The Hunters h-1

by Chris Kuzneski

  ‘I am a great man,’ he teased.

  ‘Sir, the explorations and discoveries you undertook in your youth, your heroism and patriotism, your exemplary military career-’

  Borovsky held up a hand, shaking his head with amusement. ‘All right, Sergeant. I remember them well. I was just doing my job, which is all I ask of anyone.’

  Anna obviously disagreed but was respectful enough to say nothing more — at least, with words. Her eyes still reflected admiration bordering on awe.

  Her warrant officer got the conversation moving again. ‘Tell Colonel Borovsky your impressions of the incident between our officers and the local RNU chapter, Sergeant.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ She looked up at Borovsky from her full five feet, nine inches. ‘An unusually violent confrontation, sir. We’ve been having increasing conflict with the members of the RNU here. They seem to be growing more aggressive and flagrant.’

  ‘Seem to be?’ Borovsky interrupted. ‘Or are?’

  Anna stopped as if she had been pinched. ‘They are.’

  ‘Go on. Omit nothing, including your impressions.’

  ‘Sir, they are stepping up their black market activity. In addition to selling stolen electronic goods, accessories, jewelry, and bootlegs, they are now dealing in information. Identity theft, illegal databases, passport numbers, internet passwords, bank account numbers, credit card security information, arrest records, even tax returns — all stolen from government agencies.’

  ‘Stolen how?’ Borovsky echoed.

  ‘Hacked,’ Anna said. ‘Or leaked.’

  ‘Leaked,’ Borovsky repeated. ‘For money.’

  Vargunin wasn’t certain whether his superior was being critical of the profit motive or of the mentality that allowed a person to put personal gain before the sacred duty with which they’d been entrusted: preserving the security and honor of the nation. For his part, Vargunin wished he had the courage to do that. Then, at least, he could afford the kinds of comforts that would make his private life less stark.

  ‘Money,’ Vargunin said grimly. ‘Selling such information to the highest bidder is a lucrative business. We estimate that the black market for such information is around fifty million dollars a year.’

  ‘And that is just for the exchange of the raw data,’ Anna added. ‘Breaking into bank and insurance accounts, into private e-mail accounts for purposes of blackmail, into arrest records of officials who want to keep their prostitution arrests secret, these all generate hundreds of millions in revenue above that.’

  Vargunin glanced at his old friend. ‘That is why I’m having to learn new skills — to stay two steps behind the con men instead of a dozen.’

  Anna continued. ‘Perhaps Officers Gelb and Klopov insisted on a better cut of the action, and the emboldened RNU members confronted them.’

  Borovsky stared at her, displeased by the accusation.

  ‘You asked for her impressions,’ Vargunin reminded him.

  The senior officer relaxed. ‘Do you think that is what happened?’

  For the first time, Anna’s eyes wavered, looking at her fellow officers in her peripheral vision as they slowly dispersed for their rounds. ‘That was the consensus of the investigators.’

  ‘Based on any evidence?’ Borovsky asked.

  ‘Cash folded in the hands of the officers,’ she said.

  Vargunin snorted.

  Borovsky looked at him. ‘Do you doubt this?’

  ‘I don’t dismiss it,’ he said in measured words. ‘But I stand by my earlier remark. The crime scene was still too neat.’

  Borovsky considered that while he regarded the young woman’s face. She was in her early thirties. Olive eyes, small, straight nose, and a flat mouth with lines at either bottom edge from too much frowning. Strong jawline and high cheekbones. Good, Slavic stock. Impressive mental attitude: deductive, alert to the thoughts of veterans and colleagues, but not necessarily seduced by the collective weight of their opinions. Borovsky was curious to know whether she joined the police because of the reform bill or in spite of it.

  He turned toward his old friend. ‘Is Sergeant Rusinko still assigned to this case?’

  Vargunin was taken slightly aback. ‘Well, the case hasn’t been officially closed as of yet.’ His emphasis on the word ‘officially’ told both of them that he wanted it to be. ‘So, yes. Technically, she is still assigned to it.’

  ‘Good,’ Borovsky said with a nod. Then he looked at Anna as if his old friend no longer existed. ‘Show me Marko Kadurik’s body, please.’

