Into the Black

SEVEN

Long before man conquered the vast expanses of open ocean that separate the continents, ancient mariners roamed the interior waterways delineated by the coastlines of Europe, Africa and Asia. Ancient tales of maritime explorations recorded by poets and historians of the Classical Age tell of epic journeys by god-like heroes along the coastlines of these lesser bodies of water. Geographers of the day recognized "Seven Seas," a catchall phrase to be sure. For the most part, they are elegantly named. The Mediterranean, once called simply "the Great Sea," literally translates to the Middle of the World. Between Africa and the Arabian desert, there is the Red Sea, best known for being the site of the miraculous exodus from Egypt. Separating Italy from Greece and Macedonia are the Adriatic and Ionian seas. Between Greece and Turkey-and the lands claimed by both-there is the legendary Aegean Sea. And then there is the marine cul de sac, shaped almost like a pair of wings, formed by a recent — recent in geological terms — flood so awesome as to have possibly inspired parts of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which in turn is believed to have been the source of the Biblical story of the Great Flood. Yet, despite its mythic origin and not inconsiderable size, this unusual body of water carries a rather prosaic name: the Black Sea.

Kismet gripped the stern railing and gazed into the distance. The wake churned up by the small chartered boat marked a turbulent pathway on the surface of the water; thick and distinct as it bubbled up from the spinning screw beneath the waterline but quickly spreading out until its message was no longer discernible.

Beyond the point where even the ripples of their passage could no longer be seen, the narrow Strait of Bosporus — the passage from the Aegean Sea into the Black — was still ominously visible. In the legend of Jason and the Argonauts, Kismet recalled, a pair of massive rocks called the Symplegades, had wandered about the sea in pursuit of the swift Argo in an attempt to smash it into timbers. Although Jason's ship had survived the passage, hundreds of other mariners through the centuries had fallen victim to the treacherous narrows of the Bosporus which, although lacking the power of movement, was nevertheless a mighty anvil upon which the stormy seas might hammer unfortunate vessels. Kismet was not overly concerned. The strait was becalmed, with only the merest whisper wind blowing out of the Black Sea.

Irene made her away across the deck and stood beside him. "I don't like that man," she grumbled. "It gives me the creeps when he leers at me like that."

Kismet glanced over at her. They were the only passengers on a small freight hauling vessel owned and captained by a Turk named Achmet. He couldn't fault the boat's skipper for staring. She really looked that good.

Irene had blossomed before his eyes over the past few days. As fierce determination supplanted desperation, she had begun to glow with an inner fire. Of course, replacing the work clothes that he had supplied on the night of their escape from Grimes' clutches, with garments more suitable to her form and gender had accomplished wonders.

Irene may have called it 'leering' and perhaps it was, for Achmet made no effort to temper his lecherous grin, but Kismet preferred to think of it as gazing in admiration. The dress that she now wore, a gown of hand dyed silks, tailored for her in the marketplaces of Istanbul, accentuated her beauty in a way that left him breathless.

"Achmet's all right," he replied, unable to suppress a grin. "He might not win a personality contest, but he won't sell us into slavery either."

"Easy for you to say," she retorted. "He isn't looking at you like you were a piece of meat."

Kismet nodded, ceding the point. He was, in truth, not overly concerned about the operator of their present means of conveyance. Achmet was indeed repulsive, a male chauvinist by the most liberal of standards and every inch the stereotypical sailor. But Kismet had learned over the course of many years to trust his own instincts when judging people, and the Turkish skipper had yet to trigger any intuitive alarm bells. He seemed to be a simple, reliable man who just happened to be, as Irene had so succinctly stated, creepy.

Achmet's boat was only the latest in a series of planes, trains and ships that had taken the two of them across one hundred and five degrees of longitude; from the snowy streets of New York to the somewhat milder climate of the Black Sea, off the Turkish coast. The journey had gone well and speedily, at least to the extent that any globetrotter could hope for, but Kismet was growing anxious. He fidgeted with the zipper of his heavy leather bomber jacket and turned back to his traveling companion.

