There was another protracted silence. “Palace Square, 8:00 tomorrow.”
26
The dark sky above St. Petersburg carried the threat of another snow shower. It was evidenced by the orange glow of city lights reflecting in the heavy cumulus clouds. Jake took notice of the bare trees swaying slowly in the freezing breeze. An occasional snowflake tumbled through the beam of the lone streetlight at the rear entrance to the museum.
“Here goes nothing,” Katie said as she slid her access card into the reader. The clunk sound let them know she’d been successful.
“Bingo,” Jake responded.
“That’s half the battle,” she whispered. “Time will tell if we’ve set off any alarms.”
Opening the door slowly to avoid a loud creak, they stepped inside and were relieved to find that the foyer was deserted. The overhead lights in the passageway leading to the central hall were off. Katie knew from this that the afternoon cleaning crew had left for the day.
“Looks deserted,” Jake whispered back.
Katie nodded and motioned toward an illuminated green sign at the end of the hall.
“Stairs,” she mumbled.
When they reached the stairwell, Jake peered through the small window above the handle, and seeing no one, opened it. Taking careful steps, they climbed the stairs until Katie tapped Jake’s shoulder when they’d reached the third floor. Jake pressed his face against the window and looked both ways down the hall.
“It’s OK,” he said.
“Baranov’s office is the fifth one down on the left,” she replied.
They hurriedly covered the distance and after making a final survey of the area, Jake tapped lightly on the door. There was no answer, which he’d anticipated since there was no light emanating from the crack at the bottom. He tried the knob, but it was locked.
“Are you sure the only key box is in Baranov’s office?” he asked.
“It’s the only one I know about.”
“Maybe we can pry it open. Is there an equipment room nearby?”
“The fossil lab is one floor up,” she answered. “There are all kinds of tools in there.”
Jake removed a small flashlight from his pocket, flipped it on, and turned his attention to the lock. The strike plate was fairly standard with a noticeable gap between the door and the jamb. Reaching back into his pocket, he removed a Swiss army knife and opened the large blade.
“It doesn’t look that hard to pick,” he said.
As he began working the blade into the gap, the sound of a door closing down the hallway caught their attention.
“Jake, stop!” Katie whispered.
“Excuse me,” the man called out in Russian. “Do I know you? Step over here into the light so that I can see you.”
“I hope you know this guy,” Jake said as the tall man wearing a white lab coat approached them.
“Dr. Kozlov,” Katie replied, “it’s me, Katrina.”
Jake observed that a smile came across the man’s gentle face. He guessed his age as somewhere in his late seventies. Well over six feet tall with tousled gray hair, he walked slightly stooped, which made his archaic necktie flap as he walked toward them.
“Katrina,” he greeted with a hug. “Tamara said you had returned from your trip. How are you?”
“Very well,” she said a bit nervously.
The professor looked beyond her and smiled at her companion.
“This is a friend of mine, Jake Evers,” she said. “I’m showing him around St. Petersburg and he was interested in seeing where I work. He’s also a researcher.”
Jake stepped forward to shake the man’s hand. “It’s good to meet you, sir.”
The older man shook his hand firmly. “You are from America. The southern United States, I think.”
“That’s right,” Jake smiled. “My accent must be worse than I thought if it can even be detected in Russia.”
“Try being from the Sayan Mountains close to Kazakhstan,” the professor replied. “It was years before anyone here could understand me. I think it must be equivalent to your hillbillies.”
Jake laughed. “It could be.”
“It’s good we ran into you,” Katie said. “I have gotten turned around. I somehow thought there was another exit on this end of the hall to the fossil rooms upstairs.”
“It is easy to do, especially at my age,” the professor replied, winking at them.
He motioned for them to follow him, and they walked a short way down the hall to the next corridor and then down a flight of stairs. Passing the labs where Katie worked, they came to his office. The door was open so they entered and were offered a seat. The already small office was further cramped by stacks of papers and journals that nearly covered the walls.
“Please excuse the clutter,” the professor said. “With over fifty years of research done in the same office, you tend to collect things.”
When they sat down, Katie and the professor immediately began a conversation about their work, alternating between Russian and English. Jake sat patiently, allowing enough time to pass before he could make an excuse that would allow him to return to Baranov’s office. As they had seen no one else on their way to the professor’s office, Jake hoped that Dr. Kozlov was the only one still there. When ten minutes had passed, Jake cleared his throat.
“If the two of you will excuse me, I need to use the toilet. Would you point me in the right direction?”
Katie wrinkled her brow and then gave him directions.
“Thanks. Hopefully this won’t take long. I’ve had a bit of an upset stomach this afternoon; probably something I ate.”
“If Katrina took you to that place with the heavy cream blinis, it’s understandable,” the older man teased. “I think I was sick for a week.”
“Now, Professor,” Katie began her lighthearted defense and quickly shifted back into Russian.
