“I'm sure we can find something appropriate aboard the ship. I'll ask when I call for reservations. My radio is the only thing that wasn't smashed when I landed. Maybe you can round up your friends while I hail the boat - but you might want to hurry them along. We're on Russian territory, and I don't have my passport. We shouldn't overstay our welcome.”

Kaela followed Austin with her eyes as he made his way back to the damaged ultralight. She sensed a story. Who was this guy? This was no nerd. She called out to Mike and Dundee and told them to wrap up their filming. Then she hurried to catch up with Austin.

NUMA 3 - Fire Ice

-6- MOSCOW, RUSSIA

WIELDING IRON SELF-CONTROL, Viktor Petrov replaced his telephone in its cradle, tented his fingers and stared into space. After a moment lost in thought, he rose from his desk and went to the window. As he gazed out at the city, letting his eyes linger on the turnip-shaped spires of St. Basil's in the distance, his hand came up and brushed his right cheek. He hardly felt the touch of his fingers through the parchment-like scar tissue that covered the dead nerve endings in his skin. How long had it been? Fifteen years. Strange. After all that time, a single phone call brought back memories of the searing pain.

Petrov watched the crowds of pedestrians swarming in the summer heat and yearned for winter. Like many of his countrymen, he had a poignant attachment to snow. The Russian winter was harsh and unforgiving, but it had protected the country from the armies of Napoleon and Hitler. Petrov's love of snow was more prosaic, as well. Winter covered the city's flaws, hushed its noise and hid its corruption under a white blanket of purity.

He returned to his battered metal desk, the largest object in the small, drab room. At one elbow was an old-fashioned black dial telephone. At the other, a fax machine. An empty filing cabinet stood in a corner, there mainly for show. The cramped office was one of dozens of cubicles that made up the tenth-floor warren of the agricultural building, a soaring gray monument to the banality of socialist architecture. Printed in small letters on the door were the words SIBERIAN PEST CONTROL. Petrov rarely had visitors. Occasionally, a lost soul blundered into the office, only to be told that Siberian Pest Control had moved.