When it was time for the last group to leave, Joe Glass stood at the bottom of the escape trunk ladder alongside Sergei Andropoyov. He extended his hand and smiled.

“Sergei, go with God, my friend. You have done your country and the world a great service.”

Andropoyov grasped the outstretched hand firmly and returned the smile.

“Joe, thank you for all you have done. We must have a toast together when this is all over. I will look forward to giving you the opportunity to once again capture my king.”

With that, the Russian captain turned and climbed the ladder up into the Mystic. The hatch shut and he was gone.

Chapter 18

Boris Medikov slapped the final keys to log off the computer and leaned back to stretch his taut shoulder muscles. The encrypted message he had been reading was from his niece, Marina Nosovitskaya, and her report on the OptiMarx project was quite troubling. Someone was interfering with the carefully drawn plan. For a bit, he thought they had located the culprit. As it turned out, it wasn’t Dmitri Ustinov overstepping his bounds after all, and now they were back to square one.

The apparent lack of response from the American SEC was a mystery to Medikov. By all rights they should be descending on OptiMarx in force. Instead, Marina reported they were fast-tracking the system. Someone with real power was interested in seeing the system online. That is, unless it was all nothing more than a very clever trap.

Medikov chewed on a thumbnail. He had never seen that level of subtlety by the Americans. He could believe such a plot in Russia, but not the United States. They were too accustomed to relying on raw power. If there was some other plot in the works, he couldn’t imagine who was behind it.

Medikov stood and strolled around his suite as he usually did when he felt the need to think. The rooms were in the old state-run Mezhdunarodnaya Hotel. The plush suite occupied the top of the elaborate ancient pile of concrete, looking out over the frozen Moskva River. The hotel squatted near the very center of Moscow, meters from City Hall and the Russian Federation Government buildings. It had proved to be an ideal location for Medikov to make his headquarters when business brought him to Moscow. Besides, he loved the ornate gilded fittings and the deep-piled Persian carpets. There was little that could be considered regal splendor in the Russian capital and he welcomed any he could find.