Colleen Gleason

by Siberian Treasure

  It was fortunate for the GDI’s slow and deliberate director that his staff was quick and efficient, most particularly Hamid al-Jubeir. Which was, of course, the reason he’d been assigned to this most grievous task.

  Hamid had never met Israt Medivir, but of course he knew as much about the self-made petroleum magnate as anyone else; including the fact that the dead man was younger than the investigator by more than ten years. And that he’d been a coffee importer before moving into oil and making billions of riyals in less than ten years.

  Hamid had always wondered about the correlation between coffee beans and black gold.

  The body was sprawled on the floor of his expansive office, ostensibly as he had been found; but from the unblinking, innocent eyes and the shiny, damp forehead of the man who found him, Hamid had reason to question that assumption. But later. First, the victim.

  The reason Tirat al-Haebir had crossed so many Ts and dotted extra Is on this case was because it wasn’t evident that Israt Medivir was a victim of anything other than a bad heart or a faulty brain. So setting the GDI’s top homicide investigator on the case was a risk in itself for the Ministry of the Interior, which did not wish to have the word out that the oil magnate had died from foul play until and unless it was to its benefit to have that be common knowledge.

  Hamid stood with pursed lips, the thumb and forefinger of his right hand rubbing against each other in quick small circles, as he stared down at the body. The medical examiner would determine the cause of death, and other members of his team would be collecting forensic evidence, but Hamid liked to have the moments of getting the feel for the scene first.

  Whatever the case—foul play or natural death—Israt Medivir looked exceedingly comfortable. No protruding tongue or bugging eyes. Nothing to indicate spasms or pain before death. No pooling or stench of bodily fluids having been released. No blood.

  But the man had been young.

  Hamid crouched at last beside the body, and one of his associates, who’d been engaged in gathering fibers from the ground beneath the victim as if it were most definitely a crime scene, moved aside.

  He snapped on gloves, then lifted Medivir’s head and gently rolled it from side to side and then paused. A tiny mark near the chin caught his attention. It was too perfect and round to be a shaving nick. It could be something, or it could be nothing more than a bite from a tsetse fly or mosquito.

  But Hamid noted it, and then moved to the man’s trunk. Raising the left arm, he tried to push the Western jacket and shirt sleeve away, but it was too tight. Another investigator might have moved on, but Hamid was thorough. He found the buttons at the cuffs of the shirt and flipped them open, crinkling the crisp white cloth as he pushed it away.

  When he saw the bare wrist and forearm, and the markings there, Hamid hissed a long breath between his teeth. Yes.

  And then … .odd, odd. The blood, dried and ringing the small mark at the center of Medivir’s inner elbow … that spot where a phlebotomist might draw blood if he needed to … the blood was dark. Not brown and rust-colored as blood dries … but dark. Black.

  Almost … oily.

  Hamid snatched in his breath. He bent to Medivir’s limp arm and sniffed at the markings there. And when he smelled it, and touched it, he settled back on to his heels, still crouched next to the dead man.

  Oil had been pumped into the veins of the oil magnate.

  -6-

  July 1, 2007

  AvaChem Corporate Offices

  Baltimore, Maryland

  Special Agent Helen Darrow took an instant, inexplicable dislike to Dr. Barbara Melton. This, despite the fact that it was due to Dr. Melton that Helen’s acrylic nails no longer smothered her natural ones, and that she could wear them indefinitely without worrying that fungus or germs would grow under the fake nails.

  AvaChem’s advances in the health and beauty industry had made the company an overnight success. It was only four years ago that Barbara Melton had unveiled her special formulas for acrylic nails, odorless nail polish, and permanent mascara. Her little company’s sales had skyrocketed once they landed supplier contracts with marquee companies like L’Oreal, Estee Lauder, and Avon.

  Helen knew all of this because as soon as she’d been called to the site of the earthquake at Terre Haute, she’d started getting information from the Web. It had come as a surprise to her that she was actually wearing a product made with AvaChem formulas. Pink Clamshell nail polish.

  Barbara Melton’s own fingernails were French-tipped with about three centimeters of opaque pearlescent white. She was an attractive woman, if one thought that a rail-thin, tanned-to-mahogany body and hair highlighted with every shade of blonde from platinum to honey was attractive. Elegance with an edge. A harsh one.

  Helen could be just as harsh; she just hoped she’d never look that brittle. Though there’d been a time after David when she felt as though she was ready to crack. “Who do you suspect would sabotage AvaChem’s plants, Dr. Melton?”

  “We have any number of enemies,” she replied, opening a fluorescent pink IPhone. Without looking up, she began tapping quickly around on its small keyboard. Helen wasn’t sure if she was pulling up a list, or whether the woman was multi-tasking.

