CORPORAL HAGEN CLIMBED OFF his motorcycle, walked stiffly across the snow to the end of the trail and shook his head.

“The tracks stop dead right here, sir,” he said. “It looks as though they doubled back on their own trail, which means we must have driven straight past them somewhere. Probably in those woods.” Hagen took off his steel helmet and rubbed his squarish head for a moment. His leather coat creaked as his arm moved, and it sounded just like the snow shifting under his boots as he walked. “You did say this was a child we were after, sir, didn’t you?”

“You know I did,” said Captain Grenzmann. “Why do you ask?”

“Only it’s not many children who could lay a false trail like this and would have the nerve to hide from us as we passed straight by them.”

“S’right, sir,” said the SS man called Donkels. “This can’t be any ordinary child.”

“Unless it was the horses that did it,” said the third SS man. “Them being as cunning as you said they were.”

“That would be very cunning for a horse,” said Donkels. “A horse would have to be as cunning as a fox to do something like that.”

“And I keep telling you that’s exactly what these horses are like,” insisted Grenzmann.

“Well,” said Hagen, “it seems we have to go back the same way we came.” He yawned, wiped the inside of his helmet with a handkerchief and then placed it back on his head. “Look, sir. Why don’t we call it a day? Or more accurately, a night, since that’s what this is. We’ve been on their trail now for what—eighteen hours? We tried our best to catch them and we’ve failed. Not that anyone ever needs to know that, sir.”

“I will know it, Corporal,” Grenzmann said coldly.

“All I’m saying, sir, is that since we are now returning the way we came, why don’t we keep going until we run into the sergeant and the rest of our men? Perhaps they’ve made camp back there. We can rest up a bit, get some hot food inside us and then try again tomorrow.” He shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll see some sign of the horses when it’s light. But if we don’t then, where’s the harm in just going back to the big house at Askaniya-Nova? A couple of wild horses and a child. I mean, really, sir, is it worth all this effort?”

“That’s right, sir,” said Donkels. “No one could have done more than you did. Anyone else but you would have given up ages ago.”

“You think so, huh?”

“Yes, sir. You’ve been quite relentless, sir.”

“But now the time has come to give up, is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me tell you what I think about that idea.”

Grenzmann drew his pistol, laid it on his lap and stared at it meaningfully. The other three men shifted awkwardly.

“We’re going on with the search,” Grenzmann said firmly. “Until we find them. Do you understand? Nobody is going to quit now. Need I remind you that this is a breeding pair of Przewalski’s horses we’re pursuing and we have a duty to cleanse the earth of their wandering kind forever? That’s a duty I’m not about to shirk just because you are all feeling tired. And anyone who wants to argue about this can take it up with Mr. Luger here.” Grenzmann paused. “Anyone? How about you, Corporal?”

Hagen shook his head.

“No, I thought not. So let’s have a little less argument and a little more enthusiasm. Now mount that motorcycle, Corporal, and let’s move, shall we? There’s no time to waste. As you say, it’s clear they’ve doubled back. That can only mean that they know we’re close to catching them. In spite of what you say, we haven’t failed yet. Not by a long way.”

Hagen saluted smartly and climbed onto his motorcycle; he had no love for Grenzmann, but he feared the captain and he knew the others feared him, too. It was fear that kept them all in line and often made them obey orders they sometimes found distasteful; at least that was what they had told themselves.

Minutes later, they were speeding back along the frozen trail.

An hour’s hard ride brought them back to the circle of standing stones, and they might have carried straight on because the previous tracks of their own wheels were much more noticeable in the moonlight than anything else. The ancient monument was almost behind them when Grenzmann glanced back over his shoulder and noticed two lines of hoofprints leading off at a tangent and over the brow of the hill. He slapped the arm of the man beside him and pointed.

“There’s the trail,” he said. “Get in front of the corporal’s machine and make him follow you.”

