After three or four more miles, they passed a point of transition. It was only marked by a few signs posted on trees by the side of the road: "Private Property," "No Hunting," "No Trespassing." After that, the woods around them seemed to undergo a subtle and somewhat threatening change. The first things that Gideon noticed were the logs and windblown trees—piles of deadwood that were innocuous at first glance, but after seeing a third pile, it was obvious that they were placed by man, not nature, concealing cameras, or some other security measure. A few times Gideon looked up, and saw a bare spot in the canopy supplemented by a sheet of camouflage netting. And once, in the distance, Gideon saw another man with a Kalishnikov, wearing a white parka, appearing as if he were on some sort of patrol.
They were entering some sort of military encampment.
When they reached the end of this private road, Gideon and Ruth stepped out of the Hummer into the road, followed by the man wielding the Kalishnikov, who took them fifteen yards back down the road, behind the vehicle.
Gideon watched as the driver got out of the car and went to a tree by the side of the road. Gideon could see rope and part of a scaffolding—dressed with more camouflage netting—next to the tree. The driver pulled on the rope, and the floor of the forest next to the road opened up.
A camouflaged trapdoor opened up on a dirt ramp that led down into an unlit hole. The driver pulled until the trapdoor was at about a sixty-degree angle, and when he let go of the rope, the door stayed there, expertly counterbalanced. Then he got back in the Hummer, angled back, and backed it into the hole.
"Come on," said their leader, once the Hummer was off of the road.
Gideon looked at-Ruth. She looked at him, still rubbing her wrists. He had the uncomfortable sense that she was relying on him to show her what to do.
He hugged himself. The cold was beginning to seep into his leg and his arm, burning in the newly-healed flesh. When he started walking in the direction the Kalishnikov indicated, he noticed his limp was more pronounced. His leg felt as if he'd been on his feet all day.
The man with the Kalishnikov took them out into a clearing, occasionally prodding them with the rifle.
They followed the private road out into a field. Once they left the woods, the road was marked on either side by a long, gray split-rail fence. The fence enclosed sloping pastures on either side of them, flat white expanses of snow. The pasture to the right sloped down toward a tree-line, and the one to the left sloped upward until it reached a rocky hillside that shot upward at a steep angle.
There was a cluster of buildings far in front of them.
Gideon could make out a Victorian farmhouse, and a weathered gray barn adjoining the left pasture.
It was a long walk toward the buildings. They trudged through the snow, their breath coming out in wisps of fog. The landscape felt oddly empty. The people here had gone to great lengths to cultivate a feeling of abandonment. The one subtle sign otherwise was a complex set of antennae mounted, only half-hidden, in the Victorian's weathered gingerbread.
The Victorian's dark turrets, wrapped in gray shingles, seemed to lean over them as they reached the house. A porch wrapped around the side and front of the house, half in collapse. Parts of it were little more than splintered piles of rotted wood. The intact portion, in front of the main entrance, had a roof that visibly bowed in the center.
Their keeper pushed them toward the stairs. Gideon and Ruth stepped up to the unstable-looking porch. Gideon went slowly, out of fear of putting a foot through a rotten board. Once he stepped onto the snow-covered porch, he realized he needn't have worried. The surface he walked on, under a thin coating of snow, was a new piece of plywood. Once he was on the porch, he could see that there were a number of places above them where metal braces supported what was left of the porch above them.
The main doorway appeared to be boarded shut, but as they approached, the sheet of plywood covering the doorway opened up, swinging out to reveal a stern looking guy in a turtleneck, carrying another Kalishnikov. If it hadn't been for the Russian weapon, the guy in the sweater projected an attitude reminiscent of the plain-clothes Marines.
They didn't get to see much of the interior as they were hustled upstairs. From what Gideon saw, this place had been abandoned at one point. But it was being used for something now. They passed a drawing room that seemed to be the final resting place of every piece of furniture that had been abandoned with the house. Just before they ascended the stairs, Gideon looked down a hallway and saw that the warped, water-stained hardwood floor snaked with cables.
Then they were upstairs, walking down a corridor of cracked plaster and peeling wallpaper. The hallway had once been carpeted, but the carpet, what was left of it, was rolled up and leaning at the end of the hall against a boarded-up window.
Their keepers took them to a room that held a few cots, a desk, and a small computer terminal. Gideon noticed that the desk had a set of cables that went through a hole in the floor that had been made by removing one of the floorboards. The cables included the power cord that led to the standing lamp that was the only light in the windowless room.
"Sit," said the man who had led them all the way from the van. He set down his rifle behind the desk and stripped off his parka. Briefly, Gideon thought of diving for the weapon, but the gentleman with the sweater was still with them, his own Kalishnikov ready.
Gideon and Ruth sat. Gideon couldn't help but sigh with relief as he took the weight off his leg. Both his legs were stinging as ice melted off his too-thin jeans.
The man hung his parka up on a hook in a wall and pulled a small box out from a drawer in the desk. It looked like a small vinyl briefcase. He opened it to reveal a complex telephone. The whole case was about the size of a brick, but it was larger than any cellular phone that Gideon had seen recently.
The man with the phone nodded at the man with the rifle. He received a nod in return, and the man in the sweater picked up the extra rifle and left, closing the door on the three of them.
The man gave them an inscrutable look and keyed a number into his phone. After a few moments he said, "This is Volynskji."
In response he nodded a few times. After a few moments he said, "Is that wise, sir?" A shake of the head. "Even if the mission is compl—" Pause. "Yes. It is your operation." Look up at the two captives. "I'll take care of that now. I'll give you an update as soon—" Nod. "If you say so. No transmissions. I'll defer the report until you arrive."
Volynskji slowly put the phone back on the cradle and closed the small case.
He looked up at the two of them. "I have some questions I need to ask you, but before I do so, I should say something." He walked around the side of the desk. "First, if you're thinking of being uncooperative, you should know that most professionals have the following standing orders—if suicide is not an option, they should cooperate. Every agency who has an operative fall into the hands of the enemy automatically assumes all information possessed by the operative is compromised. Stubbornness on your part will not serve any purpose—except to make things more difficult. For you, not me. All it will cost me is time." He gave both of them a flat emotionless stare that was as bad as any threat. Gideon could look into those eyes and easily imagine what he would do to someone who was "stubborn."
He sat on the edge of the desk, facing them, and asked, "Now exactly what did you say to Chaviv Tischler?"
Volynskji questioned them for several hours. Several times, Gideon thought of trying to overpower the man, but he couldn't see how to do it without raising an alarm that would alert the rifle-bearing guard at the door. So, despite what he thought of the man, and despite his reluctance to answer any questions, Gideon played along with Volynskji. He rationalized that he was protecting Ruth. He was responsible for her being here, and he couldn't allow any reluctance on his part to result in something happening to her.