Sands of Time (16 page)

He nodded, grabbed for his shirt and pulled it over his head.

“You need shoes.”

His bare feet looked cold and pale. She stood and cracked open the door. The two guards were sitting at the table, drinking. She saw a vodka bottle in the middle and cringed.

Hopefully, however, it would only accelerate the process.

She clicked the door shut and paced, rubbing her hands together. A fire chewed the logs. One fell atop another and
sparks flew. The smell of smoke filled the room and made her hair and skin feel gummy.

Roman sat up, cupping his hands around the tea. “Uh, is this spiked, too?”

“Yes. I didn’t want to take any chances.” He took a sip and some of it dribbled from his wounded lip.

“Probably need something to calm my racing heart.” Then he winked at her, and he looked so…
not
desperate,
not
afraid or like they were hostages about to get beaten up that she just had to give a huff of disbelief.

Trust Roman to find a silver lining in the thunderclouds.

“Gatov?”
growled a voice as the door cracked open.

She cringed but stepped back from the door. Mafia One entered, a little shaky, but menacing enough to sent a bolt of fear through her. He pointed his gun at Roman. “Get up.”

“No!” She grabbed the man’s arm, not sure what she expected, but not ready to hear Roman suffer, again.

Mafia pushed her down, and she hit the ground, hard.

“Leave her alone!” Even in his fatigue, Roman had “hero” flooding his veins and he pounced to his feet, right between Mafia Boy and Sarai.

Sarai’s stomach clawed at her throat.

Mafia One swung at Roman’s head. And, as Roman dodged the blow, Mafia One stumbled.

Roman saw it.

He grabbed at the gun. It skittered out of Mafia One’s hand and onto the floor.

Sarai squelched a scream and dove for the gun. She picked it up, both hands wrapped around the butt. “Stop!”

Mafia One ignored her. He swung at Roman, but Roman dodged and his fist landed in the door. Mafia One howled.

Roman one-two punched him and Mafia One landed at his feet. Out cold. Roman stared at him, then looked at Sarai. “Let’s get out of here.”

Sarai scrambled to her feet, ran out into the hall.

Mafia Two was slumped at the table, his hand around his gun.
Please, Lord, don’t let them be dead.
Even if they sort of deserved it.

Roman appeared with a coat and a pair of boots. He shoved the coat on her and his feet into the boots, then took her hand. He grinned wildly, as if he might be a boy sneaking into the circus.

“Glad you’re not my doctor,” he said.

She mock-glared at him. “I should be. Then maybe I could get your head examined and figure out what it is about you that attracts trouble.”

He pulled her through the house, grabbed a hat and coat for himself and shoved a fur
shapka
on her head. “It’s you, baby. You attract trouble.”

Oh, yeah, that’s right. She attracted
him.

They ran out into the cold, and it nearly took her breath away. Roman ran to the snowmobiles. “Think you can drive one of these?”

Sarai had already climbed aboard. Was he kidding? She could drive an F-16 fighter jet if it meant getting out of here and back to Smolsk.

And…then where? As she pulled the start cord and started the engine, she cut that question from her mind.

She wasn’t leaving Smolsk. She was a doctor. With a duty.

She didn’t care if that duty cost her freedom.

Or her heart.

H
e couldn’t believe how much he’d completely misjudged her. As Roman urged his snowmobile into the grayness of twilight, his headlights barely illuminating Sarai’s sled, he knew one thing.

She had been absolutely 120-percent correct. She didn’t need a hero.

She’d saved
him.
Twice today, if his muddled brain sorted out the facts correctly. He still felt chilled, right through to his capillaries, but a warmth sizzled in the center of his chest, keeping his core warm.

Sarai had kissed him. In between the terror of nearly dying and the pain at the hands of Fight Club, for a brief snapshot in time, he’d held her in his arms, not once, but
twice.
And she’d kissed him.

Not tentatively, not fearfully, but eagerly.
Eagerly.
At least the first time.

