Serebnitskiv stiffened. “I will not fail you, Uncle. Now I must go to my ship.”

Durov gave an offhand wave of dismissal, but then grabbed his nephew’s shoulder in what had to be a painful pinch. The younger man refused to flinch.

“Remember the old Roman warriors’ saying: ‘Return either with your shield or on it.’ If you fail me…if you fail our union…it would be far better that you not return at all.”

Serebnitskiv summoned all the confidence he could muster, nodded, and strode from the room, closing the heavy wooden double doors behind him.

Durov listened as his nephew’s steps echoed down the hallway and through the door to the outside. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and removed the telephone stored there. He dialed a number and waited for the clicks that signaled the encryption device was engaged. He began talking as soon as he was sure of the voice on the other end of the line.

“They sail this evening. All is going well. Our part of the plan is in motion. There is no turning back now. We must meet to discuss your progress. The dacha at Sochi the day after tomorrow. We will expect a full report of your progress on the New York front.”

He returned the phone to the drawer and leaned back in his chair. By the time Serebnitskiv did his work, Durov would be on the warm beaches of the Black Sea. If anything went wrong, deniability would be more plausible if he was far away.

He could feel the excitement pulse in his veins. All the gears of this complicated machine were in motion. It was something he desperately needed. A military man required action in order to maintain life. Years of careful planning, of clandestine meetings, of nurturing the relationships with the Organizatsiya, the Russian Mafia, were culminating in a glorious series of events.

He returned to the window, sipping the cold black tea without tasting it, gazing off into the distance where the wind whipped white tops on the fjord’s surface.

Soon he would no longer need to swallow his pride like bitter bile. Soon he and his nation would achieve the glory they had so long been denied.

How fitting that it would all be set in motion out there, beneath the surface of that dark, icy sea.

Chapter 1

The vicious storm raged out of the north, hundred-knot winds lashing the sea, churning waves to the height of a ten-story building before crashing back down with the awesome force of tons of seawater. Wind-driven spray froze into hard bullets that whipped across the maelstrom. Deep gray sky and gunmetal-colored sea blurred into one, the horizon obliterated by the dense fog of driving ice and snow.