RED ICE

 

  Tyler Oakland and his wife Marion are CIA agents working to stop an international diamond smuggling operation.  In London to meet two Russians for a staged buy, things quickly go sour and Marion is killed. 

  A year later, Tyler has left the CIA and runs a little cantina in Florida, where he has been drowning his sorrows in alcohol.  In Russia a second Chechnyan War has depleted the government’s finances to the point where forces on the left and right threaten to take over.  The only potential income left to the government is in a highly secured vault beneath the Kremlin:  over two-hundred billion dollars worth of diamonds, part of which the Russians decide to sell.

  The Russian plan is thwarted when the four diamond vault custodians are murdered by who appear to be their exact doubles, and who then steal the diamonds.  Tyler, recruited back into service by the CIA, travels to Europe to track the stolen diamonds, and soon joins forces with the beautiful Russian agent Valeria Beluga. 

  Their investigations take them across Europe, and during a harrowing boat chase on the Neva River in Saint Petersburg, they almost catch up with the main suspect in the diamond theft who is also one of the doubles:  Rolf Krieger, a South African mercenary thought to be in the employ of the world’s largest diamond conglomerate, De Beers, who presumably stole the diamonds .  The boat chase ends in a fiery crash, and Krieger is presumed dead.

  Tyler and Valeria then travel to Moscow where they encounter the other doubles, but Valeria is kidnapped by the mastermind behind the diamond theft, her own boss:  General Dimitri Novykh, the head of the Russian Federal Security Service.

  Tyler eventually rescues Valeria, and together they catch Dimitri and recover the diamonds, but not after they are both tested to the limits of their abilities.