Davidson moved on to the small cherrywood rolltop desk. Everything contained within it was so neat and precise. The pens and pencils organized according to size in the small tin can container. Papers stacked neatly. Envelopes face down so you could pick them up by the flap. The desk of a consummate architect. Even the stapler had clean, sleek lines.
As the room heated up from the roaring fireplace, Rebecca shed her jacket and tied it around her waist. A loud crash came from the kitchen, followed by a string of curses. Brandt.
“Find something?”
“Do you think I’d be swearing if I did?” the sergeant asked as he closed the pantry door. “Anything up there?” Brandt called to the upstairs loft.
Talli poked his head over the railing. “Extra linens and clothes, but that’s about it.”
“I don’t know if this counts,” Davidson added as he replaced the envelopes to their proper corner, “but there’s a locked drawer.”
Rebecca stepped out of the way as Brandt and Bunny joined them.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” the sergeant asked.
Davidson’s good lip turned down. “A set of lock picks.”
“Here’s mine,” Lopez offered as he joined them. “And as far as I can tell by height and approximate weight, the guy could be Nikolay, or not. It could go either way.”
“And the weapon?” Brandt asked beside her as Davidson picked the lock.
“Well, that’s where it got interesting.” Lopez held the tip of blade up to the kerosene lamplight. “I’m pretty damned sure this came from a ballistic knife.”
“A flying knife?” Bunny asked.
“Close,” Brandt explained. “They are spring powered either to increase penetration on contact or detach from the base and hit a distant target.”
Rebecca took a closer look at the metal in Lopez’s hand. “There’s rust on it.”
The corporal nodded. “Because it’s carbon steel not stainless steel.” Lopez gave a knowing look to Brandt. “A favorite of Russian weapons makers. Usually a hell of a lot stronger than stainless steel.”
“So it took a lot of force to break off like this,” Rebecca asked.
“Hella yes,” Lopez stated. “Someone was mighty pissed off to do that.”
Rebecca’s eyes swept the tidy chalet. There were no signs of anger or even haste. If she didn’t know better, she would have said Nikolay had come home, settled into his easy chair, and died in his sleep.
But there the rusted knife tip stood between her and her theory. And a Russian military knife no less. Was it completely paranoid of her that Osip had been in the Russian army and had a liking to using a knife?
“Popped it,” Davidson announced as the drawer’s lock sprang open. He carefully drew the drawer out. “Just looks like some letters in here.”
Bunny took the proffered pages from Davidson, scanning them quickly. “They look like a bunch of letters from home.” Bunny translated small passages. “Uncle, will you be home for Easter? We miss you.” She moved on to another page. “Visiting the cathedral is not the same without you…We are waiting to make your favorite okroshka.” The younger woman looked up to everyone’s puzzled looks. “It’s a soap made from sour milk.”
Ah, yes, the Russians.
The younger woman flipped through the old letters. “They all sound the same. Signed by Nikolay’s nephew.”
“Except this one,” Davidson stated, pulling out a partially finished letter. “I think this is Nikolay’s last response. I don’t think he got a chance to finish it.”
Rebecca read over Bunny’s shoulder, trying to keep up with the younger woman, however her Russian was fluent. “He’s just reassuring his nephew he will visit soon.”
Bunny handed the lot over to Brandt. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see any connection to these and…” Bunny nodded toward the body. “That.”
* * *
It took everything Brandt had not to tear the letters and throw their tattered remains into the fire. They couldn’t have flown through a pretornado to find nothing. Absolutely nothing.
The front door burst open, carrying with it a cloud of snow. Harvish slammed the door behind him, stomping his feet up and down. Brandt checked his watch. It had hardly been a half an hour.
“Taking a little break, Harvish?”
“Sorry, Sarge,” the point man answered. “It’s off the hook out there. I don’t see how we can even rotate through a sentry post.”
