‘Sir!’ a hostess shouted angrily. ‘You can’t do-’
‘Dmitri, on the sidewalk,’ Josef said.
‘I see him. It’s Kilkenny, the one who killed Pavel and the others. Josef, you’re with me. The rest of you follow Evgenii to the pickup. We’ll be right behind you.’
Leskov and Josef broke ranks, moving to intercept. Each readied his weapon as they approached their prey. The four other Russians hurried their pace, moving onto the last city block closed by the fair.
Kilkenny pushed his way through the long line of people waiting to be seated at the Mongol warrior’s restaurant, and finally reached the intersection of Main and Washington. From behind a wooden barricade, he surveyed the milling crowd, searching for the Russians. He spotted them as they passed into the next block, then realized that two were missing. Nearby, a patrol car quietly approached the intersection.
‘Turn around and keep your hands where I can see ’em!’ a cop shouted as the doors on the police cruiser flung open.
Kilkenny froze, then put both hands in the air.
As one of the officers approached, Nolan saw two of the men who attacked Sandstrom’s lab muscle their way through the restaurant’s queue. The Russians spotted Kilkenny and raised their weapons.
‘Gun!’ Kilkenny shouted as he dove for the curb.
The cops hit the pavement just as two shots roared past Kilkenny. Both flew wide of the mark, ricocheting off the pavement.
A woman screamed, pulling her children away from the restaurant’s giant mascot. Her youngest, a three- year-old boy, stumbled, and she lost her grip on his tiny hand. Hearing gunfire, the young man inside the inflatable suit dove over the child. The next shots ripped through the costume’s thick nylon skin, sending an explosion of pressurized air and fabric upward.
‘Time to go,’ Leskov announced as the window of opportunity for revenge closed.
Both men rushed with the crowd up Main Street toward Huron. On the other side of the barricade that marked the northern edge of the fair, Leskov saw the rest of his team climbing into the dark green Suburban that had brought them there.
Kilkenny stood up and began scanning the crowd for the Russians. He caught sight of the two men who’d just shot at him halfway up the block.
‘Freeze!’ the cop shouted.
‘Ptashnik!’ Kilkenny said angrily into the microphone, ‘tell the two cops at Main and Washington to lay off me right now. Your cop killers are getting away!’
Kilkenny watched the Russians move farther away while he impatiently waited for a reply.
‘Rookie, lower your weapon!’ the cop’s partner shouted as he jogged over from the patrol car. ‘This is the guy who was tracking these fucks for us. We’re here to back him up.’
‘Then let’s move it,’ Kilkenny ordered, leading the way down the sidewalk.
The crackling sound of automatic-weapons fire filled the air.
‘Oh my God!’ someone shouted, terror-stricken.
When he reached the toppled barricades at Huron Street, Kilkenny saw a plume of pale yellow steam rising from the grille of a police cruiser. Dozens of holes pockmarked the dark blue sedan. On the pavement, two more officers lay clinging to life. Farther up Main Street, a green Suburban with tinted windows sped north toward the highway.
36
Ann Arbor, Michigan
It was well past nine and evening was ebbing into night by the time Nolan and Kelsey’s question-and-answer session with Detective Ptashnik was finally through. After the debriefing, an Ann Arbor police patrol car ferried them down to the southeast corner of the Diag. They picked up a carryout of General Tso’s chicken from their favorite Chinese restaurant, then walked over to Kelsey’s old sorority house, where Nolan’s SUV was parked.
‘Do you mind driving?’ Nolan asked, offering Kelsey his keys. ‘There’s a call I need to make.’
Nolan set the bag of food cartons on the floor behind the passenger’s seat and pulled the PalmPilot from his briefcase. As they drove toward Dexter, he searched through the handheld computer for Cal Mosley’s number, which he keyed into his phone.
‘This is Mosley.’
‘Cal, it’s Nolan Kilkenny.’
‘What can I do for you?’ Mosley asked.
‘The Russians struck again today, this time in Ann Arbor. Four people dead. Cal, these were the same guys who hit Sandstrom’s lab in South Bend.’ Nolan then launched into a brief report of the latest attack.
‘So they were after these old notebooks?’ Mosley asked.
‘Yes. Definitely. After Wolff’s body was found, the police made no public mention of the notebooks. Only a handful of people even know about their existence and their potential importance to our project – and I trust all of ’em. My best guess is that these guys are still watching Sandstrom and probably have his hospital room bugged.’
‘They got their intel from somewhere,’ Mosley agreed. ‘Get the hospital to move him and ask the FBI to sweep his old room for any surveillance equipment. In the meantime, I’m going to run this latest information past some people here and see what I can come up with. Thanks for the update.’
‘Cal, I need all the help you can give me. This project I’m working on has the potential to become a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry. If whoever’s behind these attacks succeeds in taking control of Sandstrom’s quantum technology, they’ll have the power to pull the economic equivalent of a coup d’etat on the rest of the industrialized world.’
37
Moscow, Russia
The numbers from the Far East exchanges looked flat, the third straight day without any sign of the occasional exuberance or volatility that made watching the markets interesting in the first place. A day without winners or losers, without victory or defeat – so far. The day was still young, and the Western markets had yet to open.
Orlov shuffled around a few positions, much like placing bets on a roulette table – only on a global scale. His bets were spread over the three Cs: companies, commodities, and currencies. The billions under his control allowed Orlov to cover a wide field of opportunities; since the beginning of the year, his portfolio had already increased sixty-five percent.
The phone on his desk rang softly.
‘ Da, Irena,’ he answered.
‘You have a call from Dmitri Leskov.’
Orlov glanced at his watch; it was just after midnight in the eastern United States. ‘Put him through.’ There was a click, and then a dull hum that often accompanied overseas phone calls. ‘Dmitri, what news do you have?’ Orlov asked.
‘The materials are en route to you now. The courier should deliver them to you by the end of the day.’
‘Excellent.’
Cherny quietly walked into the office and laid several laser-printed pages on his desk. It was a copy of a news
