He saw it turn to the northwest. That brings them back to me, he thought. With a smile, he put the binoculars aside. He checked the map on his GPS to see where he could cut them off and found the spot he needed just a hundred yards north. Quickly parking his vehicle out of sight behind bushes, he opened the tailgate. In the back lay a second weapons case. He popped it open and lifted out the Colt M4A1, a carbine assault rifle with attached grenade launcher. He grabbed a few spare grenades and a second magazine and found a hiding place not far from the small causeway. All he had to do was wait until the Tundra came down the hill. His grenade sent the SUV crashing into the river.
Friedrich stepped out of his hiding place and walked calmly toward the small river crossing. He slid the spent shell out of the launcher and inserted the new grenade, and also chambered a cartridge in the M4A1. He was taking no chances.
When he reached the crossing, he looked down the embankment. The car lay on its roof about six feet further down, the cab underwater.
Friedrich fired the entire magazine into the car, then switched magazines and emptied the second one into it, too. Then he fired the second grenade, the blast sending water shooting meters into the air. Friedrich squinted as he stared at the burning wreck. Satisfied, he turned around, walked placidly back to his hidden car and drove away.
56
Close to Sheremetev Castle
Tom had one hand clamped over Father Fjodor’s mouth—the injured priest’s cries would have given them all away. Hellen looked into his pain-filled face and did her best to calm him, signaling to him to be quiet. All six were hunched together, bruised and scratched, inside the large drain that passed through the causeway. The water was up to their chests.
When the monstrous and impressively tough Toyota came to rest in the water, they had managed to free themselves just in time and had scrambled into cover inside the drain. The rugged truck was all that had saved their lives. They had barely had time to catch their breath when the deafening sound of automatic gunfire shattered the silence. It was close enough over their heads to make the strongest man cringe in fear, and sheer terror was etched on the faces of Hellen, Cloutard, Arthur, and the two priests. But they were alive. The firing seemed to be over, but then Tom had heard the distinctive click of the grenade launcher barrel locking into place and had thrown himself onto the others, pushing them underwater just as a wall of flame blasted through the tunnel above their submerged heads. But they had dived in time. Father Fjodor, however, had been unfortunate. A chunk of shrapnel had struck him in the side, digging into the flesh between his ribs and hip. Tom, realizing the danger, instantly put his hand over the priest’s mouth to muffle his screams.
They had now been sitting for what felt like an eternity inside the stinking pipe. Finally, Tom decided it was time. “I’m going to take my hand off your mouth,” he said. “But please, for all our sakes, don’t make a sound.” Father Fjodor nodded, tears in his eyes. Tom released his grip, and Cloutard and Arthur supported the injured priest. While Hellen checked the others to make sure they were all in one piece, Tom waded slowly to the other end of the pipe.
He climbed the embankment carefully, pistol in hand, and looked around. Apart from a column of black smoke rising into the sky there was nothing to be seen. No one was around. Neither the explosion nor the firing of the automatic weapon seemed to have drawn any attention. He climbed down again and waved to his friends to come out. With difficulty, they managed to get the priest, wracked with pain, up to the road, where they laid him down. Tom inspected the wound and the piece of shrapnel still lodged in his side.
Father Fjodor was close to losing consciousness, but in his delirium he managed to mumble, “Pull it out.”
“Don’t,” Tom said.
“We don’t know what might have been injured inside,” Hellen explained. “Maybe it’s harmless and superficial, but maybe it’s more serious. This has to be removed in a hospital, where they can stop the bleeding quickly. The shrapnel is probably stopping you from bleeding to death.”
“We can’t stay here,” said Arthur.
“My son has to get to a hospital,” Father Lazarev pleaded.
“We need a vehicle, and we need it now,” Cloutard said.
“Agreed,” said Tom. “Okay, the rest of you wait here. François and I will find some wheels.”
