October. She’d put on her headset and was sitting stiffly upright, her hands clasped together between her knees, her gaze fixed straight ahead.
Andrei said, “You don’t like helicopters, Ensign?”
“No.”
“Given what happened in Iraq, I’m not surprised.”
She swung her head to stare at him. “How do you know what happened in Iraq?”
“He’s a spy,” said Jax. “Probing into people’s deep dark secrets is what he does for kicks.” To Andrei, he said, “Why Yasnaya Polyana?”
“That’s where Stefan Baklanov’s mother lives. It’s also where the militia picked up Borz Zakaev.”
“You say he’s Chechen? That doesn’t sound good. Any chance he has ties to al-Qa’ida?”
Andrei shrugged. “Not that we know of. But it’s possible. He worked with the CIA and American Special Forces in Afghanistan back in the eighties, when you Americans and Osama bin Laden were allies, supporting the mujahedeen against us.”
“Don’t remind me,” said Jax.
Andrei showed his teeth in a smile.
“So what did you learn from this guy?” said October.
“Unfortunately, very little.” Andrei shrugged. “He had a weak heart.”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means he’s dead,” said Jax.
Her eyes widened. “You mean you tor-”
Jax brought his heel down on her instep, hard, and said to Andrei, “What can you tell us about the kid?”
“We sent someone out to talk to the mother this morning. She still thinks her son died with the others on the Yalena. If the boy is alive, he hasn’t contacted her.”
Jax grunted. “He’s obviously being careful.”
“He needs to be careful. When my men were leaving the mother’s farm, they noticed a black Durango parked up the road.”
They were coming in low over a village, the blades of the chopper flattening the long grass that thrust up through the new snow. Jax said, “Someone’s staking out the mother’s house?”
“So it would appear. We’ve set a couple of militiamen to watch the watchers.”
“Why didn’t you just pick them up for questioning?” said October.
“Because I have no more use for small fry. I want the big fish. If we leave them alone, the minnows in the Durango will lead us to him.”
Adjusting his field glasses, Carlos Rodriguez watched as the old priest came out of his cottage to load two bundles into the sidecar of a rusty Ural motorbike.
Ugly and ungainly but fiercely sturdy, the Urals had been the workhorses of the Soviet Union. This one still bore the stamped star that showed it had come off a military assembly line, although the machine-gun mount had been cut off and a spare tire mounted on the back of the sidecar. The priest himself looked like some latter-day Rasputin, only bigger and broader, with long, flowing black robes and a wild gray beard that tumbled down past his belly.
Tucking up the hem of his robes, he swung one leg over the old Ural and gave it a hard kick. Rodriguez lowered his field glasses.
“Keep him in sight, but don’t get too close.”
Salinger nodded and eased their silver Range Rover into gear.
They trailed the priest through bleak fields of winter wheat edged with scrub and sodden earth streaked with snow. A few kilometers out of the village, he turned in beneath a soaring arched gate of white stucco and red brick topped by a narrow roof of red tiles. A stylized rendition of a seven-pointed elk antler decorated the arch’s keystone.
“Think the kid is hiding here?” said Kirkpatrick as they followed the priest into a neglected court. The two Russians, Zoya and Nikolayev, turned in behind them in a black Durango that was a twin to the one the little shit wrecked.
“Maybe. Or maybe not. The guy’s a priest. He could just be visiting some parishioner.”
They watched the priest’s Ural thump along a rutted dirt lane that wound behind a big, dilapidated old house, then passed into a stand of pines. Through the branches of the trees they could see the ruins of row after row of what looked like stables, their red brick walls crumbling where stretches of the ancient tiled roofs had given way.
“What the hell is this place?” said Kirkpatrick.
“I don’t know.” Rodriguez signaled to the Russians in the Durango to pull over. “But I think we’ve just found our boy.”
59
The chopper came down on a grassy helipad beside a dreary Soviet-era building of dirty glass and rust- stained concrete. Two blue-and-white militia vans stood at the ready, their idling engines belching clouds of white steam into the cold air.
A tall, lean militia captain with high cheekbones and a tight mouth snapped to attention and delivered a stuttering report.
“What do you mean you lost the men watching the widow’s farm?” Andrei bellowed.
“They just…left.”
“And your men didn’t follow them…why?”
The militia captain swallowed hard enough to bob his Adam’s apple up and down. “One of them was taking a leak.”
“And the other was-what? Asleep? Screwing his girlfriend in the backseat?”
A rush of scarlet darkened the militia captain’s face before slowly draining away to leave him a sickly white.
Jax said, “I can think of only two reasons they’d leave. Either they’ve given up trying to find the boy and are pulling out, or…”
Tobie finished for him. “Or they found him.”
Andrei stood with his fists on his hips, a muscle bunching and flexing along his tight jaw as he stared through the silently drifting snow at the distant cluster of wooden houses. “If you were a sixteen-year-old kid too scared to go home, who would you turn to?”
From a distant barn came the lowing of a cow and, nearer, the disgruntled caw-caw of a crow perched on a nearby electric pole. Looking toward it, Tobie saw the spire of an ancient church thrusting up above the bare, snow-covered branches of a stand of willows.
“The priest,” she said suddenly. “Remember when Anna Baklanov was showing us Stefan’s picture? She said Jasha used to make fun of the boy for being so devout.”
Andrei swung toward the nearest militia van. “It’s worth a try. Let’s go.”
Stefan sat with his knees drawn up to his chest, his spine pressed against one of the iron columns supporting the stable block’s soaring roof. Tipping back his head, he could see a giant hook hanging from the center of the beam above. He craned his neck, following the line, hook after hook, disappearing into the gloom. It seemed strange that the hooks should still be here, long after all the blood stallions and broodmares had disappeared.
He shivered. The interior of the stable block was starkly empty and open, the fine polished oak that had once formed the stalls having long ago been ripped out and carted off for firewood. The row of small, arched windows set high on each side wall let in little light. He shivered again, and reached over to draw the dog closer. The pup let out a little whimper and licked his face.
“It’ll be all right once Father Alexei gets here,” whispered Stefan, his voice echoing eerily in the vast, hollow