The second was all about him, not being able to put a cap on the fear that he’d lost her, and even worse the fear that he’d caused her brutal rape and murder.

She’d been right to leave him. He let that thought bruise him for a moment.

No, better to think about her in his arms, safe, kissing him as if she loved him, as if she’d been sorry she left. He let that thought seep out of his heart, into his chest and to the rest of his chilled extremities. And, if she loved him, maybe he wouldn’t have to arrest her. Maybe she’d leave, with him.

Happily.

Oy, that lake had to have really turned his brain into an ice cube because his synapses not only weren’t firing but they’d sizzled right out. One—he wasn’t going to arrest her. Two—she’d never leave happily. Maybe kicking and screaming, or at the best, begrudgingly. But there wouldn’t be jigs of joy when she closed up shop in Smolsk.

She’d worked too hard, too long for her dreams. The thought of her leaving it all behind, destroying all she’d worked for had him feeling light-headed and nauseous.

He should pack up and go home, trust her instincts about him and Russia’s visa laws. How many times did they kick foreigners out of Russia these days? Seriously?

Don’t answer that.

The wind had returned, and along with it turned the snow into whirling dervishes that swept up before his sled
and pelted him. His eyelashes felt frozen and heavy, and he could taste the cold chapping his lips. At least he could
feel
his lips.

Ahead of him, Sarai, using some sort of inner GPS, headed straight south. Toward the road to Smolsk. Roman estimated they had about three hours until they reached the town at this clip.

Hopefully, the Mafia boys—Bednov’s boys?—had topped off their tanks that morning before their hot pursuit of Bonnie and Clyde.

He rolled around the ramifications of Sarai’s theory. Bednov and his family had vacationed at their Alexander Oil dacha long enough for little Sasha to be infected with radioactive waste from the nuclear plant. And what if dead Barry Riddle in Khabarovsk had eaten contaminated fish? Then wouldn’t Alexander Bednov also be sick? Not if he knew about the lake.

No, most likely the fish in Riddle’s gut came from Lake Baikal, served up in some posh restaurant in Irkutsk when he’d had dinner with Bednov. But was that proof enough that Bednov was involved in the smuggling of nuclear ammunition? Namely highly enriched uranium?

Nyet.
Although circumstances painted a suspicious picture, Bednov might be an innocent in all this. Doubtful, given his history, but possible. Which left Roman with a big
nol
when it came to finding the uranium supplier.

If only he’d gotten the lot number on those casks.

If only Smirnov hadn’t offed himself—or been offed—in Moscow.

Yanna’s words came back to him, like an echo caught in time.
“Gregori Khetrov is on the board of directors. He’s a communications billionaire in Moscow, only right now he’s sitting in Lubyanka prison, courtesy the FSB, on tax charges.”

He wanted to give himself a head slap—only, he’d probably dump the sled over. How could he be so stupid? Bednov and Khetrov were stockholders in Alexander Oil. Of course they’d take out Smirnov first chance they got.

If only he had his telephone—sadly it was being eaten by toxic waste at the moment—he’d have Khetrov put in solitary before someone could do him the same favor they did Smirnov.

Roman felt his adrenaline kick in. Bednov could have planned this entire thing—the coup, the ousting of foreigners—to seize control of his oil interests and to protect his smuggling operation.

A plot that only a conniver like Bednov could conceive.

And, if Bednov connected the dots, he’d figure out that the same beautiful doctor who treated his dying son just might use her incredible brain to link him to the toxic waste, then the nuclear plant….

But he wouldn’t guess in a million years that Sarai knew anything about smuggling of nuclear materials. Unless, of course, she had a nosy FSB agent on her tail, one who dragged her inside said nuclear plant, only to get caught and his insides slightly rearranged by Bednov’s thugs, who then passed that information onto Bednov.

Again, a great leap, but his chest squeezed.

He had to get Sarai out of Irkutia, pronto.

