Buried Secrets

93.



The driveway to the Alderson property was the main access road. If this was indeed the right place—and I had to assume for now that it was—Zhukov was likely to have surveillance equipment in place: cameras, infrared beams, some sort of early-warning system.

Then again, it’s not easy to set up equipment like that outdoors and have it work effectively. Not without advance preparation.

But, it was safer to assume the driveway was being monitored.

So I drove on ahead, past the entrance, plowing through the muddy river another half mile or so until it came to an abrupt stop. There I drove up the steep bank as deep into the woods as I could.

According to the map Dorothy had sent to my phone, this was the far end of the property. The farm was two hundred and forty acres of land with a half mile of frontage on a paved road and a mile of frontage along this dirt path.

The house was easily a quarter mile from here. Given the topography, the road couldn’t be seen from the house.

The owner had for years permitted hunters to come through his land. Dorothy had looked at the state’s online hunting records.

This wasn’t unusual in New Hampshire. You were allowed to hunt on state or even private lands as long as they hadn’t been “posted”—in other words, unless the property owner put up NO HUNTING signs.

But I’d been concentrating so hard on trudging through the muck that I hadn’t until now noticed the NO TRESPASSING/NO HUNTING signs posted to trees every fifty feet or so.

They looked brand-new. Someone had put them up recently to keep anyone from approaching the house.

I had some decent overhead satellite photos of the Alderson property, but nothing recent. The photos could have been three years old, for all I knew. I was at a real disadvantage.

At least I had a good weapon: a SIG-Sauer P250 semiautomatic. The SIG P250 was a beautiful gun: compact and lightweight, smooth, perfectly engineered. Mine was matte black, with an aluminum frame. I’d installed a Tritium night sight and an excellent internal laser sight, a LaserMax. I’d also had a gunsmith in Manassas, Virginia, add stippling and checkering on the metal grips, round all the sharp angles for an unhindered draw, and funnel the grip for easier reloading. He tuned it like a Stradivarius, adjusting the trigger pull down to a zero sear, meaning that I hardly had to touch the trigger to fire.

There’s an elegance to a well-made gun, like any finely engineered machine. I like the precision engineering, the honed finish, the smooth pull of the trigger, the smell of gun oil and smoke and gunpowder and nitroglycerin.

I loaded several magazines with hollow-point bullets. They’re designed to do a lot of damage to a person: When they hit soft tissue they deform and expand and create a large crater. Cops prefer them because they won’t pass through walls—or the target, for that matter.

My Defender was painted Coniston Green, also known as British Racing Green, but it was so mud-spattered that it looked as if I’d sprayed it with camouflage paint. I stashed it in a copse of birch trees, where it couldn’t be seen from the road, and took some equipment out of the back. My binoculars: an excellent pair of Leicas. A pair of boots, still crusted with mud from the last time I’d worn them. I strapped on a side holster and jammed in the SIG, then clipped a few extra magazine holsters to my belt.

At the last minute I remembered something under the rear seat that I might need. It was an old military-spec Interceptor ballistic vest made of aramid fiber. It wasn’t bulletproof—no such thing, really—but it was the most effective soft armor you could get. It was supposed to stop nine-millimeter machine-gun rounds. I put it on, adjusted the Velcro straps.

If I’d come to the right place, I needed to be prepared.

Compass in hand, I set off through the woods.





94.



The ground was sodden, even spongy, and so slick in places I nearly lost my footing. Low branches and thorn bushes whipped and scratched my face and neck. The land rose steeply and then plateaued until, standing atop a knoll, I spotted in a clearing in the distance a small building.

I peered through the binoculars and saw a large, windowless structure: a barn.

A few hundred yards beyond it, according to the aerial photo, was the farmhouse.

I came closer and finally saw the house. But it was dark. That wasn’t promising. Either this was the wrong place, or Zhukov had already left.

Meaning that Alexa was dead.

