“Exactly,” Murphy said. “Anyway, as far as the president is concerned, the sooner that stealth bomber is firmly in our hands, the better. Once that happens, Zhdanov will have to come to terms and negotiate for its return.” He smiled tightly. “Which we will gladly do . . . once our technical experts have finished studying its avionics and other systems.”

She eyed him closely. “So you want me to . . .” she said slowly, drawing it out. Like his boss, Murphy was a politician first. In the past, CIA officers had gotten into a lot of trouble for acting on the basis of winks and nods from occupants of the Oval Office and their subordinates—only to have the ground cut out from under their feet when things went sour.

“Signal our agreement by encrypted email through that secret server of yours,” he confirmed, with a crooked grin of his own that told her he knew exactly what she was doing. “Treasury officials are already transferring the necessary funds, three billion dollars, to your agency’s ‘black accounts.’ Now we just need you to let Petrov’s backers know that they’ve won.”

Thirty

Aboard the Megayacht Polyarnaya Zvezda, off the Island of Ischia, Italy

A Short Time Later

Not far from Naples, a sleek, hundred-meter-long ship rode at anchor off the volcanic island of Ischia. Though it was as large as a naval frigate, the vessel’s big, gleaming windows, luxurious fittings, swimming pool, and aft helicopter pad marked it as a rich man’s plaything.

High up on the megayacht’s top deck, Dmitri Grishin stood at a railing. Through half-closed eyes, the Russian oligarch surveyed the glittering, moonlit waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Streetlamps illuminated the faded stucco facades of the restaurants, shops, and hotels that lined Ischia’s beaches and small harbor. He rolled his shoulders, in an effort to ease some of the tension eating away at him from the inside.

Abruptly, he turned as he heard quiet footsteps behind him.

It was Pavel Voronin. In a concession to the Mediterranean fall climate and his employer’s desire for discretion, he’d traded in his usual tailored business suits for an open-necked shirt, blazer, and khaki slacks. He’d flown in from Moscow the day before, and as far as Grishin’s family and the ship’s crew were concerned, the younger man was just another of the junior corporate executives the oligarch sometimes rewarded with brief stays on his yacht.

“Well?” Grishin asked.

“They’ve met our price,” Voronin told him with a slight smile. “I just confirmed it with our financial networks. All the required funds have been securely transferred.”

Grishin breathed out in relief. “Who met our demands? Moscow or Washington?”

“Both of them,” Voronin said, smiling more broadly now.

For a moment, the oligarch stared at him in astonishment, taken completely by surprise. But then a sly, triumphant grin spread slowly across his own face. This was beyond his wildest and most optimistic expectations. In the blink of an eye, the operation he’d dubbed Vanishing Act had just netted him close to six billion U.S. dollars. True, on paper, that was still less than his publicly declared net worth. But until now, most of his nominal fortune had consisted of hard assets—of factories, mines, oil and gas wells, ships, and fleets of trucks and railcars. Unfortunately, in Piotr Zhdanov’s Russia, tangible possessions and investments were not real wealth. They were only hostages: hostages to a government that could seize them by decree, either on a whim or to appease an angry mob looking for scapegoats for their country’s increasingly dire economic conditions. Under Moscow’s despotic and unpredictable rule, today’s billionaire could all too easily become tomorrow’s imprisoned pauper.