Glass returned to Smitrov’s side. He sympathized with the man’s plight. The longer it took for him to rally his forces, to let them know what was going on, the more time Durov had to consolidate his position. There was little that Glass could do. Between the two frigates behind him and the Udaloy destroyer and its helicopters waiting to pounce on them at the mouth of the fjord, there was no way he could go to periscope depth and broadcast a message. It would be suicide.

“President Smitrov, we will do our very best. I’ve got to get my boat out into open water before we will be able to use the radio. Otherwise, we’ll all die soon after I raise a mast, and before we could send any kind of message.” Glass looked into the Russian president’s eyes. “Mr. President, we may well have to kill some of your countrymen in order to get out of here. Many of them will be innocent pawns.”

“I understand, Captain,” Smitrov answered, the sadness heavy in his voice. “It must be done. You must do your duty so that I can do mine.”

Glass pursed his lips, then turned and left the wardroom.

The fight was on.

Marina Nosovitskaya stood back and watched Dmitri Ustinov run full force again and again into Carl Andretti’s locked office door. He was making scant headway attempting to get at Andretti, who hid on the other side. She knew that time was running out for them. The OptiMarx CTO had certainly called for help by now.

“Marina,” Dmitri called over his shoulder. He grimaced as he rubbed his aching upper arm. “Find something we can use for a battering ram. A fire axe or something.”

He took a running go and slammed hard into the heavy door again. It shuddered but showed no signs of giving way.

Nosovitskaya looked around the open office space. There was nothing that looked like a battering ram here. Maybe back in the testing room. She trotted down the hall and disappeared through the door.

The young blond programmer searched the room, but there was no weapon in here, either. By chance she noticed that Dmitri’s computer was still online. Normally he was careful to never leave it operating when he wasn’t sitting in front of it. He never seemed to mind having to log back on each time he left his workstation. Now she knew the reason. Fifty million reasons.

Nosovitskaya sat down in front of the machine and tapped a few keys on the keyboard. Within seconds she found what she was looking for. She smiled. Dmitri was nothing if not predictable. The code for his secret bank account was there. It was in a file named “Marina.”