Except what if the Mafia boys called Bednov? He’d be on the next plane to Bali.

Save Sarai or nail Bednov? Now the knot formed right in the center of Roman’s skull, and he winced. Couldn’t he do both?

The options whirred before him. Didn’t Yanna say Vicktor had hopped a plane for Irkutia? Roman could pass Sarai off into Vicktor’s capable hands, then go in for the kill on Bednov.

You’re after your own personal glory, Roman.

No, he wasn’t. He was out to save lives.

A sick burning filled in his throat. How he hated when her words tunneled deep and unearthed doubts.

Apparently she knew him better than he knew himself. Because, if he was honest, he’d rather have his fingernails gnawed off by piranhas than die in disgrace like his father.

Besides, he owed Bednov a taste of his own medicine. The thought became a memory, and with it, emerged his father’s voice. “We failed communism.” Roman found himself back inside his father’s dingy two-room flat the last time he saw him alive.

The man looked grizzled and pale, with a tinge of yellow to his skin that hinted at liver poisoning. The scent of vodka embedded his rumpled suit coat—the only one he owned—a piece of the past from the days when he had reason to wear it. Roman took the vodka bottle from his father’s clasp.

“Right, Pa. Whatever you say,” he said softly. He’d flown in for three days, mostly because his old boss—a militia
man and neighbor—had seen Gregori Novik slouched in the corridor, next to a potato bin. And temperatures in Irkutsk hovered just above zero. Roman had to get his father to help—the hospital, at least.

“We failed communism!” Gregori grabbed at the bottle, missed and went down chin-first into the floor. He lay there, groaning, and Roman sighed. Gregori hadn’t been the same since Glasnost. Since his “religion” had fallen, along with the busts of Lenin.

Roman grabbed his father under the armpits, hauled him into the bedroom. He pulled off the old man’s
valenki
and winced. The man’s feet were nearly black.

Frostbite.

“Pop, I need to get you to a hospital—”

“Nyet.”
His father wrestled himself out of Roman’s grip and flopped back on the bed. Roman noticed the gray tinge of the sheets, and the smell emanating from the center of the bed. How had his father gone from respected munitions factory director to rummy?

Alexander Bednov. Once his father’s boss, he’d taken over the factory and sold off the pieces to the highest bidder, just like every former Party leader turned capitalist in the early days of perestroika.

Bednov had left his father jobless. Without a ruble to his name.

He’d also pinned on Gregori the blame for the missing capital, had even threatened jail time until Roman handed out rain-check favors to officials from here to Siberia.

Some, he still hadn’t repaid.

Roman wrestled his father out of the dingy suit coat and pulled up the covers. Now what? He saw the faintest remnants of his mother’s touch—a family picture hanging from a nail on the wall, a military pose the army had snapped of Roman his first week as a Brown Boy. Wallpaper, a rose-and-gold pattern she’d put up just months before she left, peeled from around the door frame.

She’d married someone else, a friend of Gregori’s who had surfaced from the rubble with his own small empire. Roman could barely forgive her as she lay dying of leukemia two years later. Christ’s strength had carried him through those black months. But Gregori never said goodbye. Just drank himself into numbed oblivion.

It felt like a century since their family had been intact. Roman had grown up in that flat, and in the back of his mind he saw happier times—the New Year’s tree, his parents attending his hockey matches, the Communist flag hanging on the wall, right next to a picture of his father with Irkutia’s General Secretary Varanov. Those had been days filled with hope and a future. Roman wandered through the flat, picking up garbage, empty vodka bottles, cigarette butts. His chest tightened as he fought waves of despair. He stopped in the family room and stared at a picture of his father, in his uniform, gleaming with medals, his arms around his wife and son as he stared stoically into the camera. Roman remembered that day. He’d been about twelve. His father had dressed them up, taken them in for a portrait. Roman had held his breath, trying not to smile as the photographer counted down the seconds until he replaced the cover on the camera.

