“Time is not weighing on me. If you don’t want her back for a week, take a week. A month? Take a month. Take six months.”

“Where can I—” and Sam realized that he had prolonged the conversation as long as he cold. The kidnapper had hung up. He turned off the new cell phone, took it to the bathroom and wrapped it in a towel, closed the door, and went back to his own telephone. “Selma?”

“I’m here,” she said. “I recorded that. But I didn’t learn anything except that he’s Russian, speaks English well, and isn’t afraid.”

Sam said, “How about you, Consulate? Do you have anything?”

The voice was calm, quiet, and American-accented—not Hagar, but someone who was a lot like him. “We have determined that a Russian trading partner of Arpad Bako is a man named Sergei Poliakoff. The Russian police are putting together a file for us.”

“Where does he live?”

“Nizhny Novgorod. He has an import-export business, and an estate west of the city. The Russians haven’t tipped us on what they know ahead of their report, but the officer who passed me the information implied that he’s a pretty unsavory character. He has people in a lot of places, possibly even the U.S.”

“Thanks. I’ll have to get started on this right away. I’m going to leave both cell phones in my room. If you can, please get somebody to move the kidnapper’s phone around a bit—drive it around, ship it to friends in Italy or France. He’ll be tracking the GPS to find out where I am.”

“But where will you be? You can’t go off alone in this country. You don’t even speak the language. You can’t operate without the Russian police and that means dealing through us. I want you to promise me that you won’t try to do anything like that.” The man, whose name was Owens, stopped talking and listened. There was nobody on the line.

He switched to an internal line. “We’re about to lose track of Fargo. He’s left the hotel. He’ll probably turn up near Nizhny Novgorod in a week or two. He left our cell phone and the kidnapper’s cell in his room. Send somebody to pick up both. Then send the kidnapper’s phone on a vacation to Rome, Paris, and Budapest. It’ll keep the poor guy’s wife alive for a while.”

Chapter 23

NIZHNY NOVGOROD, RUSSIA

Sam is coming. Sam will come for me no matter what. He’s coming for me already. He will have found something to trace.