Page 6

CHAPTER 6

T here wasn’t any point in hiding anymore. The Russian knew I was here. Ice cracked as I peeled myself off the frozen ground and stood, shaking off the snow, trying to regain circulation. “Who are you?” I had my pistol in my hand, although not pointed, and I kept my distance. Dawn was a smudge of gray behind the thick clouds to the east.

He looked me over and didn’t say anything.

“What about the second shooter?” I asked.

“He has shuffled off this mortal coil,” he said. “Why did you not shoot this one in the back when you had a chance?”

“I don’t shoot people in the back,” I said.

He scoffed. “I’m willing to wager that you have done that once or twice in your previous life, Max Reddy. Haven’t we all?”

I glanced over at the shooter. Most definitely dead. How? I had no idea. There’d been no shot, no contact between the snowshoer and him.

“What do you want?” I asked.

He smiled. “So, my frosty American friend. Where is the treasure?”

“The what?”

He indicated the surrounding terrain. “You are out here searching for the treasure, are you not?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” There had been rumors about a treasure that Oz Oswald had hidden back in the town I’d left a few weeks ago, but the idea that Ozzie would have stashed it on the Trail was a nonstarter.

He frowned. “I have come to you from Rocky Start, waiting for you to show me where the treasure is. And those two—” he pointed at the dead man with one of his poles, “they follow too, so then I am certain there is treasure. How can there be no treasure? Why else would someone be out walking in this? For what other reason would they be following?”

I had a feeling he and Rose would get along quite well. Also, he was dressed in the kind of outdoor gear marketed to the very rich. Warm and comfortable, he had a look that reeked of a lot of disposable income and being used to living in a cold environment. The fur appeared real and was probably mink, top of the line. Illegal in many parts of the world. But so was killing people, so the fur was probably pretty low on this guy’s list of worldly transgressions.

“I’m finishing a through-hike on the Appalachian Trail,” I said.

“A through-hike?”

“From the start point in Maine to the end in Georgia.”

“A hike?” He was bewildered.

“Yes. Walking.”

“You are Max Reddy?” the man asked.

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “From all reports Max Reddy is not a fool. Only a fool would be out here for no reason. Thus, you are in search of the treasure. It is logical.”

I could see Rose and him nodding to each other about the fool. Who the hell was this guy? And then it came to me: a Russian talking about treasure. He was the former KGB officer that Oz and Pike had stolen the money and the microfilm from. And, it appears, treasure.

“Alexei Dmitri?”

He nodded. “Very good. You have heard of me?” He sounded proud.

“Just that Oz and Pike stole a SCIF from you a long time ago.” A SCIF is a secure compartmented intelligence facility: a thing spies use to communicate, full of all sorts of decoded messages. In this case, “a long time ago” was over three decades on the other side of the world as the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan.

“Circumstances favored them at the moment,” Dmitri said.

I shook my head. “There is no treasure. That was just a rumor.”

He held up a hand. “Ah, my friend. You are wrong. There most certainly is treasure. I know that for certain. Because I had it many years ago in Afghanistan. And then the great and cunning—but now very deceased—Oz took it from me.”

At this point I was sure I had the complete attention of the entity controlling my life as it took a turn into the even more bizarre.

“I have no idea where any treasure is. We didn’t find any treasure in Rocky Start. And believe me, we searched the building thoroughly.” That was the building Ozzie had left Rose, stashed with weird junk Oz had picked up for his shop, along with several stashes of fifty thousand bucks; so far we’d found five of them. Not bad, but not treasure.

He stared at me, evaluating. “You are just walking to”—he waved vaguely—“some place, in winter, because?”

“To finish the Appalachian Trail.”

“We had men like you in the Gulag,” Dmitri said. “We called them crazy. Eventually, they wandered out into the tundra and we never saw them again.”

I decided to change the subject from my sanity. “Who are they?” I indicated the body.

“That is a good question,” Dmitri said. “I have my suspicions.” He stomped over to the corpse. I joined him.

“How’d you kill them?” I asked.

“Poison spray in the tips of my poles,” Dmitri said as he knelt next to the man. “Old-school mixture. Instant death. None of this slow, lingering poison the FSB uses these days. There is no honor in causing such pain. Unless, of course, one wants to hold out the hope of an antidote in exchange for answers. Or install fear of such a death.”

That made sense. Poison was an old KGB—and now FSB—staple.

Dmitri peeled off the man’s overwhite jacket. Went through his pockets. Then pulled off the man’s shirt. There were tattoos scrolled on the man’s arm.

