The horses ran on, not as fast as they had at first but still about as fast as Sam could tolerate. The field looked to him like an endless sea of blackness. The horses ran for two miles or so without meeting an obstacle. In the distance, far to their right, Sam and Remi could see lights on a roadway. It was hard to tell whether the occasional headlights had anything to do with them, but the road never got any closer and the lights never turned toward them or stopped. Remi and Sam slowed down, and then they dismounted and walked the horses in the darkness for a while to let them rest and cool down. When Remi felt the horses were ready, she mounted her horse and began to ride forward, slowly picking up speed again. Sam mounted and followed.

*  *  *

SERGEI POLIAKOFF walked outside the burning manor house, keeping a distance of thirty feet from the flames that were licking up its sides and flickering along the peak of its roof. The back of the house seemed to have been kicked outward by the explosion. What there had been to explode, he had no idea. Since the fire had begun, it had set off a couple of caches of ammunition, but they had been quick, rapid-fire volleys, like strings of firecrackers, not big explosions. Maybe the gas had not been turned off completely. He would probably never know.

The explosion was an outrage, an insult so egregious that he hadn’t quite found a way to react to it. His handpicked, highly trained, well-paid squad of bodyguards and operators had failed utterly against one man on foreign soil, arriving on foot, to take back his wife.

The word wife set off a new set of concerns. His wife, Irena, and his children had been in Moscow, visiting her parents, and he felt relieved knowing that. But in a few days she would be coming home. And this—this ugly, horribly damaged building—was home.

His stupid men had formed into squads now and had begun fighting the fire with garden hoses. He watched them imitating well-trained troops, and felt affronted by their tardy and useless discipline and their lack of professionalism.

Next, faintly at first, and then louder and louder, he heard the wails of sirens. His men looked at one another, grinning at the realization that help was coming, and kept spraying water. Poliakoff ran across the yard and clutched the arm of Kotzov, the head of his bodyguards. “Hear those sirens?”

“Yes. They’ll have these fires out in a few minutes.”