“I know exactly where it is,” said Albrecht. “I’ve been there.”
Selma cut in. “Sam? I’ve already chartered your plane. It will be waiting for you at Taraz Airport at noon today. It’s shockingly expensive, but it will take you to Rome, where we’ll be waiting for you. We’ll be staying at the Saint Regis Grand Hotel.”
Remi said, “We’ll try to manage it in our busy social schedule. Good-bye, Selma. See you there.”
Nurin pulled up in front of the hotel and let them off and then drove on to the car lot behind the building. Sam and Remi went up to their room. They opened it and stood still in the doorway, looking in.
The room had been thoroughly searched. The mattress and springs were leaning against the wall, all of the drawers from the dressers were stacked in two neat piles, the chairs had been overturned so someone could look beneath them. The cushions were all unzipped. The towels that had been piled neatly in the linen cabinet were draped over the shower curtain. The Bokhara rug had been rolled up.
Remi said, “The expression
“They’re pros. They were quiet so the hotel guests and employees wouldn’t hear anything.”
“What do we do about it?”
Sam said, “Nurin.” He stepped back toward the door.
“Oh, no.”
“Bring the laptop and leave everything else.”
They closed the door and hurried down to Nurin’s room. They knocked, but there was no response. They ran outside and around to the back of the building. There was Nurin, backed up against his car. Two of the men they had recognized from Poliakoff’s estate were with him. One of them held a gun on him, while the other punched him. Nurin was bent over, unable to do anything but use his arms to try to protect his vital organs.
Sam and Remi came closer and closer, moving quietly and hoping the sound of Nurin’s groans would cover their footsteps. At home, he and she had trained together for years and practiced for every unpleasant situation they could think of. They both knew that the only one to fear was the man with the gun and that both of them should attack him at once.
As soon as she was close enough, Remi took two running steps and leapt. She had the laptop computer raised above her head with both hands, tilting it so the thin edge would come down on the back of the gunman’s head.
In the last half second, the man heard or felt the Fargos’ presence. He half turned in time to have the computer hammered against his head right at the eyebrow. Remi’s trajectory brought the computer downward from there to break his nose while its flat side obscured his vision for an instant.
As the man rocked backward, Sam’s powerful punch to his midsection broke two ribs and bent him over. Sam grasped the man’s gun hand and wrist, spun him and twisted his arm behind him, and ran him face-first into the car as he wrenched the gun out of his hand.
The man who had been punching Nurin raised his hands and stepped backward, but Nurin used his feet to push off from the car and drive his head into the man’s solar plexus like a linebacker and run him into the side of the building. The man’s injuries could not be determined, but he lay on the blacktop, clutching his thorax and shallowly gasping for air. Nurin’s foot delivered a soccer kick to his face.
Sam quickly dodged in front of Nurin and pushed him away from the man, shaking his head. “No, Nurin. Please. We don’t want to kill anybody.” Sam’s soothing tone restrained Nurin and seemed to bring him back to his usual calm. He nodded and leaned back against his car, touched his mouth, and looked at the blood on his hand.
Sam pointed at the two men, then held up his hands as though the wrists were tied. Nurin opened the trunk of his car and pulled out a length of nylon rope. Sam hog-tied the two men, then used a length of electrical tape from the trunk to secure some rags in their mouths for gags. Then he opened the driver’s door and pushed Nurin toward it. “We’ve got to go now. Please, drive us.” He pretended to be steering a car.
Nurin got in and started the car, then looked at them, half dazed from the beating and not sure he understood what Sam wanted. As he started out of the lot, Remi opened the laptop computer.
“Amazing how tough these things are,” she muttered as she typed the word
After that, he drove with speed and confidence, heading toward Taraz Airport, beyond the southwest edge of the city. Nearly all of the traffic was heading in, bringing workers and merchants and country people into the busy city as the day began.
As Nurin drove, Remi typed some more. She brought up a map of southern Kazakhstan, then adjusted the screen so it showed the route from Taraz to Almaty. When Nurin reached the airport, she held it up so he could see it. She pointed at Nurin and then the map and said, “Go home to Almaty, Nurin.” Then she pointed at herself and then Sam and then at the airline terminal, and said, “We’re going away.” She used her hand to imitate an airplane taking off.
Sam took out all of the tenge from his wallet and his pockets, and then almost all of his American cash, handed it to Nurin, and then patted his shoulder. “Thank you, Nurin. You’re a brave man. Now go to Almaty before somebody finds the two Russians.” He held the computer and ran his finger from Taraz to Almaty.
He and Remi got out of the car, waved to Nurin, and stepped into the terminal. Remi stopped when Sam went to the ticket counter and went back to look out the door. Nurin was pulling his car away from the terminal. As he reached the turn onto the highway, she saw him put on his sunglasses and turn to the east toward Almaty.
* * *
IN MIDAFTERNOON, Sergei Poliakoff got off his airplane at Taraz Airport. He hated leaving Nizhny Novgorod now that he was middle-aged and financially comfortable. He would not have minded going with Irena to Paris or Barcelona or Milan, but coming to this godforsaken place had taken him a whole day and night and, here he was, on a pile of sand and rock. All he had learned before he had left home was that Sam and Remi Fargo had been spotted in Taraz. He could hardly believe that they were simply continuing their hunt for the spoils of the Huns as though nothing serious had happened to them.
Poliakoff was aware that the Fargos often solicited help, or even backup, from various allies and authorities. But coming here was insane. Fargo had just finished rescuing his wife and forcing Poliakoff to burn his own house down. Had they never heard of revenge?
The police who had been digging around in the smoking ruin of Poliakoff’s house had thought the chemical content of the ash and debris in the basement to be unique in their archive. They had no idea what it contained, and Poliakoff hoped that they had not enough patience to analyze it. He had been born a Russian and so he knew that an “unknown chemical substance” recorded on a police report could always one day be made to look like just about anything—even something worse than the truth. So he had not allowed the substance to remain mysterious. He had said in his deposition that the mess was the residue of various medicinal compounds because he had been working in a chemistry lab in his basement to concoct lifesaving drugs.
The two jumping horses belonging to his daughters had been found safe in a farmer’s field seventeen miles from his house, so that part had worked out without trouble. But he hated that this couple, the cause of all his misery, seemed not to be afraid that they might fall into his hands a second time. They were wrong not to be afraid. He’d had four men here for days, watching for them. He also had a group of oil drillers from Atyrau searching for the tomb of Attila’s father in the hills.
As he came into the baggage area, he saw two of his men waiting for him. One of them—the blond—had helped with the kidnapping of Remi Fargo, the last thing Poliakoff could recall that had been done right. As he approached, he said, “Tell me what’s going on now.”
“They were here,” said the blond man.
“They ‘were’ here? Where are they now?”
“They took off about two hours ago.”
“For where?”
“They filed a flight plan for Odessa.”
“Odessa?” he said. “That’s not their destination. That’s a refueling stop.” He reflexively looked up and away