I drew closer, weaving through the forest, keeping to the shadows, until the barn was close enough to see with the naked eye. Then I circled around. From there I could see the long expanse of yard leading up to the house. The sky had begun to clear, and there was enough moonlight to make out a patchy lawn, with more bald spots than grass.

And midway between the barn and the darkened house a neat oblong had been cut into the sorry-looking lawn. A rectangle about ten feet long by three feet wide.

Like a freshly dug grave.

But instead of the sort of earthen heap you see in a new grave, the ground was flat, crisscrossed with tire tracks, as if someone had driven a car or a truck back and forth on top of it, and the rain had later softened the marks.

I felt a tingle of apprehension.

At one end of the rectangular patch of dirt a gray PVC pipe stuck up like the sawn-off trunk of a sapling.

I dropped the binoculars, let them dangle on their strap around my neck, and I approached the edge of the woods.

The house was an old brown tumbledown wreck, its clapboard weathered and cracked, several roof shingles missing.

Mounted to the roof of the house was a white satellite dish.

It looked new.

In the shadows behind the barn I began to discern the contours of a tall piece of equipment. It loomed like an enormous, geometric bird, a seagull, a whooping crane.

I looked closer and saw that it was a Caterpillar backhoe loader.





95.



Peering through the binoculars, I focused on the house. Two floors, a sharply canted roof, small windows. No light inside. On the low wooden porch was another piece of equipment. An air compressor?

Yes. That made sense. This was how he kept air flowing into her box, or crypt, or whatever it was.

This had to be the right place.

For a minute or two I watched carefully, looking for some kind of movement in the darkness, a glint of reflected moonlight. I estimated I was about three hundred yards from the house, beyond the range of accuracy of my pistol.

But if someone was inside with a rifle, three hundred yards was no problem.

The moment I stepped into the clearing, I was a target.

I got on the cell phone and called Diana. In a whisper, I said, “I think she’s here.”

“You’ve seen her?” Diana said.

“No, I’m looking at what may be a burial site. A vent pipe in the ground. Signs of recently excavated earth.”

“Zhukov?”

“House is dark. I can’t be sure if he’s there. Tell your bosses that there’s not much doubt this is the place. They need to get up here right away. And bring shovels.”

I hit END. Checked to make sure the ringer was off.

Then I took a few more steps, emerging from the shadows. Walked across the barren lawn toward what had to be the burial site.

Something caught the moonlight, something near my feet, and suddenly the entire yard lit up, and I was blinded by the blaze of spotlights from two directions.





96.



I flattened myself against the ground. I could smell the rich loamy odor of the dirt. Gripping the SIG, the safety off, I felt for the trigger, careful not to apply any pressure. The slightest squeeze would fire a round.

In one quick motion I rolled over so I was facing up. The lights came from two directions: from the barn on my left and from the house on my right. I inhaled slowly, over the thudding of my heart, and listened hard.

Nothing.

I knew what had happened. I’d hit an invisible tripwire at ankle level.

Zhukov had served with the Russian army in Chechnya, where he must have learned all the standard army techniques, like how to string tripwire to detonate a mine or detect the enemy’s approach. The stuff we’d used was black and as thin as dental floss, made from a polyethylene fiber called Spectra. You could get fishing line made from the same thing. It was low-stretch and had high tensile strength. And you wouldn’t spot it in the dark unless you had a flashlight and knew where to look. He’d probably strung the filament around at least part of the perimeter, from tree trunk to tree trunk, rigged up to a microswitch to set off the beams. A low-tech motion detector.

So was he here, or not? Was he waiting for me to get up so he could take aim?

I listened for footsteps, for the scuff of shoes on dirt or gravel.

Nothing.

After two minutes, the spotlights went off and everything was black.

No shot was fired. No crack of twigs. Just the ambient noise of the forest: the rustle of leaves in the wind, the distant chirruping of a nocturnal bird, the skittering of a ground squirrel or a chipmunk.