  From what Helen had learned, Barbara Melton was the kind of person who wouldn’t be above a little sabotage herself. The company was run with an iron fist with every iota of profit eked out of it, and a public offering was scheduled for September. If something kept that from happening, Dr. Melton was going to be paying an awful lot of money to the EPA for some major environmental protection violations.

  It appeared that Barbara Melton, while working to provide better and healthier cosmetics to the women of the U.S., didn’t care much about the world in which they lived.

  “Some of those Greenies or fanatics from the Sierra Club, of course. We’ve had threats from every group imaginable.” She looked up briefly, then returned to tapping. “I will have my assistant provide you with a list of organizations and individuals before you leave.”

  “That would be helpful.” Helen jotted a few lines in her spiral notebook, feeling quite the Neanderthal with her handwritten notes and penciled-in calendar. She’d never even graduated to a Franklin Planner, let alone coveted a pink IPhone. She hadn’t even known they made pink ones. Maybe Melton was a breast cancer survivor. “I realize that it seems implausible to you that three plants should be leveled by earthquakes in one day, but at this time, we have no indication of how any group could have engineered such a thing.”

  That stopped Melton’s tapping. “Nature may be erratic, Agent Darrow, but it’s impossible for any logical being to believe that the devastation of my company was an act of nature.”

  Helen happened to agree, but she felt herself bristling at the woman’s tone. The truth was, the Bureau had been working with the US Geological Society to try and determine whether the quakes were random or prompted by some unknown force. Before they struck, there hadn’t been any unusual seismic activity in those areas, as would happen with a natural earthquake.

  The only theory thus far that made sense was that some entity had somehow caused three underground explosions, which created the quakes.

  But that was where the logic ended. The size of equipment needed to drill deeply enough to cause such an explosion would never have gone unnoticed. In short, the theory was plausible but the execution was impossible to comprehend.

  So Helen, as Special Agent in Charge, and her team, were back at square one.

  “We are continuing to explore all avenues, Dr. Melton,” Helen said briskly. “But there aren’t any environmentalist groups in the country that have the money or technology to produce earthquakes.”

  Melton put down her iPhone. “Perhaps they’ve tired of protest marches and pipe bombs and have allied themselves with al Qaeda.” Little lines radiated upward from her lips like stitches, as if she’d held that position often. “Regardless, I expect that the FBI will find who destroyed my company. M
y assistant has your list of potential suspects.”

  She stood, and Helen joined her, glad of the excuse to get out of the office and back into the investigation. Interviews could be tedious and a waste of time in the best of circumstances; but when they were with individuals who rubbed her the wrong way from the first moment, she found them even more excruciating.

  In the interest of leaving, Helen forbore to point out to Barbara Melton that it wasn’t the Greenies who’d been known to use pipe bombs or threats of harm to get their way.

  It had been their opponents.

  -7-

  July 1, 2007

  Somewhere in Siberia

  Impossible.

  How could such a breach of security happen?

  Roman Aleksandrov, wearing reindeer-suede shoes, strode along the hallway carpeted with sheepskin. The walls, smooth and sloping into an arch above his head, were bare and white. Small lights hung at intervals along the way, illuminating the darker tunnels that did not have access to the sunlight that burned even in the early hours of morning this time of year.

  From the outside, the world Roman had designed for his people appeared to be nothing more than a blue-white mountain of ice. But the gleaming, jagged mountainside was a dome of solar panels, designed and created to harness the energy of the sun, enclose the small city in which they lived, and provide year-round protection from the elements; as well as repel any radar that might attempt to sense the living, breathing community. Roman had first envisioned the concept over three decades earlier when he visited The Kimball Conservatory, a massive greenhouse-like structure that contained several different habitats all within one compound.

  It was only one of the many improvements that Roman had implemented over the years. He’d brought bursts of technology and science to his people and had helped the small cluster create a comfortable, luxurious world hidden in the mountains of Siberia, as well as in pockets elsewhere in the world.

  And now it was all in jeopardy.

  It was eight minutes of solid, rhythmic striding through the hallway before he reached the end of the Aleksandrov family’s Segment. When he came to the sliding door that led from their collection of living spaces to the main courtyard, under the high-reaching solar-paneled dome, he pulled a small wooden tab, the size of an American dime, from a case by the door. He dampened it on his tongue, then fed it into the small slot of the identification tube.

  The machine, created by Roman’s friend and lover, Stegnora Vishofsky, read the DNA in his saliva and allowed the door to slide open.

  Normally, Roman would stride through the entryway after this procedure with very little thought … but this morning, after learning of the breach of security in Allentown, Roman felt particularly grateful for the expertise and knowledge Stegnora had brought to the Skaladeskas. A brilliant technologist, she was the woman who implemented and managed all of Roman’s ideas and operations. She gave birth to his concepts.

