Thibodaux’s easy belly laugh shook the chill from the night air. Jericho chuckled and even Bo cracked a smile.
Satisfied that her joke had gone over well enough, Aleksandra slid back in the canvas of her chair and closed her eyes. “That was Mikhail’s favorite,” she whispered.
Jericho looked up at the night sky. Like Dr. Watson, he saw millions of stars splashed across the Milky Way over an infinite desert night. Carina, Alpha and Beta Centauri, and the Southern Cross — they were foreign to the northern sky he’d grown up with.
“You know,” he said. “I assume since Russians have a sense of humor, you possess other feelings as well. We’ve been so busy trying to find this bomb that we’ve never stopped to check and see how you’re doing.”
“How do you mean?” Aleksandra looked up at him. “I am fine.”
“It’s difficult enough to lose a fellow agent.” Jericho shrugged. “But I can see you and Mikhail were very close. Losing someone like that is especially painful.”
“He was married, you know,” Aleksandra said, her voice low and reverent. “He had a lovely wife, Irina, and two beautiful daughters.”
An awkward silence fell around the fire, but for the uneasy squeak and shift of camp chairs and the distant sound of engine noise.
“We were not lovers,” she went on, now staring a thousand yards past the fire, into the black desert night. “Though most suspected so, even our superiors. No, my Misha was very much in love with his wife. He was my trainer, my mentor, and oftentimes my surrogate father when I had no one else to trust. But most of all, he was my friend.” A tear ran down Aleksandra’s cheek. She rubbed her nose with her sleeve. “I have had many lovers — but I have only ever had one friend.”
Bo looked around the group with glassy eyes, his chest heaving. Quinn knew his brother could be argumentative, but his emotions ran bright, just below the surface. The younger Quinn sniffed and raised the bottle of rum.
“To Mikhail Ivanovich Polzin, Agent Riley Cooper, and too many other good friends we’ve all lost to bloody men.” He took a drink, then tipped the bottle, letting it run for a moment into the sand. “And to tomorrow, when we find that damned bomb.”
CHAPTER 43
“Daudov has disappeared.” Monagas slipped a Walther .22 caliber pistol with a stubby suppressor in the waistband of his pants. Nearly worthless in a true gunfight, the tiny thing was meant for close work where stealth was the key. Within the close and crowded confines of the bivouac, it was perfect.
“No sign at all?” Zamora mused. “My mind is muddled. We’ve killed so many, maybe we are just running out of Chechens.”
“No,” Monagas said. “He and anyone we know connected with him have simply vanished.”
Zamora threw a hand over his face. He lay alone in his bunk, wearing nothing but an open red dressing gown of rich silk on Egyptian cotton sheets that draped decadently over the edge. He’d grown bored with the gap-toothed twins and sent them to sleep in their own tent. The episode with Blessington and the Chechen had left him fitful and unable to concentrate. Still, in the crowds where he ran, it didn’t do to show a shred of weakness, even among friends.
Monagas stood across from him at the door to the motor home, waiting for orders.
Zamora looked up. “I would consider it a personal favor if you were to find Rustam Daudov and cut out his heart.”
“I will find him then.” Monagas turned to go.
“It is far too probable, my friend, that Daudov has found out our secret and is already en route to Bolivia.” Zamora pursed his lips. He was hesitant to voice his thoughts for fear that they would come true. “Far too many know about the camp,” he said. “My father’s pilots could easily be bought. I know — I bought them. I should have had them killed them long ago.”
Monagas put a hand on the doorknob. “The mechanic is still working outside. He will call me if he sees anyone.”
“You’re certain he had no part in Fabian’s betrayal?”
Monagas nodded. “He saw what happened to his partner.”
“Very well then. Do your best to find the Chechen dog. But I fear he has already flown.” Zamora made a fluttering gesture with his hand. “And that means my dream of finishing the Dakar has flown as well.”
“But you have other dreams, patrón,” Monagas said.
A thin smile perked Zamora’s lips.
“Indeed I do,” he said.
CHAPTER 44
Quinn and Aleksandra walked back to the bivouac together, keeping up the appearance of a couple. Each carried a folded camp chair over their shoulder. Bo had stayed back a few minutes longer to make sure the fire was out. Jacques hung back as well, using the satellite phone to call his wife in private.
In anticipation of an early start, most riders had already hit the rack, but Jericho’s mind raced. Instinct, sixth sense, haragei—Japanese art of the belly — however it was described, he’d learned long before to pay attention to such things.
“I am sorry for that display back there,” Aleksandra said. “I won’t let it happen again.”
“It was good,” Quinn said. “I don’t often see my baby brother get choked up like that.”
“You are very different, the two of you,” she said.
Jericho shook his head, chuckling. “You have no idea.”
“And yet…” She stopped to look at him under the light of the tire repair awning. The clank of wrenches and thump of rubber rims went on all night. “And yet you are very much the same.”
“I suppose.” Quinn walked on. Boaz Quinn was good deep down, but he’d chosen a very different path in his life.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Aleksandra said, looking back and forth to make certain no one else was in earshot. “In most—”
She stopped abruptly as Julian Monagas passed. The crooked-nosed thug forced his pockmarked face into a twisted half smile. He raised his hand in a noncommittal wave as he went by.
Beside him, Quinn felt Aleksandra’s body go tense, as if all the air around her was suddenly drawn away. She spun, staring daggers at the broad back of a departing thug.
“What is it?” Quinn stared down at her, feeling her hand go hot in his.
She stood stone still, not even breathing until Monagas turned the corner on the other side of the tire shop.
“Are you all right?” Quinn prodded.
“I am fine,” she said, shutting down again after all the emotional openness of the evening. She spun toward her tent. “I am very tired,” she said. “And you have an early morning.”
Inside her tent, Aleksandra knelt on her sleeping mat and rifled through her bag for the long dagger she kept at the bottom. She held her hand out in front of her. Even in the shadows of her tent, she could see it trembling.
The bastard Monagas was wearing Mikhail’s double eagle ring. It had been him in the men’s room stall at the strip club. He had killed the Chechen pig Akhmad Umarov. A tear of frustration crossed the freckles of her cheek. He had murdered her friend.
Aleksandra knew she should tell Quinn what she knew. If Monagas had killed Mikhail, then he and Zamora had been present when Baba Yaga was taken. There was no more doubt that they had her. She told herself that it didn’t matter. They were watching Zamora anyway. If Quinn started to doubt, then she would tell him. If she told him her plan for Monagas now, he would try and stop her.