Pissed and with no one else to vent at, Brandt stomped across the room and grabbed the doorknob. Even it was icy cold. Too bad. They had a perimeter to set up. He jerked the door open and gasped. Nature had sucked every bit of warmth out of the air. And the snow? It no longer floated down from the crevice above. The wind must have shifted blowing the storm right at them. And given the fact the chalet abutted against the cliff wall, the wind had nowhere to go but churn around the building.
Now Brandt knew what it felt like to stand in the middle of a shaken snow globe.
He shut the door just as quickly as he opened it. Unprepared for blizzard conditions, Brandt had to admit that not only couldn’t they post a sentry, but there was absolutely no way they were leaving the chalet tonight.
“Alright. Let’s set up camp,” Brandt announced. His men smiled in response.
“I’ll get the grub,” Harvish said, heading to the small kitchen.
Talli pushed off the upstairs railing. “I’ll break down the bed to make several racks.”
“And I’ve got a pack of cards with our name on it,” Lopez announced. Off Brandt’s glare, he clarified. “Only for anyone not on guard duty.”
Brandt couldn’t blame his men. They’d been in “go-mode” for what? Five days running. First the no-holds-barred chase to find Amed and then the attack after relentless attacks since London.
His gut told him to keep moving. Get the hell out of Slovenia and regroup. Nature, however, had other ideas. So getting some guarded rest was about the best they could do.
He could only hope the weather was as much a bitch to anyone trying to follow them.
* * *
Aunush stood perfectly still, allowing frustration to swirl around her. She let her anger go and ignored the arrogant self-assuredness of the Chinese zhong wei, first lieutenant. Rage beat off her sniper as well, yet she did not encourage it. Even Nannan chaffed at the wei’s presumption.
However, seldom was a fight worth the effort. They were messy, time-consuming, and inefficient. She already knew how she was going to respond to the wei’s insistence they could not travel up into the mountains during the raging storm. However, now she needed to be sure the wei thought she was castigated enough to capitulate.
“We must scale at least the first ridge by tonight,” she pretended to insist.
The wei shook his head. “I have confirmed with the shang. We go no farther.”
“Then we will have lost all advantage,” Aunush pushed, fueling her words with a false sense of outrage.
“He has arranged a helicopter for the break of dawn,” the soldier explained. Again. “We shall sweep down upon them before they know we are attacking.”
“Up there? With no other sounds? They are going to hear our rotor wash miles away.”
The wei took a step closer, pulling to his full height, which still missed hers by several inches. “And where do you think they will go?”
“Where did they go at St. Basil’s?” Aunush said, taking a step forward. “Or in the GUM department store?”
The edge of the man’s ears burned red.
“Brandt isn’t just Special Forces. His experience has given him a certain…perspective,” Aunush stated. “If we attempt a full-on assault, he will slip our noose.”
“As you did ours?”
Aunush had to quash a scathing retort. She breathed through her nose and out her mouth. There was no point in arguing, she reminded herself. She had her plan.
She shrugged, feigning defeat. “Your decision.”
“That is right,” th
e wei snorted, indicating to the hotel doors just a few feet away. “And do not think to try and slip away in the night. We will find you.”
“I have no doubt,” Aunush agreed. As a matter of fact, she was counting on it.
CHAPTER 16
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Chalet Nestled in the Alps
4:48 a.m. GMT
Brandt jerked upright in the chair, shaking off his rack time. He pulled the Velcro flap off his watchface. After four in the morning? What the hell? His eyes, still trying to focus in the low light, found a figure near the door. Davidson.
Rising, Brandt stretched out a few hundred kinks and crossed to the younger man.
“My watch was due at three a.m.”
Davidson shrugged. “Figured you needed the rack time.”
“You don’t figure, Davidson, you follow…” Brandt stopped short of calling them orders. That word opened up a can of worms neither of them wanted opened. “We divided up the rack time.”
Those damaged lips pulled up into what passed for a grin. “Sarge, you put me to bed like a third grader at eight p.m. I’m well rested, I swear.”
