Randi tapped the tabletop with the muzzle of the MP-5. “Then you came back to the bunkhouse and you sat down at this table and fixed yourself a sandwich. Corned beef, plenty of mustard.
“But your snack was interrupted by the arrival of our helicopter, and you had to take off. You’ve been out there all afternoon, keeping an eye on us. You watched my friends leave for the crash site and you watched us turn in for the night. Then you crawled out of your hole and you came down to this hut with the intent of axing Dr. Trowbridge and me to death in our beds.”
Trowbridge stared at Kropodkin as if he had suddenly sprouted horns. “You have no proof!” Trowbridge croaked weakly, not wanting to hear any more. He could not have been so wrong. He could not have sat across a desk from such a monster.
“Oh, I have proof, Doctor,” Randi replied so softly that both men had to keep silent to hear her. “For one, let’s consider the state the laboratory hut and radio room were in when we found them. Totally undamaged. There was no sign of a struggle. No resistance at all. Then let’s consider the state of Kayla Brown’s body. She was fully dressed in all her cold weather clothing. She had been allowed to gear up and leave that hut under controlled circumstances when she started up that hill. There was no indication of haste, of flight. No indication of panic. In short, she was not frightened.”
Randi glanced at Trowbridge. “You were in the radio shack aboard the cutter that last night, Doctor. We were talking with one very nervous and upset young woman. She knew something was very wrong on this island. I doubt she would have left the lab hut on her own, and I very much doubt she would have left so casually with a stranger. I suspect she was with someone she knew and trusted. Someone she saw as a friend. Him.”
The MP-5 barrel gestured toward Kropodkin.
“No,” the Slovakian gritted.
Randi moved to the edge of the mess table, immediately across from Kropodkin. “Then we come to his story about being stuck out on that ice flow. It’s a total fabrication. He wasn’t starving for two nights running. He was forted up somewhere, chewing on the emergency rations from the survival pack the rescue party had taken with them.”
“How can you possibly know?” Dr. Trowbridge whispered, intrigued in spite of himself.
“His atrocious table manners,” Randi replied. “Have you ever had to go hungry, Doctor? Really hungry? Several days worth of hungry in a hostile environment? I have, on several occasions. When you finally get a chance at a meal, you don’t bolt your food like this gentleman did. You don’t eat like you’re just hungry. You eat like food is the most wonderful experience in the world. You eat slowly, getting the most out of each mouthful. Personal experience.
“And while we’re on the subject of food…” Randi leaned forward across the table. “When we came into this hut, we found the half-eaten meal Mr. Kropodkin had left on the table. That corned beef sandwich and tea, hot tea.”
Hate glittered in the look Kropodkin aimed up at her. “It was not mine!” he spat.
“Oh, yes, it was.” Randi’s voice was almost hypnotic. “There was something a little bit different about the way that tea had been served. You see, it was in a glass. Now, we had a group of Anglo-Saxons, a couple of Asians, and one Slav on this island. When someone of Anglo-Saxon or Asian cultural descent makes hot tea, he or she drinks it from a cup or a mug, automatically, as a cultural norm. Only an Arab or a Slav would drink hot tea from a glass…” The barrel of the submachine gun swung across the table and lightly tapped the rim of the steaming glass at Kropodkin’s side, producing a clear ringing ting. “And there aren’t any Arabs on this island.”
Kropodkin grabbed for the inviting gun barrel. Randi, who had been expecting and waiting for the desperation move, yanked the submachine gun back, then smashed the muzzle full into Kropodkin’s face, hurling him backward off the bench.
Screaming a curse, Kropodkin scrambled to his feet, but Randi had already rolled over the tabletop, confronting him before he could recover. To a flabbergasted Dr. Trowbridge, she moved in a golden-haired blur. Three blows were landed with the submachine gun within two seconds; a two-handed horizontal strike across the forehead with the receiver, another savage punch in the groin with the muzzle, and a final butt stroke across the back of the neck as Kropodkin folded over in agony. Randi was careful to pull the finishing blow so it would not quite fracture the spine.
Kropodkin dropped like a dynamited bridge.
Dropping to her knees beside the Slovakian, Randi first checked his breathing, then yanked his arms behind his back, applying a fresh set of disposacuffs.
“Help me get him back onto the bunk, please, Doctor.”
Trowbridge just stared down at her and at the graduate student, sprawled bloody-faced on the floor.
“I can’t believe it,” he mumbled. “I can’t believe that anyone could kill so many people so casually.”
“There are more of them around than you might expect, Doctor.” Randi rubbed her eyes, suddenly very tired. “You’ve been sitting in a room with two of them.”
Chapter Thirty
The Misha Crash Site
Gradually Jon Smith became aware of dawn growing beyond the overhead astrodome. He also became aware of an imbalance in the warmth surrounding him, a comfortable emphasis favoring his left side. Then came a very definite snuggle.
The congealed frost of his breath rasped on the cover of his Jaeger sleeping bag as Smith lifted his head to look around the radar-observer cabin. A second occupied Jaeger bag was nestled firmly against his. Valentina Metrace, in her catlike connoisseurship of comfort, had burrowed close in the night.
Smith couldn’t help but cock an eyebrow. Randi had been right. Where there was a will, there was most certainly a way.
Female companionship had not been a major factor in Smith’s life for some time. At first, in the direct aftermath of Sophia’s death, the concept had been too painful, too much a breaking of a faith. Then, afterward, emotional relationships had seemed an added complication in an already overly complex life. But now this particular female seemed to be making it clear in a hundred subtle and not so subtle ways that she intended to make herself a factor.
Exactly why was beyond Smith’s comprehension. He had always viewed himself as a fairly prosaic individual. Any romance that might cling to him was only a reflection of his careers, and likely a misunderstood one at that. He had always felt very fortunate to have gained the love of one beautiful and intelligent woman. To have this second bold, enigmatic and decidedly attractive female move deliberately into his orbit was an unexpected phenomenon.
He felt Valentina’s head lift, and she shook free of her sleeping bag’s hood and face flap, peering into his face from a range of a few inches. “I would cheerfully and without a moment’s hesitation kill,” she murmured, “for a long, hot soak in a bathtub, and a change of lingerie.”
“I could loan you a spare disinfectant towelette,” he replied.
“Your counteroffers are growing steadily more pathetic, but I suppose I’m stuck with it.”
She rested her head on his shoulder, and for a few moments they lay together in the bizarre little pocket of intimacy they had found on the ice-slickened deck of the ancient bomber. The wind outside had subsided to only the faintest intermittent whisper. In the crew’s cabin aft, they could hear Gregori Smyslov snoring softly in his bunk.
The night before, Smith had been careful in the way he had arranged their gear to make sleeping room on the deck. He’d propped his loaded packframe in the hatchway between the compartments, stacking his snowshoes atop them, rendering a silent access to the radar-observer space impossible. The necessity of that action and the angular feel of his sidearm under the wadded bulk of his parka pillow pushed his momentary nonprofessional musing about Valentina Metrace into abeyance.