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 —
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.
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.
43
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.’
‘I’m not,’ McNutt assured everyone, ‘but I’m a
Laughter erupted all over the train, so much so that Garcia had to temporarily excuse himself from his workstation to avoid laughing in front of McNutt. Even Jasmine, who could barely hear the chatter over the roar of the engine, laughed so hard she started to cry. Confused by her outburst, Dobrev demanded to know what had happened on his train. While giggling uncontrollably, it took her nearly five minutes to translate the story into Russian, but once she did, Dobrev laughed harder than anyone — so much so, he had to run to the bathroom because he was afraid he was going to wet his pants.
Meanwhile, McNutt had no idea what had set them off.
‘I don’t get it,’ he mumbled to no one in particular. ‘Is it because I like the Beatles? I know they’re old, but I
It took a while for the laughter to subside. Once it did, things returned to normal.
With Papineau elsewhere, Cobb had commandeered the desk, which was covered with paper maps and charts. Garcia returned to his workstation where the extra monitors he had initially ordered as back-up were now arrayed to accommodate the new security cams he had installed on, over, and under the train. The screens now stretched around him like blinders.
Between fits of pacing, watching over Garcia’s back, and doing squat-thrusts and deep knee bends to stay limber, Sarah was lying on the sofa, studying maps on her tablet. Except for a few bruises on her neck, she was outwardly recovered from the Black Robe attack.
‘This is so boring,’ McNutt announced from a chair beside the couch, where he was enjoying a pungent sandwich he had just made in the galley — black bread, chopped sweet gherkins, crushed garlic cloves mixed with olive oil, black forest ham, Kusendorf Swiss cheese, and cucumber slices. ‘Come on, Jack. I want to shoot
