Chris Kuzneski - The Hunters

Finally he got to his own family’s contribution, starting with his grandfather, Bela. He showed her his most prized treasure, which he kept tucked behind a vintage railway lantern.

‘It is the history of my grandfather’s homeland in a single small disc,’ he said as he reverently picked up an old velvet-lined wooden box that Jasmine had originally mistaken for a magnifying glass container. His thick, stubby fingers showed remarkable gentleness as he removed the object within. The murky, butter-colored light gleamed off the coin.

‘Wow,’ she breathed, slowly raising her hands to her cheeks.

Using the cover story that Papineau had organized for them, Cobb had assigned each member of his team a different group to investigate. McNutt was rooting out black marketeers who may have trafficked the gold or knew of someone who did. Garcia was hanging out with railroad software designers. Sarah kept her ears open around officials’ wives, girlfriends, and mistresses, who learned more from pillow talk than most intelligence services discovered through wiretaps.

But Jasmine had hit the jackpot with Andrei Dobrev.

He knew more about the railroads than their other sources combined.

‘Whoa,’ Hector Garcia said in their tiny office at the Moscow train station, approximately nineteen miles to the northeast of Dobrev’s apartment. He looked up from the image on his screen, an image that was being transmitted from a button camera on Jasmine’s blouse.

‘What is it?’ Papineau asked, coming around his desk in the unadorned guest offices the train station had supplied them.

‘You tell me,’ Garcia replied from his table, which was covered in computers, cell phones, modems, routers, and wires.

Papineau leaned over his shoulder and whistled softly at the sight that bounced on the tablet screen. ‘My word!’ he marveled. ‘That’s a gold leu!’

‘A gold what?’ Garcia asked.

‘Did you not do the reading that Cobb and I assigned to the team?’ Papineau scolded.

‘I read it all. I just don’t remember it.’

‘Tragic,’ Papineau said, only half paying attention to the younger man.

‘It’s called the Internet Era,’ Garcia said in a defensive tone. ‘It’s knowing where to find information instantly that matters, not memorizing it.’

‘And if, let’s say, you were on river rapids or in a cave with no reception?’

‘Then I wouldn’t be worried about a leu. I’d be worried about drowning or starving,’ Garcia assured him. ‘So, what is it again? The coin, I mean.’

‘It’s a first-series leu,’ Papineau said, leaning in to get a better look. ‘The gold twenty-lei coin was issued in 1868. Less than five hundred were minted, so this is a rarity.’

Garcia glanced at him, confused. ‘Is it a leu or a lei?’

‘Leu is singular; lei is plural.’ Papineau practically put his nose against the screen. ‘Zoom closer. I want to see it better.’

Garcia tapped the screen to freeze the image, then slipped the live feed to the side so he could study the coin without losing Jasmine’s progress.

Papineau studied the image just to make sure. As expected, the left profile of Carol I appeared on the front. The inscription read: CAROL I DOMNULU ROMANILORU. In English, it meant: Carol the First, Prince of the Romanians. ‘What a beautiful coin. I wonder, where did the likes of Andrei Dobrev get something like that?’

‘He said from his grandfather.’

‘I meant his family in general. How did they get a coin of such value?’

‘Guys,’ McNutt whispered from his perch across the street from Dobrev’s apartment.

Papineau ignored the voice in his earpiece. He still wasn’t used to the tiny, flesh-colored communication device that Garcia had inserted near the bottom of their auditory canals. It served as both mic and speaker, and it was so precise that it could detect the faintest whisper.

For privacy purposes, team members selected codewords — one for the mic and one for the speaker — that would temporarily deactivate their personal unit. Say the ‘mic’ word, and the microphone toggled off. Say it again, and it came back on. The same applied for the ‘speaker’ word. To prevent accidental muting, team members selected codewords that wouldn’t come up in everyday conversation. Words like pumpernickel and Travolta .

Papineau continued to speak. ‘Perhaps it was a bribe of some kind.’

‘Or a very generous tip,’ Garcia suggested.

‘I wonder, is there any way you could check his bank records from that time?’

‘Guys!’ McNutt shouted. ‘Quit your blabbing and listen to me!’

His voice was so loud it caused their earpieces to squeal.

Papineau winced from the sound. ‘Why are you yelling?’

‘ Why? Because you’re ignoring me!’

‘That’s because we’re working.’

‘Well, I’m working, too,’ McNutt growled. ‘And I wanted you to know that someone is coming!’

McNutt had been watching Dobrev’s apartment — and everything that happened inside — from his vantage point on a rooftop directly across the street. From there, he could also keep an eye on the hallway outside Dobrev’s door. His line of sight gave him the opportunity to warn Jasmine and the others of any unexpected visitors. His Soviet-made Snaiperskaya Vintovka Dragunova sniper rifle, or SVD, gave him a way to make those unexpected visitors go away forever.

McNutt peered through the Barska tactical scope and explained the situation. ‘You’ve got a white male standing outside Dobrev’s door.’ He was a short, wiry, young man with a crew cut and a sour expression. He was wearing sneakers that had no shoelaces, black pants, a black leather jacket, and a faded T-shirt. ‘He must’ve come from one of the apartments.’

‘How do you know that?’ Papineau questioned.

‘Well,’ McNutt explained, ‘he wasn’t at the door five seconds ago when I scanned the hall, so unless he came down through the ceiling or materialized out of thin air, I’d say he just stepped out from one of the neighboring units.’

‘Understood,’ Papineau agreed.

‘ Thor Steinar mean anything to anyone? It’s written across his shirt.’

Garcia’s fingers pounded his keyboard as he searched the Web. He skimmed the results before he informed the team. ‘Thor Steinar is a clothing designer. It seems he’s especially popular among skinheads and neo-Nazis. He has a lot of fans in Russia.’

‘Hold up! Thor is a skinhead?’ McNutt said, confused. ‘That doesn’t make any sense. He has long hair in the comic books. It’s even longer than mine.’

‘Different Thor,’ Garcia assured him.

‘Thank God! Because that Thor is tough to kill.’

‘Of course he’s tough to kill. He’s the God of Thunder.’

‘No shit, Hector! I know he’s the God of Thunder. I’m not an idiot.’

Sitting outside in an SUV, Cobb rolled his eyes at the discussion that was clogging the intercom. The more he listened, the less confident he felt. It was the type of conversation one would expect at a comic book convention, not in the middle of an important mission.

Cobb growled, ‘Knock it off! Tell me what’s happening!’

McNutt quickly snapped to attention. ‘Thor is trying to pick the lock on Dobrev’s door. Just say the word, and I’ll take him out before he can.’

‘That’s a negative — not until we ID the target.’

Dobrev heard somebody in the hallway outside of his apartment. More curious than alarmed, he walked toward his door to investigate. He glanced through his peephole and saw his neighbor, a troubled youth named Marko Kadurik, trying to pick the lock.