  Roman insisted she come “home” with him for a visit after they attended university together in London. He was a persuasive and skilled lover, and she had fallen madly for him, leaving behind a promising career as one of the few females in nuclear physics, along with her family.

  He wasn’t sure which one had been more difficult for her.

  Yet, despite her sacrifices, she would never leave. And she was loyal to a fault. She’d been his partner for over three decades.

  She’d been the one who suggested the bargain with his brother, those many years ago.

  “Nora!” Roman burst into the lab she called her own.

  Looking up from a flat-screened computer monitor, Stegnora removed black-rimmed glasses and made to rise. “Roman. What is it?”

  Shooting his gaze onto the two other men in the room, Roman replied, speaking to them, “Leave us.”

  Brilliant men they were, in more ways than one. They stood and hurried from the room, one pausing just long enough to snatch up a small, hand-held device so he could finish his work elsewhere.

  Roman shut the door behind them to ensure privacy and stalked across the room, turned, and stalked back. “An incredible breach of security at one of the test sites. It’s put the whole operation in jeopardy; in fact, our whole existence.”

  Stegnora remained silent, but she came from around the ovary-shaped table to stand closer to him.

  “I just received communication from Varden, in which he reported that shortly after the detonation in Allentown, during the first wave of response to the destruction, a number of papers were found blowing about the site, all with the symbol of Gaia on them.”

  “How—how could that be?” Well past fifty, Stegnora was still a beautiful woman. Although her figure was not as slender as it had been when they met at university three decades ago, she was still fit and in shape. Her unlined face and startling blue eyes made her look much younger than her years; her eyelashes were still thick and full and her mouth wide and sensual. She wore her wavy hair cropped short, and over the years it had faded from a chestnut brown to a silvery gold that, although natural, looked as though it had been created by a talented hair colorist.

  “Hedron! I know he has somehow planned it to sabotage this operation. He will bring all of us down, destroy us all with his power-hungry machinations!”

  “Were the papers found? Is there any indication that the authorities—“

  “Varden handled it. He destroyed all of the ones he could find and believes there is no danger of connection between us and the detonation—at this time. The authorities believed the symbol belonged to a local group of trouble-makers. The Out-Worlders haven’t any indication that it was our prompting that caused the earthquake. Yet.”

  “It was very prudent of you to send Varden to the test sites, then. As much as you needed him here.”

  “He’s the only one I can trust completely. And Fridkov, of course. Hedron’s sons … .they must be involved in this at some level—I am certain of it.” He felt his brows drawing together much too tightly, and he took a deep breath to relax them. “The Out-Worlders could never make the connection of us to the symbol of Gaia. With the elimination of Medivir, there is no one who even knows of our existence.”

  But even as he spoke those words, he knew them to be untrue. One look at Stegnora, their eyes locking in sudden understanding, and he felt another surge of tension settling at his temples.

  “Marina is marked with the symbol. Surely Viktor has told her what it means. And she is not the only one who would know. Or who might remember.”

  “Fridkov has been charged to bring her to us. He will.” Roman wheeled and stalked toward the shaded window on one of the few exterior walls in the compound. Yanking on the white cord, he pulled it open and looked out on the grey water tossing white caps and pointed waves in rhythm with the wind. Cold and furious was the sea today. “As for the other … no one can ever find us unless we choose to be found. And the time is not yet right for that, Nora.”

  “I don’t disagree. Roman—“

  “This is confidential information—regarding the breach. You will share it with no one. Varden has done what they call damage control, and I don’t expect any problems to come of it. But I will take no chances. We can’t undo the problem; if a connection is to be made, we must be prepared.”

  “No one can find us, Roman, you’ve made certain of that.”

  “That is true. It’s impossible. But a counterpoint must be made. I’ll not sit here and wait; we will move up the timeframe for Phase Two. Fifteen days, Nora. We will execute in fifteen days.”

  “Fifteen days? Roman—“

  “Fifteen days. If you can’t handle this, I’ll find someone who can. Varden.”

  “I’ll manage it,” she said quickly.

  “Of course you will. And by then, Marina Aleksandrov will be reunited with her father and there will be no one to stop us.”

  -8-

  July 5, 2007

  Ann Arbor, Michigan

  Marina Alexander stumbled through her fron
t door, arms laden and aching. She was exhausted, dirty, and sore, but the trip had been a success.

  Her team of dogs and their handlers had located and helped pull five live finds from the earthquake in Terre Haute. On the fifth day after the quake, when they were forced to shift the search and rescue effort into a search and find operation, only one person out of two hundred had remained unaccounted for.

  Marina dropped her duffel, backpack, and cooler on the floor and bent to accept Boris’s ecstatic kisses. His tail beat wildly against the wall in the narrow entry-way, and though he was too well-trained to jump up on her, the German Shepherd’s wriggling dance made it clear it was only with the greatest of efforts that he curbed his enthusiasm.