Rostov leaned back in the chair, steepling his fingers in front of his face. This was interesting news. “And what of this girl’s mother?”
“Maria Merculief,” Lodygin said. “Deceased. Apparently she and Dr. Volodin were together for several years while he taught at the university in St. Petersburg.”
“What did she do?” Rostov asked. “The mother.”
“Ah,” Lodygin said. “That is where it gets interesting. We have no record of her doing anything. Everyone assumed both she and the girl were prostitutes.”
“But they were not?” Rostov said. “Get to the point, Captain!”
“According to Rosalina, both mother and daughter were involved with the Black Hundreds.” Slender hands still holding his bouncing knee, Lodygin gloated, triumphant in this revelation.
Rostov’s hands dropped to the desk again. This was news. The Chornaya Sotnya, or Black Hundreds, was an ultra-nationalist, anti-Semitic group from the early twentieth century. Extremely Russia-centric, they had denied the existence of the Ukraine and considered all borders of Russia prior to 1917 to be sacrosanct. In recent years a new Black Hundreds had emerged. These were as fiercely protective of all things Russian as the earlier group had been of the monarchy. They held fast to a fervent belief in a Novorossiya, free from the Zionist tyranny of the United States and the World Bank.
A fringe group to be sure, but even the Kremlin utilized their watch cry of a New Russia when it suited political aims.
“I want to talk to this Rosalina Lobov,” Rostov said.
Lodygin’s hands fell away from his knee. He uncrossed his legs. “That would be… I mean to say, that would not be advisable, Colonel.” He gave a smile capable of curdling milk, and then steered away from the subject.
“How did you get her talk to you so openly?” Rostov looked at him through narrow eyes.
Lodygin shrugged but said nothing.
“Is she in custody?” Rostov asked.
“Of a sort,” Lodygin said.
“Are you…” Rostov raised his hand, turning away. “I do not want to know.”
“I think that is best, Colonel,” Lodygin said. “Dear Rosalina did divulge to me that Kaija Merculief is quite the scientist herself, sometimes assisting her father with his work on the New Archangel.”
“Rosalina Lobov knows of the work on New Archangel?” This was too much.
Lodygin nodded. “I am afraid so. According to Rosalina, Kaija is brilliant, and has a photographic memory.” The captain inhaled through his nose, closing his eyes as he mulled over some delightfully nasty memory. “But I have a strong feeling the girl is holding something back.”
“Where is this Rosalina Lobov now, Captain? New Archangel is a state secret. She cannot be allowed to speak of the things she has heard.“
The smirk on Lodygin’s pursed lips slowly crawled across his face to form a tight smile. “You have my solemn word, Rosalina Lobov poses no future risk to this endeavor.”
Rostov resolved to shoot Lodygin in the face if the man ever so much as looked at his daughter. But still, there was a need for animals like him in moments such as this.
“I assume you will cover your tracks,” he said, feeling the urge to wash his hands in extremely hot water.
“Of course, Colonel,” Lodygin said.
Rostov drummed his fingers on the desk, his mind whirring with old problems and new possibilities. If Volodin’s daughter was a member of the Black Hundreds, she was certain to have contacts around the world, contacts who could help her deploy the New Archangel in Dallas and Los Angeles. Strategically focused, such a network could be useful to the Kremlin. As it stood now, they were a liability, likely to incite an American response that could level the Russian map.
“Volodin and his daughter must be stopped,” he said.
“My men will locate him,” Lodygin said. “I mean to say, you have my assurance of that.”
“No, Captain,” Rostov said. “I am in no mood to depend on your assurances. If your men ever do get around to contacting you, remind them that Zolner is already en route. If they value their lives, they should stay out of his way.”
The smile brightened on Lodygin’s lips at the mention of the name. “I have always admired Zolner’s work.”
“I do not doubt that,” Rostov said. In truth, the two men were both savages, though Zolner carried his savagery under the guise of a man’s man.
PART II
ACQUIRE
Now no one learns to kill while young.
This is very short-sighted.
Chapter 32
Feliks Zolner’s mother kissed him between the eyes — the only part of his skin left exposed to the freezing air. He caught the hint of black tea and wild cherry jam on her breath, felt the dab of moisture on the end of her nose. Even at the young age of nine, he knew she’d sacrificed, taking only a glass of tea and a scant spoonful of homemade jam while he ate the last of their stewed sweet cabbage and simple black bread.
She pulled the scarf up immediately after the kiss to cover her full lips, but Feliks could tell she was happy by the frosted outline of a smile on the cloth. Another drop of moisture formed on the tip of her nose, freezing immediately. She brushed it away with the back of her hand out of habit. Tucking his scarf into the collar of his wool coat to be certain his ears weren’t exposed, she patted the rifle in his hands.
“Wait here, lapushka,” she said.
Her presence gave him warmth against the incredible cold, but Feliks thought himself well beyond the age of childish names. They were too poor to have any animals that they could not eventually eat, so he had to fill the niche of family pet. Malvina Zolner assured him that no matter how old her son became, he would always be her lapushka, her “little paw.”
It would be dark soon, but Malvina made sure to place him so the sun was at his back. Orange light filtered through the white birch forest and cast a diffused glow across her wind-bitten face. Ice-blue eyes sparkled, and her button nose, which looked much like his but for her heavy crop of freckles, wrinkled, the way it did when she concentrated hard on a thought.
A hard winter had brought marauding wolves to the birch forest around the village. Malvina said the government in Moscow called them a super-pack, estimating there were more than three hundred animals. The powerful killing machines had slaughtered dozens of reindeer in three days time, gutting many of the horses the villagers kept for milk and meat while the poor animals stood helplessly in the drifted snow. Feliks had been at once horrified and mesmerized to watch how the wolves nipped and tore at their victims’ flesh, ripping away at the hams and belly until the animal lost enough blood it could no longer kick or run.
The shadow of a wolf loomed behind every tree around the village or along the snow-covered road. The blacksmith’s partially devoured body had been discovered in the alley behind his shop, but it was generally agreed that he had died from an over-indulgence of vodka, and the wolves had merely been the beneficiaries of his frozen carcass. No other human deaths had been attributed to this pack, but that would not hold. There were too many children and too many wolves.
Most of the able-bodied men — including Feliks’s father — had gone to fight the war in Afghanistan — leaving only those who were old or crippled — or crazy like Stas and Vladik Pervak to look after the village. The brothers lost nine ponies to the wolf pack and seemed to believe that as they had seen such a great loss, they should be in charge of wolf reprisal. Feliks did not like either of the men, who always drank too much to look after as many ponies as they had. They leered at him when he passed them in town, and often mumbled filthy comments about his mother. Even as a child he knew these men were nasty and vile.