The truck pulled up and alongside the road. Sam watched as the driver released the pressure from the airbrakes with a large hiss.
“Now what?” Ben asked.
“Just wait.”
It took less than ten minutes before the driver shut down the engine, climbed out of the cabin, and walked away in the direction of a local diner.
Sam smiled and said, “Shall we?”
“What?”
“Check into our hotel.”
Ben said, “Your friend ordered us a shipping container?”
“Among other things, yeah.”
“Won’t they notice if you break into it?”
“No. We’re not going to break into it. This one has an electronic keypad.”
Ben met his eye. “So we’re slumming it all the way to North Dakota.”
Sam said, “Sure. If that’s what you want to call it.”
He sauntered toward the truck, moving with the casual indifference of a man who was just trying to kill time. His shoulders relaxed but not slouched. His eyes drifting aimlessly at the scenery like he had nowhere better to be.
At the back of the truck he climbed onboard.
There was a single electronic keypad on the right-hand side. Sam entered the number Elise had given him.
The electronic locks released immediately.
He opened the heavy door until it was ajar just enough for he and Ben to slip through. Sam stepped in first. Ben followed a second later, pulling the steel door shut behind him.
“I can’t see a thing,” Ben complained.
Sam said, “Hang on. There should be a light switch somewhere around here.”
He fumbled with a switchboard on his left, and found the one that activated the light.
The entire shipping container lit up inside.
“Holy shit!” Ben said, as his eyes raked the inside of their new abode.
Sam grinned. Despite its exterior appearance, the inside had the layout of a Manhattan apartment with high end furniture and fixtures, complete with a painting of a beach. Sam flicked another switch and two digital windows revealed the outside world on either side of the shipping container. The device worked by projecting a digital image of the outside, making the steel wall appear to disappear.
Ben asked, “What is this place?”
“It’s a self-contained one-bedroom apartment. A company in Baltimore produces and delivers them anywhere in the world — at a price.”
“Elise must have worked magic to get it here so quickly.”
“That magic you’re referring to is most likely called cash and I have no doubt she paid a lot of it. She also went to the trouble of having them pack some cold weather clothes for us, food, and hopefully a smartphone.”
“Are we being trucked all the way?”
Sam opened the fridge and took out a bottle of soda and a ham and cheese subway sandwich. “No. This will be loaded on the freight train. Then it’s about forty hours until we reach Minot in North Dakota.”
Both men ate with the ravenous ferocity that the last forty-eight hours demanded.
When they were finished, Sam took off his boots, laid back onto the couch and reached a deep sleep within minutes.
Chapter Thirty-One
The Russian built Ka-226T helicopter flew across the stilled waters of the White Sea and into Onega Bay. Its coaxial main rotor system and absent tail rotor produced a whisper quiet drone as it whirred by the coast, revealing their first glimpse at the Solovetsky Islands.
Genevieve banked the helicopter to the south, skirting the coast of the largest of the seven islands. Her eyes followed the coastal landscape, before fixing on a building. Built on the banks of Prosperity Bay, was the Solovetsky monastery, with its green and red tiled roofs and series of parapets. The fortified monastery was surrounded by massive walls with a height of thirty-three feet and a thickness of twelve. The walls incorporated seven gates and eight towers, made mainly of huge boulders up to fifteen feet in length. Inside, there were a series of religious buildings, all with interconnected roofs and arched passages.
She recalled that the monastery had been founded in 1436, but some said the place had been occupied by monks for centuries beforehand — having held a mysterious and ancient religious value that remained hidden to this day. It was one of the largest Christian citadels in northern Russia before it was converted into a Soviet prison and labor camp in 1926–39, and served as a prototype for the camps of the Gulag system.
It was the very place where her grandfather had risen to notoriety as one of the toughest prisoners, respected and feared by inmates and guards alike, eventually becoming dubbed the “Master of Slaves,” before his release in 1953. His son, her father, having developed the same natural instinct for ruthless survival had gone on to set up one of the most feared and dangerous mafias within Russia. As an only child, Genevieve had grown up under her father’s protection and instruction, where her mixture of beauty and deadly skills had eventually led her to a life as an enforcer for the mafia — a deadly assassin.
That was until ten years ago, when her father killed her lover and she’d decided to leave the family business — a sin within the family, punishable by death.
As a consequence, she took on a new name and persona, finding employment with Sam Reilly on board the Maria Helena.
Genevieve blinked, returning to the present.
Along the shore of the bay, a small amphibious seaplane was being tied up to a jetty. She recognized the aircraft as a Beriev Be-103 Bekas, constructed by the Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aircraft Production Association in Russia. It was designed for autonomous operation in the unmarked areas of Russia's far north and Siberia, the Be-103 was designed for short-haul routes in regions that have rivers, lakes and streams, but are otherwise inaccessible.
It had been years since she’d seen one.
A team of several men were loading some equipment from the seaplane onto an inflatable Zodiac. She wondered what they could possibly be delivering to the monastery.
She brought the helicopter back to straight and level, revealing her first glimpse of the Bolshoi Zayatsky Island.
Genevieve slowed the helicopter, before making a gentle bank to the right, circling round the island. It had been more than a decade since she’d flown the unique Ka-226T helicopter. It used twin main rotor blades which spun in opposing directions, allowing it to counteract torque and negate the need for a tail rotor blade.
It was a substantially forgiving aircraft.
Without a tail rotor the helicopter is safer on the ground and in the air, but it also makes it possible to use the Ka-226T in spaces with scant room for maneuver, as the fuselage does not extend beyond the area swept by the rotors.
Not that she would need that much room on the barren island.
She’d seen photos of the labyrinths but had never viewed them in person.
Her eyes swept the island, taking in some of the larger thirty-something labyrinths documented on its surface.
The labyrinths were constructed from local boulders set in rows on the ground in the form of spirals. Often there are two spirals set one into another, which has been likened to two serpents with their heads in the middle looking at each other. Intermittently along the spiral there are thicker or wider heaps of stones; the ends of the spirals are also wider. Each labyrinth has only one entrance, which also serves as the exit. The smallest labyrinth measures around eighteen feet in diameter, with the largest being seventy-five across.
“What do you think?” she asked.
Tom smiled. “Honestly, I don’t know what I was expecting.”
“You’re not impressed?”
“They look like a lot of stones piled together to make spiral shapes.”