Irene had focused attention on a single location frequented by her father prior to their flight, a place not far from Poti, the coastal city she and her father had called home for many years. Their goal was on a mountainside in the Caucasus, a remote range straddling the border between Russia and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Petr Chereneyev had surveyed this region in search of petroleum for the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. While the land where Jason the Argonaut had found the Golden Fleece still had a reputation for yielding up occasional nuggets of yellow gold, it was the quest for black gold that now drove men to comb its remote reaches. However, Chereneyev had found something else in the course of his survey up in those distant mountains; a cache of Greek relics that had financed their escape from KGB assassins.

Peter Kerns had likely returned to that place, now in the role of guide for Sir Andrew Harcourt. When the British archaeologist had dropped in on New Year's Eve, Kismet had not expected to become his rival, much less imagined that the man would become a kidnapping menace. But a menace he was, coercing Kerns into revealing the site where he had unearthed the relics. Kismet's growing anxiety stemmed from the fact that every step closer to their goal was a step closer to what would undoubtedly be a violent confrontation with Harcourt. Moreover, if Halverson Grimes was involved with foreign espionage as he suspected, or perhaps something even more sinister — the same group that had menaced him in the desert years before — then their foes would probably have powerful allies at their beck and call. And as if things couldn't get any more complicated, Poti had been virtually annexed by Russian armed forces following the end of the South Ossetia conflict. At every turn, he and Irene would face dangerous enemies and would almost certainly be outnumbered.

Typical, Kismet thought darkly.

"Why the long face?"

Kismet turned and feigned a smile to conceal his apprehension, and then saw by her silent laughter that she was poking fun at him. He returned his gaze to the sea.

"Just thinking about the Clashing Rocks," he lied. "In the legend of the Argonauts—"

"I know all about the Clashing Rocks, Nick. I can quote you chapter and verse about Jason and the Argonauts. I grew up with it."

"Really?"

"To Americans, Greek myths are just that, fanciful fairy tales from an ancient but ultimately dead civilization. But on the Black coast, they view the legend as true history."

"You're kidding." The shaking of her head was answer enough. "I mean, from an academic standpoint, it's reasonable that the Jason legend might have been inspired by an actual historical figure who traveled along the Black Sea coast, but I had no idea that the people living there today were even aware of it."

"It's a part of their heritage. Why is that so hard to understand?"

Kismet shrugged. "Most Americans are oblivious to the rich heritage of their own native legends. They think American history begins with Columbus. Most don't know, or even care to know, of recent historic events in their own back yard. I guess I just assumed that sort of thinking was universal."

"I suppose it's getting to be that way," Irene conceded. "Everyone is too interested in what's going on right now to worry about the past. As a result, they lose out on valuable lessons that the past can teach them."

The significance of her comments finally clicked into place and he saw a connection that had previously eluded him. "Irene, if you know all about the legend, then wouldn't your father as well?"

"Sure. He explained most of it to me. I was quite young at the time."

"Have the locals ever found any artifacts, besides the ones your father discovered?"

"There are pieces attributed to the serpent temple that show up now and then; nothing of value really."

"And did your father ever indicate that his pieces were linked to the legend?"

"No." It was Irene's turn to appear thoughtful. "But that doesn't mean he didn't make the connection. You have to understand that my father was very secretive about those artifacts. He only mentioned them to me after we were in the United States. Something you learn living in a Communist state is healthy paranoia."

Kismet was silent. Had Peter Kerns had made the connection all those years before? Had he in fact uncovered the very proof that Harcourt was after? More importantly, would he lead the British archaeologist directly to the prize?

The stakes now seemed even greater.

"Clashing Rocks," Irene murmured, mostly to herself.

Kismet shook off his ruminations and returned his attention to her. "What made you say that?"

"Just looking at them…you can almost believe that they are moving."

Although the Bosporus was blurry in the distance, Kismet checked to see if her assessment was correct. It was true that the gentle rocking of wave action caused the eye to constantly refocus, sometimes giving the illusion that stationary objects were in motion, but overall Kismet saw nothing extraordinary.

"That one," exclaimed Irene, pointing in the general area of the strait. "It did move."

"Maybe you should go back to the cabin," he gently suggested. "The sun can be brutal on the open water like this."

