Smythe pulled himself to his feet and swayed in the general direction of the farmhouse’s back porch, toward the open kitchen door.

Both Russians stopped, instantly alert. Smythe stopped, too, wondering what was going on.

The door gaped open, its frilly curtains dancing in the chilly breeze.

Vujnovich was the first to react. He reached into his belt and pulled out his 9mm Glock.

“Wait here with him,” he growled. “Something is not right. If Mikhail has stepped out and left the door open, he will be sorry.”

“Maybe he is upstairs, mounting the SEC bitch,” Bogatinoff offered with a nervous laugh.

“Even Mikhail is not that desperate,” Vujnovich said.

The big Russian was already moving low and quick to the side of the kitchen door. He waited a few seconds, listening, crouching even lower, and then dove through the door. He landed on his knees, ready to fire.

He was on the floor beside Mikhail Gikoytski’s lifeless form. The pool of blood had expanded around the body and had already started to congeal.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled. “Josef! Get your ass in here now!”

He got to his feet and ran up the stairs to the bedroom where Goldman had been a prisoner. He was not surprised to find the door open, the room empty, the furniture askew.

Bogatinoff ran up behind him, his Glock out and ready for action. “Now what?”

Vujnovich turned and headed back down the stairs. He was at the bottom before he answered the question over his shoulder. “We find the bitch and we kill her.”

“We had better tell Medikov that she is on the loose.”

Vujnovich turned and stared at Bogatinoff as if the man had just sprung a second head. “Are you totally daft? Do you want Boris to feed his dinner guests our nuts? We do not tell him a thing until she is dead.”

“What about Smythe?”

“Tie him up and inject him with enough heroin to keep him dreaming until we get back.”

Smythe shivered in the chill of the kitchen. He didn’t understand what either of the men was saying. He almost vomited when he saw the man’s body in the pool of blood on the floor. He shut his eyes and tried not to think about who it might be, how he might have died. When he opened them again, he saw one of the men was taking a syringe from what looked like a doctor’s bag. He would have turned and run then, but the other one grabbed him and shoved him across the kitchen table. That’s when he knew for certain that the needle and whatever was in it was destined for him.

That’s when Alan Smythe shit his pants.

Dmitri Ustinov leaned back and reread the coded e-mail. It had worked! They had done it! Now it was time to reap the profits.