But although the president appeared to understand the problem, he did not-could not-grasp its full enormity.
"World War II, Anna Chutesov," he said, shaking his head. "There were Germans within spitting distance of Moscow. That was a true threat to Russia. This cannot possibly be compared to the great dangers of our history."
But Anna's ice-blue eyes never wavered. "If that is your attitude, Mr. President," she insisted ominously, "you do not truly understand the peril we now face."
And with no further way to impress the gravity of this situation on the president of Russia, Anna gave up. She returned to the empty Institute building to sit in the shadows on the floor of the musty old gymnasium and listen to the workmen far away.
As she was staring into the dusty corner, she heard the sounds of voices approaching. Two men came into the gym from the dark hallway. They carted with them an old dresser lying atop a rusted bed. Another man followed in their wake. The pushcart he rolled before him was stacked high with eight surplus Red Army footlockers. The wheels of the dolly squeaked as it rolled past Anna.
"Are you certain of this?" one of the men carrying the old bed asked Anna. He was no more than fifty, but looked eighty. Such was the toll taken on the human body and spirit in the modern Russia. The veins in his swollen nose were broken from years of too much drink.
Anna didn't even look up. She was staring somewhere near their shoes. She nodded.
"All of the beds, bureaus, nightstands. Take it all," she said darkly.
Anna didn't bother to tell them that she had removed and burned anything incriminating from the footlockers. Nor would they care. She had picked these men at random from the streets and offered them all of the furniture inside the Institute free of charge. They were eager to get the pieces out of the building and to the bazaar before she changed her mind.
Hurrying through the gymnasium, they headed out the far door. It led to the underground parking garage, which fed out to the street through the gate that was no longer locked.
As they were carting their prizes away, another man entered from the interior door.
He didn't move like the men with the furniture.
There was no huffing and puffing and stomping of feet. He walked with a more confident glide, like that of a ballet dancer. Indeed, he had been drafted from the ranks of the Bolshoi.
When he stopped before her, Anna's eyes rose reluctantly to meet his. He was thin and short, with delicate features and a slightly receding hairline.
"I may have found something," the man offered hopefully.
Anna didn't bother to mention how unlikely that was. It was too soon. No one-not even a man-would be fool enough to show his hand this quickly. "Yes, Sergei?" she asked with a reluctant sigh.
"It is a news story from the Internet. A number of men have turned up dead in Alaska. Oil pipeline workers and soldiers. Their killers are unknown."
Anna considered his words. As she was thinking, the three men returned from the street. They wheeled the empty dolly into the gymnasium.
"More, Sergei," Anna said. "We need more than that."
The young man seemed to want to say more, but the three men with the cart were passing by. Sergei kept his mouth shut until they had squeaked back through the door into the main building. Once they were gone, he turned back to Anna.
"There is more," he promised. "There was a helicopter pilot who dropped off the soldiers. When he came back to retrieve them, he claims to have seen an army of ghosts."
This got Anna's attention. Blinking, she looked up at the young man. "Explain," she insisted, her voice flat.
"He swears they were there, and then they were not," Sergei said excitedly. "He saw a group of soldiers briefly from the air, then they-poof-vanished from sight."
Anna's face steeled. Her jaw firmly clenched, she scampered to her feet.
Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps whoever was behind this was dumber than she thought. Or mad to tip his hand so soon. One thing was certain: if this was genuine, whoever was responsible was most definitely a man. No woman on Earth would ever be so big a fool.
"Show me this story," Anna Chutesov commanded.
And her strained voice was filled with equal parts hope and dread.
Chapter 7
So as not to lose the respect of the men under his command, Colonel Robert Hogue made a supreme effort to not vomit on the Eskimo's head. It wasn't easy.
As a young private, Hogue had served in Vietnam. He had seen plenty bad back then. But that was long ago. The inaction of the intervening years had dulled the horrors of youth. Time was apparently a great healer, even for a set of tired eyes that had seen as much as Colonel Robert Hogue's.
The rural town of Kakwik, Alaska, was bringing it all back with a vengeance.
The houses in the remote Eskimo village on the shore of the Yukon River were little more than steel drums. Fingers of thin black smoke still curled from chimney pipes, tickling the snowflakes that slipped down from the pale pink clouds. And all around the squalid village, the dead jutted from freshly fallen snow like gutted ice sculptures.
Colonel Hogue had nearly tripped over the first body as he and the eighty National Guard troops under his command were marching past the isolated town. The discovery of that one half-frozen corpse had led them here. Once in Kakwik, their routine maneuvers suddenly turned deadly serious.
Two dozen bodies were arranged in a gruesome tableau alongside the main road of the village. Stomach cavities were split open and throats were slashed. Blood froze black. Dead eyes, pried wide open, stared unseeing at the troops as they passed. Snowflakes collected on lash and lid.
At the sight of the bodies, a few of the National Guardsmen lost their lunch in the newly fallen snow. Colonel Hogue forged on, fighting his own urge to vomit.
The bodies along the road had been arranged as if for review. Near a particularly dilapidated home, Hogue noticed another body, separate from the rest. He cautiously left the road, ducking between a pair of corpses.
The kitchen door was open on the nearest battered tin house. It looked as if the old man who lived there had been shot as he came out the door, then fell down the four wooden stairs of his small porch. Whoever had arranged the other bodies had simply forgotten him there.
The Colonel bent to examine the old man.
The Eskimo wore a pair of tattered red long johns and orange socks. Fresh snow, like a scattering of pixie dust, dulled the dark colors.
"Check the homes," Hogue barked as he stooped over the body. "And stay sharp."
Ever alert to danger, the National Guardsmen dispersed, moving in packs from house to house. As the men began fanning out, Hogue turned back to the lone body.
The Eskimo's milky white eyes were frozen glass. A single tap would shatter them into a million fragments. With his head tipped to one side and his arm extended, the dead man seemed to be staring at something. Almost begging understanding from beyond the grave.
With a frown Hogue got down in the snow next to the body. He followed the dead man's line of sight. "What the hell?" Hogue whispered to himself. Climbing back to his knees, he crawled around the body.
The dead man's blue hand extended to the base of the stairs. Colonel Hogue pulled out a flashlight. Lying flat on his belly, he directed the beam under the bottom step.
"Damn," he swore softly.
"Colonel?"
The voice came from above. Hogue rolled over onto his shoulder. A sergeant stood above him, his curious face framed by a drab ski mask.