"I am not seeing things," she protested. "Look for yourself. One of the rocks is moving — there!"

Kismet looked again. "I'll be damned," he whispered. Between the two large rocks, a smaller lump was indeed moving. "It's got to be a ship."

"Then it's a pretty big one."

"An oil tanker," Kismet theorized aloud. "I'm sure there's no cause for alarm." Then, in spite of his platitude, he left her side, returning a moment later with a pair of battered binoculars. He raised them to his eyes and scanned from left to right until he could make out the mouth of the passage between the seas. His gaze then fell upon the rapidly moving shape that was indeed moving to intercept them. Incredulous, Kismet lowered the binoculars. "Not good."

"What's not good? What did you see?"

He ignored her. "Achmet! Can this tub go any faster?"

The lecherous captain poked his head out of the wheelhouse and barked something unintelligible. Kismet pointed toward the moving 'rock' and handed the binoculars over. Achmet focused in on the shape and spat an oath in his native tongue. He then added in passable English: "I knew you two were trouble."

"Damn it, Nick," Irene persisted. "What is it? Is it the Clashing Rocks for real?"

"No. Much worse."

The shape grew nearer and more distinct in the space of a few minutes. Even from a distance of two nautical miles, there was no mistaking the spiky, irregular outline of a great ship built for war. A large ensign snapped in the breeze from the bowsprit, a white flag with a blue 'X' stretched from each corner. It was the Cross of St. Andrew, the banner of the Russian Navy.

Achmet poured on the speed, angling the smaller vessel toward the coast. Turkey was the nearest landmass and had a proper territorial right to the waters in which they were now traveling. Nevertheless, the Russians had made it abundantly clear that legal claims mattered little. The Black Sea was for all intents and purposes, a Russian domain. It was doubtful that the Turkish Navy would be willing to risk an international incident to protect them from the Russian destroyer. It was even less likely that Achmet's tiny boat would be able to outdistance the powerful warship.

Kismet and Irene remained astern, watching as the distance between the two craft diminished. Irene broke the tense silence. "So what do we do?"

Kismet managed a tight-lipped smile. "Why should we have to do anything? We've got as much right to be here as they do. All of our documents are in order. In short, there is no problem."

"Naiveté doesn't suit you, Nick. There is a big problem. At best they'll just bully us. At worst — well, it won't take them long to realize that I am Petr Chereneyev's only daughter."

"If it comes to that, just stick to the story. You're not the one they want."

The destroyer continued to close in on them, erasing any hopes that it merely shared their route through the passage. Achmet yelled for Kismet to join him, and asked what course of action they ought to pursue.

"Just keep going as you are. If they want us to heave to, they can damn well call us on the radio and ask nicely."

"Nick!"

Kismet looked away from the captain, and followed the direction of Irene's gesture. A lazy ring of smoke hovered like a halo above the destroyer. When he heard the shrieking whistle of incoming fire, Kismet dashed across the deck and threw Irene down, covering her with his body.

An instant later, the sea erupted as a 130 millimeter artillery shell exploded a stone's throw off the port bow of the small boat. The displacement of water and the shock wave tossed the little craft violently, pitching Kismet and Irene against the gunwale. Achmet tumbled from the wheelhouse and sprawled across the deck, striking his head.

As the tumult subsided, the small boat's screws continued turning, pushing it on a random heading out of the blast zone. Achmet rose unsteadily to his feet and staggered back to the helm to shut off the engine. Kismet held Irene a moment longer.

"I'm okay," she breathed, then added: "That was Russian for 'please,' in case you weren't paying attention."

He released his hold, and as she pulled herself erect, the Russian destroyer moved alongside their boat, looming over them like a skyscraper.

Kismet gazed up at the stony faces of Russian sailors perched high above on the main deck of the destroyer. He wondered if the shot had been an intentional near miss, or if it had been their purpose to blow them out of the water.

A launch was deployed off the stern of the destroyer with an armed company of sailors and officers aboard. The seamen on the deck of the warship continued watching, their fingers ready on the triggers of the stationary 30mm anti-aircraft gun emplacements. The motor launch cut a wide circle in the water as it came around to pull alongside Achmet's boat. The Turkish mariner sat alone in the wheelhouse, fidgeting as he watched the Russians draw near.

