“Okay.” Quinn said, relieved to change the subject. He was sure Beaudine’s family issues would come up again. Beaudine’s problems were far too complicated for a hit-and-run conversation. Old wounds had a way of opening up in times like this, especially if they had festered. On some level it hurt Quinn to see another human being carrying around that sort of pain, but he’d never been much good at providing more than a listening ear — surely one of the many reasons his wife had given him the boot.
They were both quiet for a time while Quinn tried to think of something to say. He used the tip of the Leatherman to throw near perfect surgeon’s knots with surprising dexterity considering how long it had been since he’d sutured a comrade at arms. It took a certain kind of detachment to cause pain to a friend in order to help them. Detachment — now there was something he was good at.
“It looks like Lovita’s plane was sabotaged,” he said at length. “Someone crimped one of the oil lines.”
“Had to be that big Russian bastard who came in last,” Beaudine said. “Glad you clobbered him with the fire poker. I’m surprised her instruments didn’t tell her anything.”
Quinn used a small pair of scissors from the trauma kit to cut the monofilament after he completed each suture. The longer he worked, the more he came to realize this was going to require more stitches than he’d originally hoped. He kept up his pace without mentioning it, thinking it better to finish the most painful part of this gruesome business as quickly as possible.
“Lovita’s a great pilot,” he said. “But the saboteur was tricky. She would have thought we had oil pressure when she did her run-up before takeoff, but with no way to circulate, the engine overheated and eventually blew. We’re lucky we didn’t burst into a ball of flames.”
Firelight reflected off Beaudine’s face, but her eyes remained closed. Quinn of all people knew the tremendous amount of trust it took for someone in her line of work to close her eyes and let a near stranger get near her with a sharp metal object.
She gave a small shake of her head, barely moving at all. He wouldn’t have even noticed it had she not been nestled against his thighs. “Doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Why sabotage the plane if they planned to kill us all anyway before we got in it to fly away?”
“Good point,” Quinn said. “But killers can’t afford to have any loose ends. They couldn’t account for every guest. The big guy who hit Lovita was outside taking care of the oil line before he came in and saw what was going on. Half the people in Alaska have some sort of pilot’s license. Say those guests who happened to be out fishing turned out to know how to fly — or even Volodin for all we know. The sabotage would have eventually taken care of them even if they were able to slip by the Russians. Burning the plane would have thrown up a fireball that risked drawing a passing aircraft to the lodge.”
“I guess I can buy that,” Beaudine said.
Quinn’s needle pierced a piece of inflamed skin, and she gave a real flinch for the first time since he’d started the process. A tiny tear formed in the corner of her good eye. “Women cry from tension, you know,” she said, staring at the sky. “Not because we’re weak.”
“So my mother, ex-wife, seven-year-old daughter, and girlfriend tell me,” Quinn said, smiling and thinking of the four women.
“How much longer?”
“We’re not quite half-way there,” he said.
Beaudine took a series of long cleansing breaths, like she was going into labor, and settled in again. “All righty then,” she said. “What say you teach me how you tell the time with the stars like you did.”
“I can do that…” Quinn resumed his stitching as he spoke, using low, even tones. “Big dipper rotates counterclockwise around the North Star like an hour hand on a twenty-four hour clock. Midnight is at that top, with one, two, three, and so on running around the left side of the circle.”
“Counterclockwise.” Beaudine said, eyes closed, as if repeating the line from a bedtime story.
“Right,” Quinn said, snipping the ends of another surgeon’s knot. “You draw a line from the North Star through the two pointer stars on the cup of the dipper. That line points to the correct time on the circle March sixth of every year.”
“Do what?” Beaudine stared at him, seemingly oblivious now to the pain from the cutting needle. “What happens if you want to know what time it is on the other three hundred sixty-four days of the year?”
“Ahh,” Quinn said, tying another knot. “You can do that, too. All it takes is a little math—”
“I’m gonna stop you right there, mister,” Beaudine said. “Khaki’s brain doesn’t respond so well to mathematical things.”
“Funny,” he said. “I’ll bet you do math every day and don’t even think about it.”
“Not this gal, sweetheart,” she said. “Me and math, we got us an understanding. It leaves me alone, and I leave it alone. There’s a reason I went to law school instead of becoming an engineer.”
“No worries then,” Quinn said. He smiled as he snipped the line on the twelfth and what he hoped would be the final suture. “We’re not likely to use too much math on the rest of the trip.”
Quinn returned the needle to the paper envelope and finished off the wound on either end of the stitches with butterfly bandages and superglue. He covered the entire length of the wound with a thick line of antibiotic ointment and then taped on a gauze bandage before patting her gently on the shoulder.
“What?” she whispered, eyes closed, sounding sleepy.
“You can get up,” Quinn said. “We’re all done here.”
“Dammit,” she said, still not moving. “I should have had you teach me the math.”
Quinn looked at his watch, too tired to bother with the stars. “Less than two hours until sunrise,” he said. “Time to start walking if we want to catch Volodin alive.”
Beaudine sat up, running a hand down the front of her jacket to compose herself. “You sure it’s safe to hike out there in the dark with all the wolves and bears and et cetera?”
Quinn knelt by the tarp, cataloging their gear in his mind as he divided it between their two packs.
“I’m not worried about wolves or bears,” he said. “It’s the et cetera that will kill us.”
Chapter 35
The hardy, weather-bitten souls who lived in Siberia were fond of saying that there was no road, only a direction. To Feliks Zolner, there was no direction, only pursuit — whichever way it took him.
He woke well before dawn, having slept the deep and dreamless sleep known only to men who possessed no conscience. Zolner and his men had left only the fool, Igoshin, and the pitiful couple who owned the place alive. They had killed the fishermen and young pilot quickly and without fanfare. Zolner had chosen the largest suite on the top floor. The room the Hendersons reserved for special guests, it boasted a king-size bed with an enormous down comforter and enough feather pillows to smother a horse. His profession made sodden sleeping bags the norm during a chase, when he was fortunate enough to have a bag or sleep.
A hunter at heart, Zolner lived a life of purposeful stoicism. He relished the small, relative comforts of a leaky shelter during a downpour or a warm parka against the teeth of a blizzard. Clean, Egyptian cotton sheets were a seldom-seen luxury, and he was happier that way. In truth, the softness of the lodge ran contrary to Zolner’s nature. A life of ease rendered people lazy, careless, and prone to mistakes. Extravagance made one soft, and to be soft was to be dead. Hardship sharpened the intellect and the body like grit polished a stone. His mother had been the best hunter he’d ever seen, and as far as he knew, she’d never eaten anything richer than wild cherry jam. He was certain the poor woman had never owned more than two pairs of socks at any given time.