The Hunters

by Chris Kuzneski

  ‘Yes, strannik. Thank you,’ Dvorkin said with appreciation. The term ‘strannik‘ meant ‘religious pilgrim’. It was a nickname their master was often called in his early years.

  Sidorov waved the gratitude away as if it were a pesky fly. ‘You have served me well and our cause even better. You deserve every possible consideration.’

  ‘Thank you, strannik. Thank you.’

  Although Dvorkin was still aware of the young woman in the room, she was only a dim presence now - especially in the shadow of an important man like Sidorov. Even when he was being complimentary, it was probably wise to pay strict attention.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ Sidorov asked.

  Dvorkin shook his head no.

  ‘Would you mind if I had one?’

  ‘Of course not, strannik.’ For Dvorkin, it was much more comfortable to call him ‘strannik‘ rather than ‘sir’, or ‘leader’, or ‘Grigori’. One was too formal, the next too venerated, and the last too familiar.

  Sidorov rose from his chair and walked over to a rolling cart at the foot of the sofa where the woman lay. Dvorkin was once again hyper-aware of her shapely leg and the swath of soft naked flesh between the top of her stocking and the top of the long skirt’s slit, as his superior poured some amber liquid into a cut-glass snifter.

  ‘That is why I have brought you here,’ Sidorov said. His icy tone sent a disproportionately large chill through Dvorkin.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he replied.

  ‘Even though your dedication to our cause cannot be faulted, even by your critics, some have said that your understanding of it has left something to be desired.’

  ‘Critics?’ Dvorkin was taken aback. ‘Who has said this, strannik?’

  Sidorov waved that away as well. ‘I am here to heal, not accuse.’ He took a sip of brandy. ‘Just tell me what you feel. Tell me what you know, so I can put your mind at rest.’

  ‘About what, strannik?’

  The man shrugged lightly. ‘Anything. Anything at all that pertains to us.’

  Dvorkin leaned back, blinking. ‘Where to start? There is so much.’

  Sidorov dismissed that statement. ‘Not really. Start here, in this very room.’ Then he looked slowly at the lounging female and smiled.

  ‘Ah,’ Dvorkin exclaimed. ‘Our master traveled to the Verkhoturye Monastery at the age of eighteen or so. There he learned of the Khlysty, or “Christ-believers”.’

  Sidorov made a look of distaste. ‘I prefer, “They that purge”.’

  ‘Of course, of course. I was getting to that,’ Dvorkin hastily added. ‘The Khlysty did away with saints, and priests, and books. They - I mean we - practiced divine attainment through the repentance of sin.’

  ‘And to repent sin …?’

  ‘We have to experience it.’

  ‘Go on,’ Sidorov said as he took another sip of his drink.

  ‘The greater the sin, the greater the repentance.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Our master found great power within himself with this practice. He was able to heal the sick and see the future.’

  ‘And?’

  Dvorkin was confused. He was unsure as to what his leader wanted, so he was only able to parrot back the same question. ‘And?’

  Sidorov lowered his glass and pointed it at Dvorkin. ‘There, you see? This is what I’m sure your accusers are talking about. You know the story, yes, but you do not appear to understand it. Do you bring insight to it?’

  Dvorkin desperately wanted to respond in the affirmative, but Sidorov’s next words were already rolling over him.

  ‘The more the master sinned and repented, the greater the power he had. He healed the tsar’s son of his bleeding ailment. He brought the tsar’s lady-in-waiting back from the dead. He cried for them, he worked for them, he loved for them, and he lived for them - no matter how great the jealousy, hatred, and misunderstanding that he faced.’

  ‘I understand his greatness,’ Dvorkin said feebly.

  But Sidorov’s words were more than an education. He used his oratory to stir himself to an emotional frenzy. This was how Sidorov had become the leader of the Black Robes, by stoking flames within himself, flames he passed on to others.