"So what do we do now?" Irene asked, a faint quaver betraying her anxiety.

"Keep smiling. We haven't done anything wrong. Like I said, just stick to the story."

The launch drew alongside Achmet's boat and Kismet strode casually toward it, signaling that he would tie their belay line if they threw it to him. The sailors disdained his gesture, waving with their firearms to indicate that he should back off.

The pilot of the launch idled close and one of the seamen clambered over the gunwale and moored the launch to the boat. As if directed by a single mind, the sailors spilled over into Achmet's vessel and without a word deployed throughout, searching every cabin, closet and locker. A man wearing a dark blue officer's winter uniform, with a single star and one wide gold stripe on each of his shoulder boards — the insignia for a Captain 1st Class — climbed from the launch and moved toward Kismet and Irene.

He was tall, with a prominent forward-thrust jaw and an extremely self-assured bearing. A smug grin crept over his face as he approached. "Good afternoon, Mr. Kismet."

Kismet hid his dismay, but the captain's words struck him like a fist. He could not believe that the Russians had learned of his identity and presence aboard the boat, and his mind raced to identify where and when the leak of information had occurred. If the Russians already knew about his plans, their mission was doomed. After an interminable pause, he returned the smile. "I don't believe we've had the pleasure, Captain—?"

"Captain Gregory Severin, commanding the destroyer Boyevoy." Although the Russian's English was thickly accented, with syllables that sounded as though they were being spoken through a mouthful of breadcrumbs, there was no disguising the man's satisfaction at having the upper hand. He said nothing more until one of the sailors stepped to his side.

Before the seaman could report, Kismet spoke up. "What's this all about, Captain Severin? Why did you fire on us?"

Severin ignored him and turned to the sailor. "Report."

"Nothing at all, sir. Everyone is accounted for."

On an impulse, Kismet feigned confusion at their conversation. "What are you guys talking about? I want some answers."

"As do I, Mr. Kismet," Severin barked. "I want to know why a notorious American espionage agent is trying to sneak into my country."

"Is that what you think?" Kismet affected offense. "You're wrong on so many counts I don't even know where to start. I'm not an espionage agent. I was in Army Intelligence a lifetime ago, but even you must realize that's not the same thing. And we're not going to 'your country,' we're going to Georgia. Furthermore, we aren't sneaking, captain. We are traveling openly and legally on United Nations' passports. The documents are completely valid."

"I'm sure they are," Severin answered with a sneer. "I will of course be looking at them in greater detail." His eyes fell upon Irene. "And this is your lady?"

The statement was guarded, and for the first time Kismet entertained a glimmer of hope that the Russian was in the dark. Maybe Severin had not yet identified Irene; didn't know of her true heritage, or her exile from the Rodina—the Motherland. Kismet squeezed her hand, hoping to impart to her the message 'volunteer nothing.'

As if to signal her comprehension, Irene gripped his hand tightly and took a step forward. "I am not his lady," she snapped in clear, unaccented English. "I am his fiancée. And I would also like to know why you were shooting at us. You could have killed us."

The captain chuckled mirthlessly. "You are too lovely a woman to be taking up with a rogue like Nikolai Kismet. I wonder what you see in him, Irina Chereneyeva."

Kismet's heart skipped a beat. So Severin was playing with them; teasing them with what he might or might not already know. Before he could stop her, Irene replied. "So you know my name. I'm not impressed. You have no right to accost us like this. We aren't even in Russian waters. You are nothing better than a pirate."

Kismet pulled on her arm, dragging her back a step and cutting her tirade short, before she could hurl further insults. They were in over their heads; there was no sense digging the grave any deeper.

Severin laughed toward the sky. "Pirate! Yes, I'm a buccaneer. Perhaps I should make you walk the plank." He guffawed again then fixed Kismet with his stare. "My question stands, Kismet. The Russian Navy is tasked with guarding our own shores and those of our confederates in Georgia. Why are you sneaking across the Black Sea on this decrepit vessel? The owner of this boat is a known smuggler, and you — a former spy who now 'protects' the art treasures of the world? A grave robber is what you are, I'll wager."