Jake winked at her as he stepped out of the office. Looking in both directions, he was thankful to see that the floor still appeared to be deserted. When he got back to the corridor leading to Baranov’s office, he raced to the end and immediately retrieved his pocket knife. Digging the blade into the bolt, he could feel it move slightly but not enough to disengage from the strike plate. He would have to find something to break it open.
Moving back up the hallway, he found a room displaying a sign which translated into Chemistry. The door was unlocked so he stepped in and turned on his flashlight. Like most chemistry labs, there were soapstone covered tables with Bunsen burners, gravimetric balances, and elaborate racks of synthesis glassware. Keeping the beam of his light low, he scanned the back of the room and found that the rear wall was covered with cabinets filled with bottles of chemicals. The one in the far right corner was painted red and on it was written in yellow letters: CORROSION HAZARD.
“Yes,” he thought aloud.
Inside the cabinet, he found a brown, one-liter bottle with the chemical symbol H2SO4 on the label—Concentrated Sulfuric Acid.
“Ninety-seven percent,” he continued to read. “Yep, that’ll do it.”
Returning quickly to Baranov’s office door, he carefully uncapped the bottle and began pouring it into the crack above the lock. The sudden hissing sound was followed by the smell of rotten eggs, a sulfurous reaction product of the acid eating away at the lock. All he needed to still dissolve was the final few millimeters of the latch. After applying the acid two more times, he sat the bottle beside the door and looked again to make sure he was alone. Seeing no one, he kicked the handle with the heel of his boot. The sound resonated down the hall. When he tried a second time, he heard a distinctive pop, indicative of metal breaking. Suddenly, as he raised his foot to kick it a third time, he saw something emerging from beneath the door, which at first he thought was a puddle of acid. The thick, reddish color was not right however. Bending down with his flashlight, he examined the liquid, being careful not to touch it. The substance bubbled, which clearly meant that the acid had mixed with it,
but what was causing the red color?
Dropping to his knees with his face inches from the crack beneath the door, he shown his flashlight into the space and was horrified at what he found. There was black hair from a person’s head lying just inside the door. The color was obviously coming from a pool of blood surrounding the body.
“Oh,” he muttered as he recoiled from the door.
His mind raced while he tried to collect his thoughts. Then he heard footsteps approaching. With little time to act, he grabbed the bottle of acid, unlatched the window at the end of the hall, and tossed the bottle outside. As he closed it without latching it back, he heard the sound of glass breaking on the sidewalk below. Quickly, he walked back up the corridor. As he rounded the final corner before reaching Dr. Kozlov’s office, he nearly collided with a young man. Judging from his age and the stack of books under his arm, Jake guessed he was a student.
Before the young man could speak, Jake asked in Russian, “Toilet?”
The student pointed to the door not three feet from where they were standing.
“Thank you,” Jake replied and quickly darted into the room. Once inside, he paused for a few seconds and then peered out to see which direction the student had taken. Thankfully he had turned around and was headed in the direction of Professor Kozlov’s office. Jake hoped that he was merely going to report seeing a stranger in the building.
After waiting for a few minutes to give credence to his deception, he returned to the professor’s office. As he walked slowly back, he thought about his next course of action. The door to Baranov’s office was irreversibly damaged. It would certainly be discovered the following day, especially with a broken bottle of acid on the sidewalk below and the pool of blood collecting outside the doorway. When the investigators checked the after hours access records, they would find Katie’s name. An unknown American seen by the student would also raise the red flag.
To stifle any further suspicions from either Dr. Kozlov or the student, Jake would have to return after they had gone home and hope his vandalism wouldn’t be discovered before then. It was likely that he would not be able get the door open without the help of some leverage, especially with the fusion of metal that had certainly occurred after the acid had done its work. It was also going to be noisy. With people still in the building, and with the fact that he had almost gotten caught twice, he wasn’t willing to take the risk. The main problem was Katie’s swipe card. He would not be able to make it back before her access time had ended for the night. That was why he had left the window unlocked. When he returned, he would have to climb up the building, raise the window from the outside, and crawl through. It wasn’t going to be easy, especially with his bum leg.
When he made it back to the professor’s office, he found that his guess about the student had been correct.
“Jake,” Katie said relieved, “I want you the meet Kirill. He’s Dr. Kozlov’s newest graduate student.”
“From the University of Kiev,” the professor added.
Jake shook the young man’s hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself earlier. I was kind of in a hurry.”
Kirill only smiled politely and nodded a vague understanding. His education in Ukraine had only included Russian as a foreign language.
“I’m not feeling very well,” Jake said, turning to Katie. “Maybe we should go.”
Katie looked at him nervously and replied, “Sure. It’s getting late anyway.”
“I will see you to the door,” the professor replied. “Kirill, you should call it a night as well. Even graduate students need their rest from time to time.”
The young man nodded and disappeared down the hallway, presumably to retrieve his coat.
“A good student,” Dr. Kozlov said.
Jake hoped that Kirill’s willingness to work late hours was unique. When he returned, he really didn’t want any more surprises.