57
Dacha close to Yurino, Russia
“We passed some kind of luxury pad just back up the road,” Tom said as they jogged up the hill.
“A dacha.”
“Gesundheit,” Tom said, grinning.
“A ‘dacha’ is a country house for rich Russians. It is where they go on weekends,” Cloutard said, not amused.
Only when they got closer did they see the fence surrounding the entire area. At the large gate, Tom did not hesitate, but immediately rang the bell. Seconds passed and nothing happened. He pressed the bell a second time, then a third, then held his finger on the button for at least thirty seconds. Nothing.
“Merde,” said Cloutard.
Suddenly, the large gate swung open and a brand new Tesla X rolled almost silently down the driveway. At the wheel sat a young man. When he saw Tom and Cloutard, he stopped and rolled down the window. Tom turned away slightly, keeping his holster out of sight, and Cloutard, pointing to the column of smoke half a mile away, explained in a few words that they’d had an accident and that a priest had been badly hurt.
“Sorry,” the driver said. “I can’t help you. I’ve got an appointment to keep that I can’t put off for anyone.”
He was about to roll the window up again, but Tom’s fist was faster. The unconscious driver slumped forward, his head landed on the horn, and the car began to roll forward slowly. Tom jerked the door open, pulled him out, then jumped into the car and stopped it.
“What do we do with him?” Cloutard asked. “Leave him here or take him along?”
“Leave him here,” they said in unison. They dragged him to the gate and propped him up against it.
“See if he has a phone,” Tom said. “We don’t want him calling in the cavalry as soon as he wakes up.” Cloutard searched the man’s pockets. He found not only a phone but also a pistol: a Jarygin PJa.
“What have we here?” he said. He held the pistol up and Tom raised his eyebrows in surprise—why would the guy be carrying a gun like that? He and Cloutard jumped into the car and drove back to the others.
Hellen had patched up Father Fjodor’s injuries as well as she could by the time Tom and Cloutard returned in the stolen Tesla. She had torn strips from the priest’s soutane and stabilized the shrapnel. At least now it could not move anymore. But it had been too much for Father Fjodor—he had lost consciousness.
“Perfect,” said Hellen when she saw the roomy car. “Help me with him.” She opened the gull-wing doors and they laid the injured priest across the center row of seats. Father Lazarev got in on the other side and supported his son’s head on his lap. Cloutard took the passenger seat and Arthur and Hellen the third-row seats in the back.
Tom turned around to the back while Cloutard tried to decipher the navigation system. “Sorry it isn’t very comfy,” he said, “I’ll go as fast as I can.” Then he turned to the front again and sped away. In a few minutes they reached a larger, paved road and Tom pushed the Tesla to its limits.
“He’s going to make it,” Arthur said consolingly, placing one hand gently on Artjom’s shoulder.
“Thank you, old friend,” Father Lazarev said, grasping Arthur’s hand. “We have not had the best of relationships in recent years. It has been a long time since we last saw each other. It would be unforgiveable if I were to lose him now.” He stroked his son’s hair and wiped tears from his own eyes.
“What exactly is your connection with Kitezh?” Hellen asked.
“You frighten me, young lady. But Arthur says I can trust you, and you did save my life. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart,” Father Lazarev replied. “To answer your question: I
am the guardian of Kitezh. The secret of the city has been passed on in my family from generation to generation, father to son. In the casket”—he indicated the box on Cloutard’s lap—“is the key.”
“If we have the key, then all we need now is the entrance,” Hellen said.
“That lies beneath the Church of Our Lady of Kazan, the church of my forefathers, beside Lake Svetloyar. About thirty years ago, I rebuilt it. The place has always been venerated by the faithful, and a church has always stood there,” Father Lazarev said.
“How did Kitezh sink in the first place?” Arthur asked.
“An earthquake,” the old priest said. “Back when Batu Khan’s soldiers were besieging the city. Today, it lies half submerged in an underground lake. Lake Svetloyar is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.”