"Are you sure you don't have me confused with someone else?" Kismet replied in a casual tone, trying not to let the captain know just how rattled he was. "Anyway, you've got it all wrong. We're not here because of anything I want."

"Of course," Severin retorted sarcastically. "How foolish of me to think so."

"Look, if you know who Irene is, then you'll understand why we're here."

Severin's expression softened. He looked at Irene, searching her face for sincerity. "What is the real reason for your return to your homeland?"

Irene's forehead drew into a crease. "I'm sorry, it's been a while."

Severin repeated the question in his thick, but accurate English. Irene nodded, as if gradually remembering how to speak her language as he translated. Kismet felt like rewarding her performance with a kiss, but kept his emotional response in check.

"Why have I returned? I'm surprised that you have to ask. This is my homeland. I may be Russian, but I was raised on the Georgian coast. My mother is buried there. It's natural that I would want to revisit my heritage before Nick and I are married."

"Your argument is not convincing. Your father is an enemy of the state. I cannot believe you would be so brazen as to risk your own safety in returning to your homeland, placing yourself within our grasp. Surely you must fear that we will imprison you in order to extort your father's surrender."

"That would be difficult, since he's dead."

Severin raised an eyebrow and chewed on the revelation for a moment. "Then you have my sympathy. I understand now why you wish to make this pilgrimage to your old home." He turned to the assemblage of his sailors and barked for them to prepare for departure. As they hastened to obey, leaving an uncomprehending Achmet to tremble in the wheelhouse, Severin returned his attention to Kismet. "I apologize for having waylaid you. It was, I confess, a regrettable misunderstanding."

"No problem."

Severin shook his head. "You are too kind to dismiss this so easily. I must make amends." He snapped his fingers, as if suddenly inspired. "I know. There is no reason for you finish your journey in this unseaworthy craft. You must allow us to deliver you to your destination."

"Uh, that won't be necessary—"

"But it is. Admittedly, my ship is not a luxury cruise vessel, as you Americans are surely accustomed to, but it is far more accommodating than this Turk's boat." His hard edge resurfaced for a moment, just enough to let Kismet know that declining was not an option. "I insist."

Kismet looked over at Irene, then back at the Russian captain. "With an invitation like that, how can we refuse?"

Kismet gazed at the face framed in the worn mirror. The stubble on his chin was growing thick; it would be a full beard soon. He rubbed it thoughtfully and decided not to shave. The last thing he cared about was ingratiating himself to his host. He splashed a handful of tepid water onto his cheeks then toweled himself dry.

They had been on the destroyer for nearly three hours. Severin had shuffled Irene off to her quarters, and then insisted that Kismet accompany him on a tour of the ship. Kismet had affected disinterest as the captain led him through a circuit of the decks, but the intelligence officer he had once been couldn't resist taking mental notes. The Boyevoy, Russian for "militant" had been taken out of mothballs, retrofitted and added to the Black Sea fleet at the start of the South Ossetia conflict. Severin didn't go into great detail about the armaments, but seemed more interested in alternately boasting about his accomplishments and tossing out leading questions to probe the veracity of Kismet's claims. Finally, with the tour over, Kismet was directed to his berth and told to get ready for dinner.

The quarters were cramped, but according to Severin, the cabin Kismet would be using for the remainder of the voyage was the berth of the first officer, and was quite spacious by comparison to any others, save the captain's own. Irene had been installed elsewhere, and Kismet had not seen her since shortly after their coming aboard. He regretted that they had not been given the opportunity to further reconcile their cover stories. Doubtless, that was the very reason Severin had kept them apart.

A rapping at the door distracted him. He opened it to reveal a blonde, pale-skinned man wearing a star and two thin gold stripes on his sleeve, which identified him as a senior lieutenant; Kismet recognized him as Severin's executive officer, the man whose quarters he now occupied. The XO did not speak English, and Kismet wasn't about to reveal that he understood Russian. Instead he waved the officer away, indicating that he wasn't ready to be escorted to the captain's table.