“He was a gangster,” Dmitri said. “Russian gangster. They are many now in the United States. But here,” he pointed at a tattoo of a small circle with an aiming point in the center on the inside of the man’s left elbow. “That is Cauldron mark.” Dmitri spit. “Mercenary.”

The Cauldron was the late Serena Stafford’s outfit. We knew she used Russian mercenaries because Rose had shot one in the kitchen door of Oddities. That seemed like a lifetime ago. A good time when I wasn’t freezing. I hadn’t heard that they were using tattoos to mark themselves, but I wasn’t current on a lot of things.

“They were after revenge,” I said, “not treasure. We took down Serena and gave her body to—” I paused, not willing to reveal much, but Dmitri filled in the blank.

“To Herc.”

“Yeah.” Of course, he knew of Herc. And of course, Herc had told me the new boss of the Cauldron had no interest in revenge. But Herc was known to lie. And kill. Rose had wounded Serena, but he’d injected her with something lethal while she was down, then took the body for proof of death. That was Herc: silent, deadly, and always with a plan he didn’t share.

“And you killed Norman, the father of her son, whom she thought was Ozzie’s.” Dmitri chuckled. “Oz would have been mortified that she believed she’d had a son by him. One look at Junior and you know he shares none of Oz’s talents. Norman was third-rate even at his best.”

So Dmitri was pretty much up to speed on events in Rocky Start. “Yeah. So, Junior probably sent them.”

Dmitri looked at me and shook his head, disappointed. “If you did not know about the treasure, you know very little.”

“What treasure?”

“Please, do not insult me. We are professionals.”

“I wasn’t in Rocky Start very long.”

Dmitri chuckled. “Long enough to meet that dark-haired woman. Why would a man leave such a woman for this? I could only think of for treasure.”

Yeah, Rose would like Dmitri.

He went on. “I thought Pike and Oz dead all these years. I was surprised when I learned they had not died in the plane crash. And that the treasure had not been lost with them and the plane. Very. Very. Surprised.” He said the last word with an edge. “Give me assistance,” he ordered, indicating the body and pointing to the steep decline ten feet away.

“Just going to dump it there?”

“The animals will do the rest before spring,” he said. “Unless you wish to carry it, give proper burial, and perhaps present some flowers? I don’t know much of your customs, but what kind of burial does a bad man rate? I assure you they would not do much for you if they had succeeded.”

We shoved the body over the edge and it tumbled for about thirty feet before slamming up against a tree trunk.

Dmitri picked up the automatic rifle, looked it over, then handed it to me. “You should be better prepared.” He looked at my boots, sunken in the snow, but refrained from commenting on the lack of snowshoes. “Come.”

I checked the rifle, making sure there was a round in the chamber and the bolt wasn’t frozen in place.

We walked back up the trail. The second man was lying face down next to his long gun. He probably never even knew who or what killed him. Dmitri pulled his coat off and checked. No Russian tattoos. Instead, there was one I knew was affiliated with the Royal Marines Commandos. But he did have the same Cauldron one. Proving they were an equal-opportunity employer around the world for former special ops and criminals. We pushed him over the edge and it was so steep he disappeared from view over two hundred feet below, tumbling the entire way. Dmitri tossed his rifle after him.

“The bodies might be found,” I said.

“Maybe.” Dmitri shrugged. “Why do you care? Even if they were found right now, an autopsy would indicate heart attack. If anyone looked beyond the obvious cause of being frozen. Hunters who were caught in the blizzard. Stupid men. Men with no identity. I doubt they will ever be found and nature will have its way with the corpses.” He waved it away. “We have, as you Americans say, bigger fish to fry. To put in perspective, we have a whale to find. A very valuable one.”

“There is no treasure in Rocky Start.”

Dmitri nodded. “I agree. I do not think it is in the town of Rocky Start. Oz was not that stupid. He would have hidden it in some unique way. That is why I followed you. Please try to keep up.”

I think he meant that both literally and figuratively as he went back to the trail, heading back the way he’d come. He was walking on top of the snow with the snowshoes while I plowed along behind him, working much harder.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“You mean, where are we going,” Dmitri said over his shoulder. “Back to Rocky Start, of course. That is where the answers lie. I have a ride available. Unless you wish to hike back. Feel free, Max Reddy.”

I looked around at the snow coming down, considered how far I was from civilization, and thought about Rose, and, for once, it was a no-brainer.

I followed Dmitri.