As she sat in the dark, she began to face the possibilities. Most likely, someone had seen her and Sam showing American passports and decided an American hostage was a good thing to have.

The truck stopped. She heard a set of double doors squeak open. Her mind took a second to follow several paths to their ends. She was much more athletic than they would suspect, and a highly ranked fencer and pistol shot. She might be able to pop out and—what?—get them to shoot her? She could pretend to be unconscious, listening to what they said in a language she didn’t understand. She decided to be rational, open, and try to appear unafraid. Appearing unafraid might be difficult, but not beyond her acting ability.

She heard a clasp being undone and then an aluminum hoop being sprung open and lifted off the lip of her barrel. Hands popped the top off and then lifted the layer of loose towels on top of her. Remi stood up.

She recognized the two large women from the airport. They both wore coveralls now instead of the loose work dresses and their hair was pulled back and knotted. Behind them were two men. They might have been the ones driving the getaway truck and possibly helped lift the barrel on and off vehicles. But now one of them held a short, nasty-looking Stechkin APS machine pistol like those made for Spetsnaz units of the old Soviet army. She knew they were still used by police because they fired cheap, readily available ammunition and had low recoil. She could see these two were fitted with silencers. They hadn’t been manufactured with tournament accuracy, but, at six hundred rounds a minute, they could certainly hit a girl in a cardboard barrel.

There were two other men in blue jeans and windbreakers. They both carried short-barreled Czech Škorpion machine pistols. A few feet beyond all of these men was another man, this one wearing a light gray tailored suit that fit him perfectly. He was clearly the man to watch. He nodded and smiled at the four people in coveralls, then said something in Russian to the whole group. They moved quickly, first to help Remi out of the barrel and off the truck, then to put a pair of plastic restraints around her wrists to bind her hands behind her.

The man in the suit maintained a cheerful smile through these proceedings and an easy manner that belied the military obedience and discipline of his underlings. He looked to Remi like a prerevolutionary aristocratic gentleman spending the summer on his country estate. He wore a crisp white shirt and a blue silk tie, and, while she watched, he lit a cigarette and turned his attention to her. “You looked like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus being lifted out of your scallop shell, Mrs. Fargo.”

He waited a moment, then said, “You’re not speaking to me?”