The center of town was no more than three hundred yards long. Buildings vanished in the side-view mirror. The forest reasserted itself.
The main drag gave way to a neat gravel road. Luo took a left at the first fork onto a crude dirt road. The trail twisted and turned through the forest. The buhanka negotiated the turns effortlessly. Fifteen minutes later they arrived at a second fork. Weeds and brush covered the road to the right. A chain-link fence blocked access. Private property and danger signs hung on the fence and the trees at each end. The fork to the left was a ninety-degree turn toward the lake. It was narrower but contained tire treads instead of vegetation.
Luo took a left per the instructions on the map and descended to a clearing at the edge of the frozen lake. There was room for a pair of cars or pickup trucks. Luo took the entire parking spot.
“Fisherman’s wharf,” Luo said. “Just like the man said. The castle is one and a half miles away. That’s why the fork to the right is the road untraveled now. It used to lead to high ground. Beautiful views. Popular with tourists. Now it’s billionaires’ row. The uninvited are unwelcome, and I bet you the closer one gets, the more ominous the warnings.”
“Until a man with a rifle appears in front of you.”
“And behind you. Which is why we will go via the road where there are no warnings.”
They took their gear from the back of the buhanka and walked to the edge of the ice. Six boulders faced the lake for viewing or fishing purposes. Luo and Bobby sat down and changed into their skates. A third pair of skates remained in a box in a shopping bag.
“I’ll carry Eva’s skates in my knapsack,” Bobby said.
Luo didn’t bother looking up. “I know you will.”
Bobby took her skates out of the box and put them in his knapsack. He squished his high-top basketball shoes on top of them and slipped the bag onto his back. Secured his headlamp onto his forehead by tightening the strap around his head. Luo had just finished tying his first skate by the time Bobby was ready.
“You laced those skates pretty fast,” Luo said. “As though you’ve done that before.”
“Just once or twice.”
Bobby imagined a mad scene at the castle. Guards running in one direction, while he and Eva escaped in the other. They’d skated together before in a hockey rink in Korosten. She’d been a competitive swimmer and was more comfortable in open water, but she was competent on ice, too. The wind would be at their backs, and their futures in front of them.
They would fly side-by-side across the ice, and never be separated again.
CHAPTER 42
Nadia stared out the window of the plane. The Irkutsk Airport was located in the middle of the city. Lights illuminated a sprawl of brick tenements and a low-level cityscape. The bridges over the Angora River added a welcome dose of aesthetic appeal to an otherwise gray and foreboding descent.
“Living standards have improved in major Russian cities,” Simmy said. “Especially since oil went north of a hundred a barrel. Out here, though, not so much. You can tell by the look of the city. Money trickles in from Moscow. There’s some resentment.”
They landed at 7:30 p.m. Evidently money had trickled in for a new domestic terminal. Its contemporary steel frame and floor-to-roof windows gleamed in the night. Nadia counted the seconds as the plane taxied toward its gate.
Her mobile phone chimed. Once, twice, three times.
Voice mail.
She accessed it and found three messages waiting for her. All from Bobby. She listened to them, one by one.
Relief washed over Nadia when she heard he had indeed taken a cargo plane to Irkutsk. By the time she finished listening to the messages, however, reality had set in. The first two messages were two and a half hours old. The third was still two hours old. That meant he had a two-hour head start. And Bobby’s final two revelations disturbed her.
“What did he say?” Simmy said.
“Give me a sec. I want to try to call him.”
Nadia tried calling Bobby. He didn’t answer. Instead, her call rolled into voice mail again. She left him a message regarding her whereabouts and asked him to call her immediately.
Nadia gave Simmy an abbreviated account of Bobby’s trip from Vladivostok to Irkutsk.
“He did say ‘father’ after all,” Nadia said. “Not ‘farther.’”
“Whose father was he talking about?” Simmy said.
“Eva’s.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“So did I. Apparently that was just a story her aunt and uncle made up. To minimize the pain of the mother dying and the father being absent.”
“Or so this man says. How did he find Bobby?”
“Apparently he followed him from Fukushima. He was the angel. The man with the boomerangs. He hitched a ride on the same cargo plane in Vladivostok.”
“It’s a bit suspect, but then again… We weren’t a hundred percent sure Eva herself was alive, and now this man appears…”
“Makes you think she really is Genesis II.”
Simmy raised his eyebrows and tilted his head. “Did Bobby say what their plan was? Do they know where Eva is?”
“He said they took her to a castle. Some billionaire’s estate called the Swallow’s Nest. Have you heard of it?”
“The one in Crimea? Of course. Some knockoff in Siberia? Good Lord no. Every idiot with a mansion likes to put a name on it, and it’s always something painfully unoriginal. It must be Golov’s estate. The Zaroff Seven. They’re all there waiting for her.”
“And now Bobby is on the way there, too.”
“And if there are two parts to the formula, they will soon possess both of them.”
“Bobby said he and this Luo were stopping for supplies.”
“What kind of supplies?”
“He didn’t say. But I’m guessing they have some sort of plan. I’m presuming they’re going in on foot. Not driving up to the front door.”
“The way we are.”
“We are?” Nadia said.
“This is the new Russia,” Simmy said. “We’re a civilized country no matter what you Americans believe. We’re a country of businessmen. Businessmen resolve their differences by negotiating. So we’ll negotiate.”
“Sounds optimistic to me, but I like it.”
“You have no choice but to like it.”
“That too. I would like your plan even more if we knew where we are going.”
“Not to worry. This is the new Russia but some old habits die hard, you know what I mean? Where there is a bribe, there is a way.”
Two vintage Toyota Land Cruisers idled on the tarmac. Nadia followed Simmy into a truck with one of Simmy’s men. Two others carried the six oversized duffel bags from the plane’s cargo area into the back of the second truck. Based on the strain on the men’s faces, the bags appeared heavy.
“What’s in the luggage?” Nadia said.
“The usual overnight stuff, you know.”
“No. I don’t know. Enlighten me.”
Simmy stared at his computer. Nadia glanced at it. A map popped up. A serpentine route emboldened in red began at Irkutsk and snaked its way to a large blue area. He hit a key and driving instructions appeared.
“You know, the usual stuff,” Simmy said. “Pajamas, brandy, toothbrush. And shaving cream. Never forget the shaving cream.”
“That looks like some heavy shaving cream.”
Simmy rubbed the whiskers on his beard. “A man likes to be able to clean up well on a moment’s notice. When you rough it to Baikal, you never know how dirty you’re going to get.”
“You sound like a man who knew where he was going when he packed.”