Black Wolf: A Dreamland Thriller

by Dale Brown

  “I do think,” said Zen, rolling over to one of the battle-axes. The blades gleamed with the light from the fixtures suspended above.

  “Were these ever used?” asked Caroline.

  “We cannot to be sure,” said the guide. “Similar weapons would have been intended for show in other families. Sometimes they might be used in ceremonies, certainly. They are very old, so it is hard to tell.”

  “I think I see blood on that handle,” said Zen.

  He was teasing, but the others all looked.

  “Maybe senator is correct,” said the guide.

  The tour continued through one of the two doors at the far end of the hall. A suite of conference rooms had been built in the courtyard. These backed into the keep, so that the great room was connected to the meeting area by a short hallway. This transitional space was lit by a large glass skylight. The effect was as if you were stepping into a time machine and materializing back in the twenty-first century.

  Zen, tired from the flight, had a little trouble negotiating the threshold, his wheelchair veering with the bumps. He barely kept himself from cursing as he crashed into the wall, fortunately at a slow speed.

  Caroline looked at him, but knew from experience that he didn’t want or need any help. The guide, unfortunately, didn’t, and came over and took the back of his chair.

  “I’m all right,” said Zen, pushing the chair back a little too hard in annoyance. “It’s OK.”

  “Daddy likes to drive himself,” said Teri.

  “So I do, my princess,” said Zen. “Makes me feel like a king. Appropriate for a castle.”

  Flustered, the guide started talking about the work the People had done on the castle.

  Zen thought it was interesting the way she used the phrase “the People” instead of the government. On the one hand, it was a vestige from the old days of Communist party rule, still a sore subject for many Czechs. On the other, it was a reminder of who actually owned the country, and Zen couldn’t fault it.

  Except for the communist connections, he’d recommend it for the U.S. He knew far too many supposed government servants, to say nothing of elected officials, who could use the reminder.

  They moved on, down a ramp past a modern kitchen. It continued in a series of rectangular turns, leading them to a large stone room below the main hall.

  “This is the dungeon, where prisoners were kept. And wine,” added the guide. “I’m not sure whether they really went together. You can see the chains still on the walls. And the old graffiti.”

  Teri followed the guide, craning her neck toward the wrought-iron circles embedded in the stones.

  “Uncle Jeff, I think Teri may be getting a little tired,” said Caroline. “Her eyes are droopy.”

  “I think you’re right. We’re probably all good for an early bedtime. We’ll head over to the rooms after this,” he said. “Pretty interesting place, though, no?”

  “It’s a little creepy,” said Caroline.

  “You think?”

  “This room especially. Can you imagine it before they took the wall away? There would have been no light. It would have been a horrible place to be held prisoner.”

  “You do the crime, you pay the dime,” said Zen.

  “Or if you disagree with the lord of the castle,” she added. “He was god, as far as the local peasants were concerned. If he didn’t like you, the chains went on.”

  “That’s a point,” said Zen. “Though probably if you did something to really piss him off, he’d just have you killed. Why waste the space?”

  53

  Kiev, Ukraine

  “There’s no question about it,” said Hera, pointing at the computer screen. It displayed an image of the interior of the large building the Wolves had used on the farm. “This part here resembles the interior of the ministry where the NATO meeting is to take place. Look at the access path they took.”

  Hera superimposed a diagram of the meeting hall on the photo, then had the computer show the paths the Wolves had taken inside.

  “There are gaps in the walls here and here,” said Danny. “Those aren’t on the Kiev building.”

  “True, but notice that they don’t go through those spaces. And they ignore this part as well. They could have run something across the space to block it off so the radar wouldn’t pick it up. A simple rope or ribbon. They might have realized that they could be scanned, and disguised the layout. Or maybe it’s something generic that they adapted.”

  Danny rubbed his fingers across his scalp, scratching a nonexistent itch. He was extremely tired—he hadn’t slept in almost forty-eight hours, and if you added the time he’d actually slept the week before, the total would have come in under twenty. He’d already had one go-pill, but wanted to avoid taking another. While the doctors claimed they weren’t addictive, he just didn’t like the idea.

  “I think they must have been planning to stash those robotic helicopters in one of these warehouse buildings,” continued Hera. She pointed to a row of buildings eight-tenths of a kilometer away. “They would have a straight shot right across the roadway here. Go over this fence—or blow it up—and they’re there.”

  McEwen stared at the screen pensively.

  “You don’t think that’s the place?” Hera asked.

  “Oh, I think it’s definitely the place,” said the older CIA officer. “But those helicopters wouldn’t have taken them very far, according to what your scientists said. They had to have some other place in mind.”

  “I think we should check out the warehouses,” said Hera.

  “And the airport,” said McEwen. “Because the airport is within range of the helicopters. So they get in them, fly to the airport, and leave from there.”

  “The airport would be shut down,” answered Hera.

  “In ten minutes? I doubt it. You could have a private plane ready to leave. Or even a helicopter.”

  “We should check into all of that,” said Danny, trying but failing to suppress a yawn.

