of frozen red muscle, and examined the bone’s splintered edges. “Great strength in the bite,” Franco said quietly. “The leg was broken with a single crunch.”
“So were both the arms,” Nikita said. He sat on his haunches, looking at the bones arranged around him in the snow. A patchwork of shadows and sunlight lay on Belyi’s face, and the ice in the single remaining eyelid was beginning to melt. Mikhail watched with dreadful fascination as a drop of water trickled down Belyi’s blue cheek like a tear.
Wiktor stood up, his eyes blazing, and slowly turned his gaze through all points of the compass. His fists clenched at his sides. Mikhail knew what he must be thinking: they were no longer the only killers in the forest. Something had been watching them, and knew where their den was. It had crushed Belyi’s bones, torn out his tongue, and scooped the brains from his skull. Then it had brought the broken skeleton back here like a taunt. Or a challenge.
“Wrap him in this.” Wiktor removed his deerskin cloak and gave it to Franco. “Don’t let Pauli see him.” He began to walk, naked and with a purposeful stride, away from the white palace.
“Where’re you going?” Nikita asked him.
“Tracking,” Wiktor answered, his feet crunching in the snow. Then he began to run, casting a long shadow. Mikhail watched him weave through the tangle of surrounding trees and spiky undergrowth; he saw gray hair ripple across Wiktor’s broad white back, saw his spine start to contort, and then Wiktor vanished into the forest.
Nikita and Franco put Belyi’s bones in the robe. The head, with its silent jawless shriek, was the last to go in. Franco stood up, the folded robe clutched in his arms and his face gaunt and gray. He looked at Mikhail, and his lip curled. “You carry them, rabbit,” he said in a tone of derision, and he put the sack of remains in Mikhail’s arms. Their weight instantly dropped the boy to his knees.
Nikita started to help him, but Franco caught the Mongol’s arm. “Let the rabbit do it alone, if he wants to be one of us so much!”
Mikhail stared into Franco’s eyes; they laughed at him, and wanted him to fail. He felt a spark leap inside him. It exploded into incandescent fire, and the heat of anger made Mikhail strain to stand with the sack of bones in his arms. He got halfway up before his feet slipped out from under him. Franco walked on a few paces. “Come on!” he said impatiently, and Nikita reluctantly followed. Mikhail struggled, his teeth gritted and his arms aching. But he had known pain before, and this was nothing. He would not let Franco see him beaten; he would let no one see him beaten, not ever. He got all the way up, and then walked with unsteady steps, his arms full of what used to be Belyi.
“A good rabbit always does as he’s told,” Franco said. Nikita reached out to carry the bones the rest of the way, but Mikhail said, “No,” and carried his burden toward the white palace. He smelled the coppery aroma of icy blood from Belyi’s remains. The deerskin had its own smell-higher, sweeter-and Wiktor’s sweat smelled of salt and musk. But there was another odor in the chill air, and it drifted past Mikhail’s nostrils as he reached the doorway. This odor was wild and rank, a smell of brutality and cunning. The smell of an animal, and as different from the odors of Mikhail’s pack as black differs from red. It was wafting, he realized, from Belyi’s bones: the spoor of the beast that had slaughtered him. The same odor that Wiktor was now tracking across the smooth, blizzard-sculpted snow.
The promise of violence hung in the air. Mikhail felt it like the slide of claws down his spine. Franco and Nikita felt it, too, as they gazed around through the forest, their senses questing, collecting, evaluating with a speed that was now their second nature. Belyi had not been the strongest of the pack, but he’d been very quick and smart. Whatever had torn him to pieces had been quicker and smarter. It was out there now, somewhere in the forest, waiting and watching to see what would be the response to its gift of death.
Mikhail staggered across the threshold into the palace and saw Pauli standing there with Renati and Alekza, her mouth gasping wordlessly as she stared at the folded robe in his arms. Renati quickly stepped forward and took the robe from him, carrying it away.
The sun went down. The stars emerged, shimmering against the blackness. A small fire crackled in the depths of the white palace as Mikhail and the rest of his pack huddled in the circle of its heat. They waited as the wind began to rise outside and shrill through the corridors. And waited. But Wiktor did not come home.
