"You were misled," she explained matter-of-factly. "Your General Secretary and President thought it best you should not know your subject's inentity 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.

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 81 inches in length by 301/2 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-"

"That's enough," she said, her embarrassment growing.

"Are you a party girl?"

"Only when the occasion demands," she replied, coming back on even keel. "And this is definitely not the occasion."

He threw up his arms and then let them drop dejectedly. "A sad day for Pitt, a lucky day for NUMA."