As he began rummaging through his duffel, it was all too evident that the bag had been thoroughly searched in his absence. He kept his irritation in check, and with a nonchalant air began pulling out his clothes and laying them on the bed. His kukri lay sheathed in the deepest recesses of the duffel, but there was no sign of his pistol. He breathed a silent curse then repacked it, leaving out a fresh shirt and a rumpled sport coat, which he donned with exaggerated slowness. On the way out of the cabin he took a second look at himself in the mirror. What he saw nearly made him laugh aloud. He would be attending dinner at Severin's table looking like a skid row bum. The XO sniffed disdainfully, calling Kismet an uncivilized pig under his breath, then led the way to the officer's mess.

Irene was already seated at Severin's table, idly conversing with the captain. Severin rose to greet him then gestured for him to sit. The executive officer took a seat directly opposite Irene, leaving only one vacant setting, at the captain's left. As Kismet lowered himself into the heavy wooden chair, he was painfully conscious of the fact that the only person at the table he would be unable to see was Irene. This too, he knew, was no coincidence.

Two seamen dressed as waiters marched out of the galley. When they finished their ministrations, each guest at the table had before them a bowl of sour-milk okroshka and a crystal cordial snifter that was more than half-full of a clear liquid. Curious, Kismet lifted the glass and passed it under his nose. There was no smell, but a faint vapor stung his nostrils; the beverage was not water.

Severin took up his own glass and inclined it toward Kismet. "Are you familiar with the custom of the toast? Of course, you must be. I will begin. We drink to your impending marriage to the beautiful Irina Petrovna Chereneyeva." He quickly repeated the toast in Russian, for the benefit of his officers, then brought the snifter to his lips.

With one accord the officers raised their glasses and drained them. Kismet tilted his in the direction of the other guests then took a sip. The vodka burned cool on his tongue, leaving a frigid trail from the back of his throat all the way down his esophagus.

One of the officers pointed at Kismet and made a remark about his sincerity. Before he could pretend to have not understood, Severin began chiding him. "Ah, Nikolai. You barely tasted the vodka. Could it be that you are not looking forward to taking Irina as your bride?"

Kismet winced. "Forgive me. I guess I didn't understand the custom." He lifted the snifter a second time and poured its contents into his mouth. His stomach burned, as though he had swallowed a flaming snowball, and he immediately felt the warmth of the alcohol spreading to his extremities. The overall sensation was not entirely unpleasant. Before his glass was back on the table, the waiter was already decanting a second round.

"Tell me, Mr. Kismet. How did you meet your future bride?"

"I, ah—" Suddenly, Kismet drew a blank. It was as if the part of his brain where he stored their fictitious romance had been burned away by the liquor. He wasn't a lightweight by any means, but it had been several hours since he'd last eaten and there was nothing in his stomach to buffer the alcohol. "At work," he finally blurted.

"I see. An office romance. She was your subordinate…what's the word? Your intern?"

"No," countered Kismet, his manner measured and deliberate. He could hear his own voice and knew that his speech was unimpaired, but his body felt detached, and he was virtually certain that his words would be slurred and unintelligible. "Irene was working with the museum staff on a program for her students. We met in the lunchroom one day when she was visiting."

When not on the run from a gang of kidnappers, Irene Kerns spent her days teaching English to Russian immigrant children in Brighton Beach. The fabrication they had agreed upon seemed to adequately fit the facts without being needlessly complicated, but now as Kismet tried to put it into words, he found himself cringing at its implausibility.

"Forgive my error. When was it that you became romantically involved with each other?"

Kismet suspected Irene had already undergone an extensive, if polite interrogation and knew Severin would be comparing his answers with hers, hungry for telltale inconsistencies. He forced himself to relax, drawing several deep breaths in an effort to counteract the numbing effects of the liquor, and after a few seconds launched into the tale of his whirlwind romance with Irene Kerns.

The soup bowls were cleared away, and the waiters began shuttling out the main course; two platters of zharkoye roasted meat, carved into thin slices. It was blood red at the center and dripping with juices. The platters were placed on the table and the officers did not hesitate to load their plates with heaping portions. Kismet waited for his turn with the fork then speared two slabs of the meat. He noted that no one had begun eating, and waited silently for the signal to begin.

