The voice on the other end was just as manic when Medikov responded, “You do not order me! I’m not in your silly Navy. The attack on the market will stop. It will stop immediately!”

Durov took another swig of the vodka and forced his voice to calmness. The medicine was beginning to quell the pounding ache in his heart. “Boris, listen to me. If the attack is halted, there are certain dealings you have made that will reach the ears of the FSB. I don’t think you would like the consequences should that information be made known to the authorities.”

The Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, successor to the old KGB for internal security matters, was not an agency to trifle with. Even someone as powerfully connected as Medikov could disappear without a trace.

With that, he eased the telephone back into its cradle and reached for the bottle of blue pills again. Durov smiled to himself as he worked to control his breathing. He shook out two more of the capsules.

Medikov would get little enjoyment from his beloved profits. If he only knew how futile it was to worry so over the ramifications of what he and his henchmen had set into motion.

If he only knew how little time he had left.

Anatol Vivilav stared out through his submarine’s periscope. Lights on the Swedish coastline illuminated ships steaming in every direction. Vipr was moving through the narrow waterway separating Sweden and Denmark. The sub’s scope was a tiny pipe, barely making a ripple on the surface as they headed east.

He had spent many hours talking with old Russian submariners, listening to their tales of threading their way through the Kattegat. It was one of the busiest crossroads in the world. Hundreds of ships traveled its narrow passage every day, carrying steel from Krakow to factories in France or wine from Spain to Latvia. All of those ships seemed to be overhead right now, intent on running over his periscope in the darkness.

If the water was a few meters deeper, he could drop down below periscope depth and sneak through unmolested. There wasn’t enough depth to separate Vipr from the keels of the big, new tankers that plied these waters.

“Captain,” Anistov Dmolysti called out. “Sonar is reporting a ship at bearing one-four-three. It has a zero bearing rate. My best estimate is a range of a thousand yards.”

Vivilav spun the periscope around to look down that bearing. He saw the huge bow wave of a freighter bearing down on them. He had to maneuver or the freighter would cut Vipr neatly in half.

“Right full rudder,” he ordered. “Steady on course two-one-zero. Anistov, make turns for thirty clicks, please.”

“Yes, Captain. You only have three minutes on that course. Shoal water in fifteen hundred meters.”