The kid did look pretty damned chipper, scars and all.
“Alright,” Brandt conceded, “but I’m still taking over for you.”
Davidson didn’t move though. “You might want to check on somebody that didn’t get any sleep, first.” He indicated toward the woman sitting cross-legged near the burned-out fire. Rebecca. What was she up to?
“I’ve got it,” Davidson said, resuming his position near the door. “Sun should be coming up soon. It’s still snowing, but seems to be letting up on the blizzard thing.”
Brandt moved across the room to Rebecca. He grabbed a poker from the fireplace tools and jabbed the smoldering embers. Once first light hit, they’d have to douse the fire to prevent any smoke from giving away their location. So they might as well get as much warmth out of the wood as they could.
Even so, Rebecca tugged her jacket tighter around her shoulders. He grabbed the blanket he’d been using and draped it over her back before sitting on his heels next to her.
Laid out in front of the researcher were two puzzles. The first were the broken fragments of the tablet they’d recovered from St. Basil’s. They were positioned exactly as they had been back on the pedestal. In front of the stone were the letters from Nikolay’s family. Rebecca chewed absently on her lower lip. Her laptop lay off to the side. Unusual.
“What are you working on?” he asked.
Rebecca seemed startled at his words and looked up at him wide-eyed. “Oh, Brandt.” She then felt the blanket over her. “Sorry, thanks.”
Her eyes drifted back to the pages in front of her.
“Going to share?” he asked, knowing once she got into this mood, a single sleepless night was just the beginning.
“Not sure if I really have anything,” she said, working on that lip again.
Brandt sat down cross-legged. He could already tell this might take a while. “How about I decide?”
Rebecca let out a long sigh. “Okay, tablets first.” Brandt’s interest was definitely piqued. The tablets were supposed to be the key to finding Amed, yet he hadn’t heard anything of the sort yet.
“Unfortunately, so far the writing on the tablets really is talking pretty standard God is good, God is great stuff.”
He didn’t think he’d let his irritation show at her casual dismissal of his faith, yet Rebecca nudged him with her elbow. “Sorry. I mean it talks a lot about God’s covenant to man and man’s covenant with God. Some other stuff about a prophet to come to fulfill David’s promise to his people.”
“Christ then?” Brandt clarified.
“Yeah, sure,” Rebecca said, then suddenly became very intent on rubbing her eyes. The action was just a distraction though. Just like she did anytime the subject of Jesus came up. He wanted to ask her again what had happened down in the back of that cave under Rome, but why would she tell him anything now? He wasn’t exactly her favorite person, at least not anymore.
Instead, he let Rebecca stretch her muscles until she finally continued on. “But nothing more specific that would have any bearing on the Rinderpest. Although I’m sure that scholars are going to have a field day parsing each and every word of these tablets out. There are just so many ways to interpret even the simplest sentence.”
She then pointed to Nikolay’s letters along with the handwritten translations of each. Bunny had done the work after they’d eaten dinner and Lopez hosted a somewhat skeptical Texas Hold ’Em poker tournament.
“These though?” Rebecca stated as she pointed to the family letters. “These are kicking my ass.”
From the droop of her lids, Rebecca really had spent the night poring over the family correspondence. Exactly what had her so interested?
* * *
Rebecca studied the multitude of letters laid out in front of her. Sure, Brandt was pretty used to her wacky theories. Used to her plucking strands from one mystery and weaving it into another. But this time?
“We’re going to be pulling out as soon as the sun is up,” Brandt reminded her.
She sighed. There was no point in delaying. She might as well get the scoffing over with.
“Alright,” Rebecca said. “This is going to sound crazy.”
Brandt’s eyebrow went up. “Why else would I be sitting here? I come to you for the crazy.”
God it hurt when he got her, really got her. She’d missed that. Too much.
Focusing back on the letters, Rebecca pointed to the first row. “As you can see, these letters are pretty much just small talk. Family stuff. A little about Moscow and Nikolay’s travels after he left Russia. Apparently nothing of significance.”
