The Garden of Betrayal Read Online Free

that the Russians have closed their airspace between Saint Petersburg and the Finnish border, and that there’s been a huge increase in encrypted radio traffic out of their military bases at Pribilovo and Kronstadt.”
    “So, how do your people know there was an explosion?” I asked, my adrenaline beginning to pump.
    “There was a camera crew shooting the ceremony. The footage should be on air any minute. You can see the tiniest hint of a flash in the last frame of the video before it goes dark.”
    “Satellite views?”
    “Too cloudy. I’ve got to go.”
    “Wait. You’re thinking terrorism?”
    “It’s hard not to, isn’t it? But we haven’t got any facts yet.”
    “Stay in touch.”
    I turned on CNN after I hung up, listening for updates as I speed-typed an e-mail to my clients and Rashid. The newly completed terminus was doing only light duty while the attached pipeline was still under construction, a bare fraction of the capacity used to route gas locally, but an attack there would rattle the markets, an ominous portent for the future. Energy infrastructure was a soft target. A systematic campaign against refineries or pipelines or storage facilities could do an enormous amount of economic damage. The likely reactions were a knee-jerk spike in energy prices, weakening global equity markets, a steeping yield curve, and a declining euro. I wrote urgent in the subject line and hit the send button. Alex Coleman was in my office thirty seconds later.
    “You think this is serious?” he demanded.
    Alex looked terrible, rough patches of psoriasis visible on his hairline and bluish circles beneath his eyes. He’d had a difficult time during the recent market turmoil. In truth, he’d been having a difficult time for years. I could guess what his positions were from the sweat soaking his shirt beneath his arms.
    “I don’t know anything more than what I put in my e-mail.”
    “You have a hunch?”
    “Half the countries that used to make up the Soviet Union are furious about this pipeline, and they’d all like to see Russia take it in the neck. I think this is bad.”
    “Shit.”
    He rushed out just as CNN cut to a special report. It took only a few seconds to figure out that they didn’t know anything more than I did. I grabbed my phone and started dialing.
    Two hours later I was holding my phone to my ear impatiently, waiting for Dieter to pick up again. Equity markets were tanking and oil prices had gapped higher, but nobody knew a damned thing. Rashid was unavailable, having responded to my original e-mail with a note of his own saying that he’d be at the hospital all day and asking to be kept up to speed electronically. My phone turret was lit up like a Christmas tree, every one of my clients frantic for information, and I had nothing to tell them.
    I stood to relieve my cramped muscles and turned to face the window. It was snowing, fat, lazy flakes drifting from a gunmetal sky and melting as they touched down. I’d come to hate the snow, just as I’d come to hate everything else about New York, the occasional cell phone–returning Good Samaritan regardless. But Claire and I could never move. Our apartment on Riverside Drive was the only home Kyle had ever known—the only home he’d know to come back to.
    “Mark,” Dieter said into my ear, sounding rushed. “I’m sorry, but I still don’t have anything else to tell you.”
    “Don’t hold out on me,” I insisted. “You must have twenty guys working on this. You’ve got to know something.”
    “The Russians have everything shut down, but the prevailing wind isfrom the west, and we were able to get a stringer south of Vyborg before he hit a police roadblock. There’s a lot of smoke in the air. That’s all I’ve got.”
    I started to ask another question, but he was already gone. I hung up and smacked one hand down on my desk in frustration.
    CNN had obtained the footage Dieter referred to in his first call. I watched on one of my desktop