Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia: Tuesday 27 October
7:30 A.M. local time
Early the next morning, Stefan was crouched down on his hands and knees, digging for carrots in an overgrown field near the half-collapsed barn where he’d spent the night, when the dog came to him.
Black and tan, with floppy ears and a waggy tail, it looked like some kind of a shepherd mix, half grown and skinny. Panting hopefully, it leaned against Stefan’s legs and looked up at him with softly pleading brown eyes.
“Go away,” said Stefan, throwing a frightened glance about. “Go home.”
But all the villages and farms around here were deserted, inhabited only by storks and ghosts. The dog whined, its head dipping.
Stefan reached out a tentative hand to scratch behind the pup’s ears. It flopped down beside him, its tongue flicking out to lick his wrist.
He ran his hands down the dog’s bony sides and flanks. “What’s the matter, boy? Hmm? You lost? Or don’t you have a home at all?”
The dog whined again.
Stefan stared down at his small pile of hard-won carrots. He hesitated, then broke one into quarters and held it out in the palm of his hand. “You hungry?”
After Sunday night’s disaster near Ayvazovskaya, Stefan had vowed once again to avoid all villages and towns. But the dog didn’t seem to care for carrots, and it kept whining. After two hours of walking, the pup was lagging, its head drooping. Drawing up at the top of a low rise, Stefan hunkered down to loop an arm over the pup’s shoulder as he eyed the town below.
It was a cheerless place, its ugly concrete houses dating back to the Soviet era. Built on the edge of a stretch of marshland, the town’s only reason for existence seemed to be the railroad tracks that ran on an elevated embankment along the edge of town. Stefan could see a freight train coming in the distance, the dirty brown smear from its diesel engine stretching out across the marsh.
He brought his gaze back to the town center, where a line of shops fronted a small rubbish-strewn square with the inevitable statue of Lenin at its center. He wasn’t going to try stealing again—he’d learned his lesson. But surely ten rubles would be enough to buy the dog some scraps from a butcher?
Trying desperately not to attract anyone’s attention, Stefan walked down the hill to the town’s desolate windblown main street, one hand clutching his lucky amber horse head, the dog limping at his heels. They had almost reached the looming statue of Lenin when he glanced up and saw a big black Durango parked at the edge of the dusty square.
Stefan’s mother had a saying: Honest men drive Russian cars. In Kaliningrad, only New Russians, thieves, and whores drove Durangos and Mercedes.
Dropping his hand to the dog’s neck, Stefan swerved sideways into a narrow rutted lane choked with weeds and broken clumps of concrete. Flattening himself behind an old garage, he listened to the buzzing of insects in the grass, smelled the drift of cooking onions from a nearby house, and tried to stop trembling. Beside him, the dog whined. Stefan whispered, “Shhh!”
It was a full minute before he summoned the courage to peek around the corner of the garage. Two men in turtleneck sweaters and dark trousers were working their way down the row of shops on the far side of the square. They had something in their hands—a piece of paper? a picture?—that they kept showing to everyone they came to. The townspeople would look at the paper for a moment, then shake their heads. Stefan could imagine them saying, This boy? No, I haven’t seen this boy. What has he done?
Then one of the men turned, and Stefan recognized the big Chechen with red hair and a ruddy complexion who’d shot Uncle Jasha. With a gasp, Stefan drew back his head, his heart pounding so hard his chest hurt.
“We’ll find another village with a butcher,” he told the dog, turning. “Come on.”
The dog gave a low woof and darted out into the square.
“No! What are you doing?”
Sniffing the Durango’s tires, the pup swung around and calmly lifted its leg.
Stefan’s gaze flew to the men across the square, but both were turned away. He brought his gaze back to the SUV.
Against such men and their guns, Stefan knew, he could do nothing. But that didn’t mean he was helpless.
The dog came bounding back, its tail wagging proudly. Stefan closed one hand convulsively around the lucky amber in his pocket, then reached out and touched the dog’s shoulder. “You stay.”
The dog sat down and cocked its head.
“Good dog. Stay.”
The dog lay down, its head on its paws.
Hunkering low, Stefan sprinted across the alley to crouch behind the Durango’s big fender. Over the broad, shiny expanse of the car’s black hood he could see the men on the far edge of the square, still busy working the shops. Jerking his penknife from his pocket, he dropped to his back and wiggled underneath the SUV.
The familiar, pungent scent of hot oil from the Durango’s engine engulfed him. Stefan had grown up working with his dad on truck engines; it took him only a moment to locate the Durango’s brake line. Breathing a small prayer of thankfulness that the line wasn’t made of metal, he started hacking at the rubber.
He could feel the sharp stones of the roadway digging into his back and rump as he sawed the small blade back and forth. His arms began to ache from the effort of working over his head in the cramped space, but he kept cutting, desperately aware of the passage of time.
