’t find any sign of him or the snowmobile before the weather closed in again.”

“But you’re sure he’s dead?”

“Completely sure,” Petrov said flatly. “Between the bullet I put in his back and the subzero temperatures, Mavrichev was effectively a corpse the moment he disappeared into the night. Even if it took him a while to die, there’s nowhere he could have gone to find help. Not with the nearest village more than a hundred kilometers away.”

Voronin nodded. “Good,” he said with a pleased smile. “Then that’s one less complication for us to worry about.” He looked more closely at Petrov. “In the meantime, do your best to relax, Colonel—despite the hellish conditions. Think about the rather large fortune you’re about to make, instead.”

“Yes, because that will keep me warm when I’m outside freezing my ass off in the wind and trying to tie down another fucking camouflage panel that’s ripped loose for the hundredth time,” Petrov snapped sourly.

“It can’t hurt, though, can it?” the other man said, not hiding his amusement. “Anyway, I’ll contact you as soon as I have any news. For now, Voronin out.” The screen went blank.

Impatiently, Petrov disconnected his computer from the PAK-DA’s instrument panel and closed it down. Grishin and his suave assistant must think he was a complete fool, he thought in irritation, or else made blind by the prospect of riches and the power that wealth conveyed. Well, maybe that wasn’t so surprising. Both the oligarch and Voronin were driven themselves by the desire for ever-greater wealth and power . . . and like many civilians they mistakenly believed the two things were one and the same.

But real power came in many different forms, Petrov knew. Soon enough, he would prove that—not just to Grishin and Voronin, but to the whole world.

Somewhere inside the back of his skull, he felt another wave of pressure building up. With a grimace, he shook out another couple of pain pills and forced himself to choke them down.

Then, oppressed by the sudden feeling that his time might be even shorter than he’d supposed, Petrov leaned forward and activated the PAK-DA’s navigation system. One of the bomber’s large multifunction displays lit up. Several more quick taps on the glowing touch screen retrieved an intricate mission plan that he’d been devising ever since he’d learned about the tumor growing inside his brain. Fittingly, he’d named this plan Vikhr, Whirlwind—after a malignant wind spirit in Russian folklore. And the day was fast approaching, he knew, when he would sow the wind, and leave millions of others to suffer the whirlwind that must follow in his wake. Almost obsessively, he started working through the plan again, checking and rechecking his calculations for flight times and fuel consumption.