Two things immediately grabbed his attention.

A car parked in the woods just where the drive ended and the splintered front door, half opened.

He wheeled to a stop, gripped his Beretta, then hustled to the entrance, stopping short of entering, listening for any sound but hearing nothing. A glance inside revealed an entrance hall dotted with antique furniture. What was it about these Cincinnati people? They all seemed loaded. First Charon's mansion, now Begyn's.

He slipped inside and kept to the exterior wall, searching the sunlit interior for any sign of trouble. He glanced into other rooms and immediately spotted overturned furniture, slashed upholstery, armchairs gutted, and books off their shelves lying in a jumble on the floor. Bureaus were ransacked, drawers ripped out, the contents dumped and scattered about as though an earthquake had hit. Somebody had definitely been looking for something.

His attention turned to the staircase.

A body lay sprawled across the wooden risers near the top. Blood had flowed down and congealed in thick maroon patches. He climbed the stairs, sidestepping the puddles, and rolled over the corpse. An automatic rifle lay beneath, which clattered away down the steps. He came alert and looked around to see if the noise had attracted any attention.

Nothing.

The face on the corpse was of a man, mid-thirties, short hair, thick features. A deep gash had penetrated the throat with a wide smile, which explained the cause of death.

He heard a noise.

From downstairs.

Something moving.

He crept back to ground level and turned in its direction, closing his mind to all messages except those coming from around him. A dining room opened to his left where another body lay on the hardwood, the man's throat slashed nearly identically to the first. A door stood just ahead, one that swung in and out, which he assumed led to the kitchen. He approached and pressed his body tight to the wall, sneaking a peek through the half-inch space between the molding and the jamb. He was right. A kitchen did lie on the other side. With his left hand he shoved the door inward and burst in.

Empty.

Sunlight poured in through windows, glittering off stainless-steel appliances and marble countertops.

What had happened here?

He was about to check the rest of the house when he heard another noise. Behind him. He whirled and was met by a sharp blow to his windpipe, which immediately triggered a choking response. He knew the move, it was taught to him in the army, but he'd never personally experienced it.

He fought to breathe, but never got a chance.

Something slammed into his left temple.

And the last thing he saw before everything went black was the glistening blade of a knife.

Malone sat in a cafe located in downtown Eastport, finishing off a plate of eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee. Zorin and Kelly had been gone over two hours. He and Cassiopeia had watched as the two men came ashore in a small dinghy, bypassing the immigration booth located near the docks. As expected, they'd entered the town and called a cab on a cell phone Kelly produced, which arrived a few minutes later. He and Cassiopeia had not followed. Instead, the drone overhead had kept a distant watch, an open phone line providing them with a running account.

The cab had dropped the two at the Eastport Municipal Airport, which sat not far from the central business district. They'd entered the small terminal and exited a few minutes later, walking over to a row of parked cars and driving one away. Malone knew what had happened. Kelly had rented a vehicle, which would be an easy thing for him to do.

Finally, they'd caught a break.

While the drone kept watch, he decided to send Cassiopeia to follow them, cautioning her to stay way back. He'd been told that the drone's airtime was drawing to a close, so Cassiopeia would become its replacement. He'd catch up to her later. The important thing was not to lose Zorin.

He'd already called Edwin Davis and told him more of what he had in mind. So while he waited, a hot breakfast had sounded good.

The waitress cleared his plate away.

Outside, Eastport remained quiet, understandable given that winter was in command, the morning skies rapidly becoming a solid mass of slate gray. Snow seemed to be on the way. Hopefully, he'd be headed south before it arrived. The cafe enjoyed a light business, but it was not yet 10:00 A.M. on a Saturday. A white Ford Taurus wheeled into an angled parking spot out front and he saw two men emerge, both dressed in the blue uniform of the Maine State Police.

They entered the cafe, found him, and introduced themselves.

"We're told you need our help," one of them said. "National security."

He caught the skepticism. "You doubt me?"

The trooper smiled. "Doesn't matter. When the state police chief personally calls on a Saturday morning and says that we're to come here and do whatever you want, I come here and do whatever you want."

He had to give Edwin credit, the man knew how to get things done. Malone had explained that the best way to keep Zorin and Kelly under surveillance would be a running tail. One car follows for a few hundred miles, then another takes over, then another. Hard to notice any interest that way. Right now that only would involve Maine, so Edwin had enlisted the state police's help. Most likely, Zorin and Kelly were headed south farther into New England, so more tails would have to be ready in other states. So much easier to just have a drone follow the car, but he knew messy legal issues were associated with that on U.S. soil.

No matter, the old-fashioned way should work just fine.

