Page 74 of Stars

I keep calling the Kremlin, Dr. Mendoza had said.None of my messages ever get through. My reports have disappeared. Why?

What was Ilya doing in Tomsk, talking to the daughter of a missing general?

Who had they pulled out of that grave in Uchami?

* * *

“So you foundthe best hotel in Tomsk, huh?” Ilya stomped out his cigarette at the doors of the Sputnik Hotel. He kicked the butt down the broken concrete and stormed into the cramped lobby, crossing to where Jack and Ethan waited at a wooden table left over from the Bolshevik Revolution.

Jack eyed the lobby: the claustrophobic space, the pink-and-peach curtains, the ancient wood furniture. The Sputnik Hotel was classic Soviet construction, a concrete tower rising in a sea of other concrete towers. Someone in Tomsk had decided to slap a coat of burgundy paint on it a decade or five ago. It was chipped now, peeling off the sides and the upper levels, and black mold coated the outside corners, bred from the mist and ever-present damp chill rolling off the Tom River and out of the Siberian wilderness.

“What are you doing here?” Ethan didn’t wait for Ilya to pull up a chair and take a seat at their table. He launched into his interrogation as Ilya was pulling off his coat.

Ilya’s wide eyes locked onto Ethan. “You do know this is Russia,da? You do knowyouare the ones who are out of place? I’ll ask the questions.”

Ethan’s cheeks flushed, a dusting of crimson.

“I looked you up. Seems there is no entry for a Jack Spiers or an Ethan Reichenbach.” Ilya pulled out his smashed pack of cigarettes and bit a fresh smoke out. He lit it and inhaled in one motion, pocketing the pack and lighter. “Just who is in my country,hmm?”

“We’re here under fake names,” Jack said softly.

“Obviously.” Ilya’s gaze rolled to Jack. His cheeks hollowed as he sucked in a long drag of smoke. “Why?”

Jack rested his foot on top of Ethan’s, a silent, subtle message to keep quiet, at least for now. “We were asked to investigate a possible outbreak by Dr. Penelope Mendoza of Borderless Doctors.”

“Outbreak?” Ilya reared back. “What outbreak?”

“Dr. Mendoza’s team in Sakha Republic,” Jack said. He waited. Ilya stared at him, frowning. “The ones who found the two dead Yakut villagers and the destroyed Yakut villages.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ilya blew an angry cloud of smoke to the side of Jack’s head. “What fucking dead Yakuts?”

Ethan and Jack shared a quick look. “You’ve never heard of this?”

“Not a fucking word.”

“Dr. Mendoza said all of her reports had been lost and that every time she’s tried to contact anyone in the Russian government—either in Sakha or in Moscow—she’s been stonewalled. Or hung up on. She thinks someone is purposely trying to bury what she and her team have found.”

“And what the fuck have they found?”

Jack explained it for Ilya, describing the two dead Yakut villagers bleeding out, their eyeballs torn from their faces and their insides liquefying and pouring out of their bodies every which way possible. The soup that their internal organs had become, the bloody mess and skin left behind on the dirt track.

The villages and the evidence of slaughter. Of villagers locked in yurts and huts and burned to death. And then, when Dr. Mendoza’s team returned, the same villages wiped from the earth, erased as if they never were.

“We have photos,” Jack finished. “And the doctors’ reports from Dr. Mendoza’s team.”

Ilya’s dark eyes flashed. “I want to see them,” he growled. “I want to see everything.”

Jack pulled a folder from his bag and slid it across the table. “It’s not pretty.”

“And you say she has received no help from Sakha?”

“No one is returning her calls.”

“And when she calls Moscow?”

“Disconnected.”

“The Kremlin?”