Now they were still at liberty and he didn't know where.
The news was beginning to filter in to him from the wolf pack.
A lad of twelve, with webbed fingers, brought word of food disappearing from some wretched collection of hovels to the southwest.
Always to the southwest.
Another boy, who seemed incapable of not picking his nose, said there was talk of a giant lone wolf that was raiding some of the hamlets, stealing food.
"Southwest?" Zimyanin asked, already knowing the answer. He wasn't surprised when the boy nodded his agreement.
By evening the local sec commander had finally been located. He had been off on a secret mission that involved some illicit cheese and beef, which he was taking a percentage of. His sister-in-law had tracked him down with the sickening news that some stone-eyed bastard of a senior sec officer wanted him urgently.
Pausing only to change his undershorts, the man rushed along to meet with Zimyanin. To his enormous relief the Muscovite didn't seem concerned about where he'd been or even what he'd been doing. Zimyanin simply wanted to draw on his specialized local information, briefing him on the situation and asking him for his thoughts.
"They are hiding," Zimyanin concluded.
"Yes, Comrade Major-Commissar. But you do not think that they might have simply kept running? That their base is farther out?"
Zimyanin had taken off his cap with the silver circle, and he rubbed his hand over his bald skull. He considered the suggestion, but swiftly rejected it.
"No."
"But they..."
"No. I plotted all reports. All of them. They began a few miles from here. No farther. And now they go back by precisely the same route. They are hiding someplace close by. I saw a name on a map. The name was Peredelkino."
The sec commander nodded thoughtfully, his brain sharpened by his fear that his black-market dealings might be discovered, and honed further by relief that they hadn't been.
"Peredelkino? Yes, I know it. The stories are that Stalin provided large houses there. In fact, I believe that the Americans were given one."
"You are sure? A dacha that was once owned by the Americans, at Peredelkino? Then we have them, Mother Russia! We have them!"
"We must mount an attack," Zimyanin continued. "Not a massive attack. It might come to that, but I want to try to take them by surprise. Send me the vicious little bastard who runs the pack."
Chapter Thirty-Four
"You sure are one powerful woman, Krysty," Ryan said, shaking his head as he saw again the full extent of the damage done to the locking mechanism of the gateway door.
"Not my strength," she replied. "I can only do that by calling on the Earth Mother. You know that."
"Sure."
He looked at the twisted metal, with entrails of the lock hanging out. Doc was at his elbow, peering at the wreckage.
"A sorry sight, my dear Ryan. Depressing to see the cunning works of man's hands laid so sadly low, is it not?"
"It is, Doc."
"I confess that I have spent some totally unprofitable hours while you were away, down here in the bowels of the earth. I was trying to work out some way whereby we might bypass the lock and trigger the jump mechanism from within."
"Nothing?" Ryan asked.
"It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools. I had no tools to blame."
"How about now," J.B. suggested, "with what we brought?"
Doc scratched the side of his nose in a vaguely ruminative manner. "Perhaps. And, then again, perhaps not."
"Yes," Rick muttered. Then, much louder, "Yes, we can!"
"Sure?"
There was a sudden, startling and hectic glow in his sunken eyes. "We can, Ryan. Don't doubt it, buddy. Just get the guys lifting barges and toting bales and all that shit. It'll take us the best part of six or eight hours." Another fit of hideous, racking coughs shook his whole frail body. "If we're lucky, that is."
The boy who led the pack of sec brats was only a year or so younger than Jak Lauren. He had the same sharp planes to the bones of his face and the same blank killer's eyes.
He wore a cut-down woman's jacket in pale blue artificial silk, the sleeves hacked out and the front daubed with maroon circles of paint. The pants were small sec-issue, tucked into a worn pair of canvas boots. The ubiquitous strangler's cord the badge of the leader in a wolf pack was tucked into the narrow belt.
The gang was a little larger than most. Zimyanin had counted eighteen of them, about half girls.
"You understand what I want you to do?"
For several seconds the boy said nothing, his face showing as much emotion as a slab of weathered stone. The officer wondered if he might be deaf, or very simpleminded and was about to repeat the question. But the kid's mouth clicked open and words came out slowly.
"Yes, Comrade Major-Commissar." Another long, long pause. "We will approach and enter the large house there. We will kill all we find. If we are seen and stopped, we come back and we report to you."
"No, no, no! Don't kill them all. I want the one-eyed man, the cripple and the woman with red hair spared and taken alive. Alive! You understand what that word means?"
"It means not dead, Comrade Major-Commissar. Not dead."
"Good."
"But, Comrade Major-Commissar," the boy continued, "if we have to make them all not alive, what then?"
"Then you make them all not alive. But I most earnestly want that one-eyed man not dead. Him more than the others."
"Yes," he replied, nodding.
As the boy walked slowly away to pass on the orders to his gang, Zimyanin watched him. "What a strangely gifted child," he said quietly in English. "Such a credit to his parents. Not that anyone would ever claim the credit for having birthed that monster."
The wrenches were a hundred years old, the metal corroded and frail. To try to use them with a man's full power behind the effort would mean a handful of twisted rust. Everything had to be done so gently and cautiously.
Ryan was only too conscious that every hour sliding past doubled the threat from the Russian security forces. He was already regretting leaving Gregori Zimyanin alive. It would have been worth the price of a bullet to remove him from the game. But regrets were a valueless currency, and Ryan didn't waste much time thinking about it. But he did make sure that anyone not working down in the cellars of the mansion was up top, watching for the inevitable attack.
After two hours of intensive labor, Rick said that he felt that they were actually making some real progress.
"Got most of the lock opened up. Damage isn't as bad as it might have been. Bring me in closer. Gotta be able to see real good. And help me to a drink, one of you."
His swallowing was painful to see and hear. The disease was now racing so fast through his body that he needed continuous support. He was sweating constantly, though the subterranean rooms were bone-cold.
"How much longer do you figure, Rick?" Krysty asked as she took the mug of water from the freezie's lips.
"How long's a piece of string, lady? How high's up? How when's now? Just gotta keep doin' it my way. Suck it up and spit it out. I'll sit this one out, if you don't..." A coughing fit choked off the slurred, rambling words.
Zimyanin called over the elderly captain who was acting as liaison with the local militia. "While the wolves go in, I want something in reserve."
"The little ones will not fail you, Comrade Major-Commissar."