57

Northwestern Moldova

Nuri pushed the spade into the dirt, hammering down with his right heel against the top of the shovel. The box had been buried quite a while ago; the ground was hard.

The radar had reported it was two meters below the surface—six feet. That didn’t sound like much, until you started digging. The first foot or so was tough—a shrub had grown almost exactly over the box, and there were tree roots on the side to contend with. The next foot or so was somewhat easier, though the clay soil only reluctantly gave way.

The rest was hell. It didn’t help that it was after midnight and he’d been awake for a millennium. Or so it seemed.

He pushed downward in a circle, working his way around as he created a funnel. The moon was nearly full, but the sky was filled with clouds, and the only light came from two battery-powered lanterns loaned by the Moldovan police contingent guarding the house.

He’d asked the deputy minister if they had a backhoe. Lacu wasn’t sure, but promised to look into it by morning. Nuri figured he’d be halfway to China by then.

Or maybe not. Five feet deep in the hole, and he was ready to drop his concerns about letting the Moldovans see whatever was in the box. But it didn’t make sense to stop now. He knew he was close. He poked and attacked with the shovel, using it as a pick.

Finally he hit something hard.

He scraped, pried, scrambled up for one of the lanterns.

Back in the hole, he dug at it with his hands.

It was a rock.

Ten minutes later, he pried the rock away and found the box.

Two of the men who were guarding the house came up as he was pulling it from the ground.

“I could have used you guys a half hour ago,” he said in English, pushing it ahead of him as he clambered up the side.

“Moltumesc,” said one of the men, taking the box.

“Give me a hand, would you?” Nuri asked.

“Da,” said the man.

The other smashed Nuri in the back of the head with his rifle, sending him tumbling back into the hole.

58

Kiev, Ukraine

Hera was surprised to find Danny up and sitting at their laptop when she and McEwen returned to the hotel suite.

“I thought you were sleeping,” she said.

“I did.”

“What, for two hours?”

“You going to mother me, too, are you?” he asked, unfurling his bare feet from beneath him and standing. “Do either of you know how to work the coffee machine?”

“It’s busted,” said Hera. “I meant to ask for a new one.”

Danny frowned. “So what’s going on?”

McEwen told him about the guns. Hera, meanwhile, used the laptop to see if MY-PID had gotten any more information about the weapons and the hangar.

The serial numbers on the rifles indicated they were genuine, manufactured in 1953 for the Soviet army. They belonged to a lot that had been declared obsolete by the government more than a decade before. There was no other information about those specific guns, and the type was so common—literally ubiquitous—that trying to correlate them against known gun sales, legal and illegal, was impossible, even for MY-PID.

Information on Duga, the company that had leased the hangar, was far more limited—and therefore considerably more useful. It had leased a similar building at a regional airport in France two years ago; there had been an assassination tied to the Wolves there as well. Following transfers of money from its accounts, MY-PID discovered an HSBC bank account that had been tapped for cash in three different cities near where Wolf murders had taken place.

More interesting was the fact that the account had made a large transfer to an Austrian bank account, which in turn was tapped twice in the past two days in Prague.

“So there’s someone in Prague?” said McEwen.

“Maybe,” said Danny.

Hera asked the computer for more information on the bank account and the withdrawals. It didn’t have any—the account had only been opened a few days before.

“No other connections?” McEwen asked after the words null set appeared on the screen.

“Not yet,” said Hera. “It’s thinking.”

“Well let’s think ourselves—why would someone from the organization be in Prague?”

“Part of their getaway,” said Hera. “They need a clear path out. New identities, that sort of thing.”

“So whoever dropped the guns off then moved on to Prague,” suggested McEwen.

Hera tested the theory by trying to find correlations between the account and recent airline travel between Kiev and Prague. MY-PID found nothing usable.

“How much money did they take out?” Danny asked.

“Six hundred euros,” said McEwen. “Twice. Walking around expenses.”

“But why didn’t they bring it in themselves?” Danny asked. “If it was someone assigned to clear the way for an escape, they would come in with the money.”

“It could be a handoff to someone,” said McEwen. “You can’t carry too much cash across the border. Generally you’re not stopped, but if you have more than a few hundred euros, there will be questions.”

“This was only twelve hundred.”

“Twelve hundred is still a lot, at least where I come from,” said McEwen. “But you’re forgetting—these are the transactions we know about. There could be another ten. They could be planting the money for the people coming through. Hiding it for them. Or spending it.”

“Why escape through Prague, though?” asked Hera. “If you can fly anywhere, either go to Russia or go somewhere with more connections.”

“Damn,” said Danny.

Hera looked up from the computer as he continued.

“Get all the information you can about an air show in Prague,” he said. “And get some coffee up here from room service. Find out where Nuri is—call him and tell him I need to talk to him.”

“What are you doing?” asked Hera.

“Getting my shoes. Then going to Prague.”

59

Northwestern Moldova

The pain swirled around Nuri’s head. He felt as if he was flying through a wind tunnel, spinning around at the center of a cyclone.

Then he landed, crumpling into a pile in the corner of a dark room.