  31

  Once everyone had steadied themselves, Cobb motioned for Jasmine to take the floor. He stepped to the side, leaned against the workstation, and crossed his arms in anticipation. He was pleased to note that even Garcia was looking at Jasmine, not his computer screen.

  ‘We got what wrong?’ Garcia demanded.

  ‘Everything,’ she said as she started to pace back and forth in the center of the train compartment. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner. I mean, it’s so obvious. Who knows? Maybe I was distracted by the violence, or maybe I’ve been worried about Andrei, I’m really not sure now, but this is something I should have focused on much earlier-’

  ‘Jasmine!’ Cobb blurted to stop her rambling.

  She glanced at him, frazzled.

  He flashed a warm smile to calm her down. ‘Relax. Just relax. Don’t worry about the past. Just take a deep breath, and tell us what you figured out.’

  She did as she was told and took a deep breath.

  He gave her a moment. ‘Better?’

  She nodded. ‘Better.’

  He smiled again. ‘Good. The floor’s still yours.’

  She paused for a second to gather her thoughts. ‘As I was saying, we’ve been looking at things all wrong. Instead of focusing on who protected the treasure, we should have been trying to figure out who moved the treasure to begin with. And if you think about it, history tells us that there’s only one person who could have moved that much gold out of Moscow at that time.’

  ‘Mon Dieu!‘ Papineau gasped. With his knowledge of European history, he got her reference before the rest of the team.

  ‘Think about it!’ Jasmine commanded in her excited, sincere way. ‘The war was at its most oppressive point, the enemy was at the gates, everyone was starving and freezing. Who was the one person who could lead a train out of Moscow at that time? Who was the one person who could get through every station and every checkpoint with unquestioned authority?’

  Garcia, McNutt, and Sarah had no clue. They looked like the Breakfast Club — a geek, a jock, and a prom queen — caught in the headlights of a pop quiz.

  Shaking his head, Papineau muttered in French, ‘Stupid Americans.’

  The team huddled around Garcia as he brought up historical information about Tsar Nicholas II and the Romanovs on his computer screen.

  ‘How’d you get this to work? Doesn’t Russia restrict access to the Web?’ Sarah asked.

  Garcia chuckled. ‘It’s not like I’m wardriving — connecting to the Web through someone’s Wi-Fi signal. I’ve got a direct link through Papi’s satellites. He’s got two, by the way.’ He shifted his focus to the Frenchman. ‘But you should have three. When they switch over in their orbit, there’s a gap.’

  ‘We’re working on it,’ Papineau said, scanning the screen.

  Jasmine could have described what they needed to know, but Cobb wanted them to discover it on their own. He sensed that they would learn more that way.

  ‘How long a gap?’ Cobb asked quietly.

  Garcia blinked up at him. ‘Two to eight minutes. Why?’

  Cobb grimaced. ‘Blackouts are risky.’

  ‘I know.’

  Papineau interrupted them. ‘Here we are.’

  They all faced the computer. On the screen was a picture of a Romanov prince with an extremely long title: Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov, Count Sumarokov-Elston.

  Jasmine wasn’t going to wait until they fini
shed reading. She might not be able to shoot a pebble resting on the top of a mountain or steal a coin from a beggar’s cup, but there was one thing she could do. She could narrate.

  ‘After the prince was accused of being the brains behind Rasputin’s murder, Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna — who was the aunt of Felix’s wife — essentially placed the prince under house arrest in his estate outside St Petersburg.’

  ‘Hold up,’ McNutt said. ‘I’ve heard the name before, but who is Rasputin?’

  Jasmine answered. ‘Gregori Rasputin was a Russian mystic and faith healer who greatly influenced the tsar and tsarina in the final years of the Romanov dynasty. Although many viewed him as a charlatan, the tsarina was under his charismatic spell.’

  Sarah smiled. ‘You’d have liked him, McNutt. His nickname was the Mad Monk.’

  McNutt nodded. ‘You’re right. I like him already.’

  ‘Well,’ Jasmine said, trying to get them back on track, ‘Prince Felix didn’t, which is why he had Rasputin killed. The tsarina, who viewed herself as Rasputin’s protector, was furious. So much so that she exiled the prince — even though he was a war hero.’

