“I am glad you are safe,” Dimitry said. “At the church, when I left you in that tunnel—”

“What exactly is that tunnel?” Tucker interrupted, remembering the fresh boards shoring it up.

“I found it by accident one morning. I felt a strange draft coming up from the floor and started prying up boards.”

“And you’ve been maintaining it?” he asked.

The suspicion must have been plain in his voice.

Dimitry smiled. “Myself and Fedor. I told you he was a smuggler.”

Tucker raised an eyebrow toward the town’s old bishop, suddenly remembering how deferential everyone in the bar had been toward Dimitry, more than could be explained by religious affection.

“Okay, perhaps Fedor has a partner,” Dimitry admitted. “It is hard to maintain my flock on faith alone. But, mind you, we don’t smuggle anything dangerous. Mostly medicine and food, especially during winter. Many children get sick, you understand.”

Tucker could not find any fault in such an enterprise. “It’s a good thing you’re doing.”

Dimitry spread his hands. “Out here, you do what you can for your neighbor. It is how we survive, how we make a community.” He pointed ahead. “There is Fedor’s hangar. I will check first. Make sure it is clear, da?”

With Kane at his knee, Tucker waited while Dimitry went ahead. He returned two minutes later and gestured for them to follow.

“All is good.”

Dimitry led them through the main hangar doors. Lit by a lone klieg light, a single-engine prop plane filled the small space. Tucker couldn’t make out the model, but like everything else at the air base, the craft seemed a hodgepodge of bits and pieces. But at least the propeller was in place.

He found Fedor kneeling beside a red toolbox on the floor.

Before they could reach him, Kane let out a low growl. The shepherd still stood by the door, staring out.

Tucker hurried to the shepherd’s side, careful not to show himself. He drew Kane back by his collar. Across the base, a pair of headlights passed through the main gate, turned, and headed in their direction. It was clearly a military vehicle.

He drew his pistol and crossed to Fedor. He raised the gun and aimed it at the man’s forehead. “We’ve got visitors. No matter what else happens, you’ll be the first one to go.”

Fedor’s eyes got huge, and he sputtered first in Russian, then English. “I tell no one! No one!” He stood up—slowly, his palms toward Tucker. “Come, come! Follow. I show where to hide.”

Tucker weighed his options as the grumble of a diesel engine grew louder. He remembered Dimitry’s earlier words: you must trust someone or you’ll never get out of here.

With no choice but to heed that wisdom, Tucker pocketed his weapon. “Show me.”

Fedor hurried toward the rear of the hangar, towing everyone with him.

The big man led them to a giant orange storage tank, streaked with rust, that sat on a set of deflated rubber tires. A hose lay curled next to it. Tucker recognized an old fuel bowser used to fill the tanks of planes.

Fedor pointed to a ladder on one side. “Up! Through hatch on top.”

Having already cast his dice, Tucker stepped to the ladder and crouched down. He turned to Kane and tapped his shoulder. “UP.”

Backing a step, then leaping, Kane mounted Tucker’s shoulder in a half-fireman carry. Together, they scaled the ladder and crawled across the bowser’s roof to the hatch.

Fedor headed toward the hangar door, leaving behind a warning. “Quiet. I come back.”

Hurrying, Tucker spun the hatch, tugged it open, and poked his head inside. The interior seemed dry.

At least, I won’t be standing hip-deep in gasoline.

He pointed down and Kane dove through the hatch, landing quietly. Tucker followed, not as deftly, having to struggle to pull the hatch closed, too. His boots hit the bottom of the empty tank with a clang. He cringed, going still, but the rumbling arrival of the military vehicle covered the noise.

In complete darkness, Tucker drew his gun, his nose and eyes already stinging from fuel residue. But he also smelled bananas, which made no sense. He shifted to a better vantage, but his foot hit something that sounded wooden.

What the hell . . . ?

He freed his tiny penlight and flicked it on. Panning the narrow beam, he discovered the back half of the bowser’s tank was stacked with crates and boxes, some marked in Cyrillic, others in various languages. He spotted one box bearing a large red cross. Medical supplies. On top of it rested a thick bunch of bananas.

Here was more of Dimitry and Fedor’s smuggling operation.

It seemed he was now part of the cargo.

From outside, he heard muffled Russian voices moving around the hangar—then they approached closer. He clicked off his penlight and gripped the pistol with both hands. It sounded like an argument was under way. He recognized Fedor’s tone, which sounded heated, as if in the thick of a furious negotiation. Then the conversation moved away again and became indiscernible.

After another ten minutes, an engine started, rumbling loudly, wheels squelched on wet tarmac, and the sounds quickly receded. Seconds later, feet clomped up the ladder, and the hatch opened.

Tucker pointed his pistol up.

Fedor scolded, “No shoot, please. Safe now.”

Tucker called out, “Dimitry?”

“They are all gone, my friend!”

Fedor groaned. “Da, da. As I say, safe.”

Tucker climbed up, poked his head out, and looked around. Once confident the hangar was clear, he dropped back down, collected Kane, and climbed out.

“Price higher now,” Fedor announced.

Dimitry explained, “They were looking for you, but mostly they learned about our operations here. Not unusual. Every village in Siberia has such a black-market system. So people talk. The soldiers came mostly to collect what could be most kindly described as a tax.”

He understood. The roving soldiers weren’t above a little extortion.

“Cost me best case of vodka,” Fedor said, placing a fist over his heart, deeply wounded.

“We told them that we were about to leave on a postal run,” Dimitry explained. “After collecting the tax, there should be no problem getting through. Even soldiers know the mail must flow. Or their vodka here might dry up.”

Tucker understood. “ ‘Neither snow, nor rain, nor dark of night . . .’ ”

Fedor looked quizzically at him. “Is that poem? You write it?”

“Never mind. How much more do I owe you?”

Fedor gave it much thought. “Two thousand rubles. You pay, da?”

“I’ll pay.”

Fedor clapped his hands together. “Happy! Time to go. Put dog in plane. Then you push plane out, I steer. Hurry, hurry!”

Tucker rushed to comply.

Not exactly first-class service, but he wasn’t complaining.

12

March 11, 11:15 A.M.

Novosibirsk, Siberia

“And how confident are you of Dimitry and Fedor?” Ruth Harper asked.

Tucker stood at a pay phone next to an open-air fish market. The pungent smell of sturgeon, perch, and smelt hung heavily in the cold air. He had spent the previous ten minutes bringing Harper up to speed. He was surprised how happy he was to hear that southern lilt to her voice.

If not Tennessee, then maybe—

“Do you trust those Russians?” she pressed.

“I wouldn’t be making this call if either of them had ratted me out. Plus, I’ve been strolling the snowy streets of Novosibirsk for the past two hours. I’m clean. And it’s still another twelve hundred miles to Perm. If I pick up a tail, I’ll have plenty of time to shake it loose.”

“Still, you’re cutting the rendezvous close.”

“Bukolov will keep. If they—whoever they are—had any idea where he was, they wouldn’t be after me. Which reminds me, any further word about the source of that leak?”