“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean that I want you to trust me on the timing of things. If I say let’s run, we run. But if I don’t, I don’t want you running on your own. Okay?” Joey had always been impulsive, and he’d always been suspicious of authority. In his mind, Nicholas could see the boy bolting the instant that his hands were free, regardless of the likelihood of getting shot in the process. However this worked out, they would live together or they would die together. And if only one of them had to die, it would be Nicholas.
“I’ll try,” Josef said. “I promise that I’ll try.”
Nicholas heard the hedge loud and clear, and he admired it. Josef was far from a perfect kid — he got into too many fights, and he was incapable of keeping his mouth shut if someone pushed him too hard — but he was as scrupulously honest as a thirteen-year-old could be, and that was a great source of pride.
The van decelerated quickly, causing Nicholas to slide a few inches along the floor, and then it turned abruptly to the right, causing him to slide the other way.
“Whoa,” Josef said. “What the fuck—” He abruptly cut off his words.
Nicholas ignored the transgression. They were being kidnapped. Profanity was allowed.
After the turn was completed, the roadway became rougher. The bumps caused Nicholas to bounce on the floor, and the landings ignited jabs of pain through his body.
“Just hang on, Joey,” he said. “I think we’re going off-road.” He said that as if it were a good thing — or a neutral thing — when in fact, he couldn’t think of a single positive outcome from being delivered to an off-road location.
The Russians had a long history of bad things happening in the woods. Just ask the Romanov family.
As the bumps got more severe, the vehicle seemed to slow, then finally stopped.
“What’s happening?” Josef asked.
“Just try to stay calm,” Nicholas said. “I don’t know yet. Whatever it is, we can get through it.”
Just a blink later, he heard the sound of the back doors opening, and the accompanying blast of cold air.
“You two still alive?” someone said. The accent was comically thick.
“No thanks to you,” Nicholas said. The tough talk was for the benefit of his son. No boy wanted to hear his father snivel.
“Sorry about the rough ride,” the voice said. “The rest should be easier.”
“Where are you taking us?”
The question triggered laughter among whomever stood outside the vehicle.
“To La-La Land,” the captor said. “And I’m sorry to both of you for the bruise.”
Pain erupted in Nicholas’s thigh. By the time he realized they’d stuck him with a needle, he wasn’t there anymore.
It was nearly 3:00 A.M. when they all gathered in the War Room to look at the reconnaissance photos. “This comes from SkysEye,” Venice said. While not the very latest in imaging technology, it was every bit the equal of what Jonathan had used back in the day. With a little manipulation of the computer’s mouse, they could see the texture of the mortar between the bricks.
David was clearly impressed by what he saw. “Is this the kind of detailed view military commanders get when they launch a mission?”
“Depends on where the mission is,” Jonathan said. “Not all areas of the world are as well-viewed as the others.”
They all sat around the teak conference table in various postures of engagement and exhaustion, all of their chairs cheated toward the big screen at the end of the room.
Boxers said, “I’d give you an ‘ooh’ and an ‘ah’ too, if I didn’t know I had to get in and out of there.”
Saint Stephen’s Reformatory had clearly been modified and added to over the years. The twelve-foot exterior wall covered a rectangular footprint of about four acres. Those walls contained the prison complex itself, which consisted of four three-story buildings that themselves formed a square, with what Jonathan imagined to be an exercise yard in the middle. Another larger building extended perpendicularly from the middle of the northernmost annex of the complex.
Jonathan pointed to that larger building. “What is this?”
“Used to be the main cell block,” Venice said. “Held a couple hundred inmates. The roof there is made of stained glass. All the better to inspire the residents to lead better lives.
“The jail closed its doors as a jail in 1978. Until 1952, none of the side windows in the cell blocks had glass. In Canada. Lots of prisoners died of hypothermia in the early days, but then they started stacking people eight to ten in a cell, and the hypothermia deaths plummeted. Of course, then there was the disease problem.”
Irene looked confused. “How do you know this?”
“The Internet and I are very good friends,” Venice said.
Jonathan asked, “Did you contract for thermal imaging?”
“We did,” she said, and she started tapping the computer.
The image on the screen turned to various shades of black, gray, orange, and red. Jonathan used a laser pointer to trace the northern annex, where the thermal footprint was hottest. “This seems to be the most occupied building,” he said. “They’ve clearly got the heat on, and if you look carefully, you can see an occasional human form.”
The other buildings showed cold, except for a faint pink glow from the easternmost corner of the southernmost annex. “What’s that?” Irene asked, pointing.
“With the walls and floors as thick as they are, it’s hard to tell. My guess is that they’re firing up the furnace.”
“Which means they’re expecting guests,” Boxers said.
Irene nodded. “That’s consistent with what I got from the police in Vail. I had our Denver field office ask around, and they found someone who saw Nicholas Mishin and a boy — I’m assuming that’s his son — in the grocery store around six o’clock this evening. They then verified that the house had been broken into and that neither Nicholas nor Josef were there.”
Yelena had moved to the very front of her chair. “What else did they find?”
“I told them to stop looking,” Irene said. “I told them to seal the place up. Treating it as a crime scene right now will just grab attention we don’t want. I think we’re all comfortable that we’re on the right track. If we’re wrong, we’ll know soon enough, and then we’ll pull out all the stops for the investigation.”
“How the hell are we going to get in there, Dig?” Boxers wanted to know.
“One step at a time. What else do we know about this prison place?”
“I found some pictures of the inside,” Venice said. Fifteen seconds later, the screen blinked, and then displayed a terrible, tiny claustrophobic jail cell with stone walls and heavy plank flooring. A small arched window looked like a droopy eye, equal parts heavy bars and air.
“Oh my God,” Yelena breathed. “My poor baby.”
Jonathan felt a flash of pity, but then dismissed it. They were fast entering the phase where emotion posed nothing but liability.
“Wooden floors,” Jonathan observed aloud.
“Is that good?” Yelena asked.
“Neither good nor bad,” Jonathan said. “It just is.”
Venice clicked again, and they were looking at what appeared to be an interior hallway that ran the length of a cell block. The doors were all open in this photo, but they looked to be made of heavy timber, with only a single, round observation window that was maybe two inches in diameter.
“This is all great,” Boxers said. “But unless we know where within this complex the Mishins are being kept, it’s not going to do us much good.”
“I might have something for you there,” Irene said, glancing at her buzzing cell phone. She pressed a button and said, “This is Director Rivers, and you’re on speakerphone.”