“Good night, Professor,” Katie said as they stepped outside. “I look forward to talking with you again next week. Tell Tamara I said hello. I’m scheduled to be back in the office on Monday.”
“It was nice to meet you,” Jake said shaking the professor’s hand.
“And you as well young man,” Dr. Kozlov replied. “Play it safe and stay away from those restaurants Katrina suggests. They are killers to your colon.”
“Thanks, Professor,” Katie said curtly and then smiled.
The older man laughed and then kissed her on the forehead. “I will see you Monday, Katrina. The two of you take care and have a good night. Tell your grandmother I said hello.”
As they walked down the stairs, Katie could hardly contain herself. “Did you find anything?”
Jake took a deep breath. “You so don’t want to hear this.”
“What is it?”
“What color hair does Baranov have?”
“Black, why?”
Jake nodded and then stopped to face her when they reached the sidewalk outside the gate. “There’s someone dead inside his office. It may be him.”
“Oh my goodness!” She felt faint.
“Look, we’ve got big problems. There are people out to get you and I don’t have a clue about what’s going on here, but you’ve just become the perfect target to be framed for murder. Unless I can get back in there and somehow clean up our trail, we could both be burned for this. We’ve been seen by two people. The access log will show you were there, and I’ve left plenty of fingerprints behind. We don’t have a choice. I have to go back.”
“That’s not possible. My access has expired for the day.”
“I left a window open next to Baranov’s office. Maybe in an hour everyone will have gone home. I’ll sneak back in and try to come up with something.”
“I’m going back with you. If you get caught, we both do.”
“No,” he said, gripping her shoulders softly. “There’s a more pressing issue—your grandmother. I was planning on getting both of you out of Russia tomorrow, but the clock has been moved up on us. It’s clearly not safe for either of you to stay here. Does she have any out of town relatives, someone who wouldn’t mind her visiting for a while without asking too many questions?”
“She has a cousin in Tomsk.”
“Put her on the train tonight. In fact, go with her. After I’ve left the museum, I’ll make contact with the U.S. Consulate tomorrow morning and explain what’s happened. I have friends there who can help us. I’ll call you when it’s safe.”
“I agree with you about Baba, but I’m not leaving St. Petersburg without you.”
“But…” Jake tried to object.
“I’m terribly stubborn,” Katie said, holding up her hand. “You won’t change my mind on this.”
Jake rubbed his tired eyes. “OK,” he finally conceded. “Go take care of your grandmother. Where do you want to meet?”
“There’s an all-night coffee shop called Pushkin about four blocks down on the left. I’ll meet you there.” A worried look showed in her eyes.
“God will watch over us,” Jake reassured her. “Trust him.”
“I know,” she said sincerely, “but I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you.”
“I’ll be OK,” Jake insisted. “Did you talk with Professor Kozlov about what’s going on?”
“I tried to, but he put his finger to his lips and shushed me. He scribbled this note.”
Katie handed it to Jake and then translated.
“The building has ears. You cannot trust Baranov. Don’t come back here. I will come by later to explain, but you need to leave the city.”
“So he knows,” Jake said.
Katie nodded.
“Then, let’s get you out of here!”
27
“Hopefully those two are the last ones,” Dawkins huffed. He was fed up with the waiting game, and his stomach was growling.
“There are still three cars in the parking lot,” Hoffmeyer observed.
“One of them is Baranov’s. The other two I�
�m not sure about, although I think one of them is his secretary’s.”
“They’re probably together. If so…”
“Wait,” Dawkins snapped. “Someone else is coming out.” They watched as a tall man walking slightly stooped exited the building and got into an older sedan. “Good, that leaves just the two of them.”
“You really think Baranov is still in there?”
“I’ll bet he’s been waiting for everyone else to leave so he can meet his other customers. He’s probably calling them right now.”
“How do you propose we get in there?”
“With this,” Dawkins held up a swipe card. “I borrowed it off a lab coat when I was there the other day. I thought it might come in handy.”
“The same day you lifted the photo?” Hoffmeyer shook his head.
“You may not approve of my methods, but I always get the job done.”
“Then let’s get this over with and hope your methods don’t get us arrested or worse.”
They covered the distance from the utility building to the museum in less than five steps. Dawkins looked up to recheck that there were no security cameras and swiped the card through the reader.
“We’re in,” he muttered.
“Where’s Baranov’s office?”
“I’m guessing the third floor. The directory in the lobby lists the room number as 324.”
Finding the central stairwell, they quickly climbed to the third floor and stepped out into the darkened hallway, lit only by emergency lights on either end. Dawkins pointed to an office door displaying the number 304 and then proceeded to the next door which read 302.
“Other direction,” he motioned.
They moved past several offices before reading the numbers again: 320, 322, and finally 324.
“This must be it,” Dawkins whispered.
“Looks like no one’s home,” Hoffmeyer said hopefully.
“What’s that awful smell?”
“Eggs,” Hoffmeyer wrinkled his nose. “Rotten eggs.”
“Is it coming from his office?” Dawkins asked.
The Genesis Conspiracy Page 13