The vent pipe was roughly a hundred feet from me. Would she hear me if I spoke into it?

Then I realized what a mistake that would be. If Zhukov was hiding in the house, monitoring Alexa over a remote connection, then whatever she heard he’d hear too.

Of course, if he was in the house, it was only a matter of time before he saw me.

So I had to take him out first.

Holster the weapon? Or keep it handy? I needed both hands. Jamming it into the holster, I rolled and spun into a crouch. Sprang to my feet.

And started toward the house.





97.



But I didn’t run.

I didn’t want to trip another wire. As I walked, I looked around for fence posts, stakes, anything a wire might be strung around.

Maybe I was walking right into a trap. Maybe he was waiting for me in the dark with a high-powered rifle.

Around to the side, past a set of wooden bulkhead doors, the wooden frame rotting, the paint blistering and peeling. No padlock.

Enter the basement? No. Maybe it wasn’t a basement but a root cellar: dirt floor, accessible only from the outside, no internal door to the upstairs.

On this side of the house was a door, behind a screen with a large hole in it. But I kept going around to the front. Past an oval of bare earth where cars probably parked and turned around. No vehicles there, though. None in the front of the house either.

He couldn’t be inside, or I’d be dead by now.

But what if Zhukov had simply abandoned the farmhouse? After all, he knew from Navrozov’s cutout that he was being actively hunted. Why stay here? Leave his victim in the ground, let her die.

A path had been worn across a scrubby lawn to the front door, though how recently it was impossible to say. I detected no movement in any of the windows, so I pulled open the screen door and tried the front door.

It came right open.

Someone had been here very recently.





98.



The smell of food that had been cooked not long ago: maybe sausage or eggs, something fried in grease.

A small entryway, low ceilings, a musty odor under the cooking grease. Cigarettes too, though fainter here, as if he smoked in another part of the house. I moved stealthily, the SIG in a two-handed grip, pivoted abruptly to my left, weapon pointed, ready to fire. Then to my right.

Nothing. The floorboards creaked.

Now I faced a choice. There were three ways to go. A doorway on my right led to a small front room. On my left was a steep staircase, the wooden treads worn and bowed. Straight ahead was another doorway, which I guessed led to a kitchen and the back of the house.

The stairwell was a potential hiding place. I listened closely, heard nothing.

I pivoted again, tracing an arc right to left. Then I lunged toward the dark stairwell.

I said, “Freeze.”

No response.

And then I heard a voice.

Not from upstairs, though. From the back of the house. A woman’s voice, muffled, indistinct, its cadence irregular, the tone rising and falling.

A TV had been left on.

I stepped through the threshold, searching the dim corners, my body a coiled spring. My finger caressed the trigger. I scanned the room, slicing with the pistol left to right, then toward the corners.

The kitchen was windowless, carved out of an interior space, an afterthought. The floor was dark red linoleum, a swirly white pattern running through it, the tiles chipped and cracked. An old white GE stove, vintage 1940 or so. A Formica counter edged with a metal band. A white porcelain sink with two separate spouts, one for hot water and one for cold. It was stacked high with plates and bowls that were crusted with food. An empty box of Jimmy Dean breakfast sausages lay discarded in the middle of a tin-topped kitchen table.

I heard the woman’s voice again, much clearer now, coming from the next room. From the back of the house.

Not from a TV.

The voice was Alexa’s.





99.



Amped with adrenaline, I burst into the adjoining room, gun extended.

“—Bastard!” she was saying. “You goddamned bastard!”

Then her tone changed abruptly, her voice wheedling, high-pitched. “Please, oh God, please let me out of here, please oh God please oh God what do you goddamn want? I can’t stand it I can’t stand it please oh God.”

And I saw that Alexa wasn’t in here.