Roman had wanted to be just like his father that day. And a thousand days after that, even when he went into the military. He’d be a Party man. A man who lived for Mother Russia.

Until he met David Curtiss. David, and the awakening of freedom in Russia, introduced him to a new way of living. A living that had purpose beyond a government, that outlasted leaders. A living that earned him a right hook across his jaw the first time Roman had mentioned it to his disillusioned father. The slap felt like a
pero,
a knife slicing deep into his heart, dividing the past from the future. A future that now meant that he’d never end up curled with a bottle like his old man.

Roman believed in Jesus and His ability to change him from the inside out, to make his life purposeful. To give him a real hope and a future. One that didn’t include letting Bednov escape.

Roman blinked away the memories and stared into the stream of light cutting through the darkness, filtering the snowflakes.

There had to be a way to nab Bednov
and
save Sarai. It started with getting Sarai to trust him, to believe that he only wanted the best for her and to get her to abandon her death grip on her clinic and leave with Vicktor.

The only remaining alternative would be to arrest her.

He still couldn’t quite get that thought into his brain without wincing.

But he couldn’t leave. Not with Bednov still in power. Even if he left Irkutia, Bednov’s men would track him and
Sarai across Russia, and beyond. Sarai wouldn’t be safe until Bednov was brought down.

He gunned his sled, drove even with Sarai, and she slowed slightly.

“Sarai! Are you cold?”

She looked at him. Shook her head.

They were out in the open and under the starry sky, the clouds having been emptied by the blizzard, with the moon pouring down light. Idle oil wells made eerie outlines. They’d long passed Alexander Oil headquarters. The road would appear soon. Roman estimated thirty or so kilometers to Smolsk.

The cold wind leaked in under his hat and burned his ears. His breath puffed out ahead of him, streaming behind him. He focused his brain on a hot cup of tea and a warm bed. Make that sedative-free tea.

And repaying Bednov for the crimes against his family, and all of Russia.

Roman would somehow be the patriot his father hadn’t been.

Sarai watched Roman hunch over as he tunneled into the night. She’d fudged the truth—she felt frozen clear through, and couldn’t feel her legs, let alone her toes. The only things hot were her hands—thanks to the handlebar heaters on this polarius snow bike—and her heart.

Or maybe pure shock generated the heat inside.

She’d just knocked out two guys, saved Roman’s hide and was now fleeing for her life.

Forty-eight hours in his life and he’d turned hers upside down. Who, exactly, had she become?

Please,
please,
reach Smolsk soon. She focused her thoughts on something warm—her comforter, hot tea, maybe Roman’s arms around…

She shook the thought away. Despite their kiss, they had no future. Not as long as Roman insisted on being a cop instead of… No, that wasn’t fair.

For the first time, as she’d gotten an in-her-face glimpse of the dark side of his job, she knew that God had to have called him to his place in the world, just as He’d called her to missions. Roman was a man of honor, of discipline and sacrifice, of courage. A real hero, and a man who trusted God.

She cut her gaze back to him. He looked cold as he hunched over, fighting through the snow. Her doctor’s concern stabbed at her. He shouldn’t be out here in the snow, in the cold.

His pants were probably frozen to his legs.

He wouldn’t be in this mess if she’d listened to him. If she hadn’t gone racing off to Khanda. What good had she done there, anyway? What if her guess about the connection between Maxim and Sasha was wrong?

By returning to Smolsk and staying in Irkutia, she could be risking both their lives.

And, well, she’d already been there, done that today.

Her sled hiccuped and she jerked forward. Roman’s sled pulled out ahead.

She felt the hum trail away, then the machine sputtered
and died. The sudden quiet, after the steady roar in her ears, felt strangely serene. Roman turned, then circled his snowmobile.

“What’s up?” he said over the roar of his engine.

“I dunno. It just died.” He looked like the abominable snowman, frost caking his hair, his whiskers.