  ‘And that’s when he took the train,’ McNutt guessed.

  ‘No,’ Sarah assured him as she continued to read ahead. ‘Three months later, things went from bad to incredibly bad.’

  Jasmine stared daggers at the back of Sarah’s head, angry that her turf was being encroached upon. ‘They were worse than “incredibly bad”,’ Jasmine corrected. ‘The tsar’s abdication and the February Revolution were events that shaped the course of our world.’

  ‘Shh,’ Sarah said, rebuking the rebuke. ‘I’m reading.’

  Jasmine ignored her. ‘The prince couldn’t have possibly known he was going to be exiled-’

  Sarah interrupted her. ‘But he absolutely knew which way the wind was blowing. After all, he had the stones and foresight to take out Rasputin. He had to realize things were precarious.’

  Jasmine didn’t reply. She was far too irritated.

  Cobb was curious to see how this would work out, but he didn’t get the chance. McNutt sliced through the tension.

  ‘How many times did they try to kill him again?’ McNutt asked.

  Jasmine was back onstage. ‘About a half-dozen,’ she said. ‘Poison, shooting, beating — supposedly he was nearly disemboweled by a woman three years before, but obviously that didn’t kill him either.’ She looked around at the others, intentionally skipping Sarah. ‘And when they finally tried to burn his body after they found it in the Neva River, witnesses reported that he sat up in the flames.’

  ‘I’m officially creeped out,’ Garcia said.

  ‘Most likely his tendons weren’t cut before the funeral pyre,’ Sarah said without inflection, her eyes still intent on the screen. ‘The heat of the fire would make them shrink. Hence the incineration sit-up.’

  Cobb smiled, impressed.

  Jasmine noted his reaction and took a deep breath. ‘That is what some biographers have said as well, but others have put forth the idea that he was a saint who cheated death.’

  ‘A whoring, alcoholic, game-playing saint?’

  Jasmine, who felt physically inferior to Sarah, hated where this was going. History was her area of expertise and she knew if she didn’t stand her ground and protect her role on the team, then these interruptions would continue for the rest of the mission. To shut Sarah down, Jasmine went for her weak spot. ‘Many theologians believe that sainthood is achieved through trial. It is not necessarily inborn. It is something that is earned over time, not stolen by a thief in the night. That’s the easy way to get through life.’

  Sarah winced. ‘Excuse me?’

  Jasmine didn’t back down. ‘Sorry. No offense intended.’

  Sarah stood back from the computer, even more insulted by the insincere tone of the apology. ‘I would think not since we’re both trying to steal this treasure.’

  ‘Actually,’ Jasmine stressed, ‘I’m trying to find it, not steal it.’

  Cobb sensed they weren’t going to work this out on their own. He could see the aggressive tension in both of their bodies, particularly Sarah’s. ‘Take a breather,’ he said to her.

  ‘Glad to,’ Sarah muttered as she left the train car.

  ‘Man,’ McNutt said, as if the confrontation hadn’t occurred, ‘I get the feeling that Rasputin was a guy who really didn’t want to die.’

  Cobb smiled. Sometimes McNutt’s bubble was a useful place.

  ‘Prince Felix wanted to live, too,’ Jasmine reminded them. ‘After the abdication three months later, he immediately decamped to Crimea.’

  ‘How “immediately”?’ Cobb wanted to know.

  ‘No way of knowing for sure, but within weeks, possibly a fortnight, possibly less.’

  ‘Surprising how much you can get done under house arrest,’ Cobb said. ‘Three months could be enough time to have made plans, written letters.’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ Jasmine said. ‘From Crimea, the family — including the prince — was able to secure passage to Malta on a British warship. From Malta, they went to Italy and London before eventually settling in Paris.’

  ‘When?’ Garcia asked.

  ‘That was in 1920.’

  ‘Two, three years after attacking Raspy,’ McNutt noted.

  ‘Wow,’ Garcia teased. ‘You didn’t even have to use your fingers or toes.’

  ‘Cut it out,’ Cobb said before McNutt could respond. He didn’t need another pissing contest. Or a dead computer guy, which is what Garcia would be if McNutt got a hold of him.