Her voice was coming from computer speakers. A black Dell computer on a long wooden workbench that ran the length of one wall. In the monitor I saw that same strange close-up of Alexa’s face, with a greenish cast, that I’d seen in the streaming video.

But she looked so bad I almost didn’t recognize her. Her face was gaunt, her eyes swollen to slits, deep purple hollows beneath them. She was speaking out of one side of her mouth, as if she’d had a stroke. Her face shone with sweat. Her eyes were wild, unfocused.

In front of the monitor was a keyboard. To the left of it was a small, cheap-looking microphone on a little plastic tripod. Like something you’d find in a discount bin at RadioShack.

For an instant Alexa seemed to be looking at me, but then her eyes meandered somewhere else. She fell silent, then started whimpering, all her words rushing together. I could make out only “please” and “God” and “out of here.”

I spoke into the microphone: “Alexa?”

But she went on, uninterrupted. On the stem of the microphone was a little black on/off switch. I slid it down to ON. Said, “Alexa?” again. This time she stopped. Her mouth came open. She began to sob.

“Alexa?” I said. “It’s Nick.”

“Who—who is this?”

“It’s Nick Heller. You’re going to be okay. I’m at the house. Right nearby. Listen, Alexa, help is coming, but I need you to stay quiet and keep calm, all right? Can you do that for me? Just for a little while. You’re going to be okay. I promise.”

For a second I thought I saw a flash of light in the backyard coming through the window.

“Nick? Where are you? Oh my God, where are you?”

The light again. A car’s headlights. I heard the rumble of a car’s engine, then a door slamming.

Zhukov was here. It could be no one else.

But I couldn’t see him. He’d parked on the side of the house that had no windows.

“Nick, answer me! Get me out of here please oh God get me out of here, Nick!” She started screaming.

“You’re going to be okay, Alexa. You’re going to be okay.”

Finally she seemed be listening. “Don’t leave me here,” she moaned.

“He’s back,” I whispered. “Can you hear me?”

She stared up, her lips parted, and as she nodded she began sobbing again.

“Everything will be fine,” I said. “Really. As long as you don’t say a word. Okay? Not a word.”

I gripped the SIG in both hands.

But what if it wasn’t Zhukov who’d just arrived? What if it was the police? It was far too soon for the FBI’s SWAT team. They were driving, since getting a helicopter there and loading it and all that, would take even more time, and would also deprive them of the heavy armaments.

Zhukov, if it was him, would enter the house through the front door, as I had. The worn path told me that. Yet he wouldn’t expect anyone to be here. That would give me a temporary advantage. If I positioned myself correctly I might be able to get a jump on him.

Heart thudding now. Time had slowed. I went into that strange calm place I so often did when faced with grave danger: senses heightened, reactions quickened.

A door opened somewhere.

But not the front door. Which one?

The side door I’d noticed earlier.

I needed to conceal myself, but where?

No time to hesitate.

A door next to the kitchen entrance. A closet, probably, with a wooden kitchen chair next to it. I slid the chair a few inches out of the way.

Opened the door with my left hand, stepped into the darkness—

And dropped into space.

Not a closet, but the basement stairs. I reached out and grabbed something to arrest my fall. My boots landed with a muffled thud.

A wooden banister. Swiveled myself around, pulled the door shut behind me. My hand on the knob, keeping it turned so the latch wouldn’t click.

Silently eased it shut. Lowering myself to my knees on the first step, I peered out through the keyhole.

Waited for him to appear.





100.



Dragomir Zhukov had parked at the side of the house just to vary the pattern. Never be predictable.

It was for the same reason that he’d shut off the satellite Internet connection. It was predictable that he’d want to stay connected. It was also a needless risk. There were ways to trace an Internet signal.

Of course he had left one cable in place: the one connecting his computer to the casket.

Before he opened the door, he glanced down at the baseboard and saw the tiny strip of transparent tape he’d placed between the door and the jamb. It was still in place. That meant no one had entered here.

Or probably not, anyway. Nothing was ever certain.