  ‘The priests sought to banish him,’ Sidorov preached, ‘and they were banished themselves for their sins. Their agents tried to kill him with a knife, but they were humbled by his survival. And the tsarina loved him in return, as did all the princesses. Why else was he allowed in their bed-chambers? The ladies of court loved him, and that was truly why he was most hated by men of power. They all wished they were loved as greatly. Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dvorkin replied.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes!’ Dvorkin exclaimed, catching fire. ‘That’s why Prince Yusupov, the Grand Duke Pavlovich, and Duma representative Purishkevich plotted to kill him.’

  Sidorov put the snifter down so hard Dvorkin thought it might break. His leader’s smile was wide but his eyes were cold. ‘Yet they could not kill him, could they?’

  ‘No, strannik.’

  ‘What else did they call him?’

  ‘I - I must think—’

  ‘What else did they call our master besides strannik?’

  Dvorkin’s mind raced. They had called him the mad monk, but he dared not say that.

  ‘Later in life, Pavel! What did they call him?’

  ‘Starets!‘ he suddenly remembered. ‘Venerated teacher. Elder monk confessor.’

  Sidorov calmed. ‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘Starets.’ He looked at the ceiling as if searching for a sign or message, then looked upon his associate with pitying intensity. ‘And our master starets sinned so much, and repented so much, that he could heal the sick and see the future, yes?’

  ‘Yes … Yes, starets …’

  Now that a different title had been indicated, he had better use it.

  Sidorov stared at him. ‘But there’s more. You know there’s more.’

  ‘… I do, yes,’ Dvorkin said while he racked his brain for answers. What more does he mean? What other feats in the palace? What other liaisons did he have?

  Sidorov was standing over Dvorkin now, looking down at him as if from a great height. ‘Our master could transcend death.’

  Dvorkin felt his face flush with humiliation. ‘Of course! How stupid of me! How utterly shameful!’

  Much to Dvorkin’s amazement, Sidorov laughed in delight. ‘Good, good,’ he approved. ‘Remember, part of the Khlysty sect is self-flagellation. “I whip myself, I seek Christ” is what they chanted, yes?’

  ‘Yes, starets,’ Dvorkin said with relief. ‘If you have a whip, I will gladly use it.’

  Sidorov smiled at the offer. ‘Oh no, there will be no whips for us. We don’t have time for self-flagellation any more. Our task is too great.’

  ‘Yes, starets,’ Dvorkin agreed, suitably humbled.

  ‘Tell me, Pavel, what is our task?’

  ‘Our task?’ he echoed.

  Sidorov furrowed his brow. ‘Surely you remember our master’s story. Surely you remember the task of his followers.’

  ‘It is … it is to find him.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sidorov breathed. ‘They slit his stomach open. He did not die. They poisoned him. He did not die. They shot him three times. He did not die. They beat him. He did not die. They drowned him. He did not die. They burned him. He … did … not … die. Our master still lives!’

  Sidorov turned from his associate. ‘I have spent my life following his example. I have sinned. I have repented. I have gained influence.’ He started to move around the room, as if gaining power from the trappings of royalty. ‘I have followed every lead, I have explored every clue. And finally - finally - I discovered a way to locate him.’

  He was back by Dvorkin, just behind his chair. He put his left hand on Dvorkin’s right shoulder and sneered. ‘All you had to do was wait, and watch, and let the Americans find him for us, but you were too weak to do your part!’

  Fueled by
rage and disgust, Sidorov plunged a silver fruit knife into the left side of Dvorkin’s stomach, then dragged it across to the right. The part of Dvorkin’s brain that wasn’t in paralyzed shock, that wasn’t shrieking in high, inaudible agony, was impressed at the strength it took to pierce flesh, cut across organs, and slit muscle with a fruit knife, even one from Imperial Russia.

  Dvorkin opened his mouth to scream, but only a small ‘uh’ emerged. His hands came up, but they stopped when his mind couldn’t decide whether to claw at the knife, the hand that held it, or Sidorov’s face. Ultimately, his reflexes decided for him, and he reached down to try to keep his intestines from spilling onto his knees.

  Sidorov cut as far as he wanted, then shoved Dvorkin to the floor. The man fell mostly on his side, his hands clutching at the jagged, blood-wet wound. He looked up at his leader, his eyes bulging and his mouth opening and closing like a beached fish.