The blast of a train’s whistle, sounding unexpectedly close, distracted him. He jerked his head out of the way just as the line finally broke, sending a stream of brake fluid squirting out into the dirty road. He was tempted to leave it at that, to run while he had the chance. But a cut brake line could be quickly dealt with; a missing section of line was a lot harder to fix. Biting his lip, he started a second cut some six inches from the first.
Glancing over his shoulder, he realized the men were now standing together at the corner, talking. Just as the big redheaded Chechen stepped off the curb to cross the square, the section of hose came loose in Stefan’s hand.
Scooting out from beneath the Durango, he pushed to his feet…and heard a shout go up across the square.
“Mother of God,” gasped Stefan.
He pelted down the alleyway, the black-and-tan dog leaping up and yelping with joy at the sight of him. “Come on, boy!” he shouted. “Run.”
“Get the car!” the Chechen yelled. “Cut him off at the street.”
The dog bounding at his heels, Stefan ran down a rutted weed-grown lane hemmed in by high fences of vertical weathered boards. He could hear the pounding of running feet behind him, the loud gunning of the Durango’s engine in the square. He risked a quick glance over his shoulder and saw the big Chechen, red-faced and gaining on him fast. Then the driver of the Durango floored the gas, and Stefan heard a horrendous tearing crash.
Whooping with delight, he swerved to his right and squeezed through a gap where a board had broken off one of the fences. The dog wiggled in behind him.
The Chechen was too big to slip through the hole in the fence. As Stefan darted across the overgrown yard and down the gravel drive leading to the street, he could hear the big man grunting and swearing as he heaved himself up over the tall, jagged fence. He hit the ground on the other side hard. But by then Stefan was already flying down the street toward the railway embankment.
He was aware of the train thundering closer, its whistle now a loud shriek of warning. And he realized that if he didn’t make it across that embankment before the train cut him off, he’d be trapped.
He heard a whimper and looked back. Its head drooping, the pup faltered, stumbled.
“No!” Reaching down, Stefan scooped the dog up against his chest. Staggering beneath the weight, he stumbled across the street, tripped over a rock buried in the rank grass of the elevated rail bed. He could hear the Chechen drawing nearer, his breath coming in determined grunts. Gritting his teeth against exhaustion and pain, Stefan raced up the embankment, his legs reaching, his arms hugging the pup tight.
Big and black and deadly, the engine bore down on them, its shrieking whistle a painful physical blast. Lungs bursting, Stefan sprinted across the tracks. He felt the sucking vacuum as the train roared past behind him, the earth trembling beneath him as he half fell, half slithered down the far side of the embankment, the pup at his side.
At the base of the slope he paused, his heart pounding, his hands shaking as he drew the dog to him and buried his sweaty face in the animal’s thick, warm coat. Then he pushed up, the rhythmic clickity-clack of the train’s wheels loud in his ears.
Looking back he could see an endless line of boxcars stretching out across the marsh, and he smiled. “Come on, boy,” he said to the dog. “Let’s go.”
Salinger parked the silver Range Rover in the shadow of a ruined Teutonic castle and cut the engine. “That’s it.”
Rodriguez studied the tidy stucco house halfway down the street. “Wait here,” he said, pulling on his gloves. He was opening the car door when the call came through from Borz Zakaev.
“There’s been a new development,” said Borz in his deep, gravelly voice. “We were near Znamensk, showing the kid’s picture to some townspeople, when he cut the brake line on the Durango.”
Rodriguez glanced over at Salinger. “You’re sure it was the kid?”
“We chased him,” said Borz. “The little shit ran across the railroad tracks right in front of a train. By the time we got around it, he was gone.” Borz hesitated. “We’re going to need a new car.”
“You can’t get the Durango’s brakes fixed?”
“We didn’t know about the brakes until Zoya crashed into a cement wall. He’s okay, but the SUV’s a wreck.”
“Fuck,” said Rodriguez. How much trouble could one fucking little shit be?
A movement overhead drew his gaze to the cold expanse of northern sky, where a dozen or so ducks flew in a perfect V formation, their wings beating the air as they fled the coming ice and snow. Rodriguez smiled.
“This kid, he thinks he’s smart. He thinks he just bought himself some time. But he’s not smart, he’s stupid. He let us know he’s alive.” He reached for the map, spread it open on the Range Rover’s console. “Where is this Znamensk?”
“Just south of E77 and A229, on the railroad line.”
Rodriguez followed the route with his finger. Most maps of Kaliningrad were shit. But this one had come from the Russian army. The town lay about a third of the way between Kaliningrad and Yasnaya Polyana. He smiled and folded the map away. “Looks like our little pigeon is flying home.”
“So what do we do?”
“Keep checking the towns along the route. You may flush him out. When we’re finished here, the rest of us will move operations to Yasnaya Polyana.”
Nodding to Salinger, Rodriguez closed the car door quietly behind him and started down the walk toward Anna Baklanov’s well-kept little house.