Chris Kuzneski - The Hunters

‘Yes … Yes, starets …’

Now that a different title had been indicated, he had better use it.

Sidorov stared at him. ‘But there’s more . You know there’s more.’

‘… I do, yes,’ Dvorkin said while he racked his brain for answers. What more does he mean? What other feats in the palace? What other liaisons did he have?

Sidorov was standing over Dvorkin now, looking down at him as if from a great height. ‘Our master could transcend death.’

Dvorkin felt his face flush with humiliation. ‘Of course! How stupid of me! How utterly shameful!’

Much to Dvorkin’s amazement, Sidorov laughed in delight. ‘Good, good,’ he approved. ‘Remember, part of the Khlysty sect is self-flagellation. “I whip myself, I seek Christ” is what they chanted, yes?’

‘Yes, starets ,’ Dvorkin said with relief. ‘If you have a whip, I will gladly use it.’

Sidorov smiled at the offer. ‘Oh no, there will be no whips for us. We don’t have time for self-flagellation any more. Our task is too great.’

‘Yes, starets ,’ Dvorkin agreed, suitably humbled.

‘Tell me, Pavel, what is our task?’

‘Our task?’ he echoed.

Sidorov furrowed his brow. ‘Surely you remember our master’s story. Surely you remember the task of his followers.’

‘It is … it is to find him.’

‘Yes,’ Sidorov breathed. ‘They slit his stomach open. He did not die. They poisoned him. He did not die. They shot him three times. He did not die. They beat him. He did not die. They drowned him. He did not die. They burned him. He … did … not … die. Our master still lives!’

Sidorov turned from his associate. ‘I have spent my life following his example. I have sinned. I have repented. I have gained influence.’ He started to move around the room, as if gaining power from the trappings of royalty. ‘I have followed every lead, I have explored every clue. And finally — finally — I discovered a way to locate him.’

He was back by Dvorkin, just behind his chair. He put his left hand on Dvorkin’s right shoulder and sneered. ‘All you had to do was wait, and watch, and let the Americans find him for us, but you were too weak to do your part!’

Fueled by rage and disgust, Sidorov plunged a silver fruit knife into the left side of Dvorkin’s stomach, then dragged it across to the right. The part of Dvorkin’s brain that wasn’t in paralyzed shock, that wasn’t shrieking in high, inaudible agony, was impressed at the strength it took to pierce flesh, cut across organs, and slit muscle with a fruit knife, even one from Imperial Russia.

Dvorkin opened his mouth to scream, but only a small ‘uh’ emerged. His hands came up, but they stopped when his mind couldn’t decide whether to claw at the knife, the hand that held it, or Sidorov’s face. Ultimately, his reflexes decided for him, and he reached down to try to keep his intestines from spilling onto his knees.

Sidorov cut as far as he wanted, then shoved Dvorkin to the floor. The man fell mostly on his side, his hands clutching at the jagged, blood-wet wound. He looked up at his leader, his eyes bulging and his mouth opening and closing like a beached fish.

Sidorov stood there, the bloodied fruit knife now in his left hand. ‘Our master is waiting for my arrival — waiting to give me his power. All you had to do was wait. But no, you wanted to cut corners. You wanted to follow the Americans from inside a nice warm room. So you tried to plant a bug on their train. And one of them saw you. She came to investigate. You panicked and seized her. And now they know we are tracking them.’

Sidorov grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and turned him onto his back. ‘But don’t worry: you will get the same chance that the prince, the duke, and the Duma delegate gave our master.’

Sidorov wrapped his hands around Dvorkin’s throat and squeezed.

A soft gurgle escaped his mouth as the life was choked out of him.

Satisfied with the punishment, Sidorov rose and walked over to the sofa. With a bemused smile, he sat next to the still, young woman, and tenderly removed the heavy blindfold — heavy because he had soaked the cloth in a transdermal anesthetic that had seeped through her skin and into her bloodstream within moments of its application.

He watched her sleeping for a few moments.

She had never looked better, he thought.

Like an innocent angel.

He realized this is what she must have looked like before family abuse, self-loathing, and desperation had brought her here.

Sidorov lay beside her and took the unconscious beauty in his arms. She would help him repent, he decided. Long into the night.

Thursday, September 20

Vascauti, Romania

(870 miles southwest of Moscow)

Garcia followed their progress on his Goldfinder program. They had traveled nearly nine hundred miles since they had left the station, and thus far everything had gone smoothly. ‘Good news: we have left the Ukraine and entered Romania. Next stop: Gold City.’

McNutt groaned at the comment. He was an optimistic fellow, one who lived in a dream world where bears could fire cannons, but he knew this mission was still a long shot unless all of the team’s theories proved to be accurate.

First, they assumed that Prince Felix had taken the treasure train from Moscow. Second, they believed that every soldier capable of walking had been massed for an aborted attempt to slash through Poland and attack East Prussia. This meant that the treasure could not have been offloaded from the train because there was no one on board to do the heavy lifting. Third, they guessed that the train would head to at least one major spur where they could change directions to confuse would-be followers. However, this change needed to be done without witnesses. That meant a well-hidden spur in a thinly populated region.

After punching all that information into the Goldfinder program, it spit out a logical choice: the Transylvanian Plateau in Romania. Despite its name, the Transylvanian Plateau was a land of steep hills and valleys. The higher peaks of the Romanian Carpathian Mountains rose in nearly every direction, but here in the middle the rocky terrain gave way to vast forests and scenic cliffs. Given the difficulty of locating anything among its seemingly endless woodlands, they figured it was a great place to hide treasure.

Now all they had to do was find it.

McNutt, who had openly wondered if they were on the wrong train heading in the wrong direction, glanced at the screen. ‘There’s the calm before the storm, but this is nuts. Nearly twenty hours, and there isn’t even a breeze out there.’

He was right. There was nothing ominous on the overhead satellite feed, nothing in the 360-degree video sweep, no radio chatter, no complaints from the pressure-sensitive tabs in the couplings, and nothing but Russian folk tunes from Andrei Dobrev in the engine. Dobrev had shown Jasmine the rudiments of how to run the engine so that she could spot him for rest periods. She was up there with him now.

Cobb, via his earpiece, told McNutt not to worry. ‘Sometimes a day with nothing but sunshine is just that: a sunny day. Don’t read into it.’

‘Actually, I’m pissed because it’s sunny.’

Garcia turned around. ‘You’re pissed at the sun?’

McNutt nodded. ‘I was hoping to do some sightseeing before we left Moscow, and today would’ve been a perfect day to stand in line at Red Square. I could’ve worked on my tan.’

Cobb ignored the ‘tan’ part and focused on ‘Red Square’. He was stunned that McNutt wanted to visit a historical site. ‘I didn’t know you were a history buff.’