“The problem is that this time the quake won’t be as kind to Kitezh as the first one was,” Tom said. “If that earthquake guy Sir Hillary Graves, is right, it’s going to wipe the city out for good.”
Father Lazarev sighed. “I know we can’t save the entire city. But there is one particular artifact that I have to get to safety. Berlin Brice will stop at nothing to get it, even if it means burying half of Russia.”
“What is it?” asked Hellen, looking expectantly at the priest.
“Ce n'est pas bon,” Cloutard suddenly said.
“What’s not good?” Tom asked, glancing across at him.
“My Russian is a little rusty, but unless I’m mistaken, we’re sitting in the official car of a Russian general.”
“Ah. That would explain why that guy was carrying a military pistol. He was the general’s chauffeur, I guess,” Tom said.
Cloutard handed a few documents he’d found in the glovebox over to Father Lazarev, who looked through them quickly.
“You’re right. General Lubomir Orlovski. The documents are trivial, just order forms for kitchen equipment for the officers’ mess.” He handed them back to Cloutard.
“Wonderful,” Arthur said drily. “You stole a Russian general’s car.”
“You have to get used to things like this if you spend much time with Tom,” Hellen said. “We tend to lurch from one catastrophe to the next.”
“Now don’t start exaggerating,” Tom said. “Everything’s under control.”
“Unless we happen to bump into the Russian military and the general,” Cloutard added, and he took a swig of cognac from his hip flask.
Without warning, Tom slammed on the brakes. The jolt woke Father Fjodor, and he groaned in pain. Tom’s hand shot forward. “Fuck, now you’ve done it,” he muttered, and all eyes peered at the soldiers manning a roadblock just ahead of them.
“You were right,” Arthur said, looking at Hellen. “From one catastrophe to the next.”
Tom rolled slowly toward the roadblock. Father Lazarev opened the back window. A soldier approached and the priest explained their situation to him in Russian. Beside him, his semi-conscious son moaned. After a brief conversation with the solider, Father Lazarev nodded in resignation.
“They have closed off the entire area around Nizhny Novgorod. The authorities have issued an earthquake warning—the whole region is being evacuated. But the soldier says they can escort us to a nearby base. They have an infirmary there where they can treat my son.”
“But they won’t let us through to Lake Svetloyar, will they?” Hellen asked.
“I’m sorry, no.”
“Explain it to him one more time. Maybe if you say the magic word ‘Kitezh’ he’ll turn a blind eye,” Tom said, as hopelessly optimistic as ever.
In the meantime, two more soldiers had joined the one at the window and were now eyeing the car suspiciously. One of them reached for his radio.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this . . .” said Tom.
The man with the radio barked an order, and seconds later more than twenty Kalashnikovs were pointing at them.
“I think General Orlovski wants his car back,” Tom said. Just as he raised his hands, the earth began to tremble.
58
Interrogation room, army base near Pigalevo, Russia
“Why you steal car of general?” the Russian officer screamed.
The soldiers had wasted no time at all. The second foreshock had rattled them, certainly, but no one had been hurt, and the earthquake did not distract the soldiers from the fact that Tom and Cloutard had stolen a very expensive car, belonging to a highly decorated general. They had handcuffed all of them, loaded them onto the back of an old Ural-4320 truck, and driven them to the nearby army base.
On arrival they were immediately separated. Tom suspected that his friends had been taken to the holding cells he’d seen when they’d driven into the base. I hope they’re at least looking after Father Fjodor, he thought as two soldiers led him, still cuffed, into a windowless room. In the center of the room, a chair stood beneath a dim, dangling light bulb. The floor was spattered with the dried residues of various bodily fluids. The place reeked—the sweaty stench of the soldiers that hauled him onto the chair was the least of it. This was no regular interview room. It was something entirely different, and Tom did not like to think what might have happened in there. In one corner stood a bucket of water with a gray-brown towel slung over it, and Tom suspected it was not there for wiping the floor. Against the wall was a table—in the dim light, Tom could make out various knives and surgical instruments. A ripple of nausea ran through him and his heart began to pound. The steady drip-drip-drip of water from a faucet into the filthy metal washbasin beneath it did not help. Tom’s restlessness grew, mixing gradually with a dash of fear.