"We do not usually eat so well," Severin explained with mock humility. "But for guests, we hold back nothing. Irina, let us have your toast."

Kismet leaned forward slightly, and caught a glimpse of Irene as she reached for her glass. "To good food."

Severin repeated the toast in Russian, and all of the snifters were raised and emptied. Kismet watched as Irene tipped her head back, and then with a frown drank his own portion.

As another measure of strong spirits flowed into his bloodstream, Kismet had little doubt that Severin was trying to use the vodka to loosen his tongue. He knew, or at least had a rough idea, what his own tolerances were with respect to alcohol. But could Irene hold her liquor? He decided not to take that chance.

As he lowered his glass to the table, his let his elbow fall squarely in the middle of his plate. "Oops," he drawled. He tried to extract his arm, but only succeeded in knocking the glass over, and smearing gravy all over the tablecloth. "Looks like I've had a little too much to drink." His words were slow and sloppy, and as he spoke, he waved his hands in a series of uncoordinated gestures.

"Nekulturny," remarked one of the officers. Uncultured.

Severin affected a distasteful expression. "I wasn't aware that you Americans were such poor drinkers."

Kismet grinned foolishly. "Guess I'm a little tipsy. Don't mind me. Go on with your dinner."

The officers regarded Kismet as though he were a leper, but followed the lead of their captain and began eating. Kismet toyed with his food, occasionally fumbling his utensils to perpetuate his drunken act. Severin, however, did not relent in his search for answers. With Kismet seemingly out of the conversation, he focused his inquiries exclusively toward Irene.

"How did your father die?"

"I'd rather not speak of it," she mumbled. The liquor was clearly affecting her, but she seemed to retain a shred of good judgment.

"I understand. But it is important that I know the facts. Petr Ilyich had many enemies. Some might even wish to avenge themselves upon his heir. What will I tell them when they learn that his daughter sat at my table?"

"It was an accident. There was a fire."

Severin nodded slowly. "How sad for you." He waited silently, as if expecting her to reveal more, but Irene said nothing. The quiet hung in the air above the table like a pall, dissipating only when the waiters cleared away the platters.

Kismet contemplated yet another portion of vodka waiting in his glass as dessert-bliny topped with sour cream and honey-was served. The liquor was indeed potent. His intoxication was now no longer an act, but rather a measured relaxing of his usual self-control. Following yet another toast, he was all too aware of the difficulty he was having in discerning the difference.

"Mr. Kismet. Irina has told me of your latest endeavor. You should have been more forthcoming. You see, I have information that will be of great value to you."

Severin's speech was as smooth as the vodka. Kismet had to will up the last vestiges of his cognitive abilities even to comprehend what the Russian had said. "My latest endeavor?" he echoed stupidly.

"Yes Nikolai. I know all about it."

Kismet sat in a daze, trying to fathom the implications of Severin's statement. Surely Irene had not revealed anything. The captain was still probing, trying to trick him into giving up something. "I'm not sure I do," he replied. Leaning forward, he craned his head around to look over at Irene. "What's he talking about, dear?"

Irene's blank expression confirmed his suspicion that Severin's statement was indeed a ploy designed to trick Kismet into a self-incriminating admission. Rather than continue to profess his innocence, he tried a new tack.

With finesse apropos of a drunken fool, Kismet wrapped an arm around Severin's shoulder, hugging him in a buddy embrace. "Greg you sly dog," he slurred. "I'm not a kid anymore. There's nothing you can tell me that I don't already know."

It was Severin's turn to be confused. With an expression that hovered between disgust and befuddlement, the captain shrugged free of Kismet's grasp. "I am not sure we're talking about the same thing—"

"I don't know what either one of you is talking about," Irene proclaimed, now thoroughly in the dark.

Kismet continued to play the idiot. Raising a finger to his lips, he began whispering in a conspiratorial tone. "Bedroom secrets, darling. Captain Greg doesn‘t think I know how to please a Russian girl." He flashed a lascivious wink in her direction, purely for Severin's benefit.

The Russian captain looked stunned, but quickly recovered his composure. "How foolish of me. Of course, you are a man of the world, Mr. Kismet."