  “I think one of us should get some rest,” said McEwen.

  “I’m OK,” said Danny. He got up from the chair. “All right, so they’re at the airport and they have an airplane. Where would they go?”

  “Over the border, back to Moldova,” said Hera.

  “No, they’d want to keep the country as a safe haven,” said McEwen. “They’ve clearly worked from there before. They’re going to go somewhere safe.”

  “They’re being followed,” said Danny, yawning again.

  “They parachute out,” said Hera.

  “I could see that,” said Danny. “But where?”

  The possibilities were endless. Danny scaled back, suggesting that they have MY-PID check for leases and plane charters that might be suspicious.

  “No offense to the computer,” said McEwen, “but don’t you think we’re better off doing the legwork ourselves?”

  “The computer can find things we can’t,” said Danny.

  “And vice versa.”

  “All right,” Danny agreed. “Let’s do it both ways.”

  “We’ll take care of it,” McEwen told him. “In the meantime, why don’t you get some rest?”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” said Hera.

  “Ganging up on me?” Danny smiled.

  “Your eyes are like slits, Colonel,” said McEwen. “I hate to be the one to say this, but you really do need your rest. There’s no substitute.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” he said sarcastically.

  She frowned.

  “You’re right,” he admitted. “I’m off to bed. Wake me if you find anything important.”

  54

  Northwestern Moldova

  Nuri was hungry as well as tired, and since it was dinnertime, the first place he stopped when he got to the village was the café. The hostess acted as if he was an old friend when he came in, taking him to the table at the front with great ceremony. Her tray of cordials quickly followed.

  “Too tired to drink,” he said
.

  “No, no, tired good. Pep you up.”

  Maybe he would have a drink, he decided. He felt pretty wound up, too keyed up to sleep.

  “You should have a drink with me,” Nuri suggested as she began setting out the bottles.

  “Oh, I cannot do that. Not with a customer.”

  “You sure?”

  “My husband is the cook,” warned the woman.

  “He should have one as well.”

  The woman laughed and said he would not like the effect even a single drink would have on his food.

  Nuri picked a green bottle at random. To his surprise, the liqueur was pink.

  To his even greater surprise, it actually didn’t taste bad.

  “I think I should put myself in your hands,” he said, handing back the menu. “I’m very hungry.”

  She nodded confidently.

  “I imagine it will be different than what your Russian friends ordered last night,” he added.

  Her smile turned to a frown. “They wouldn’t know good food if it bit them.”

  “Why do so many Russians come here?” he asked. “To the village—not here. Here it’s obvious. Your food is so good. And the cocktails.”

  He pointed at his empty glass.

  “They only drink vodka,” she told him.

  “What is it about the area? If they don’t really ride bikes?”

  She shrugged. “It’s always been that way.”

  Nuri got little else from her but food. She brought an appetizer dish that looked as if it were pancakes, though there were bits of what he thought were meat in them. The main course was familiar—beef with noodles, and very good.

  Dessert consisted of two pastries. They looked exactly the same, but tasted very different. One, filled with some sort of fruit, was borderline delicious. The other, with a mystery filling, was borderline poisonous.

  Maybe not so borderline. Nuri had one bite, felt his stomach start to turn, and got up to use the restroom.

  When he came back, the hostess was clearing the table. He started another conversation, mentioning that someone had told him about a Russian doctor who helped train athletes for the Olympics before Moldova was independent.

  “Russian doctors.” She made a face.

  “Bad?”

  “One struck my mother in the street twenty years ago. She could not walk forever after that accident. Did he even apologize? And he came back many times—still sometimes I see him.”

  “He lived here?”

  “Not lived. But stayed. Russians.” She shook her head.

  “Came here a lot?”

  “Not in my café.”

  “But the town.”

  “They come in. They think they own us.”

  “I’m sure. What about this guy? He owned a house?”

  “She has the house. A kilometer out of town. She is Russian, too. He pays, I’m sure. You know the kind. With a family. On the side, they play.”

  “You know his name?”

  “Pfff—all Russians. Who keeps track?”

  She took the dishes and went back into the kitchen.

  Nuri reached into his pocket for the MY-PID controller and called up a photo of the doctor.

  “Is this him?” he asked when she returned.

  The hostess made a face, then looked at him as if he had tricked and betrayed her.

  “I’m an investigator for the Olympics,” he told her quickly. “We believe this man may have done some illegal things. If you have information about where he lived here, or any of his dealings, it would remain confidential. I would never say where I got it.”

  It was one thing to complain about the Russians, and quite another to reveal that you were investigating them, especially when you had appeared to be just a benign tourist. The woman instantly turned cold, going so far as to pretend that she didn’t understand his English.

  It had been a calculated risk, and Nuri knew he had had lost. But her reaction made it obvious that the doctor was in fact the same person. Finding which property he owned was simply a process of elimination, solved within a few minutes by MY-PID as it searched through property and utility records. These were somewhat sparse, but the computer filled in the gaps by accessing every possible record it could find. It finally gave Nuri two possible locations for the house.

