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“And where are the Fargos? Do they know where it is?”
“They were here in Szeged this afternoon, but they’ve had several hours to learn the next location and I’m sure they’ll be leaving as soon as possible.”
“Find out how they’re planning to get to Kazakhstan from Hungary and let me know immediately. Do you have photographs of them?”
“I have men watching the airports and train stations and men watching the Fargos. I’m sending you the photos right now.”
“Call me the minute you know their flight number and destination. Minutes and seconds will matter.” He hung up.
* * *
FROM THE TOP TOWERS of Sergei Poliakoff’s estate outside Nizhny Novgorod, he could see the Volga, and along its banks the lights of the city of more than a million people were like a galaxy of stars miles away. The city was huge and modern and had long been a center of aerospace research, but here in the calm and quiet of his estate it could easily have been the 1850s. When he sat in the gardens, he could listen to the winds and hear no interruption but for the calls of birds that had come to eat from his currant bushes.
Outside, an American-made Hummer with armored door panels waited with two of Poliakoff’s bodyguards inside. Next came the family’s big black Mercedes with tinted windows and then the follow-up, a white Cadillac Escalade. His wife, Irena, and the children went past the Mercedes and entered the Escalade. If any of Poliakoff’s detractors were to attempt to cause trouble, they would attack the armored Hummer with its guards or the elegant Mercedes that looked as though it held the family. The men in the front seat of the Escalade would drive on through.
Sergei watched them leave, and then the front door closed with a resonant thud and the steel bolts snapped into place. Poliakoff was a good match for Irena. Her parents had been important intellectuals during the Communist era, and, unlike most of the others, they had never gone out of favor.
He picked up his cell phone and clicked his way through the pictures Bako had sent him of golden bangles and trinkets. Then he came to the pictures of the Fargos. The wife was not merely attractive, she was a genuine beauty, he thought. He knew, from his experience with Irena, that living with such a prize was a wonderful thing in daily life. In a fight, it wasn’t such a good thing at all. It gave a man something precious, but also made him fragile and vulnerable, making him love his wife so much he didn’t want to risk her in a fight.
Bako was essentially a merchant—greedy as a tick, but he didn’t love a fight. He thought of enemies as competitors. And Le Clerc, at the bottom of his soul, was the same. Like Bako, he was capable of hiring a few ruthless men and keeping them around, but what he watched were the reports his accountants brought him. They were just dishonest business types, not tough men after real success. Poliakoff had lived in a harder world than the others. Only he seemed to see this situation clearly at a glance. The woman was the treasure.
FERIHEGY AIRPORT, BUDAPEST
SAM AND REMI WERE AT BUDAPEST AIRPORT, WALKING toward the boarding tunnel for their flight to Moscow.
“Astana is supposed to be all shiny and new,” said Remi. “That should be interesting. The whole place was rebuilt in the past fifteen years.”
“We’ll probably have to spend some time in the capital seeing the people who have authority over antiquities,” said Sam. “This time, I’d like to get them in on everything before we start digging.”
“Do you think Bako will beat us there?”
“I can’t predict,” said Sam. “At times, he seems to begin ahead of us. He’s already thinking about every site where Attila ever was and he picks the one he thinks fits. Other times, he seems to turn things over to people who don’t know what they’re doing.”
“We’re getting back in time to when Attila was young and to the part of Asia where the Huns came from.”
“We’ll see,” he said.
The flight from Ferihegy to Sheremetyevo Airport took just an hour and forty-five minutes. From there, the fastest available flight from Moscow to Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, would take eight hours and five minutes. As they taxied to the end of the runway, Remi gently put her hand on Sam’s as she always did until the plane had taken off. When the plane leveled, she took her hand off his and began to read the book about Kazakhstan she had bought.
They sat together in near silence for the remainder of the short flight. Since they couldn’t tell whether they were being watched by people Bako had placed on the plane, they communicated mostly by touch and whisper. When they got off the plane, they looked up at the electronic boards to find their flight to Astana.
They saw that their plane was expected to leave on time in three hours. They went to sit in a waiting area not far from their gate, and Sam took out his phone to look at a map of their route. After a few minutes of watching Sam, Remi said, “You seem a little jumpy. What’s up?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He watched a small group of men across the cavernous room, talking quietly among themselves. “I’ve noticed over the years that when you feel uneasy, there’s often a good reason.”
“That sounds a little too much like ESP,” she said.
“You know, I’m not a believer in things that don’t have causes. I just think that we’re picking up tiny clues in large numbers all the time, and, once in a while, they add up to trouble that you haven’t quite understood yet.”
“I can believe that. But here we are in an airport designed and built by . . . let’s say a very controlling government at the height of the Cold War. It’s practically a machine for keeping an eye on people. You’re probably just picking up on features of that design.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But please do me a favor and be just a little bit paranoid.”
“If it helps, I’ve been observant,” she said. “And I haven’t seen any suspicious-looking men. I’m off to the ladies’ room.”
Remi walked across the open floor to the concourse and went toward the sign with the international symbol of the little cookie-cutter lady in a dress. As she walked, she heard the sound of high heels on the hard floor and noticed that a couple other women were converging on the restroom behind her. She glanced subtly to each side as she went, reassuring herself, just a couple young women with carry-on bags. She pushed on the door to enter and saw two large, middle-aged women in uniforms and aprons in front of her. One was at the row of sinks, handing out towels. The other, with a mop stuck in a bucket on wheels, was moving closer to the door. As Remi stepped in, the mop woman let the next couple of women in and then pushed a sign on a plastic cone in front of the door and turned a knob to lock it. She went to work, mopping the floor.
Remi went into an empty stall. When she came out, things seemed to happen all at once. As she opened the door, the two uniformed women stepped to her from both sides. The mop woman threw her arms around Remi and held her in a crushing embrace and the other one reached between two of her hand towels, pulled out a hypodermic needle, and injected Remi in the arm.