A sudden thought sent a new crop of sweat to the colonel’s bald head. “He was not among the dead, was he?”
Lodygin remained silent.
Rostov screamed into the phone. “Do not dare tell me Volodin is dead!” He wiped frothy spittle off his lips with his forearm. “He must account for the missing gas.”
“He has vanished,” Lodygin said.
“What do you mean, vanished?” Rostov slapped the desk with his hand. This was possibly the only news worse than if the old bastard had died. “Are you saying he took the gas with him?”
“I do not know,” Captain Lodygin said. “Corporal Myshkin informed me only moments ago. Apparently, a young woman with whom Volodin keeps frequent company has also gone missing.”
“You are as close as can be to the end of the earth,” Rostov said through clenched teeth. “Where could they have gone? Put Myshkin on speaker.”
A shaky voice came across the line. “I… am… Corporal Myshkin, Colonel.” If pale gray had a sound, this was it.
“You’ve searched the entire facility?” Rostov barked. “What of his apartment?”
“We have looked everywhere, Colonel,” the boy stammered.
“Well, look again!”
“Yes, Colonel,” Myshkin stammered. “The captain has placed men at his apartment, in the event he returns… but I fear he will not.”
“And this girl?” Rostov snapped.
“Yes, Colonel,” Myshkin said. “Kaija Merculief. We are watching her apartment as well. The neighbors inform us that she is a night butterfly, a prostitute, but that Dr. Volodin is her only customer. She is fifteen years of age—”
Rostov wanted to strangle someone with the phone cord. His daughter was fifteen. “Kostya Volodin is an old man. You tell me he keeps company with a fifteen-year-old prostitute? Is that how you people amuse yourselves in Providenya?”
“No, Colonel,” the corporal stammered. “I mean, I suppose Dr. Volodin does. In his defense, the girl looks much older than fifteen.”
“Never mind,” Rostov said. “I do not much care how old she looks. Find Volodin. Now. I want him back in his lab with the missing gas canisters within the hour. Your life depends on this, Myshkin. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Colonel, extremely clear, but…” The corporal’s terrified gulp was audible over the phone. “I… I fear that is not possible. No one has seen the doctor since the last flight out of Providenya.”
Rostov ran a thick hand across his face, thinking. “Are you there, Captain? Pick up the phone.”
“Yes, Colonel,” Lodygin said, still supremely smug, as if he were perfectly happy digging his own grave. The line was clearer now that it was off speaker and the sniveling Myshkin was gone.
Rostov took a long breath, working to relax his clenching jaw. “What does he mean, the last flight?”
“An air charter departed Providenya one hour and ten minutes ago.”
“Tell me what you make of this, Captain.” Rostov’s voice rose with each and every word. He had abandoned any idea of calming down. “Because from where I sit, it looks as though the doctor hoisted a flag of warning to our enemies with this debacle in the river and then slipped away with the remainder of the gas under your watch.”
“I will locate Dr. Volodin myself,” Lodygin said, finally showing some sort of initiative beyond his inane plan to spray black paint on dead fish.
Rostov paused before answering. “This charter flight,” Rostov said. “Did it by chance go to Murmansk? I seem to remember the old fool having family there.”
“Not Murmansk, sir.” Captain Lodygin gave a quiet cough. “Alaska.”
PART I
CONSPIRE
The meaning of my star is war.
Chapter 1
Jericho Quinn knew an ambush when he saw one. He rolled the throttle of his gunmetal gray BMW R1200GS Adventure, leaning hard over into the second of a long series of S turns. Sometimes called the two-story bike of the motorcycling world, the big GS flicked easily on the twisty road. A chilly wind bit the tiny gap of skin between the chin of his helmet and the collar of his black leather jacket. Behind him, riding pillion, Veronica “Ronnie” Garcia squeezed with strong thighs, leaning when he leaned, moving when he moved as he negotiated the narrow, seaside road. Her soft chest pressed against his back, long arms twined around his waist.
Popping the bike upright on a straightaway, Quinn shot a glance in his side mirror and watched the grill of a dark panel van loom behind him. It came up fast, pressing aggressively on the winding two-lane that ran on the narrow ledge between mountain and ocean. Quinn bumped the throttle again and sped up, easing farther to the right and buying some distance while he considered any and all options that didn’t end with him and Garcia as twin grease spots on the asphalt or Wile E. Coyoted into the mountainside.
The van accelerated, moving close enough that it filled Quinn’s side mirrors with nothing but chrome grill. Just as he was about to swerve onto a gravel trail that cut off toward the ocean, he got a clear view of the guy at the wheel. A kid with a thick mullet haircut pressed a cellphone to his ear while gesturing wildly with the hand that should have been reserved for steering. Quinn kept up his speed but took the shoulder instead of the trail, allowing the van to barrel past before the next blind corner. For all Quinn knew, the guy never even saw him.
He’d ridden the Seward Highway south of Anchorage hundreds of times while growing up and knew there was a passing lane less than a mile ahead. Cell phones, sleepy drivers, drunks, turds with mullets — all made Quinn want to beat someone to death with an ax handle — but road rage had no place from the back of a motorcycle. No matter the traffic laws, the reality of physics dictated a right-of-way by tonnage if you wanted to stay alive.
“I’m proud of you, Mango,” Garcia’s sultry voice, spiced with a hint of her Cuban heritage, came across Quinn’s Cardo Bluetooth headset as he flicked the leggy BMW back onto the highway proper. “You didn’t even mutter when you yielded to that dude.”
Quinn poured on more speed, sending up a tornado of yellow leaves from a tiny stand of birches along the road. “I’m not much of a mutterer,” he said.
“Yeah, well,” Ronnie chuckled, “you’re not much of a yielder either.”
Turnagain Arm, a narrow bay off the Cook Inlet of the Pacific Ocean, lay to their right, silty waters white-capped and churning as if her tremendous tides hadn’t quite figured out which way to flow. Craggy peaks of the Chugach Mountains loomed directly to their left in a mix of rock, greenery, and waterfall that tumbled right to the shoulder of the winding road.
Quinn moved his neck from side to side, letting the adrenaline brought on by the idiot in the van ebb — and taking the time to enjoy the ride until the next idiot barreled up behind him. He flicked the bike around a basketball-sized rock that had come to rest in his lane. Here and there, great swaths of stone and shattered trees that had been bent and torn by avalanche, fanned down the mountainside, just beginning to heal from the previous winter.