When he finished, he looked at Sascha.

“Put Andreas’s photograph out on the wire,” said Cloud. “Law enforcement, news agencies.”

“What about his identity?” asked Sascha.

Cloud was silent as he considered the question.

“Not yet.”

48

NEVA RIVER

SAINT PETERSBURG

Dewey treaded water and watched as lights in a marina building went on. A few seconds later, police cars poured in through a fenced-off entrance. Dewey dived beneath the surface and swam into the darkness, away from shore, resurfacing after more than a minute. Searchlights scanned the surface of the water near the shore. He turned onto his back and let the current take him away from the city.

The hum of the chopper’s rotors softened, blending into the slapping of the water. He floated for an hour as the lights of Saint Petersburg became a dome of dull yellow, blurry and silent, far in the distance. He came onshore along a rocky stretch of coast, bordered by a dense thicket of trees and brush.

He was exhausted. His knee was badly cut. He was cold and wet. He wanted to sit down and rest. But he couldn’t. Now was the time he needed to move. Not later, now.

They’re coming.

He took a step, then another, his eyes weaving between the starry sky and the tree line, moving east, navigating by the stars. He walked for at least an hour, through a rough country of trees and fields. Eventually, he came to the first sign of civilization: train tracks.

The rail bed had a few weeds, but he smelled fresh oil. The track was still being used.

Dewey moved left, along the tracks. He walked for another hour, then saw the outskirts of a rail yard. It sat quiet but was large. The tracks split into a dozen lines. Boxcars and locomotives filled the sidings.

Dewey’s clothing was still damp. He was hungry. Mostly, the gash at his knee hurt. But whatever discomfort he felt, he ignored. There would be time to think about it later. Right now, he needed to focus on a few core issues, survival being at the very top of the list.

He reached to his left calf. Sheathed to his leg was his Gerber combat blade, seven inches of black steel, double-serrated, its hilt wrapped in black hockey tape. He pulled it out, then moved along the outskirts of the big rail yard, at the edge of a tree line, to a simple two-story brick building at the side of the yard.

Dewey studied the building from the shadow of the trees. Seeing no activity, he charged across the exposed side of the building, reaching the far end, then crouching against the brick. He stalked, back pressed to brick, until he came to the corner of the building. Dewey peeked around. He saw a doorway and, beyond it a parking lot, empty except for a pair of pickup trucks.

Dewey walked to the door, jiggling the doorknob. It was locked. He glanced around, making sure he was alone, then heaved his shoulder against the door. It was a steel door. The lock was double-bolt. It wasn’t going to be opened by force.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

Dewey got down on his knees and felt along the foundation, looking for a hidden key. He went right, crawling all the way to the corner of the building. He found nothing.

A loud, creaking noise, then the slam of steel as, in the rail yard, on the other side of the building, there was activity; a boxcar was being moved.

Dewey repeated his search for a key on the far side of the door, crawling, banging the foundation. A few feet from the door, a piece of concrete seemed loose. Dewey tugged at it. It popped out. Behind it was a set of keys.

Back at the door, he inserted keys until one fit. He went inside, relocking the building behind him.

He felt the wall for light switches, then flipped them on. Clutching the knife in his right hand, Dewey moved inside the building.

He passed two offices, then came to a locker room, with work boots strewn against a far wall, benches, and lockers. He opened and closed lockers until he found one with clothing in it: a pair of jeans hanging from a hook and a dirty T-shirt. He held the jeans up, but they were far too small. He heard the door down the hallway open. Then voices, two men, speaking in Russian.

Dewey stepped quietly along the line of lockers. He wedged himself between the last locker and the wall.

One of the voices was coming closer. He couldn’t understand what the man was saying, but his tone was unmistakable. Anger. He heard doors opening down the hallway, then footsteps moving up the stairs to a second floor. The two men were calling back and forth to each other.

From the corner, Dewey watched the room through a small gap between the top of the locker and the ceiling. He saw the man’s shadow at first, then the man. He was big, dressed in a dark green uniform. Local police or railroad security.

Dewey stood as still as a statue. His eyes followed the man’s as he scanned the room, taking a drag on his cigarette, a small hint of grin appearing.

Dewey’s eyes shot to the bench. There, sitting on top of the bench, was the set of keys.

“Fuck,” he whispered. Don’t look at the keys.

The officer left the locker room and shut the door.

Dewey breathed a sigh of relief. He waited for the voices again. But there was nothing.

He should’ve searched the lockers.

Dewey understood in that moment that he’d seen the keys. He was getting the other officer.

Dewey scanned the locker room. There were two windows. Both were tiny.

The door was the room’s only entrance or exit.

Then the lights went off.

Dewey stepped out of the small hiding area. He had precious little time. He crawled to the pile of boots. There were several dozen pairs, piled against the wall. He dug out a crawl space beneath the pile. He covered every inch of his body and head in boots, still clutching the Gerber in his right hand.

Dewey waited for more than a minute. He heard the faintest scratching of metal, as the doorknob was slowly twisted open. He watched as the door opened. He saw the vaguest outline of a gun, moving in, then training right, at the space just inside the door along the wall, then the unmuted explosion of gunfire filled the room as the officer fired at the space next to the door in the same instant another man lurched inside, gun aimed in the other direction, and then, a second later, fired three blasts through the door; whatever was behind the door was now pelted with holes.

One of the men turned the lights on. Dewey watched through a tiny gap in the mass of boots that lay atop him. The two officers looked surprised at the empty corner, at the lack of a dead man just inside the door.

The second man was short and fat. He said something to the taller man.

Dewey guessed, from the shaking of the man’s head, that it was something along the lines of: Are you sure someone is in here?

The bigger guard stepped to the bench and picked up the keys, as if showing him proof.

Dewey’s ears suddenly picked up the faintest hint of a siren in the far-off distance.

The short man barked something in Russian. The other guard began to open the door to the first locker, near the door, at the opposite end of the room from Dewey. He looked inside the locker, found it empty, then slammed the door shut. He moved methodically down the line of lockers, opening and closing each one.

The siren grew louder, then was joined by more sirens.

They were coming. They were moving quickly, and they were organized. The Russian authorities were angry.

But how could they possibly know he was still in-country?

It didn’t matter. There was only one way he’d be able to get out of the rail yard, and it would necessarily leave evidence, likely in blood. In a few short moments, things would get hairy.

A splash of lights cut in through one of the windows.