“Looks like a headlight. Maybe just a motorcycle.”
Charlie studied the tiny light, and damn if it didn’t look like it was a single headlamp after all. But who’d be trying to navigate these dangerous roads, in the middle of a blizzard, on a motorcycle? That’d be crazy. Cops would be using a heavy-duty cruiser, the National Guard guys would be in a jeep. The only thing he could tell for sure was that it was moving along at a good clip.
“Keep an eye on it,” Charlie said, turning off the cruise control and pushing the accelerator lever.
“Shit. What if it’s Eddie on a snowmobile?”
He heard the click of a safety being taken off a gun. A Glock 19, from the sound of it. Oh, Christ, Harley was not only nuts … but armed?
“Where’d you get that?” Charlie demanded, though it had undoubtedly come from his own gun cabinet. “Put it away. Now.”
But Harley was off in his own delusion again. “Fuckin’ Eddie,” he muttered, staring out the back of the van.
“Eddie’s dead. You told me so yourself.”
Harley, still staring, clucked his tongue and said, “Eddie never did know when to call it quits. I never should have let him come back with me.”
Come back? Charlie thought Eddie had fallen off a cliff on the island.
“Well, this time I’m going to cap his ass for good.”
Charlie stopped trying to make sense of Harley’s ravings. All he could do was drive … and pray he got to Nome before Harley went off in his van like a bomb.
Chapter 54
Stepping into the tavern, Ana was careful to remain behind Sergei. Dressed in rough old clothes, her hair chopped short, and her eyes downcast, she appeared to be the perfect peasant wife, beaten into subservience and silence. After so many weeks on the run, it was an act she was finally growing used to.
Sergei, in a brown-wool tunic buttoned all the way up the side of his neck, and a black sealskin coat, furtively scanned the tavern and its occupants. A couple of dozen men in leather jackets were playing cards and dominoes and swigging from bottles of beer and vodka. A fire was crackling in the immense hearth, and gas lamps burned along the walls. A phonograph on the bar played a scratchy version of the country’s newly inaugurated anthem, the Internationale; every note of it made Ana want to smash the record.
Sitting alone at a table in the corner, a bald man in a pilot’s uniform raised his chin in acknowledgment. Sergei and Ana threaded their way through the cluttered room, drawing a few glances and a couple of coarse remarks about the rubes, before drawing up chairs at the table.
“You are Nevsky?” Sergei asked in a low voice.
The bald man didn’t answer but motioned to the innkeeper to bring two more glasses. Above the bar, a placard promoting the Imperial Russian Air Force had been defaced, and written in red paint on the wall beside it was the new name for the Soviet air force—the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Air Fleet. The bald man had several bright medals and ribbons pinned to his shirt.
The innkeeper plunked the glasses down on the table, filled them from a brandy decanter, and said, “Your bill is overdue, Nevsky.”
“I’ll pay it after you’ve shot down your first enemy fighter,” Nevsky said in a hoarse grumble.
The innkeeper grunted in disgust, and went back to the bar.
“And who is this?” Nevsky said, gesturing to Ana.
“My wife.”
“I wasn’t told there would be two of you,” he said, trying to stifle a cough.
“What difference does it make? The airplane can carry one more passenger, can’t it?”
Nevsky threw down a shot of the brandy. “Not for the same price it can’t.”
Ana wasn’t surprised. Although she kept her composure and said nothing, this was the same story they had encountered throughout their journey from the monastery at Novo-Tikhvin. They had been forced to bribe everyone, from wagon drivers to lorry loaders to ticket agents on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Everyone in Russia had his hand out, and nothing could be done or had without some special compensation being offered. The entire nation was starved and desperate and teeming with violence, and much as she tried to find some sympathy in her heart for these people—the people her own father and mother, despite what was said about them, had held so dear—she could not. In every soldier and peasant she encountered, she saw nothing but another murderer.
“What is the price then?” Sergei asked.
“Double. What else would it be?” He refilled his glass. “Do you take me for a thief?”
Sergei didn’t even have to look at Ana for approval; funds were the one thing they had. “We’ll pay it, but only after you take us to the island.”