Andretti and Smythe walked out of the conference room together. Ustinov stayed behind to attempt to make small talk with Goldman. It never hurt to be nice to a bureaucrat, even if she happened to be a tough-as-nails woman. Both the other two men had seen the look in Ustinov’s eyes. He was on the hunt.

Andretti waited for the elevator door to slide shut before he spoke.

“What did you make of that? They brought us all the way down here for a two-minute meeting and to hand us the paperwork they could have sent up to us by courier. Do you think we have a problem?”

Smythe half smiled when he answered, “I don’t think so. This was all for show, to let us know how serious they are about keeping an eye on us. It gave McLain a chance to trot out his attack dog to scare us, to put us on our best behavior. Maybe to even throw us off our guard. She growled a bit, right on cue. Ustinov will use that Russian charm of his on her. He’ll have her eating out of his hand. Besides, except for his tendency to chase everything in a skirt, he is so damned clean and innocent. He’ll soon have her convinced that the only sinister plot at OptiMarx has to do with him getting into her pants.”

Andretti was still chuckling at the idea of the young Russian programmer chasing the SEC inspector as they stepped out of the elevator into the marble-and-wood lobby. Smythe’s limo was waiting at the curb to whisk them back over to Reagan Airport and the corporate jet.

Dmitri Ustinov was on his own.

Sergei Andropoyov shivered and pulled his coat even more tightly against his body as he made his way from one of the crippled submarine’s compartments to another. It was cold in here already, even with a few of Gepard’s heaters still left on. They couldn’t afford to use any more of them. They drained far too much from the limited battery supply.

Andropoyov could see his frosty breath in the eerie half-light as he fought to keep his true thoughts from showing on his face. He knew it was important that he make an appearance. The surviving crew needed to be reassured that everything was all right. Most of them were lying in their bunks, curled beneath their blankets, trying to stay warm while they heeded his admonition to avoid movement and conserve oxygen.

Oxygen wasn’t the real problem. They had enough for a month or more, stored in the big flasks out in the ballast tanks, and there were enough sodium chlorate candles to give them breathable air for another week after that.