Entering his personal code on the keypad to the left of the door, Orlov entered. His assistant, Nina Terova, poked her head from behind a divider in a back comer of the room. A stately, broad shouldered woman of thirty-five, she was dressed in a tight-fitting navy-blue jacket and skirt. She had chestnut hair worn in a bun, large eyes, a handsomely arched nose, and a deep, diagonal furrow along her forehead where a bullet had creased her skull. A former officer on the St. Petersburg police force, she also carried scars on her chest and right arm, the result of having stood her ground to bring down two men during an attempted bank robbery.

"Congratulations, General," she said.

"Thanks," Orlov replied as he shut the door, "but we've still got several hundred checkpoints to go--"

"I know," Nina said. "And when we pass those, you won't he happy until we've put a successful day behind us, and then a week, and then a year."

"What's life without new goals?" the General asked as he sat behind his desk, a black acrylic surface on four thin, white legs made from the remains of one of the Vostok boosters that had carried him into space. The rest of the room was decorated with photographs, models, awards, and mementoes of his years in space, including a display case with his prize possession, a switch panel from the crude capsule that had carried Yuri Gagarin on the first manned flight into outer space.

He sat in a leather-upholstered bucket chair, swung it in front of the computer, and typed in his access code. The screen quickly filled with the back of Interior Minister Dogin's head.

"Minister," Orlov said into a condenser microphone built into the lower left comer of the monitor.

It was several seconds before Dogin turned around. Orlov wasn't sure whether the Minister liked making people wait for him, or whether he didn't like to appear to be waiting for others. In either case it was a game, and Orlov didn't like it.

The Minister smiled, "Corporal Ivashin tells me that everything went on as planned."

"The Corporal was out of line, not to mention premature," Orlov said. "We haven't reviewed the data as yet."

"I'm sure it will check out," Dogin said. "And don't be hard on the Corporal for his enthusiasm, General. This is a great day for the entire team."