It was clear that the woman had seen the firefight, the grenades, the torn flesh and rivers of blood. She had seen it all. When it was over, she was not afraid of the Chechen rebels, or the Russian soldiers. She was not afraid of the war itself, or even of dying. She had met many devils.

She was afraid of Aleks.

He put down his weapon, and approached her, hands out to his sides. He was starving, and preferred to sit at a table. He meant her no harm. As he neared the woman, her eyes grew wide with horror.

“You,” she said, her hands beginning to tremble. “You!”

Aleks stepped into the house. It smelled of fresh bread. His stomach lurched in hunger.

“You know me?” he asked in halting Chechen.

The woman nodded. She touched the weathered book on the table. Next to the book was a loaf of black bread, a stone-sharpened carving knife.

“Koschei,” she said, her voice quivering. “Koschei Bessmertny!”

Aleks did not know these words. He asked her to repeat them. She did, then crossed herself three times.

In a flash she lifted the razor-sharp knife from the table, brought it to her throat, and slashed her jugular vein. Bright blood burst across the room. Her body slumped to the cold floor, quaking in its death throes. Aleks looked at the table. The loaf of bread was splattered with deep carmine.

Aleks fell upon the blood-soaked bread, wolfing it down, the taste of the old woman’s blood, along with the yeast and flour, an intoxicating mixture that both sickened and exhilarated him.

It was not the last time he would taste it.

IN THE DYING LIGHT he read the book, a book of folk legends. He read the fable of Koschei the Deathless. There were many tales, but the one that moved him was the tale of the immortal Koschei – a man who could not die because his soul was kept elsewhere – and Prince Ivan’s sisters: Anna, Marya, and Olga.

He wept.

AFTER HIS DISCHARGE, Aleks returned to Estonia, where he took odd jobs – carpentry, plumbing, fixing fifty years of shoddy Russian construction. He worked the slaughterhouses in the south, the mines in central Estonia, anything to get by. But he always new he was destined for something else, something greater.

Aleks befriended the mayor of the town, a man who also owned just about every business within fifty kilometers.

The man brought him along on a job, a job robbing an old Russian of his wealth accumulated on the backs of Estonians. Aleks had no loyalties, no God. He went. And found that the violence was still deep within him. It came easy.

Over the next few years, from the Gulf of Finland to the Latvian border to the south, and sometimes beyond, there was not a shop owner, business man, farmer, politician, or criminal enterprise, large or small, that did not pay Aleksander Savisaar tribute. He always worked alone, his threats and assurances couched in his ability to make believers of those who doubted his sincerity with torture and cruelty of such intensity, such speed, that his actions never had to be repeated.

By the age of twenty-seven his legend was widely known. In his pocket were politicians, law-enforcement agents, legislators. He had bank accounts and property in six countries. A fortune he never dreamed of.

It was time to turn his attention to his legacy but, with all his wealth and power, he did not know where or how to begin.

He began by building a house, a large A-frame set among tall standing pines atop a hill in Kolossova. Isolated, secure, and tranquil, he began to fell the logs he needed. By fall he had all the lumber milled, and had the structure fully framed.

He returned to the long-abandoned Treski orphanage, the place where he had been left. At great expense, he had locals tear it down stone by stone. Back in Kolossova he hired stonemasons to build a wall around his house.

Hurrying to close in the roof before the winter snows came, Aleks worked well into the evenings. One night, just as dusk claimed the day, he sat on the second floor, looking out over the valley as it began to snow in earnest.

He was just about to gather his tools when he thought he saw movement amid the stand of blue spruce to the west. He waited, stilling his movements, his breathing, dissolving into his surroundings, becoming invisible. He fingered the rifle at his side, shifted his eyes back and forth, scanned the clearing, but there was no movement. Yet there was something. A pair of shining pearls, seemingly suspended on the snow. He looked more closely, and a form began to take shape, seeming to grow around the glistening orbs. The high dome, the pointed ears, the dusty rose of a lolling tongue.

It was a gray wolf.

No, he thought. It cannot possibly be. The wolf who had discovered him in the cemetery, by all accounts, was full grown at that time.

When he saw the old wolf slowly rise, on its terribly gnarled forelegs, and begin to move with an arthritic sluggishness, Aleks believed. The ancient wolf had come to see him before he died.

But what was the message?

Days later, when he saw the young girl, the soothsayer named Elena Keskküla, standing on the same spot, observing him, it was an epiphany.

He watched many times over the next few years, even after her family moved north, observed the people coming to her farmhouse, their tributes in tow – money, food, livestock.

In these days he often envisioned himself on a hillside, the days speeding by, spring given unto winter in seconds, decade born of decade. He watched the fields grow ripe with fruit, fall fallow. He watched cities grow from timberland, only to flourish, expand, reach for heights of glory, then decay, and crumble into ash and dust. He watched saplings reach to the sky, then yield to farmland. He watched animals grow fatted, calve, nurse their young, only to see their offspring seconds later begin the wondrous cycle again. Skies blacken, seas churn and calm, the earth opens and closes in massive quakes, pines grow down the mountains to the valleys, only to farther lakes and rivers, which in turn gave life to the gardens and farms.

Through all of it, through eons of war and pestilence and greed, generations of lawlessness and avarice, there would be his daughters at his side. Marya, the pragmatist, the keeper of his mind. Anna, the artist of his heart. Olga, never seen, but always felt, his anchor.

He fingered the three vials around his neck. Together, one way or another, they would live forever.

HE WATCHED THEM play their games in the backyard, their gossamer blond hair lifting and falling in the breeze. They had Elena’s air about them, an aura of prudence and insight.

He crouched down to their level. They approached him, showing no fear or apprehension. Perhaps they saw in his eyes their own eyes. Perhaps they saw in him their destiny. They were so beautiful his heart ached. He had waited so long for this moment. All the while he had feared it would never happen, that his immortality had been something of fairy tale.

Without a word he reached into his pocket, produced the two marble eggs. He handed them to the girls.

The girls studied the eggs closely, running their small fingers over the intricate carving. Aleks had seen the drawing they had made on the refrigerator. He saw that one section of the drawing was missing.

Anna, the one they called Emily, beckoned him close. Aleks got down on one knee. The little girl leaned even closer, whispered: “We knew you would be tall.”

TWENTY-NINE

The white van parked in front of the townhouse had EDGAR Rollins & Son Painting and Decorating on its side. Michael pulled up behind it, cut the engine. Nothing seemed real. This was the last place he wanted to be, but he could not take the chance of breaking with his schedule. He checked his cellphone for the five hundredth time. Nothing.