No. He simply didn’t have the strength to run anymore. Demyan decided to face his consequences and be damned.
He stepped forward toward his home.
The man’s cold, hard eyes fixed on his. “Would you be Demyan Yezhov?”
It was a relief to give in and stop running. “Yes, sir.”
“I’m sorry to tell you this, Mr. Yezhov, but there was an accident at the Yakutsk diamond mine today. Your father was down below at the time. He didn’t make it to the surface. I’m really sorry.”
It took Demyan a moment to contemplate the news. His father was dead. He was now entirely on his own in the world. A week ago, his family consisted of a proud and violent father, a younger brother who often had a right to hate him, and a mother who he hated for not getting them out of their wretched world. It wasn’t a lot, but it was his family, and now he’d lost them all.
He knew he should have felt nothing but grief and loneliness, but as the words sunk in, he felt a different emotion rise vigorously to the surface. There should have been guilt, too — why did he survive when his entire family didn’t? — but there wasn’t.
Instead, he felt relief. Now he didn’t have to face his father and tell him that Ilya had drowned and there was nothing he could do to help him. With time he would feel remorse, but for now, all he could feel was the rush of survival.
Demyan looked at the stranger’s face. “Do you want to come in for a tea?”
“Sure,” the stranger acknowledged.
Demyan lit the oil heater and poured a glass of Russki chai — AKA, straight vodka.
The stranger accepted the glass and said, “To your father.”
Demyan looked at his glass. “To my father.”
And both men drank the entire contents of the glass in one gulp.
“I’m so very sorry. It was a terrible accident. But your father did work down the mines.”
Demyan nodded. “I know. It was always dangerous.”
The stranger held out his hand. “My name’s Leo Botkin.”
Demyan took it. “My father’s mentioned you before. You own the mine, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing here, Mr. Botkin?”
“I knew your father well.” Botkin shrugged, as though he personally handled the visits to all the families of his mine when someone died. “He was a good man. Hard, but fair. He did a lot of good for the company. He will be missed.”
“Thank you,” Demyan said, and he meant it. “It’s more than I expected, and I’m sure my father would have appreciated it.”
“There’s another reason I wanted to come in person, too.”
“Yes?”
“Your father told me of your recent loss of your mother. He was a conscientious man, and has been paying into a company insurance fund for years. It’s not a lot but it should help you and your brother out, until you’re old enough to find jobs. I wanted to deliver it to you, personally.”
“My father left money for my brother and I?” Demyan asked, without admitting that he’d lost his brother today, too.
“Yes.” Botkin handed him a receipt. “This has been deposited into the Yakutsk branch of the Bank of Russia, under your name. You’re to use it wisely to better the lives of you and your brother. If your family needs anything else, I have left you with a contact number for me, personally.”
“That’s very kind of you, sir.”
Demyan unfolded the receipt. There in front of him was the deposit receipt to an account in his name, for five million rubles — the equivalent of a hundred thousand U.S. dollars.
He looked at Botkin. “Is this for real?”
“Yes. Your father worked hard to ensure that you and your brother would have a good life.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. It was simply an insurance policy your father took out on your behalf. Many of my workers do the same.”
Demyan smiled at the lie. No one working in the Yakutsk diamond mine could afford to take out such an extravagant policy. He wondered what his father could possibly have been involved in to provide so much money. “All the same, I must thank you for coming all this way to deliver it.”
“You’re welcome. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No.”
“All right. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Demyan watched as Leo Botkin, the bearer of his great fortune and misfortune, left. He looked at the sorry log hut that a week earlier was considered the home of all four members of his family. Now he was all that was left. Well, I’m not going to die here. He packed what few possessions he had into a small rucksack.
When the goods truck came the next morning, he hitched a ride to Yakutsk and from there a flight to Moscow.
His mind was sharp and he was already stronger than most adults. He was now rich. He would survive, and he would make something of his life — someone in his family needed to get out of Oymyakon.
He would leave and never think about the family he’d lost, or his village again.
Chapter One
The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk banked hard as it rounded one of the fortress-like giant stones that rose from the dark green canopy of the jungle. It crossed the rocky tabletop mountain in almost absolute silence, before dipping its nose and descending the steep sandstone cliffs into the ancient valley below. The nose was soon brought to level, and its angular, radar-disrupting fuselage, heavily modified for stealth, skimmed the tips of the dense forest canopy as it raced by at sixty knots.
Inside, Dr. Billie Swan peered into the inky blackness. Her face displayed all the signs of a person who hadn’t slept much in the past 24 hours. Despite that, her intelligent hazel eyes appeared sharp and focused. The dark of the moonless night shrouded the most stunning and potentially deadly landscape as it shot past them. Hundreds of feet of sheer sandstone cliffs, topped with dense jungle foliage, and torrents of water dropping over the edges of the tabletops into pools below — all hid one of the world’s oldest and most mysterious cave systems, carved from quartz sandstone.
In the cockpit, wearing military grade night-vision goggles, were Sam Reilly and Tom Bower. Billie smiled at the image. The two men made an unlikely pair. Sam was shorter and stocky, while Tom was tall… and even broader in the shoulders. Both had been good friends since childhood. Both had spent time in the U.S. military as helicopter pilots, before Sam took over the salvage branch of his father’s shipping company, bringing Tom with him.
Her lips formed the crest of a half-smile as she watched Tom at the controls. It required constant minor and major adjustments of the three major controls. The collective pitch, cyclic pitch and the antitorque pedals moved in one constantly changing triangle. Despite the complex task, he looked more like someone out for an evening date in a sports car. In this case, the sports car was an experimental, nearly silent, stealth helicopter, worth millions of dollars, on loan from the U.S. Defense Department.
She had dated him for a while. If things had been different, she might have even married him. But things weren’t different. Like her grandfather before her, she had dedicated her life to finding the remnants of an ancient race, nicknamed the Master Builders. That life didn’t leave a lot of time for relationships. She could live with that. She’d always seen herself as her own master. Besides, Tom was now dating Genevieve, and he seemed happy.