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“Looks like it. The question is, how familiar is Bondaruk with Khotyn’s history? If the tunnels exist, does he know about them, and has he sealed them up?”
“Better still: Has he followed in Abdank’s footsteps and put them to use?”
Sam checked his watch. “Well, we’ll know shortly.”
They had a contact to meet.
As it turned out, Selma’s research into Khotyn became something of a one-stop shopping trip, giving them not only a hint about how they might sneak into Khotyn, but also, hopefully, a road map of exactly how to go about it.
The archive curator at Taras Shevchenko University, a man named Petro Bohuslav, hated his work with a passion and he desperately wanted to move to Trieste, Italy, and open a bookstore. After some parrying, he’d made his pitch to Selma: For the right price he was willing to share a set of rare, as yet unarchived blueprints of Khotyn, as well as his personal knowledge of the grounds.
They found him in a mom-and-pop restaurant overlooking the Balaclava marina, a few miles down the coast. Night had fully fallen by the time they arrived and the interior of the café was dimly lit by hurricane lamps on each table. Soft kobza folk music played over loudspeakers hidden by hanging ferns. The air smelled of sausage and onions.
As they entered, a man in a corner booth lifted his head and studied them for five long seconds, then put his face back into his menu. A hostess in a bright red shirt and white blouse approached them. Sam smiled and nodded at the man and they made their way through the tables to the booth.
“Mr. Bohuslav?” Remi asked in English.
The man looked up. He had receding white hair and a bulbous drinker’s nose. He nodded. “I am Bohuslav. You are Mr. and Mrs. Jones?”
“That’s right.”
“Sit, please.” They did. “Something to eat? Drink?”
“No, thank you,” Remi said.
“You want into Khotyn, yes?”
“We didn’t say that,” Sam replied. “We’re writers doing a book on the Crimean War.”
“Yes, your assistant told me. Tough woman, that one.”
Remi smiled. “She is that.”
“So, this book you are writing—it is about the Siege of Sevastopol or the war?”
“Both.”
“You need special details. You are willing to pay?”
“Depends on the details,” Sam replied. “And how special they are.”
“First, tell me: You know who lives there now?”
Remi shrugged. “No, why?”
“A bad man bought Khotyn in the nineties. A criminal. His name is Bondaruk. He lives there now. Many guards.”
“Thanks for the information, but we’re not planning an invasion,” Sam lied. “Tell us about you. How do you know so much about the place? Not just from the blueprints, I hope.”
Bohuslav grinned, displaying a trio of silver front teeth. “No. More than that. You see, after the war, after we drove the Germans out, I was stationed there. I was a cook for the general. After that, in 1953, I moved to Kiev and worked at the university. Started as a janitor, then became research assistant in the history department. In 1969 the government decided to make Khotyn a museum, and they asked the university to head the project. I went with others from the department to do a survey. Spent a month there, mapping, taking photographs, exploring. . . . I have all my original notes and sketches and photos, you see.”
“Along with the blueprints?”
“Those, too.”
“The problem is,” Remi said, “that was forty years ago. A lot could have changed in that time. Who knows what the new owner has done since you were there.”
Bohuslav held up a finger in triumph. “Hah. You are wrong. This man, Bondaruk, last year he hired me to come to Khotyn and consult on restoration. He wanted help making it look more like Zaporozhian Cossack period. I spent two weeks there. Except for decoration, nothing has changed. I went almost anywhere I wanted, mostly without escort.”