FIVE – The Mouse Trap
1
At six o’clock on the morning of March 29, Michael Gallatin dressed in a field-gray German uniform, with jackboots, a cap bearing a communications-company insignia, and the proper service medals-Norway, the Leningrad Front, and Stalingrad-on his chest. He shrugged into a field-gray overcoat. On his person were papers-an expert job had been done in acid aging the new photograph and yellowing the documentation, Michael noted-identifying him as an oberst-a colonel-in charge of coordinating the signal lines and relays between Paris and the units scattered along the coast of Normandy. He had been born in a village in southern Austria called Braugdonau. He had a wife named Lana and two sons. His politics were adamantly pro-Hitler, and he was loyal to the Reich’s service, if not necessarily in awe of Nazism. He had been wounded once, by a fragment of shrapnel from a grenade thrown by a Russian partisan in 1942, and he had the scar under his eye to prove it. Under his coat he wore a leather holster with a well-used but perfectly clean Luger in it, and two extra clips of bullets in his pocket, near his heart. He carried a silver Swiss pocket watch, engraved with figures of hunters shooting stags, and nothing-not even his socks-had a trace of British wool. The rest of what he needed to know was in his head: the roads in and out of Paris, the maze of streets around Adam’s apartment and the building where Adam worked, and Adam’s nondescript, accountant’s face. He had a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs with Pearly McCarren, washed down with strong black French coffee, and it was time to go.
McCarren, a craggy mountain in a Black Watch kilt, and a young dark-haired Frenchman Pearly referred to as Andre led Michael through a long, damp corridor. His jackboots, the footwear of a dead German officer, clattered on the stones. McCarren talked quietly as they went along the corridor, filling in last-minute details; the Scotsman’s voice was nervous, and Michael listened intently but said nothing. The details were already in his head, and he was satisfied that everything was planned. From here on, it was a walk on the razor’s edge.
The silver pocket watch was an interesting invention. Two clicks on the winding stem popped open the false back, and inside was a little compartment that held a single gray capsule. The capsule was small to be so deadly, but cyanide was a potent and fast-acting poison. Michael had agreed to carry the poison capsule simply because it was one of the unwritten regulations of the secret service, but he never intended the Gestapo to take him alive. Still, his carrying it seemed to make McCarren feel better. Actually, Michael and McCarren had become good companions in the last two days; McCarren was a tough poker player, and when he wasn’t drilling Michael on the details of his new identity, he was winning hand after hand of five-card draw. Michael was disappointed in one thing, though; he hadn’t seen Gaby today, and because McCarren hadn’t mentioned her he assumed she had gone back to an assignment in the field. Au revoir, he thought. And good luck to you.
The Scotsman and the young French partisan led Michael up a set of stone steps, and into a small cave lit by green-shaded lamps. The illumination gleamed on a long, black, hard-topped Mercedes-Benz touring car. It was a beautiful machine, and Michael couldn’t even tell where the bullet holes had been patched and repainted. “Fine machine, eh?” McCarren asked, reading Michael’s mind as Michael ran a gloved hand across a fender. “The Germans know how to build ’em, that’s for sure. Well, the bastards have got cogs and gears in their heads instead of brains anyway, so what can you expect.” He motioned toward the driver’s seat, where a uniformed figure sat behind the wheel. “Andre there’s a good driver. He knows Paris about as well as anybody, seein’ as he was born there.” He tapped on the glass, and the driver nodded and started the engine; it responded with a low, throaty growl. McCarren opened the rear door for Michael as the young Frenchman unlatched two doors that covered the cave entrance. The doors were thrown open, letting in a glare of morning sunlight, and then the young Frenchman began to quickly clear brush away from in front of the Mercedes.
McCarren held out his hand, and Michael gripped it. “You take care of yourself, laddie,” the Scotsman said. “Give ’em hell out there for the Black Watch, eh?”
“Jawohl.” Michael eased into the backseat, a luxury of black leather, and the driver released the hand brake and drove through the cave entrance. As soon as the car was clear, the brush was put back into place, the green- and-brown-camouflage-painted doors were sealed, and it looked like a rugged hillside again. The Mercedes wound
