“Yet you needed to enter my country off the books. Which tells me that you have gone active again.”

“In a manner of speaking.” He gave his Russian friend a quick, sanitized version of the work that the Volunteers had been doing and then told him about the bizarre incident on the Côte d’Azur that had activated the Volunteers once again. “I need some information.”

“Ah.” Which might have meant yes, absolutely. Or the opposite.

“Information about thermobarics.”

“It’s easier to get you the explosives than it is to get you information about the explosives. Safer, anyway.”

“Well, let me ask, in any case,” Middleton said. “I had my associate look into the records of a shipping company that delivered some merchandise to an outfit in Florida. I think it was explosives. He contacted me on the flight and told me that a number of shipments labeled ‘construction items’ were sent from Albania to Moscow to Mogadishu to Algiers and finally to the U.S. The company realized he was into their system and blocked him out, but not before he got me the names of all the freight forwarders involved.”

“You’re looking at me rather knowingly, friend. I believe I am nervous now.”

Though Korovin didn’t look nervous. He looked amused in that indulgently conspiratorial way former Soviet army officers and KGB operatives slip on their faces like bank robbers do a ski mask.

“And you want to hear a funny coincidence?” Middleton asked.

“No, I do not.”

“All the shipping companies were incorporated by a single law firm in Moscow. And guess who they also represent? Your boss, Arkady Chernayev.”

Arkady Chernayev was the richest man in Russia, perhaps in the world. He divided his time between his estate in Knightsbridge, London, and a mansion on the outskirts of Moscow. Not to mention a dozen other properties around the world, several private planes and three obscenely large yachts. Chernayev had gotten rich in the oil business during the free-for-all in the last days of the Soviet Union.

“No, not boss.” A scowl.

“Ruslan, you’ve done private security work for him. Don’t even bother trying to deny it. My sources on this are impeccable.”

Korovin looked away, then busied himself by sectioning a herring with the delicacy of a cardiac surgeon performing a coronary bypass. He placed each slice of herring atop squares of black bread, then looked up. “That was long ago,” he said finally, his expression hardened. “Why is this so important to you?”

“Because if Chernayev is behind this, which I’m beginning to believe, I think he’s channeling money or explosives or both to a dangerous fanatic named Devras Sikari. The point of contact for their interests was Tampa, Florida.”