“It’s simple enough,” Putin said, his translator (unnecessarily for Barbara) relaying his words in English a few moments later. “We must take out the hospital and this Tolenka.”

President van Rennsaeler brushed greying hair back from her face, shaking her head. “Your own agent said that would only release the creature that is trying to come through Tolenka.”

Putin shrugged. “She and this Tolenka were associates. She is trying to protect him. We have no assurance that any of her claims are true. Are we to just wait? I say that we move now to take out the center in Talas. Now. Waiting any longer is foolishness.”

That started everyone talking at once.

“… not even possible. The drones we sent in all failed…”

“… my government absolutely would protest the use of nuclear weapons…”

“… no guarantee that bombing would take out the man…”

“… and if Baba Yaga is right, then what? We will have no other options…”

Bill Ray gave a sigh and leaned toward Barbara. “Bureaucrats,” he said. “Everyone trying to cover their own ass.”

Barbara managed a quick smile at that: it was something Klaus would have said. She waited for the furor to lessen, then spoke loudly into the opening.

“I appreciate your point of view, Mr. President,” Barbara answered. Which is not something Klaus would have said. “And yours may yet be a tactic we have to attempt, if there are no other options left to us. But Director Ray and I believe there’s another way, one that both he and I agree upon. If destroying Tolenka isn’t the answer—and I do believe Baba Yaga, as everything else she’s told us has been verified, and she has no reason to lie—then there’s another way. If we can’t simply kill Tolenka, then we must take him elsewhere.”

“To where?” Putin scoffed. “Assuming you can find and capture the man—and I would remind you that the Committee’s last attempt at that was a miserable failure, Ms. Baden—where would you take him? Where would you send him?”

“To hell itself,” Ray answered.

“Via the Highwayman,” Barbara hurried in to say. “John Bruckner.”

“I’ve ridden with the Highwayman,” Ray said. “I’ve seen the dimension that the man opens up, and everything about it says Talas: the twisted, deformed figures, the monsters, the fog. That’s where that beast inside Tolenka is from, and if we toss Tolenka back there and leave him, then…” Ray clapped his hands together dramatically. “Everything closes up. Let the beast come out of Tolenka—the passageway into our world would be gone, because Tolenka is that portal.”

“This is all just supposition,” President van Rennsaeler said.