Along with a backup.

He finished his juice and said, "We need to go out to the airport."

The trip was quick, just over a mile, and inside the terminal he found a single rental car counter. He'd asked for the officers to come in with him just in case of a problem. Nothing intimidates more than uniforms, badges, and holstered weapons.

They approached the counter and he said, "About two hours ago you rented a car to two men. We need to see the paperwork." The attendant looked like he was going to balk so he pointed a finger and said, "And the only correct response here is, Yes sir, here it is."

His stern look and the two troopers beside him made the point. The clerk handed over the rental agreement, which was in Jamie Kelly's name, on a Canadian driver's license, paid for in cash. No drop-off point noted.

"Is the car coming back here?" he asked.

The clerk nodded. "That's what they said."

But he knew that wasn't true.

So he asked what he really wanted to know. "You have GPS in all of your vehicles, right?"

"Of course. We can find them, if need be."

He gestured with the rental agreement. "We need the GPS frequency for this one. Now."

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO.

Stephanie listened as the male voice on the other end of the cell phone, dry and raspy, like the rattle of some creature in a pile of dead leaves, told her things she'd never known. Apparently, back in the 1980s, while she'd been engaged with Forward Pass, working covertly with Reagan and the pope, others had also been hard at work undermining the Soviet regime with more active measures designed to destabilize.

"It was quite a time," the voice said. "You have to remember Andropov was head of the KGB when they tried to kill John Paul. He would have approved that operation."

She listened as the voice explained how Andropov became convinced that John Paul's papal election was designed by the Vatican to undermine Soviet control in Poland, part of a deliberate plan to collapse the Soviet Union. Ridiculous, for sure, but ultimately, thanks to circumstances that formed outside the church-mainly the election of Ronald Reagan as president of the United States-that's exactly what happened.

"He firmly believed that the pope was dangerous, and largely because of John Paul's charm, especially toward journalists. I remember reading a memo where Andropov went on and on about how the pope went for cheap gestures with a crowd, like wearing a Highlander's hat in England, or shaking hands with people, kissing children, as if he were running for office. Andropov seemed terrified of what the pope might do."

And rightly so, since John Paul orchestrated his actions with the direction of an American stage manager. Interestingly, though, never once had either Reagan or the pope warned her about Andropov.

"The KGB went through the Bulgarians to have John Paul shot," the voice said. "That much we know. And they chose their assassin with care. Ali Aca supplied them with perfect plausible deniability. He was weak and stupid and knew nothing about nothing. All he could do was babble nonsense, and that's what he did. I remember when the pope went to the prison and forgave Aca. What a brilliant move."

One that she'd helped arrange.

John Paul made the decision, and Reagan approved.

So in 1983, two years after the assassination attempt, the pope met privately with Aca who, filled with emotion, cried and kissed the pope's ring. Photographs and accounts of what happened consumed the press, which splashed the story around the world, along with those possible assassination links back to Moscow. The whole thing had been bold and assertive. A pitch-perfect example of how to make lemonade out of lemons.

Or at least that's how Reagan had described it to her.

"When Andropov assumed the general secretary's post," the voice said, "there was talk of trouble. He knew what we'd been doing in the Eastern Bloc. Funneling money to dissidents, providing logistical support, offering secret intelligence on their governments, even taking care of a problem or two."

She knew what that meant.

People had died.

"Then Andropov gets sick and he knows it's over for him. The doctors gave him eight months. That's when we got scared. He had nothing to lose, and there were people in the Kremlin that would follow him right off the cliff. When Kris called earlier and asked me about Fool's Mate, I immediately remembered it. We all thought it was going to be the old Russian's last move."

She wondered who the aged voice belonged to, but knew better than to ask. If Kris had wanted her to know she'd have told her. Most likely he'd been CIA. High up. And she knew the score. Neither successes nor failures ever were aired in public. The agency was deliberately compartmentalized, its past laced with so many secrets that no one could ever know it all. And the big ones that really mattered? They were never written down. But that didn't mean they were unknown.

"Andropov hated Reagan. We all thought the KGB was going to make a move on him. He'd tried to kill the pope, so why not a president. The writing was definitely on the wall by late 1983. The Soviet Union faced serious economic trouble. They also had a leadership problem. The whole country was in flux. The Kremlin became fascinated by American presidential succession. Kris mentioned that you read a communique we seized. There were several like that. The zero amendment. That's what they called the 20th."

"Do you know why?"

"Because, if an attack was done right, no one would be left in charge."

"How's that possible?"