  Sidorov stood there, the bloodied fruit knife now in his left hand. ‘Our master is waiting for my arrival - waiting to give me his power. All you had to do was wait. But no, you wanted to cut corners. You wanted to follow the Americans from inside a nice warm room. So you tried to plant a bug on their train. And one of them saw you. She came to investigate. You panicked and seized her. And now they know we are tracking them.’

  Sidorov grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and turned him onto his back. ‘But don’t worry: you will get the same chance that the prince, the duke, and the Duma delegate gave our master.’

  Sidorov wrapped his hands around Dvorkin’s throat and squeezed.

  A soft gurgle escaped his mouth as the life was choked out of him.

  Satisfied with the punishment, Sidorov rose and walked over to the sofa. With a bemused smile, he sat next to the still, young woman, and tenderly removed the heavy blindfold - heavy because he had soaked the cloth in a transdermal anesthetic that had seeped through her skin and into her bloodstream within moments of its application.

  He watched her sleeping for a few moments.

  She had never looked better, he thought.

  Like an innocent angel.

  He realized this is what she must have looked like before family abuse, self-loathing, and desperation had brought her here.

  Sidorov lay beside her and took the unconscious beauty in his arms. She would help him repent, he decided. Long into the night.

  43

  Thursday, September 20

  Vascauti, Romania

  (870 miles southwest of Moscow)

  Garcia followed their progress on his Goldfinder program. They had traveled nearly nine hundred miles since they had left the station, and thus far everything had gone smoothly. ‘Good news: we have left the Ukraine and entered Romania. Next stop: Gold City.’

  McNutt groaned at the comment. He was an optimistic fellow, one who lived in a dream world where bears could fire cannons, but he knew this mission was still a long shot unless all of the team’s theories proved to be accurate.

  First, they assumed that Prince Felix had taken the treasure train from Moscow. Second, they believed that every soldier capable of walking had been massed for an aborted attempt to slash through Poland and attack East Prussia. This meant that the treasure could not have been offloaded from the train because there was no one on board to do the heavy lifting. Third, they guessed that the train would head to at least one major spur where they could change directions to confuse would-be followers. However, this change needed to be done without witnesses. That meant a well-hidden spur in a thinly populated region.

  After punching all that information into the Goldfinder program, it spit out a logical choice: the Transylvanian Plateau in Romania. Despite its name, the Transylvanian Plateau was a land of steep hills and valleys. The higher peaks of the Romanian Carpathian Mountains rose in nearly every direction, but here in the middle the rocky terrain gave way to vast forests and scenic cliffs. Given the difficulty of locating anything among its seemingly endless woodlands, they figured it was a great place to hide treasure.

  Now all they had to do was find it.

  McNutt, who had openly wondered if they were on the wrong train heading in the wrong direction, glanced at the screen. ‘There’s the calm before the storm, but this is nuts. Nearly twenty hours, and there isn’t even a breeze out there.’

  He was right. There was nothing ominous on the overhead satellite feed, nothing in the 360-degree video sweep, no radio chatter, no complaints from the pressure-sensitive tabs in the couplings, and nothing but Russian folk tunes from Andrei Dobrev in the engine. Dobrev had shown Jasmine the rudiments of how to run the engine so that she could spot him for rest periods. She was up there with him now.

  Cobb, via his earpiece, told McNutt not to worry. ‘Sometimes a day with nothing but sunshine is just that: a sunny day. Don’t read into it.’

  ‘Actually, I’m pissed because it’s sunny.’

  Garcia turned around. ‘You’re pissed at the sun?’

  McNutt nodded. ‘I was hoping to do some sightseeing before we left Moscow, and today would’ve been a perfect day to stand in line at Red Square. I could’ve worked on my tan.’

  Cobb ignored the ‘tan’ part and focused on ‘Red Square’. He was stunned that McNutt wanted to visit a historical site. ‘I didn’t know you were a history buff.’

  ‘I’m not,’ McNutt assured everyone, ‘but I’m a huge Beatles fan. Before we left town, I was hoping to visit Lennon’s tomb.’