  There was no way he was going to sleep now, at least not until he checked them out. They were two kilometers away, one northeast and the other just slightly northwest of the hamlet.

  He drove past both. Neither looked much like the sort of place a man who lived in the Chisinau mansion would choose. Both were over a hundred years old; neither measured more than eight hundred square feet. One leaned to the left; the other seemed to be missing a foundation pier on the right. The lights were on in both houses, but neither had cars out front.

  Nuri debated what to do. The action at the farm had shown that the Wolves were extremely formidable, and he didn’t want to walk into an ambush. On the other hand, the longer they waited to talk to the woman, the less likely they’d find anything of use. He debated it back and forth and finally decided to see what he could find out.

  Nuri parked in the driveway of the house that was missing the foundation pier. It was a muddy, rutted affair that cut diagonally across the front yard. He got out of his car. He was still working on his cover story when the door opened. The inside light framed a slender blonde in her early twenties standing in the doorway.

  “Can I help you?” she asked in Moldovan.

  “I am looking for Dr. Nudstrumov,” he said, using Russian.

  “Dr. Nudstrumov? What are you saying?”

  She was still speaking in Moldovan, and didn’t appear to recognize the Russian at all when Nuri repeated it.

  “I don’t know a doctor,” she told him. “Do you have the right house?”

  The woman was pretty, and certainly the sort that might be kept in a love nest, as the woman at the café had put it. But as soon as Nuri heard a male voice behind her, the theory lost a great deal of credibility.

  Unless, of course, the man was one of the Wolves.

  “Perhaps he uses a different name,” said Nuri, exhausting the phrases he had memorized with MY-PID’s help.

  The woman shrugged. The man appeared behind her. He was only a little taller than she was, thin—not an overjuiced type like the men at the Wolf farm.

  “I’m looking for the doctor’s relatives,” said Nuri, moving to English as the idea occurred to him. “Because we have news—we believe he is dead.”

  “Who?” said the young man. He understood the English, but it quickly became clear that the doctor’s name meant nothing to either him or the girl. Nuri showed them the photo on the MY-PID without getting a reaction.

  “I’m sorry for bothering you,” he told them.

  The second house was so close to the road that Nuri couldn’t even park in front of it, fearing that his vehicle would be sideswiped. He found a wide shoulder about thirty meters farther down. Parking there, he walked back along the road’s edge. As he approached, he could see an old woman working in the kitchen, washing dishes. She had the wrinkled face of a woman who had seen much trouble in her life, but her movements were graceful, the sort of effortless gestures a ballerina might make.

  Nuri stopped. What would she have looked like twenty years before, when the athletic training facility was still operating?

  In her thirties, still attractive, but on the precipice of decline.

  Nuri prompted MY-PID for a new set of phrases, rehearsing them as he walked to the house.

  “The doctor sent me,” he said when he knocked on the door. “I was to collect the things.”

  “What?” she answered harshly in Moldovan.

  “I don’t know. He said that you would know.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  Remembering what the woman at the café had said, Nuri switched to Russian.

  “The doctor sent me,” he told her.

  “What language is that?
Speak in Moldovan.”

  He repeated the words the computer had told him.

  “Moldovan,” insisted the woman.

  “You don’t understand?” said Nuri, still in Russian.

  “I don’t know what you’re saying,” insisted the woman.

  “You were a dancer,” said Nuri, guessing but knowing at the same time. “And still beautiful.”

  Her frown deepened. Nuri held out his hands. “I am just a messenger.”

  She frowned. Her lower lipped curled downward. Then she told him to come in.

  There was nothing in the house to indicate that the doctor had ever been there, or had the slightest connection with the woman. There was very little in the house at all—the front sitting room where she led Nuri had only two places to sit, one a wooden chair, the other a very old sofa, badly frayed. The television at the side looked to be from the Soviet era.

  The woman left Nuri sitting there and went back to washing her dishes. He was sure he was right about the connection, but he began to worry that she had somehow tipped off a helper. Finally, he heard the whistle of a teakettle. She stopped doing the dishes; after a few minutes she came out with a tray of cookies and tea. It was an old-world gesture, a show of culture and dignity at a moment of personal despair.

  “I knew a day would come when he would end all things,” she said softly, speaking in Russian.

  Nuri didn’t understand all the words, but the meaning of what she was saying was clear as she picked up the teacup, her hand trembling slightly. She sipped slowly. The heat from the liquid formed a light cloud of vapor, softening her face. Nuri thought he could see into the past, see what she would have looked like when the Russian first met her, already well past her prime as a dancer.

  They drank in silence. Nuri wanted to tell her something to comfort her, but there was nothing he could say. Telling her the doctor was dead would surely not comfort her, and any mention of any sort of money or being taken care of would probably be an even worse insult. He was a voyeur to her pain, powerless to alleviate it.

  She drank about half her cup, then abruptly but gracefully put it down and rose. He noticed for the first time that she walked with a slight limp, the product undoubtedly of injuries as a youth.