“I’m afraid so. Connie was with him. She’s in surgery in Florida right now. I need you to stay on top of what’s happening down there.”

“You bet. Of course . . . Boss, I’m sorry.”

Then Middleton shoved aside the memories about his dead colleague and consulted his notes. He said, “I need you to crack into the shipping records of Continental-Europe Transport Ltd. Find all the deliveries to and from Sindhu Power in Tampa. Connie found their shipping label.”

“And that’s the outfit in Florida where Connie and JM were?”

“Yeah. The address on Balan’s computer.”

Middleton clicked his phone shut and turned to Tesla. “OK, Nora, if they snatched Felicia thinking she was Charley—”

“It means Charley’s in trouble. You want to go to Paris, Harold?”

“No, I want you to. The email on Balan’s computer said whatever was going to happen in the ‘village’ was going to happen soon. Our Florida operation’s been derailed. Given that Connie found a note about calling Moscow, Russia’s our only lead—that’s the only country selling thermobarics on the black market. I’ve got to get there as fast as I can.”

Stepping over the body, he snagged his suitcase, which he hadn’t had a chance to unpack.

Tesla looked at the body. “The police. I have to call them back. What should I tell them?”

Middleton paused for a moment to think. “Tell them anything,” he said. “Everything, if you’d like.” He started walking toward the front door. “We won’t be around when they get here anyway.” A nod at the body. “He’s their problem now.”

6 - JOSEPH FINDER

6

JOSEPH FINDER

At just after three o’clock on a gloomy afternoon, the Boeing 727 touched down on runway number 3 at Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport.

The reverse thrusters kicked in with a loud whine and before long the roar of the engines subsided as the plane was powered down.

For several minutes, the pilot and his three-man crew just sat there, waiting patiently for the tedious rituals to begin—border control and customs, clearing first the crew and then the cargo. Hours of forms and questions but most of all waiting. The Soviet Union was no more, but its bureaucracy lived on. Rain thrummed against the Plexiglas cockpit window, which slowly began to fog up.

And they waited.

Since this was a cargo plane, there were no passengers to deplane. The main cabin was a cavernous cargo bay packed with eleven containers of cargo—igloos, they were called in the business—which were in turn jammed with boxes. Everything from flat-screen TVs to iPhones, from Armani suits to Armagnac.

Seated along the bulkhead in the small compartment aft of the cockpit, the second officer spoke quietly to the new man, who had been added to the crew at the last minute, just before takeoff in Frankfurt.