Yuri smiled, walked over to the chest, opened it, and grabbed the first couple of notebooks neatly stacked inside the box. Shaking his head, Yuri said, “Mister Tokarev, there are more than two dozen books and file folders in here. We could be here a while.”
“Well then, we had best get started,” replied Tokarev. “Bring what you have and look for anything that is dated 1969 or is related to the Luna 15 mission.”
Yuri put what he had on the table in front of Tokarev. Mumbling to himself, he dragged his chair over and began to sort through the chest.
“Well, I don’t mind telling you that I feel like a bit of a fifth wheel here,” said Sam to Jen.
“So do I,” replied Jen. “There’s not a lot we can do until Tokarev finds what he’s looking for.”
“Well, I didn’t fly all the way to Russia to sit here and do nothing,” announced Cardinal. “I’m going outside to shovel the walk for Pasha. After that, I’m going to grab an axe and cut up some wood for the stove.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” added Sam. “I think I’ll join you.”
A minute later, all bundled up, Sam and Cardinal stepped back outside. A light snow had begun to fall.
Jen took a sip of her tea, sat back in her chair, and watched as Tokarev skimmed through his late friend’s notes. After a few minutes, she decided that she had best give Fahimah a call. Jen dug out her iPhone and scrunched up her face when she saw that there was no cell reception.
“Pretty lady, that won’t work out here,” said Yuri. “This is the countryside. If the world ended tomorrow, it would take days for anyone around here to find out.”
“Wonderful,” muttered Jen. She slipped her phone back in her pocket, and then, trying to sound optimistic, she looked over at Tokarev and asked, “Have you found anything interesting?”
“My dear, I had no idea how much information my old friend managed to take from his office. This could take days. I have to go through these notes line by line. I don’t want to miss something by being too hasty,” replied Tokarev.
“If we have to stay, is there a hotel nearby that we could use?” asked Jen.
Tokarev shook his head. “The nearest hotel is over sixty kilometers away.”
Outside, the snow began to fall more heavily by the minute. Cardinal cursed the weather as he watched the path he had just cleared slowly begin to fill up with fresh snow. He was about to turn and join Sam behind the house cutting wood, when something caught his eye. He raised a hand to block the falling snow and looked over at a car parked on the road. He hadn’t noticed it when he first came out; however, it was sitting there with its engine running. His instincts told him to be suspicious.
“Damn,” said Cardinal to himself, when he realized that there was a man in the car, observing the cottage through a set of binoculars.
He stuck his shovel in a snowbank, walked over to Yuri’s minivan, opened the trunk, and pulled out a heavy canvas bag. Quickly unzipping the bag, Cardinal grinned when he found what he was looking for. Using the car for cover, Cardinal dropped to one knee and brought up the Dragunov sniper rifle to his shoulder. Through the weapon’s optical sight, Cardinal could clearly see two men sitting in the car watching the cottage. Both men were smoking and taking turns with the binoculars.
Cardinal lowered the rifle and dug around in the canvas bag for a loaded magazine. He found one, set it on the rifle, and smoothly pulled back on the charging lever, loading a round into the chamber. With his thumb, he made sure the safety was on. A second later, Cardinal brought up his weapon and looked back towards the car. He smiled when he saw one of the men smash his cell phone down on the dash and begin to berate his partner for some transgression. With the men still yelling at one another, the car pulled away and quickly disappeared from sight in the falling snow. Cardinal stood up from behind the minivan. He knew the men would be back.
He had been so focussed on the car that he didn’t hear Sam walk up beside him. “I hope that you’re not going deer hunting without a licence,” said Sam dryly. “This may be the Russian countryside, but I bet they have laws out here, too.”
“I saw a car on the road. It’s gone now, but there were two men it and they were watching the cottage.”
“Are you sure? Perhaps they were lost and pulled over to check a map.”
Cardinal shook his head. “They had binoculars with them. I saw them checking out the cottage.”
“Damn. That can only mean one of two things. Either some of Yuri’s pals are looking for him or someone else is looking for us.”
“Looks that way.”
“What do you want to do?” asked Sam as she grabbed a 9mm pistol and loaded a magazine into it.
“Staying out here isn’t an option. I say we load everyone up in the minivan and hightail it back to Saint Petersburg before our friends come back.”
“Sounds good to me. What about Pasha? What if he doesn’t want to leave his home?”
“I don’t know. If he stays, one thing is for sure: he won’t be alive in the morning,” replied Cardinal, grasping his rifle tight in his hands.
Sam dashed back inside the house while Cardinal stayed outside and kept watch. She quickly passed on what had happened outside. Yuri translated for Pasha. With an angry look on his face, Pasha walked over to his telephone and tried to call the police, only to find that the police officer on the other end of the line sounded three sheets to the wind.
Three minutes later, with everyone jammed into the minivan, Yuri hurriedly backed the automobile out onto the road. He spun the minivan’s wheel in his hands as he turned the vehicle in the direction of the main highway heading back to Saint Petersburg.
Cardinal sat up front. He’d traded his sniper rifle for a compact AKS-74 carbine. He looked over at the passenger-side, rearview mirror and tried to see if they were being followed. With the snow coming down, it was hard to see anything that was not right behind them. By the time he spotted them, he knew it would be too late.
20
The gold-and-white, VIP helicopter slowly descended from the azure-blue sky, like a hawk coming in to land. Below, resting on the smooth, glass-like surface of the Mediterranean was the superyacht Oceanus. Built in Greece for Dimitri Kazan, a billionaire whose family owned and operated almost half the world’s supertankers, the Oceanus was the most expensive private yacht in the world. At over one hundred and seventy meters in length, the ship had two helipads, one fore and one aft. With nine decks and three swimming pools, the Oceanus could comfortably host twenty guests in the most opulent rooms imaginable. Sixty men and officers worked aboard the vessel, keeping it running in top shape. The ship’s chef, lured away from a high-end Paris restaurant to cook meals for the vessel’s many visitors, was reputed to make in excess of one million dollars a year.
Smoothly landing on the aft helipad, the pilot quickly turned off the helicopter’s engines. The instant the blades stopped, a blue-uniformed sailor ran over and opened the passenger-side door.
David Houston climbed out of the air-conditioned helicopter and felt the warm air coming off the sea. He looked around and smiled when he saw Dimitri Kazan standing on an oval-shaped deck just above the landing pad.
Kazan was dressed in a cream-colored shirt and pants. With a drink in his hand, he looked like a man who didn’t have a care in the world.
“Sir, if you’ll follow me,” the sailor said to Houston.
With a nod of his head, Houston followed the young man off the helipad and out onto the ship’s wooden floor. Houston had dressed for the occasion, with his favorite pair of snakeskin cowboy boots, a large, brass belt buckle, and a new, white Stetson hat. Houston was playing up the fact that he, unlike any of the other guests already on board the Oceanus, came from Texas.