The Hunters

‘A whoring, alcoholic, game-playing saint?’

Jasmine, who felt physically inferior to Sarah, hated where this was going. History was her area of expertise and she knew if she didn’t stand her ground and protect her role on the team, then these interruptions would continue for the rest of the mission. To shut Sarah down, Jasmine went for her weak spot. ‘Many theologians believe that sainthood is achieved through trial. It is not necessarily inborn. It is something that is earned over time, not stolen by a thief in the night. That’s the easy way to get through life.’

Sarah winced. ‘Excuse me?’

Jasmine didn’t back down. ‘Sorry. No offense intended.’

Sarah stood back from the computer, even more insulted by the insincere tone of the apology. ‘I would think not since we’re both trying to steal this treasure.’

‘Actually,’ Jasmine stressed, ‘I’m trying to find it, not steal it.’

Cobb sensed they weren’t going to work this out on their own. He could see the aggressive tension in both of their bodies, particularly Sarah’s. ‘Take a breather,’ he said to her.

‘Glad to,’ Sarah muttered as she left the train car.

‘Man,’ McNutt said, as if the confrontation hadn’t occurred, ‘I get the feeling that Rasputin was a guy who really didn’t want to die.’

Cobb smiled. Sometimes McNutt’s bubble was a useful place.

‘Prince Felix wanted to live, too,’ Jasmine reminded them. ‘After the abdication three months later, he immediately decamped to Crimea.’

‘How “immediately”?’ Cobb wanted to know.

‘No way of knowing for sure, but within weeks, possibly a fortnight, possibly less.’

‘Surprising how much you can get done under house arrest,’ Cobb said. ‘Three months could be enough time to have made plans, written letters.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ Jasmine said. ‘From Crimea, the family — including the prince — was able to secure passage to Malta on a British warship. From Malta, they went to Italy and London before eventually settling in Paris.’

‘When?’ Garcia asked.

‘That was in 1920.’

‘Two, three years after attacking Raspy,’ McNutt noted.

‘Wow,’ Garcia teased. ‘You didn’t even have to use your fingers or toes.’

‘Cut it out,’ Cobb said before McNutt could respond. He didn’t need another pissing contest. Or a dead computer guy, which is what Garcia would be if McNutt got a hold of him.

‘How do you think the prince paid for all that?’ Papineau asked Jasmine.

She thought about it for a while. ‘There was some talk that he took jewelry and rare art from their palace before they left.’

Cobb glanced at Papineau. ‘Does that theory sound right to you?’

‘Yes,’ Papineau mused, leaning back in his chair. ‘Prince Felix was both an honorable man and a man of action. He must have known that securing the Romanov riches from invaders as well as his own enraged family would be impossible under those circumstances.’

‘But maybe not the Romanian treasure,’ Cobb said.

‘How long have you known this, about the prince?’ the Frenchman demanded.

‘I still don’t know it,’ Cobb replied. ‘But once I stopped thinking about how to find the treasure and started to think about how it could’ve been lost …’

‘No one but a member of the royal family could’ve gotten it out of town,’ Jasmine said. ‘There are always royal loyalists in any revolution. Not even the highest-ranking general would have had that much pull.’

‘And the prince was going to be on an exile train regardless,’ Papineau marveled.

‘Yep,’ Cobb said. ‘So I wouldn’t worry about grave robbers. I bet they stopped looking for crumbs a long time ago. What was it that Sherlock Holmes used to say?’

‘“When you eliminate the impossible,”’ Garcia immediately quoted, ‘“whatever’s left, no matter how improbable, has got to be the-”’

He never got to finish. At that moment a small red light on his workstation began to flash, a strident buzzer began to bleat, and the ceiling screens began to swing down.

‘What is it?’ Papineau snapped.

‘Someone’s done something to the train,’ Garcia snapped back, his hands dancing across his keyboard as his computer screen filled with different images from outside. ‘The security cams I installed have been on-line for hours.’

Cobb and McNutt flanked him instantly, their eyes intent on the screen.

‘Do you see all the workers who were there before?’ McNutt asked.

‘The four that Dobrev was breaking in, yeah,’ Cobb replied. ‘The two that delivered the license left right afterwards. Where’s Dobrev?’

‘There,’ Jasmine said from just behind them. She pointed at the corner of an image in the upper left of the screen. Dobrev was checking Ludmilla’s undercarriage, carrying the spanner he had used to save Jasmine.

‘Okay,’ Cobb said. ‘So what’s the prob-’

They all snapped to attention when Sarah screeched like a wounded cat.

She was outside, and she was in trouble.

32

A morgue is a morgue. It has no personality. It isn’t a cathedral where the deceased are remembered with tears and prayer. It is a collection of drawers and tables where the dead are all the same. They haven’t ‘passed’ or ‘gone to their reward’. There is nothing romantic, nothing hopeful at all. There is no modesty. Public faces and private parts are all equal here.

They are dead.

No matter where it is — in the oldest village or a brand new building — and no matter how much technology is employed, a morgue is a place where lifeless bodies are stored and dissected to see what the dead have to say to the living.

Today, Marko Kadurik was talking to Colonel Borovsky.

Situated in the cellar of the police station, this morgue was neither ancient nor cutting-edge. The fresh paint and new furniture that brightened the floors above had yet to trickle down into this dark, stone space. There were fluorescent lights in the ceiling, metal tables on the floor, and autopsy equipment in a long tray on the right. Several corpse cabinets lined the left wall. It was not like the morgues that Borovsky had seen on television or in the other countries he had visited overseas. Those places were always clean and antiseptic. None of them communicated the smell, look, feel, and choking weight of death like this place did.

He glanced at Anna Rusinko, looking for signs of distress. She had led him down the stairs and into the morgue and was now watching his every move like a wide-eyed rookie.

Remarkably, she appeared unfazed by her surroundings.

As per his orders, the dead body of Marko Kadurik had been placed on the center table, a single sheet discreetly draping his body from the neck down. The first thing Borovsky did was pull back the thin covering with a flourish. Then he tossed it against the wall.

The civilian morgue attendant, a pale-skinned youth dressed in a stained lab coat, swallowed hard. He was surprised by the behavior. ‘The mortal wound is on his head, comrade.’

Borovsky looked at him dismissively. ‘The autopsy is complete?’

‘No, sir,’ the young man replied. ‘Not yet begun-’

‘But you are certain the head wound is what killed this man.’

The youth stood there with an expression that said, Do you not see the exposed section of brain? But he wisely said nothing.