Yuri clenched his fingers more tightly together. ‘What happened to my son?’
Allayn hesitated and then sighed as though finally surrendering to his fate, whatever that might be.
‘During our retreat we saw two people leap from the top of the adjacent mountain and fight in freefall down into a gorge. Peruvian authorities recovered a body from the Urabamba River wearing clothes that we recognised as Vladimir’s. He had died after freefalling directly into the river and was killed on impact.’
Yuri stared vacantly into the middle distance and his knuckles cracked as he compressed them in silent fury.
‘What of the American, Warner?’
Allayn lifted his chin. ‘Warner was seen boarding an aircraft at Maria Reich airstrip later that morning, along with Lucy Morgan and the other members of their team.’
Yuri nodded slowly, as though he had been expecting that reply all along.
‘Was Vladimir successful in recovering the remains we sought from Macchu Picchu?’
Allayn appeared to wince.
‘No remains that I know of were recovered from the site, either by Vladimir, us, Morgan or the American troops. My men did not observe any materials or objects being carried by Lucy Morgan when they boarded the aircraft at the airstrip, so it would appear that none of us succeeded at all.’
Yuri ground his teeth in his weary jaw. ‘So it would appear.’
Allayn swallowed thickly. ‘I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr Polkov. Is there anything that I can do for you?’
For the first time, Yuri looked up into the thug’s eyes. ‘Yes. Yes, there is.’
‘Name it.’
Yuri reached into his jacket pocket and with one hand and produced a small, ornate silver pistol. ‘Hang onto this for me.’
Allayn reached out for the pistol, and Yuri aimed it at his chest and fired. The shot was deafeningly loud in the jet’s interior, and Allayn stared in shock at Yuri and then down at his own chest where a rapidly spreading bloodstain bloomed from within his fractured heart. Allayn gasped as his legs crumpled from beneath him and he slumped onto the walkway, his eyes staring lifelessly at Yuri’s shoes.
Yuri stared down without interest at the corpse as the Lear jet’s pilots hurried aft from the cockpit and came to an abrupt halt as they saw the dead man lying amid the pool of blood. Yuri looked up at them.
‘We have some extra trash to dispose of, gentlemen. See to it.’
The pilots looked at one another and then hurried away as Yuri leaned back in his seat and marvelled at the wondrous sky blossoming outside. His only son and heir was dead, murdered at the hands of Ethan Warner or one of his cronies. There was nobody now to inherit the vast fortune that he had built over the years, nobody to continue the family name, nobody with whom to share all he had achieved over his lifetime.
Nobody.
One of Vladimir’s other thugs, the man named Sergei, strode into the jet and hesitated as he saw the dead body. Yuri watched as the two pilots returned with a large canvass sack and began hauling the dead body into it, Sergei also watching in furtive silence. Yuri realized that one day he too would be dead and buried with nobody to remember him, nobody to raise a glass to his memory. No doubt, there would be many who would raise a glass to his death but Yuri cared not for their future joy, only his present revenge.
He waited until the pilots had dragged the corpse away and then he waved Sergei forward.
‘Sergei,’ he greeted him. ‘Vladimir is lost. There is no time for remorse or condolences. There is nothing that can be done. We must honour his memory the best way we know, by avenging his death. The Americans boarded their Catalina and disappeared. They could not yet have gone far.’
‘I have tracked their movements as you requested, Yuri,’ Sergei replied. ‘Their aircraft flew south, toward the Atacama Desert.’
Yuri fell silent for a long moment. The Atacama Desert, the driest region on Earth, was a desiccated wasteland of barren plains, soaring mountains and extinct volcanoes. But those unenviable qualities were not what interested Yuri the most.
In 1999, three Inca mummies had been discovered on Mount Llullaillaco in Argentina, high above the Atacama plains. One, a fifteen year-old girl, was one of the best preserved ancient mummies ever discovered. Yuri had travelled to Argentina’s High Mountain Archaeological Museum himself to personally inspect her remains. The girl has been so perfectly preserved that she had appeared to Yuri to be merely asleep, downy hairs still visible on her arms, lice still lodged in her thick, black hair.