  ‘How do you think the prince paid for all that?’ Papineau asked Jasmine.

  She thought about it for a while. ‘There was some talk that he took jewelry and rare art from their palace before they left.’

  Cobb glanced at Papineau. ‘Does that theory sound right to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Papineau mused, leaning back in his chair. ‘Prince Felix was both an honorable man and a man of action. He must have known that securing the Romanov riches from invaders as well as his own enraged family would be impossible under those circumstances.’

  ‘But maybe not the Romanian treasure,’ Cobb said.

  ‘How long have you known this, about the prince?’ the Frenchman demanded.

  ‘I still don’t know it,’ Cobb replied. ‘But once I stopped thinking about how to find the treasure and started to think about how it could’ve been lost …’

  ‘No one but a member of the royal family could’ve gotten it out of town,’ Jasmine said. ‘There are always royal loyalists in any revolution. Not even the highest-ranking general would have had that much pull.’

  ‘And the prince was going to be on an exile train regardless,’ Papineau marveled.

  ‘Yep,’ Cobb said. ‘So I wouldn’t worry about grave robbers. I bet they stopped looking for crumbs a long time ago. What was it that Sherlock Holmes used to say?’

  ‘“When you eliminate the impossible,”’ Garcia immediately quoted, ‘“whatever’s left, no matter how improbable, has got to be the-”’

  He never got to finish. At that moment a small red light on his workstation began to flash, a strident buzzer began to bleat, and the ceiling screens began to swing down.

  ‘What is it?’ Papineau snapped.

  ‘Someone’s done something to the train,’ Garcia snapped back, his hands dancing across his keyboard as his computer screen filled with different images from outside. ‘The security cams I installed have been on-line for hours.’

  Cobb and McNutt flanked him instantly, their eyes intent on the screen.

  ‘Do you see all the workers who were there before?’ McNutt asked.

  ‘The four that Dobrev was breaking in, yeah,’ Cobb replied. ‘The two that delivered the license left right afterwards. Where’s Dobrev?’

  ‘There,’ Jasmine said from just behind them. She pointed at the corner of an image in the upper left of the screen. Dobrev was checking Ludmilla’s undercarriage, carry
ing the spanner he had used to save Jasmine.

  ‘Okay,’ Cobb said. ‘So what’s the prob-’

  They all snapped to attention when Sarah screeched like a wounded cat.

  She was outside, and she was in trouble.

  32

  A morgue is a morgue. It has no personality. It isn’t a cathedral where the deceased are remembered with tears and prayer. It is a collection of drawers and tables where the dead are all the same. They haven’t ‘passed’ or ‘gone to their reward’. There is nothing romantic, nothing hopeful at all. There is no modesty. Public faces and private parts are all equal here.

  They are dead.

  No matter where it is — in the oldest village or a brand new building — and no matter how much technology is employed, a morgue is a place where lifeless bodies are stored and dissected to see what the dead have to say to the living.

  Today, Marko Kadurik was talking to Colonel Borovsky.

  Situated in the cellar of the police station, this morgue was neither ancient nor cutting-edge. The fresh paint and new furniture that brightened the floors above had yet to trickle down into this dark, stone space. There were fluorescent lights in the ceiling, metal tables on the floor, and autopsy equipment in a long tray on the right. Several corpse cabinets lined the left wall. It was not like the morgues that Borovsky had seen on television or in the other countries he had visited overseas. Those places were always clean and antiseptic. None of them communicated the smell, look, feel, and choking weight of death like this place did.

  He glanced at Anna Rusinko, looking for signs of distress. She had led him down the stairs and into the morgue and was now watching his every move like a wide-eyed rookie.

  Remarkably, she appeared unfazed by her surroundings.

  As per his orders, the dead body of Marko Kadurik had been placed on the center table, a single sheet discreetly draping his body from the neck down. The first thing Borovsky did was pull back the thin covering with a flourish. Then he tossed it against the wall.

  The civilian morgue attendant, a pale-skinned youth dressed in a stained lab coat, swallowed hard. He was surprised by the behavior. ‘The mortal wound is on his head, comrade.’