LISBON, PORTUGAL
We are both dead,” said Vladamir Krupnov with barely suppressed panic in his voice. “Do you understand that?”
Dr. Benjamin Fulcher held the phone to his ear and pulled back the drapes of his hotel room overlooking the Baixa district of Lisbon. “Calm down, Vlad. Where are you right now?”
“I’m not going to tell you that over the phone. They might be listening.”
“Who?”
“You know goddamn well who. The posrednikov.”
“You’re being paranoid.”
“Perhaps. But that’s because I know them. You don’t. Trust me, Doctor. If we fail at this, you will not see the light of the next day. It won’t matter where you are or what you’re doing. They will find you . . . and kill you. The posrednikov don’t tolerate people who waste their money.”
“I’m not afraid,” said Fulcher.
“Well, you should be.”
“We will not fail.”
“Your confidence is admirable, Doctor. But honestly, it’s wearing on my nerves. You didn’t just see your entire team wiped out in one day.” Krupnov cursed under his breath in Russian. “That blond d’yoval. I should have blown her brains out when I had the chance.”
“Listen, Vlad. I’m sorry about your men. We knew this was a risky business when we started. But even if the Thurmond material is out of our reach, there are still at least ten more seed stones up for grabs. That’s more than enough to carry out our plan.”
“What are you talking about?” said Krupnov sharply. “You heard Malachi. He didn’t know anything about those stones. And even if he did, he’s dead now. The woman, Opal, she’s probably with the Americans by now. So we are no closer to those ten stones than we were before. Probably further away.”
“Vlad—”
“No, Doctor. We promised them that we were close to bringing this plan to completion. The posrednikov will hold us to that promise. If you don’t understand that, then you are a fool. I don’t care if you do have a Nobel Prize.”
“Vlad, we will keep our promise.”
“How?”
“Have you ever heard the expression that there’s more than one way to skin a cat?”
“No. We don’t skin cats in Russia.”
“It just means there’s more than one way to accomplish a goal. You may be right about Malachi and the woman. But I have discovered something quite remarkable about this tiny stone. Something I’d overlooked before.”
“You mean the material we got from Haroldson? The small chip that his father took from the stone he found in Tunis?”
“Yes. I retrieved it after we finished the demonstration in the White Sea, and I have it with me now. There’s something about it that I believe will solve all of our problems.”
“And what’s that?”
“I’ll explain later. Just be ready to travel. I’ll give you instructions shortly.”
Fulcher terminated the call and immediately turned his attention back to the small apparatus that he’d set up on the desk of the hotel room three hours ago. It consisted of a glass ball about the size of a basketball, which had a small opening in the top that was covered with tape. The glass ball was striped with black longitude and latitude lines so that it looked like a globe without the geographical features. It was sitting atop a makeshift gimbal structure that Fulcher had carefully aligned three hours before to point due north, after taking into full consideration the local magnetic declination of the Lisbon area.
Fulcher bent down and carefully inspected the tiny black chip that was floating inside the glass ball. It hadn’t moved for the past half hour, which meant it had finally achieved a steady state. “Excellent,” he whispered. He took precise note of the position of the chip as it pressed gently against the side of the glass ball.
Like attracts like.
He jotted the information down on a scrap piece of paper and then hobbled over to a Mercator map of the world that was spread out across the hotel room’s dining table. Using a ruler, a protractor, and a black pen, Fulcher carefully placed a dot on his location in Lisbon and then plotted a line in the exact direction indicated by the tiny floating chip in the glass ball. It was the third line that he’d drawn on the map in the past twenty-four hours. The first had originated in Severodvinsk, Russia, and extended south. The second had originated in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and extended southwest. And now this line, which began in Lisbon and extended southeast. They all intersected at nearly the same point, forming a tiny triangle known to navigators around the world as a “fix.”
Fulcher stood up with some effort and tapped his finger on the small triangle of intersecting lines. “Remarkable,” he whispered. “After all this time.”
He quickly retrieved his cell phone and dialed Krupnov.
“Da?” Krupnov answered.
“Vlad, I know where those ten stones are located. Be in Istanbul tomorrow afternoon. I’ll arrange a private flight from there.”
“Are you sure?”
A smile crept across Fulcher’s face. “Sure as clockwork. Just make sure you’re there.”