After what felt like an eternity, the steel door flew open and an officer entered, flanked by two soldiers.
“Who are you? Why you steal car of general?” the officer barked now in broken English, the corners of his mouth pulled down.
“That’s a very long story, and I’m afraid we don’t have time for long stories. Why don’t you call your boss, and he’ll call his boss, and so on and so on until you reach President Gennady Vlasov. He’ll tell you who I am. If you can’t reach him, then—”
The officer stepped toward Tom and backhanded him in the face, hard enough to tip the chair over backward. Tom landed painfully on the cold stone floor.
“No play silly games. Who are you?” the officer shouted again after the two soldiers had set the chair upright.
“Ow!” Tom said loudly and with measured insolence. “You made me bite my tongue.” The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. He spat on the floor in front of the officer. “Ah. That explains all the spots on the floor,” he said, and he grinned with bloody teeth at the officer. The officer was ready to hit him a second time, but Tom spoke first: “Okay, seriously. My name is Tom Wagner. I work for Blue Shield. Yeah, I know, who the hell’s heard of Blue Shield, right? It kind of belongs to UNESCO. We protect cultural heritage, but whatever. Too complicated. Look, can you at least call the governor of Nizhny Novgorod and the Patriarch of Moscow? They’ll clear up everything. The injured man is the Patriarch’s private secretary.”
The officer said nothing, but stood and pondered things for a moment. Tom could see only the lower half of his grim face. The rest was in shadow.
The officer nodded to one of his soldiers, then turned on his heel and stalked out of the room.
“Hey, where are you going? President Vlasov’s waiting for your call,” Tom shouted after him. Then the two soldiers stepped in front of him. “Well, boys, what’s next?” he said.
59
Army base near Pigalevo
Hellen, Cloutard and Father Lazarev walked beside the gurney on which Father Fjodor lay. The soldiers had treated them with undisguised hostility, but they weren’t monsters. They could see that Father Fjodor had been seriously wounded—he might have died without Hellen’s makeshift stabilization of the injury—and they took him to the infirmary immediately.
“What do we do now?” Arthur whispered, as their military escort led t
hem to the infirmary.
“Tom will find a way to free us and get us to Kitezh,” Hellen whispered back confidently.
“And how is he supposed to do that?” Tom’s grandfather sounded desperate.
“Mon ami, you do not seem to know your grandson very well. Tom is disaster-prone, I admit, but he is also a master at getting out of his disasters. It is as Hellen says: he will find a way.”
“Whatever Mr. Wagner does or does not do, I will stay here. I may be the guardian of Kitezh, but I will not leave my son here alone,” said Father Lazarev.
The soldiers had removed the old priest’s handcuffs—he presented no danger to them—and he held his injured son’s hand as he walked beside the gurney.
Hellen nodded. As overjoyed as the scientist in her had been to discover that Kitezh still existed, she could also see that Father Fjodor’s life took priority. Cloutard and Arthur, too, had nothing but sympathy for the old priest.
But Father Fjodor, his face contorted in pain, whispered, “You can’t do that, Papa. You have to do your duty and get the artifact to safety. Nothing will happen to me here. They will help me, don’t worry. You have to go to Kitezh. You know what will happen if the artifact falls into the wrong hands.”
The old man’s expression darkened. His face suddenly turned stony and a chill entered his voice. “You are right, my son. I have a duty, and I have to see it through,” he said. He leaned over and kissed his son on the forehead. They had reached the end of the corridor, and Father Fjodor was pushed into a treatment room.
The Invisible City (A Tom Wagner Adventure Book 3) Page 14