The BMW sped quickly ahead, and taking over the lead, Grenzmann’s rider turned the small pursuit party back up the hill and toward the center of the stone circle. When they arrived there, Grenzmann saw that the tracks went down one side of the dip but did not come up again.

“What did I tell you?”

Grinning broadly, he held up his hand and brought the pursuit party to a halt.

“They must be hiding down there,” he said. “Turn off your engines and dismount. We’ll go the rest of the way on foot. Better bring a flashlight, Corporal.”

With machine pistols slung around their necks, the four Germans descended along the path to the door of the open burial chamber.

“This is a strange place,” said Donkels. “A temple or, more likely, a grave. It’s certainly not the sort of place you want to be entering at night, I’d have thought. These stone circles were made by people who believed in magic and witchcraft. And you desecrate a site like this at your peril.”

“Donkels is right,” said Hagen. “That’s a grave in there. Best leave whoever it belongs to well alone, if you ask me.”

“Nonsense,” said Grenzmann. “It’s perfectly obvious that they’re hiding in here. Which means that this grave has already been desecrated. Not that it is of any concern to us. We’re German soldiers, not a bunch of old women. It’s just a question of going in here and getting them.”

Corporal Hagen stared nervously into the entrance. A strange smell filled the air; he sniffed it suspiciously. “Maybe so,” he said. “But sometimes old women know best. And it is very dark in there. Perhaps it would be better just to wait here until the morning. It couldn’t do any harm, could it? If they are hiding in there, it’s not like they can go anywhere else now, is it?”

“It might be a trap,” suggested Donkels. “Suppose they’re armed.”

“Give me that flashlight,” demanded Grenzmann, and stepped through the doorway.

Reluctantly, the three SS men followed him along a wide stone passage that turned to the left as it descended down a gentle slope.

“He doesn’t lack courage,” Hagen whispered to the other two. “I’ll say that for him.”

“Is that what you call it?” said Donkels. “If you ask me, he’s going to get us all killed. I’ve got a funny feeling about this place. As a matter of fact, ever since we got started, I’ve had a peculiar feeling about this whole business. As if there was something not quite right about these wild horses and this child.”

“Maybe there will be treasure,” said Hagen, trying to look on the bright side. “Perhaps, like Heinrich Schliemann, we’ll find the Ukrainian version of the treasures of Troy and all die rich men.”

Talk of treasure lifted the hearts of the Germans for a moment.

“As long as we don’t just die,” said the third SS man. “Like Schliemann.”

“Silence in the ranks,” hissed Captain Grenzmann.

As the passage came to an end, he moved the beam of the flashlight from the floor to the roof, revealing a high, vaulted ceiling that was covered with paintings like the ones they’d seen back in the waterworks.

“What is this place?” breathed Hagen.

“These are the same paintings we saw back at Askaniya-Nova,” said Donkels. “Aren’t they?”

“Nonsense,” said Grenzmann, and pointed the beam of the flashlight straight ahead of them into the thick darkness. “Those were much more recent. These cave paintings are the real thing.”

Another, even stranger, sight met their widening eyes—so unutterably remarkable and unearthly that the Germans were stunned into silence as they tried to make sense of what they were looking at in the impatient beam of Grenzmann’s flashlight.

The three SS men gasped, and even Grenzmann felt his jaw drop; all thoughts of the original objects of their pursuit were momentarily forgotten.

“Incredible,” he said.

It was a life-sized war chariot that resembled an ancient exhibit in the world-famous Pergamon Museum in Berlin. The charioteer appeared to be a young female wearing a breastplate and helmet, with a spear in her hand, and she stood on a waist-high, semicircular chariot that was well equipped with arrows and javelins. Two horses were hitched side by side by a yoke, and next to them stood an enormous hunting dog. But what made the chariot group so marvelous to the Germans was that it appeared to be mostly made of solid silver, and their fear now gave way to greed.

“Look at that,” said Hagen. “Did you ever see anything so lovely? So magnificent?”

“It’s silver,” said Donkels.

“If it is,” said Hagen, “we’re rich.”