The sound of pounding feet and shouting male voices interrupted Nosovitskaya as she copied down the numbers on a sticky note. Time was running out. Someone else was here and they were making a lot of noise.

Nosovitskaya slipped over and cracked the door open just a sliver. She peeked out just in time to see four men with drawn pistols charge down the hall toward Andretti’s office. Their dark blue windbreakers had FBI written across their backs in large gold letters. Ustinov was already spread-eagled on the floor, yelling for the agents not to shoot.

FBI? Andretti had gotten serious attention in a hurry.

She moved away from the door and walked back across the big room. The red EXIT sign on the far wall marked the door to the stairwell. She slipped through the door, eased it shut behind her, and headed down the metal-and-concrete stairs.

It took her fifteen minutes to climb down to the building’s first floor. Nosovitskaya opened the door and stepped out into the marble-lined lobby. She was just in time to see an elevator door open across the way. Two of the FBI agents escorted a handcuffed Dmitri Ustinov out of the elevator and turned toward the huge plate-glass front doors.

Nosovitskaya stood and watched as they crossed the lobby, just as the other curious passersby were doing. Ustinov glanced up, in her direction. He saw her. Their eyes met for an instant. The agents pulled him away, out the door and toward where their car waited at the curb. The plaintive look on the man’s face was lost on her.

She turned away, toward the back exit of the building, and walked out into the night.

Chapter 42

Lieutenant Tim Schwartz burst through the door and pulled to a halt before he crashed headfirst into Admiral Tom Donnegan’s big desk. The normally reserved aide had not even bothered to knock on the door or straighten his tie before barging into his boss’s office in such a hurry. He was breathless, his eyes wide. “Admiral, quick! You’ve got to see this. CNN is carrying it live.”

Donnegan glanced up from his desk and peered over the half-rim reading glasses that rested on the end of his nose. Young Schwartz was never this excitable. Donnegan had chosen him for his aide not only because he was smart but also because he was unflappable. Something important had grabbed his attention.

Donnegan deliberately removed the reading glasses and closed the file he had been studying. He moved it to the top of a tall stack of similar buff-colored folders in his wooden out-basket. The screen on the big television mounted on the far wall flashed on. Schwartz flipped the channel over to CNN. Some talking head reporter was standing in Red Square, using the familiar view of the Kremlin as a backdrop.