The tomb had also contained a collection of gold, silver, shells, textiles and both pots for food and elaborate headdresses made from the feathers of exotic birds. CT scans had shown that her internal organs were in perfect condition: there was still blood in her heart, her brain was undamaged and when the blood vessels were thawed the blood that poured out of them was crimson. DNA samples had been taken and later matched to a man from a small village some one thousand miles away at the foot of Mount Ampato, making him a “living Inca” with a direct bloodline to the young girl sacrificed five centuries before.
If Lucy Morgan had found the location of an Inca sacrificial site that contained remains similar to those found at Paracus…
‘That’s it,’ he said to Sergei with clairvoyant conviction. ‘Track every possible known trajectory to the Atacama Range, search every database, find them and report to me as soon as you do. I want them alive when I find them, so that I can kill them myself.’
‘The Russians are on the run.’
Aaron Devlin nodded as before him Lieutenant Veer pointed to a map of Peru that was spread on a table before them. They had occupied an office in a municipal building on the airport’s north-west corner, and Aaron frowned as he scanned the map.
‘How many of them were there?’
‘We counted sixteen, of whom we killed at least eight. All of them were Russian or Eastern European, judging by their accents. Local authorities recently pulled the body of Vladimir Polkov out of the water down-river from Macchu Picchu — two of my team witnessed the recovery operation.’ Veer hesitated, and Aaron saw his jaw clench as he spoke. ‘I lost two men myself, sir. I want these bastards hung out to dry.’
‘Patience, lieutenant,’ Aaron cautioned. ‘Vengeance will cloud your judgement, and we’ve already let Morgan and Warner slip through our fingers enough times, agreed?’
‘Warner didn’t make it out, or at least he wasn’t with the rest of his team when we caught up with them,’ Veer said with grim satisfaction.
‘And the remains that Lucy Morgan sought?’
‘Nobody left the site with anything,’ the commander replied. ‘Morgan’s team made their way down the mountain among other tourists two hours after the attack. We were able to gain access to the ruins atop Huayana Picchu and it appears that a small tomb was excavated there, but if there was anything inside it was too large to carry concealed down the mountain.’
Aaron thought for a long moment.
‘Morgan’s path has been guided by Inca quipu, which can fit inside a pocket with ease,’ he pointed out. ‘She may have found another one in the tomb.’
‘That’s entirely possible, sir,’ Veer acknowledged.
‘Where are they now?’
‘They boarded a privately owned aircraft, a Catalina, which operated under an IFR flight plan filed for transit to Cerro Moreno International Airport, Argentina.’
‘Do we have units on the ground there?’
‘I was able to get two operatives into the city of Antofagasta at about the same time as their aircraft arrived. They picked up the trail but are having difficulty maintaining contact with Morgan’s team.’
‘How so?’ Aaron asked, straightening a little.
‘The team have hired two vehicles and a large supply of mountaineering equipment such as oxygen bottles, crampons, ice axes. They departed the city this morning to the south east. There’s not much out there and my men were not able to get close enough to the team to place GPS markers on their vehicles without being spotted. They’re essentially tracking them blind, and contact is getting sketchy even with their satellite phones. Wherever they’re headed, it’s pretty much the most remote location anywhere in the region.’
‘We’ll deploy immediately,’ Aaron ordered. ‘Morgan must have at least one play left to be travelling into such a hostile region. Have you been able to plot any potential destination?’
‘There’s nothing out there sir except high mountains, volcanoes and barren plains. Their presumed destination is the mountains of the Atacama Desert, but it will take them at least a day or two to travel that far.’
Aaron thought for a moment. ‘What of Yuri Polkov?’
‘His private jet is making for the same location, sir.’
Aaron nodded.
‘Prepare the men,’ he ordered. ‘We will follow Polkov, and in time he will lead us to Lucy Morgan and her team.’