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Page 13.

When there was nothing more to do, when there were no more tears, when she was exhausted from loss and grief, Marianne knew her journey was finished. Now life could begin again.

She blew her two loved ones a final kiss, and strode back across the beach toward the gravel road.

No sign of Lenka and her brother and her cousin or the police cruiser.

As she strode along, numb and without feeling, Marianne looked at her wristwatch—not with the impatience shown earlier by Mikhail and Anatoly as they looked at theirs.

Two hours had passed, and Lenka should be back to pick her up any time now. That had been the agreement.

No sign of anyone.

Marianne was growing thirsty. She had cried all the salt out of her system, and all her water. She was dehydrated. So much water all around—in the salt-pocked ice, in the sea, in the taunting clouds—and nothing to drink.

Hands in her pockets, she walked in steady, long strides. She hunched her shoulders to make her parka bigger around herself, and shelter herself from the elements.

Time now to return to France, and to look after the grande maison in Paris, the Maison Troisroses near Avignon, and her three boys. She had grandchildren now—where had she been all this time? Grand-mère would be chain-smoking out of concern.

Then, too, from her travels around the world in search of Tim Nordhall, and her conversations with so many people, she had a whole box of notes. She’d been in the habit of scribbling furious, cryptic notes in pencil, ballpoint, or even mascara on whatever was handy—note paper, card stock torn from old cigarette cartons, napkins, anything that came to hand. Now it was time to collage them, to piece it all together in a logical time frame, at least, if not for herself, then for her sons and their children. They should all be proud of the legacy of Tim Nordhall, and the sacrifices of the woman he had never stopped loving, nor had mama ever stopped thinking of her lover in the far West. Or east, from Siberia.

As she approached the gravel road, a sleek European luxury car pulled up. Its elegant, dark-green metal gleamed in sunlight.

If not the police, then who?

She had a strong feeling.

The car pulled up, and its lone passenger stepped out of the driver’s side.

Her hunch was right—it was Nayden Marinov.

The last awful shoe was yet to drop.

Let it—she was ready, even eager, to put all this behind her.

He stood with his hands in the pockets of his long coat, which hung loosely and easily around his tall frame. He looked ruggedly, criminally handsome with his dark hair blowing in the wind, and sunglasses parked on top of his forehead. He looked youthful for a man in his mid forties. His face betrayed little emotion. He was a man who had long buried his emotions and their moral sinews. His eyes had a flat, leaden, calculating confidence to them. If he smiled, it was almost a grimace.

“Where are the police?” she called out as she drew near.

“They won’t be coming for you,” he called back to her.

He extended a helping hand, but she ignored it, preferring to clamber up the berm to the main gravel road surface on her own power.

“I came to rescue you,” he said.

“Thank you. I appreciate that. And the flowers.”

He said nothing. He waited until she had walked around the car. He made no move to open the door or offer any more polite gestures. When she was seated inside, and buckled up, he got in and slammed the door shut. The car started up with a rustle of expensive machinery. The car inside smelled of leather, and fine oils.

The smell of drug money, she thought. The irresistible song of bizenis.

“I am going to drive you to the airport and see you take off from here. I don’t want you to look back, or ever return here.”

They rode in silence through the unchanging, empty landscape.

“Thanks,” she said simply.

“I owe you something.”

“That’s on your dime.”

“I understand.” He leaned forward to wipe condensation off the windshield with a rag from under the seat. The car was a rental from the airport—the best they had, of course.

“It was nice to meet you, Mr. Samsonov.”

“You figured it out.” He hardly seemed surprised. He kept his hands on the steering wheel. His eyes only briefly flickered in her direction. He was a chess playing type. He’d calculated all this ahead of time. He was the type of man who planned his emotions ahead of time. You had to, to survive in his business.

“You left your credit card on the table when you paid for dinner yesterday evening.”

“Maybe it was a Freudian desire to help you learn the truth. About me. About Anadyr.”

“My mother suffered here,” Marianne said. “That is all that really matters.” She looked at him. “Your mother.”

He nodded. “This is a little armpit of hell, yes.”

“Don’t make light of it.”

“I’m not,” he said sharply. “There we go already. Sibling rivalry, like I said. It must be in the air.”

She did not say it, but she wondered if Samsonov—Uncle Vadim—had raped her to make her pregnant, or if she had consented to have sex with him for his name, his ration card, and his meager seaman’s pay. Mama must have been desperate. If Marianne had any tears left she would have cried again.

“Look,” he said, “I know you think I am a terrible guy. I am a very terrible guy. It’s true. But you are my sister, and I will get you out of here alive and in one piece.”

He pulled out a huge Makarov hand gun, which he laid on the seat between them. From another pocket, he pulled out two clips of spare ammunition, which he laid beside the gun. He pulled the rag over them, which he had used to wipe the windows.

Marianne gripped the seat around her with white knuckles. What was this now? She remembered the arsenal in the police cruiser.

“We will come to a militia checkpoint up the road in a minute,” Nayden said. “I got through without a hitch coming this way.”

“Because your thugs let you through. I can already guess the whole story.”

“You have a big imagination,” he said warily, eyeballing the road ahead and behind, looking for signs of an ambush. “Whatever you’re thinking, think the worst and you are probably right.”

“Lenka…” she said, filled with concern. She’d begun to like the brisk little cop. She’d already had fantasies of Lenka returning to Latvia one day, now that the Iron Curtain was gone, and of marrying a blond, blue-eyed man from Riga perhaps. Starting a new life where her grandparents had left off before Stalin’s purges and mass relocations of entire peoples.

It was not to be.

“Oh my god,” Marianne said, holding her hands before her mouth. Her eyes bulged at the sight before them.

A number of heavily armed Spetsnaz special forces in white Arctic camouflage stood by the sides of the road. On the road itself were blue and green uniformed local militia police in fatigue caps and olive-drab battle dress.

In the center of the road were two cars.

One was the police cruiser, lying on its side and riddled with bullet holes.