"I'm no scholar on the issue, but I remember being told that if you can wipe out the president-elect and vice-president-elect, the Speaker of the House, and the president pro-tempore of the Senate in one swoop, before the new president and VP are sworn in, you're left with cabinet members who take power through a congressional act. That law is riddled with problems. It's unclear whether cabinet officers could even constitutionally serve. There'd be so much infighting that no one would be in charge. Infighting, by the way, that the KGB would stoke. Those guys were masters at active measures like that. They manipulated our press a thousand times, and they would have done so there, too."

"And the purpose of all that?" she asked "That's the moment the USSR would strike. When no one is sure who can give the military orders. You'd have total confusion. The tanks would roll across Europe. We'd be busy fighting among ourselves about who's in charge. Some would say this guy, others this guy. Nobody would know for sure."

The tactic made sense.

"We picked up intel that they were working on some active measures that involved the 1947 Presidential Succession Act. Of course, to make that work, they'd have to strike at an inauguration. Some of us believed that's what Andropov had up his sleeve for Reagan's second in 1985. But thankfully, the old man's kidneys failed in early '84. And everything was forgotten since the people who took over after that were not interested in World War III. All that loyalty to Andropov vanished."

She stared across the table at Kris Cox, who was watching her with eyes the color of glacier water. Everything about her friend's countenance signaled that she was being told the truth by someone who knew.

"How many people are aware of this?" she asked the voice.

"Not all that many. It was one of those things that never happened, so it just went by the wayside. There was a lot like that back then. The KGB, if nothing else, stayed focused. Every day there was something new. It's important now only because you seem to have a problem. I remember Aleksandr Zorin. He was a competent KGB officer. Our people respected him. It's amazing he's even still alive."

She decided to learn all that she could and asked, "What about RA-115s?"

"Haven't heard that term in a while, except on TV or in the movies. They existed, of that I'm sure. Others disagreed, though. The problem was that not one of them was ever found anywhere in the world. And you would think at least one would surface. Some thought it was part of a KGB misinformation campaign. Like I said, they were good at that. A way to get us to chase shadows."

"The SVR says now that they did exist, and that five are still unaccounted for."

"Then you should listen to them. That's quite an admission."

One she was sure Nikolai Osin never should have made, considering the increasing division within his chain of command. The last thing Russian hard-liners would want would be for the United States to know anything about any possible suitcase nukes.

"Could they be here?" she asked. "In the United States."

"Absolutely. The KGB was the largest, most expansive intelligence agency the world has ever seen. Billions upon billions of rubles were spent preparing for war with us. Those guys did anything and everything. Nothing was out of bounds. And I mean nothing. We know for a fact that arms caches were placed all over Europe and Asia. Why would we be exempt?"

He was right.

"It seems Zorin may be trying to implement Fool's Mate," she said. "Apparently he was privy to what Andropov planned."

"Four KGB officers were assigned to the operation. We never learned their names. So he could have been one of those."

"But it's been so long," Kris said. "Why now?"

She knew the answer. "He's bitter about everything that happened with the end of the Soviet Union. He was an ideologue, one who truly believed. Osin told me that he blames us for everything bad in his life and he's been stewing on that a long time."

"Which makes him especially dangerous," the voice said through the phone. "My guess is that he wants to use the 20th Amendment to generate the same political chaos here that we did over there. But he needs a workable RA-115 to make that happen. You'd have to take a lot of people out at once."

A problem, for sure, but one Zorin seemed intent on solving.

"We'll have a new president in a little over twenty-four hours," the voice said.

And she knew what that meant.

The next opportunity to apply Fool's Mate.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE.

Luke opened his eyes.

He was sitting up, bound to a wooden chair with tape, nearly identical to how he'd restrained Anya Petrova. His arms and legs were strapped tight, preventing him from moving in any direction. His neck was free, his mouth unobstructed. But his head hurt from a nasty pop and everything was still out of focus. He blinked to correct the problem and eventually saw that he was in the kitchen of Begyn's house.

A woman stood on the other side of the room.

Short, trim, not an ounce of fat on her. She wore a tight-fitting jogging suit that revealed highly toned muscles. He wondered how many hours of push-ups, chin-ups, and bench pressing had gone into that sculpting. He envied her dedication. It took all he had to work out. A pair of enameled, dark-hazel eyes appraised him with a look that was all alert. Her auburn hair was cut short, close to the ears, in what he thought was a military style, and that conclusion was further reinforced by her demeanor. She was attractive, the face bearing no malice, but neither did the features convey much compassion. Instead, she stared at him like an elephant. Calm, solitary, watchful, but encased inside a dangerous stillness. She held a seven-inch, stainless-steel blade, not unlike one he once carried as a Ranger.

"You military?" he asked.