a wind tunnel. The spotlight popped and began playing over the cliff, zigzagging upward.
“I’m in,” Remi whispered from above.
Eyes alternating between the spikes above him and the rapidly ascending pool of light below him, Sam climbed the last few feet then suddenly felt Remi’s hand on his own. He coiled his legs beneath him and pushed off while simultaneously pulling with his arms. He rolled into the tunnel and jerked his legs inside as the spotlight hovered over the opening for a moment then continued on.
They lay huddled together in the darkness, Sam trying to calm his breath as they listened to the boat make its way through the arch and the engine noise finally faded.
“Is this the place?” Sam asked, pushing himself up onto his elbows and looking around. The tunnel was roughly oval in shape, roughly five feet tall and six feet wide.
“I’d say so,” Remi said, pointing.
Bolted to the ceiling at the mouth of the tunnel was a crisscross bulwark of thick tar-covered oaken beams supported by vertical timbers bolted to the walls. Dangling from the center of the bulwark was a rusted block-and- tackle pulley system linked by thick hawser rope to a hand-crank winch affixed to the uprights. A pair of narrow- gauge rails sitting atop wooden cross ties and crushed gravel ballast stretched into the darkness.
“Well, the winch isn’t original, that’s for sure,” he said. “Unless, that is, Zaporozhian Cossack technology was way ahead of its time. See here . . . those bolts are precisely machined. This might go back to the Crimean War, but my guess is World War II. Just look at the mitered joints . . . this thing could have lifted thousands of pounds.” He stepped up to the mouth of the tunnel and peered over the edge. “Ingenious. See how they placed this, just above this natural bulge in the face? Even in daylight it would’ve been invisible from the water.”
“I see it.”
“Wow, look at this—”
“Sam.”
“What?”
“I hate to stifle your imagination, but we’ve got a bottle of wine to steal.”
“Right, sorry. Let’s go.”
Having used Google Earth to draw up their own overhead sketch of Bondaruk’s estate, complete with angles and distances, as well as annotations from Bohuslav’s notes, they kept track of their steps as they headed into the tunnel.
Under the moving beam of their flashlights Sam could see signs of limited blast work along the walls, but it appeared most of the tunnel had been carved out the old-fashioned way, by hammer, chisel, and backbreaking labor.
Here and there on the floor were wooden toolboxes, coils of half-rotted rope, rusted pickaxes and sledgehammers, a pair of half-rotted leather boots, canvas coveralls that partially disintegrated when Remi nudged them with her shoe. . . . Attached to the right-and left-hand walls every ten feet were oil lamps, their glass globes black with soot, their bronze reservoirs and handles covered in a scabrous green patina. Sam tapped one with his index finger and heard sloshing inside.
After fifty yards of walking, Remi stopped, studied the sketch, and said, “We should be just under the outer wall. Another hundred yards or so and we should be directly under the main house.”
She was off by only a few yards. After another two minutes they reached a widened intersection, the tunnel and tracks continuing straight as well as to the right. Five old-fashioned ore carts sat in a line against the left-hand wall, while a sixth sat on the north-south tracks.
“Straight ahead to the stables, and right to the east wings,” Sam said.
“I think so.”
He checked his watch. “Let’s check out the stables first and see what we can see.”
After another half mile or so of walking, Remi stopped suddenly and placed her index finger to her lips and mouthed,
She nodded. “I hear voices. Laughing . . . singing along.”
“Yeah.”
They continued on and soon the tunnel came to a dead end at a set of stone steps leading upward to a wooden trapdoor. Sam lifted his head and sniffed. “Manure.”
“Then we’re in the right place.”
The music and laughter were louder now, seemingly coming from directly above their heads. Sam placed his foot on the lowermost step. At that moment, there came the thunk of a footfall on the trapdoor. Sam froze. Another foot joined the first, followed by two more, these lighter, somehow more delicate. Through the gaps in the trapdoor shadows moved, blocking and unblocking the light.
A woman giggled and said in Russian-accented English, “Don’t, Dmitry, that tickles.”
“That’s the idea, my
“Ooh, I like that. . . . Stop, stop, what about your wife?”
“What about her?”
“Come on, let’s get back to the party before someone sees us.”
“Not until you promise me,” the man said.
“Yes, I promise. Next weekend in Balaclava.”
The couple moved off and moments later there came the banging of a wooden door. Somewhere above a horse whinnied, then silence.
Remi whispered, “We’ve managed to stumble into one of Bondaruk’s damned parties. Talk about bad luck. . . .”
“Maybe good luck,” Sam replied. “Let’s see if we can make it work for us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Chances are decent that Bondaruk is the only one who knows what we look like.”
“Oh, no, Sam.”
He grinned. “Remi, where are your manners? Let’s mingle.”
Once certain there was no one about, Sam climbed the steps, lifted open the hatch, and had a look around. He turned back to Remi. “It’s a closet. Come on.”
He climbed up and held the hatch for Remi, then closed it behind her. Through the open closet door was another space, this one a tack room dimly lit by theater-style lights along the baseboards. They stepped through and out the opposite door and found themselves on a gravel alleyway bordered on both sides by horse stalls. Overhead was a high vaulted ceiling with inset exhaust fans and skylights through which pale moonlight filtered. They could hear horses snorting softly and shuffling in the stalls. At the far end of the stable, perhaps thirty yards away, was a set of double barn doors. They walked to them and peeked out.
Before them lay an acre-sized expanse of lush lawn surrounded by chest-high hedges and flickering tiki torches. Multicolored silk banners fluttered on cross wires suspended over the lawn. Dozens of tuxedoed and evening-gowned guests, mostly couples, stood in clusters and strolled about, chatting and laughing. Waiters in stark white uniforms moved through the crowd, occasionally pausing to offer hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. The source of Sinatra’s “Summer Wind,” pole-mounted loudspeakers strategically placed around the lawn, now emitted a soft jazz number.
To Sam and Remi’s right they could see the upper floors of Bondaruk’s mansion, its onion-domed minarets silhouetted against the dark sky. To the left, through an entrance gap in the hedges Sam could see a gravel parking lot packed with several million dollars’ worth of Bentleys, Mercedeses, Lamborghinis, and Maybachs.
“We’re underdressed,” Remi muttered.
“Severely,” Sam agreed. “I don’t see him, do you?”
Remi moved closer to the gap and scanned the throng. “No, but with the torchlight it’s hard to tell.”
Sam shut the door. “Let go check out the southeast wing.”
They went back through the tack room trapdoor, retraced their steps down the tunnel, and took the east