Long ago Dragomir had learned the importance of leaving nothing to chance. This was one of the many lessons he’d learned at the University of Hell, also known as Prison Number One, in Kopeisk.

The money transfer had been received in his account. The cutout had been eliminated.

Some time ago he had made provisions for a quick escape in the event the operation did not go to plan. In a steel box he’d buried in the Acadia National Park in Maine was a Ukrainian passport and wads of cash, in U.S. dollars and euros. The passport didn’t expire for another two years.

With a new identity, crossing the Canadian border would be quick and easy, and there were plenty of international flights out of Montreal.

The only chore that remained was hardly a chore at all.

It was his reward for all the long tedious days of vigilance and patience and restraint.

He knew how it would go: He had rehearsed it countless times, savoring the prospect. He’d tell the young girl what was about to happen, because there was nothing as delicious as a victim’s foreknowledge. Hour after hour he’d seen her fear, but when she learned, in precise and clinical detail, what was imminent, her terror would reach a whole new physical state.

Then he’d go about the business methodically: He’d disconnect the air hose from the compressor and attach it to the garden hose with the brass coupler. Once he pulled up the lever on the farmer’s hydrant, the water would start to flow. It would take a few seconds before the water began to trickle into the casket.

He had drowned small animals—mice, chipmunks and rabbits, a stray cat—in a trash barrel. But the squeals and the frantic scrambling of a dumb animal were ultimately not satisfying. They lacked apprehension.

She would hear the trickle, and then she would know.

Would she scream, or plead, or both?

As the water level grew higher and the air pocket grew smaller, she would flail and pound and most of all beg.

He had done some calculations. The interior volume of the casket was 230 gallons. Given the water pressure in the house and the diameter of the hose and the distance from the spigot to the burial site and then the nine feet down through the soil into the casket itself, it would take just short of half an hour to fill to capacity.

Then the water would reach her chin and she would have to struggle to keep her head above water, gasping her last precious breaths, her neck trembling from the exertion, her lips pursed like a fish.

He would watch in hypnotized fascination.

She would attempt to scream as her lungs filled with water; she’d flail and plead, and when she was entirely submerged, she would hold her breath until she couldn’t take it anymore and she was forced to expel the air from her lungs. And like a child in utero she would be forced to breathe liquid.

She would drown before his eyes.

It was a terrible way to die. The way his father died. For years he could only imagine it.

But now he would know.

Dragomir knew he was not like other people. He understood his own psychology, the way he drew sustenance from the fear of others.

As he entered the house, he paused.

Something was different here. A shift in the air? A vibration? He had the finely tuned senses of a wild animal.

Now that the cutout was dead, he wondered how long it would take for the Client to realize what had happened. They had some idea where he was based, but he was sure he hadn’t been followed after the last rendezvous.

Still, he wondered. Something was off.

He moved quietly through the parlor to the front door, where he’d placed another tell, a barely visible slice of Scotch tape at the bottom of the door next to the jamb, both inside and out.

A minuscule ribbon of tape lay on the floor. No one who wasn’t looking for it would see it.

But now he knew for certain: someone was here.





101.



I could hear footfalls, the creaking of the wooden floor, the sounds becoming louder, closer. Grasping the pistol in my right hand, the banister in my left, I squatted and looked through the keyhole and saw only the ice-blue light from the computer monitor.

Alexa on the screen. Such advanced technology in the service of such primitive depravity.

He had entered the room.

I saw a leg, clad in jeans, but just for an instant. Walking toward the computer, or at least in that direction. Then he came to a stop.

The man was standing a few feet away. I could see his back: large torso, broad shoulders, a dark sweatshirt.

Did he suspect anything? But his body language didn’t indicate suspicion.

He was standing at the window, I saw now, casually looking outside, a black knit watch cap on his head.

And the hideous pattern on the back of his neck.

The bottom half of an owl’s face.