“I thought we’d decided that like eight hours ago,” Brandt added.
They had, but something about the letters bugged her. She was no expert on family correspondence, but this just felt…
“The small talk is just too, well…perfect,” Rebecca stated as she picked up a letter. “All is well here. We have frequented the cathedral to pay homage to your work but would like nothing more than to share the journey with you.”
Brandt looked at her like maybe she really was crazy.
Rebecca picked up another. “This stuff is like reading episodes of Happy Days or Leave It to Beaver.” She rushed on to read another letter. “Your mother is doing well. Her hearing is going, but we just speak louder.” She glanced up to Brandt. “I mean, come on, I know that things can get lost in translation, but that cannot be real.”
“This is Nikolay’s nephew supposedly writing these letters, correct?” Brandt asked.
“Yeah.”
Brandt took the letter from her. “Which means that Nikolay’s mother is the nephew’s grandmother. Wouldn’t he call her ‘Grandmother’ or ‘Babushka’?”
Damn it. She’d missed that. She’d been so focused on the diction that she’d missed the reference. Staying up all night did not hone your powers of observation.
“So if we make the leap that these letters were not, in fact, written by his nephew,” Brandt asked, “then who wrote them?”
She felt more sure of her working postulate now that Brandt agreed with her, yet was reluctant to really let the cat out of the bag.
“Rebecca,” Brandt sighed. “You’ve got a theory and we both know it’s going to sound ludicrous, so spit it out.”
“I think…” Rebecca backtracked. “Given that these letters were written most likely in the seventies and—”
Brandt’s hand covered hers. “Spit. It. Out.”
Withdrawing her hand from under his, Rebecca sighed. “I think it is…Osip.”
* * *
“Osip?” Brandt asked, really not expecting that name to pop out of her mouth. He probably would have been less surprised if she’d said President Jimmy Carter.
“He would have been in his late twenties, early thirties,” Rebecca rushed on. “I saw O
sip’s handwriting in Pushchino, plus during the Cold War, with the huge crackdown on religion, they would have had to been extremely careful and—”
“Okay,” Brandt said, having to talk over her. “So is there a way to break whatever code they were using?”
Rebecca opened her lips, but no words came out. It was one of the few times he’d stunned her to silence.
“Code?” Brandt prompted.
“Yes…I mean, no,” Rebecca sputtered. “Well, yes and no. Yes, I think there is a code. No, I haven’t broken it yet.”
Brandt studied the page in his hand. “Well, they certainly aren’t using any kind of high-level Soviet Venona codes.”
Those were one-pad virtually unbreakable codes substituting numbers for letters. This cipher clearly was within the text itself. However Nikolay and Osip used even a simple letter substitution code, it could take days to weeks to figure it out.
“No,” Rebecca stated. “They were both religious men. I think they may be talking about their individual searches for the rest of the tablets.”
That would make sense. The letters did contain an inordinate amount of detail on their daily travels. In just one letter Osip mentioned the cathedral, St. Petersburg, and Crimea. Either this “nephew” was a Russian travel agent, or they were on the hunt for something.
“I take it the sights that Osip is talking about in Russia have important Jewish significance?”
Rebecca crossed her legs again, finding a passage she was especially excited about. “And not just Osip. Even though we don’t have Nikolay’s original letters, we can tell by Osip’s response that Nikolay was traveling all over the place too.” She brought the paper closer to read. “Osip said, ‘I can only imagine that Cyprus was beautiful. I hope that you brought back many mementos.’”
“That did sound pretty promising,” Brandt said, then followed up with his real thoughts. “If we were back in the seventies and didn’t have a plague hot on our heels. This isn’t getting us any closer to where Amed hid the Rinderpest.”
Rebecca frowned, however Bunny stirred on the couch across from them, lazily opening her eyes. “Did you look at the later letters? I think they got more cagey.”
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