Chris Kuzneski - The Hunters

The usually loquacious Frenchman was speechless.

‘Damn,’ Papineau finally said.

‘That doesn’t tell me anything,’ Cobb complained.

‘Hear me out,’ Papineau said. ‘The Black Robes are a group of zealots who worship Rasputin. They follow his example of sinning, then repenting. Through that, the mad monk gained great political power, just as these men have in their own time. They approached me when we arrived-’

‘How did they know who we were?’ Cobb asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ Papineau lied, covering for the colleague he had given the Brighton Beach letter to. ‘They have eyes and ears everywhere. They offered to help set up this operation using their influence in key portions of the Transportation and Migration Ministries.’

‘Because?’

‘I don’t know,’ he lied again.

‘And you just accepted that?’ Cobb asked incredulously. ‘It never occurred to you that some sort of quid pro quo might be involved? No, don’t answer that. I already know. Of course you did. You just didn’t think it was necessary to tell us. You figured we’d muck through somehow, and if we didn’t there was always some other sucker-team you could bribe with five million bucks.’

‘Jack,’ the Frenchman said. ‘I know I’ve lost your trust-’

Cobb made a scoffing sound. ‘You never had that. The best you can hope for is trying to regain some sliver of credibility at this point. Let’s just leave it at that, okay? We’ll find your treasure because we accepted the contract, and you figure out some reason, any reason, why I shouldn’t take your head as a souvenir when we’ve delivered it.’

Papineau started to respond, but Cobb made the throat-slashing motion at Garcia. Once Garcia broke the connection, Cobb looked at him steadily.

‘What do you think the Black Robes want?’ Garcia asked anxiously. ‘Some sort of revenge on Prince Felix?’

‘It’s possible,’ Cobb agreed. ‘And I think Borovsky might know the answer.’ He dipped his forehead at the laptop. ‘So the more immediate question is about Papineau. I asked you to find out about him. What’ve you got?’

The techie looked honestly at his superior. ‘As far as I can tell,’ Garcia confessed, ‘Papineau is who he says he is.’

‘I’m aggressively uninterested in what he says, Garcia,’ Cobb replied. ‘I’m interested in what he’s not saying. After you’ve eaten, dig more.’

Cobb turned around and nearly walked into McNutt.

‘Hey,’ the gunman said. ‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, McNutt, thanks.’ Cobb thought that would be it, but McNutt just remained standing there. ‘You?’ Cobb finally asked him.

‘Yeah. Listen, I just wanted to … you know … back in the armory?’ McNutt looked down for a moment. ‘Thanks, okay? Just … thanks.’

‘Not a problem,’ Cobb assured him. ‘Maybe someday you’ll return the favor.’

‘I hope so,’ McNutt said.

‘ You hope so? ‘ Cobb teased. ‘What do you mean by that?’

McNutt quickly realized his mistake. The only way he could save Cobb’s life was if Cobb was in grave danger to begin with. That wasn’t the type of thing he should be wishing on his team leader. ‘Wait! That came out wrong! I mean, um-’

Cobb laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I know what you meant.’

McNutt breathed a sigh of relief.

Cobb continued. ‘But just so you know, that’s why soldiers don’t try to put those things into words. A simple thanks is good enough.’

‘How about thanks and a drink?’

‘Even better.’

They both returned to the circular campfire and the villagers for some homemade cheese and that long-awaited tuica . When they were finished, Cobb, McNutt, and Sarah stretched out to look at the setting sun. They knew it was the calm before the storm.

‘Okay,’ Sarah said briskly. ‘What now, Jack?’

Before he could answer, Borovsky appeared, accompanied by Jasmine. The two had been talking with Anna and Dobrev throughout the meal.

‘I have thought about this moment for many years,’ the Russian said through their interpreter. ‘All my life, in fact. And the lives of my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather as well. And now that the time has come, I only can think of one proverb to say: “When you meet a man, you judge him by his clothes. When you leave, you judge him by his heart.”’

One by one, Borovsky looked at the people he had come to respect. When he reached Cobb, he spoke in slow, heavily accented English. ‘Would you come with me, please? There is something I would like to show you.’

As the group — minus Garcia, who stayed in the village to tend to his gear — made its way across the gentle foothills that led to a mini-plateau, Borovsky pointed out a narrow-gauge railway that cut through the sparse forest. Up ahead was a small mining train. It was covered by tattered tarpaulins and a blanket of carefully meshed twigs and branches.

Fueled by joy, Dobrev rushed over uneven stone and high grass to reach it. He excitedly pulled off the tarps and twigs, and stared at the train underneath. It consisted of a small, open trolley car; a slightly larger, open freight car; a four-seat passenger car with no glass in its few windows; and a diminutive engine that seemed little more than a lawn mower. In the train industry, it was known as an ‘omnivore’ because it could run on coal or firewood.

Chasing after Dobrev, Jasmine suddenly saw the little boy in the old man. His somber face erupted in a smile the likes of which she had never seen on him — or anyone else.

To her, the trains and track looked like an overgrown toy set.

To him, it seemed like the Romanian treasure itself.

As he talked, he ran his hands over everything: from the roofs above to the mini-tracks below. ‘Our train rests on thousand-millimeter track. This rail is not even six hundred.’

Decebal, who was the only villager with the group, nodded in agreement. He waited until everyone had reached the train before he started to speak in broken Russian laced with Romanian. With Borovsky’s help, Jasmine translated the information for her team.

‘They laid down the tracks around 1912. Before that, everything was donkeys and carts. After that, they started exporting lumber, barely enough to keep the village going, but enough. Eventually they laid heavier gauge tracks further down, that’s what we came up on, but then …’ She paused. ‘Well, that’s weird. He said business just stopped.’

Jasmine confirmed her understanding with Decebal and Borovsky, then passed on the information. ‘Business didn’t decline,’ she explained. ‘It just stopped. Completely.’

‘Meaning,’ said Cobb, ‘that when the prince rolled in he bought the town and didn’t want any exports coming from this direction.’

‘So they went back to carts,’ McNutt said. ‘After the fall of the Romanovs, that’s all they could afford.’

‘Imagine being the guardians of an immense treasure and being poor as dirt,’ Sarah said.

‘They didn’t think of it that way,’ Jasmine assured them. ‘It was more like being the palace eunuch. They were honored to serve the queen or lady.’

McNutt snorted. ‘Now there’s a trade I’m not down with.’

‘Yeah,’ Sarah said. ‘Without the boys, you’d have to change your name to “McNada”.’

The other team members groaned. Except for Cobb, who was studying the small, narrow tracks. They reminded him of the kind of tracks used for ore cars inside coalmines.

The group continued forward, following Borovsky over the flat but scrubby terrain. Since the colonel was left-handed, Anna remained on his right side the entire time. That way, if he ever had to draw his gun or knife, she would be out of his way.