  Laughter erupted all over the train, so much so that Garcia had to temporarily excuse himself from his workstation to avoid laughing in front of McNutt. Even Jasmine, who could barely hear the chatter over the roar of the engine, laughed so hard she started to cry. Confused by her outburst, Dobrev demanded to know what had happened on his train. While giggling uncontrollably, it took her nearly five minutes to translate the story into Russian, but once she did, Dobrev laughed harder than anyone - so much so, he had to run to the bathroom because he was afraid he was going to wet his pants.

  Meanwhile, McNutt had no idea what had set them off.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he mumbled to no one in particular. ‘Is it because I like the Beatles? I know they’re old, but I love their songs. Lennon was a musical genius.’

  * * *

  It took a while for the laughter to subside. Once it did, things returned to normal.

  With Papineau elsewhere, Cobb had commandeered the desk, which was covered with paper maps and charts. Garcia returned to his workstation where the extra monitors he had initially ordered as back-up were now arrayed to accommodate the new security cams he had installed on, over, and under the train. The screens now stretched around him like blinders.

  Between fits of pacing, watching over Garcia’s back, and doing squat-thrusts and deep knee bends to stay limber, Sarah was lying on the sofa, studying maps on her tablet. Except for a few bruises on her neck, she was outwardly recovered from the Black Robe attack.

  ‘This is so boring,’ McNutt announced from a chair beside the couch, where he was enjoying a pungent sandwich he had just made in the galley - black bread, chopped sweet gherkins, crushed garlic cloves mixed with olive oil, black forest ham, Kusendorf Swiss cheese, and cucumber slices. ‘Come on, Jack. I want to shoot somebody. When is that going to happen?’

  ‘Hopefully, not on this trip,’ Cobb said.

  ‘Bite your tongue,’ McNutt snapped.

  Sarah rolled her eyes. McNutt was still having trouble with the big picture. ‘Let me ask you a question: why would anyone try to stop us when we have no real idea where we’re going?’

  ‘Because Russians are ornery that way.’

  ‘You make it sound like we should be watching out for Cossacks on horseback.’

  ‘Hey, watch what you say,’ Jasmine cautioned from the engine. ‘There are still large pockets of Cossacks, and they are intensely xenophobic.’

  ‘See?’ McNutt said.

  Sarah and McNutt both happened to glance over at Cobb. He seemed to have tuned them out. His
focus was a pin that let the air out of the conversation. The car was quiet, save for the endless clack of the heavy cars passing over old rails set in a slightly uneven track bed.

  They were all wearing what had rapidly become their uniforms. Black, ultra lightweight, long-sleeve T-shirts made of the latest sports fabric. It kept them cool in heat and warm in cold. Their Eisenhower-style jackets and cargo pants were dark olive and featured stealth material that made the soft, strong cloth virtually silent. They were equipped with cunningly placed pockets for a variety of each person’s needs - mostly extra ammo, since the jackets were long enough to cover their dark brown holster belts. Their shoes were also black and looked like a cross between hi-top slippers and combat boots. They were waterproof, slip-proof, and insulated, much like their shirts. In addition, every team member wore a watch that was synchronized and had a reflection-free face. The crystals were polarized along a vertical axis, meaning no one could read the watch except the owner, and ambient light bounced up, not out.

  After a few minutes of silence, Cobb told Sarah to bring up a specific map on her iPad. He pointed to a variety of lines he had made on his own map with different colored pencils.

  ‘I think the prince was trying to both find a place to hide the treasure and make sure his family’s path to Yalta was still clear,’ he said. ‘So we’re looking for a road less traveled.’

  ‘To Yalta?’ she said.

  ‘Toward Yalta,’ he corrected.

  ‘Aren’t we a bit far afield, then?’ Sarah asked, pointing east. ‘We’re headed southwest. Isn’t Yalta a few hundred miles that way?’

  ‘I don’t think the prince wanted to hide the treasure in the Ukraine - or, as it was known then, Little Russia.’ He shook his head. ‘Too close to anti-Romanov armies. I’m betting that somewhere along this path he split the two groups - family one way, the way which led out, and the treasure another way.’

  ‘Was it Malta or Yalta that his family left from?’ McNutt wondered, chewing on a crunchy bite of sandwich. ‘I can never keep those straight.’