Page 46

CHAPTER 46

D espite our best efforts, neither Tanke or Luke were accompanying us on our treasure hunt the next morning, depriving us of much needed muscle. Tanke was taking care of llamas and Luke was taking care of our prospective doctor. Priorities.

I too had a lot of other things I’d prefer doing, like taking a shower with Rose, eating breakfast with Rose, taking Maggs for a walk with Rose, pretty much anything with Rose, but we’d agreed it was time to push Dmitri to find out what he knew. Rose had her own plans to press some of her honey pots to find out who was talking to who. We knew the Ferrells were in trouble and leaking like the Titanic to Herc. They were also maintaining and launching the drone for Herc. I didn’t buy Lionel’s story to Rose that Dottie was doing it all. They were a couple. We needed to find out who else knew what so we could figure out how to respond to Herc’s supposed plan to retire to Rocky Start and what he was actually up to.

As Dmitri, Marley, and I traversed the same route as yesterday, I took the opportunity to engage in small talk, not my forte.

“If we find the treasure,” I said to Dmitri. “And we let you have it, what would you do with it?”

“First we recover,” Dmitri said as he turned us off onto the forest road.

I wasn’t letting him off that easily. “You can’t sell it. It’s too rare.”

Marley spoke up from the passenger seat. “You going to melt it down?”

Dmitri shook his head. “No civilized person would do that.”

“Then what?” I pressed.

“I will speak of it when the time comes,” Dmitri hedged.

“How did you send Betty a llama from the Gulag?” I asked, trying to find a hole in his story. And discover more about over three decades of being dark.

Dmitri laughed. “The Gulag is a strange place. No one wants to be there. Not even the guards. But the system always served a larger purpose beyond holding undesirables. The camps are usually positioned in places where there is wealth in the ground. And a smart prisoner can end up becoming a rich warden.”

“And you were a smart prisoner?”

“I became rich,” Dmitri acknowledged, “but I was still a prisoner, despite eventually running the camp.”

“Why and how did you leave?”

“When I received word that the fate of the treasure had been discovered, along with a possibility of recovery. It was the reason I had been sentenced to the Gulag in the first place.”

“I thought that was because you lost the SCIF.”

Dmitri waved that away. “The SCIF lost all importance when the Soviet Union fell. The treasure became more valuable as the years went past. Even more so now that the rest of it has disappeared.”

“That’s why you left,” I said, “not how.”

“When one is motivated enough, one can do things. Until recently, the intelligence said that Oz and Pike’s plane crashed at sea and all onboard were killed, with the treasure lost. My Gulag was much like Rocky Start. A number of former Soviet agents who were no longer active gravitated there over the years. No longer welcome in the new Russia. Although we were in Siberia, we made it a palatable place to live. And there was money to be made from the minerals beneath our feet. We had a symbiotic relationship with Moscow. It left us alone and we supplied raw materials to the motherland. But we were still prisoners.”

“And you dropped all that and raced here when you heard about the treasure,” I said. “Who let you out?”

“It’s complicated,” Dmitri said, and it was Marley’s turn to laugh.

“That’s what I tell Pike when I don’t want him to know something,” Marley said.

“You said your Gulag ‘was,’” I noted. “Don’t you plan on going back?”

“That depends,” Dmitri said. “I was able to make a deal with those who hold power to leave. I just have to deliver.”

Just great. Herc and Dmitri. In Rocky Start.

We reached the first gate and I swung it open and the snowcat passed through. Then the next two gates. Finally, we arrived at the blown down trees.

I picked up the chainsaw and got to work.