Irene seemed to take up the thread of Kismet's improvisation. "You men are disgusting," she sneered. "I sometimes wonder what I ever saw in you, Nick Kismet."

Her contempt was so palpable that Kismet found himself wondering if she was in fact sincere. Before he or Severin could answer, she stood up. "I'm afraid I'm not feeling very social tonight. I'd like to return to my room, if you please."

Severin nodded. "I apologize for any offense, Irina Petrovna." He gestured for the second officer to escort her, and the two of them left the officers' mess.

Kismet decided to stay in character. He playfully slugged Severin's shoulder. "Now look what you've done."

Severin whirled to face him. "You are drunk," he spat. "If you were one of my men, I would have you publicly disciplined for your foolish behavior."

Kismet folded his hands meekly in his lap. "Oops. Maybe I should go to my room, too."

"I think that would be the best thing for you to do."

Kismet rose, affecting unsteadiness, and staggered toward the exit, bumping repeatedly into the bulkhead. When he crossed the threshold however, leaving Severin's lion's den behind, he paused to breathe a sigh of relief. “That could have gone better,” he muttered under his breath. “Then again, i suppose it could have gone a hell of a lot worse.”

Kismet awoke the next day with a fuzzy mouth and a mild headache; a pleasant surprise inasmuch he had been expecting a hangover of epic proportions. He had slept soundly. According to his watch it was nearly noon, though it was possible that their journey had taken them across enough degrees of longitude to the next time zone, making it an hour later. Either way, he had overslept by a considerable margin. He swung his legs off the bed and struggled to rise. The deck was chilly beneath his bare feet and he hastily got dressed.

A taciturn sailor was posted at his door. Kismet pantomimed his desire to eat, and the seaman nodded, indicating that he should follow. He was led to the galley where a portion of leftover breakfast had been set aside for him, along with an urn of unpalatable coffee. With a grimace he swallowed some of the vile brew. The sailor, apparently his personal watchdog, remained at attention just inside the galley doorway.

As Kismet struggled through a mug of the coffee, he heard Severin's voice behind him. The captain dismissed the sailor, and then stalked over to where Kismet was sitting. "You have slept through the journey, Mr. Kismet."

"Guess I forgot to ask for a wake-up call."

"Indeed. No matter though. We turned north after crossing the fortieth meridian early this morning. We should be in sight of Poti within the hour."

Kismet grunted but said nothing. Severin helped himself to a mug of coffee and sipped it thoughtfully. "You know that I had your luggage searched when you came aboard."

"I noticed. You refolded my underwear all wrong."

Severin was not amused. "Among your belongings, we found a firearm. The Russian Navy does not take the matter of weapons smuggling lightly, even when it is simply a personal weapon for self-protection. We are charged with protecting the borders of Russia and her neighbors on the Black Sea. You have committed a grave offense, I'm afraid."

Kismet set his mug down. Severin had avoided mention of the issue on the previous night, but now the matter of the pistol represented the captain's final hole card. Kismet was ready to call his bluff. "Listen Greg. I've put up with enough of your crap. I wasn't sneaking into your country, and I wasn't trying to smuggle my gun in. I was in a boat showing the Turkish flag, in Turkish waters, with legal authorization to carry a pistol. It was you that violated the law by firing on that boat and by coercing Irene and I aboard your ship."

"You were not coerced," the captain replied defensively, startled at Kismet's vehemence.

"Like hell we weren't. Boarding of our boat was an act of piracy on the open sea. You pointed your guns at us and made it all too clear that we were your hostages. You seized our luggage, kept us under constant supervision, and probably tried to poison us with that godawful vodka. So don't give me any shit about my illegal gun."

Severin's face was growing red under the heat of Kismet's accusations. "I was only trying to educate you in the laws of the region. You are correct that I did not afford you the opportunity to declare your possession of the gun. That was an unfortunate oversight on my part. I merely seek now to explain to you why your weapon has been confiscated."

Kismet did not relent. "I think you're the one about to commit a grave offense. The United Nations has authorized me to carry that gun on my person at all times. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Russia is still part of the UN, right? Permanent membership on the security counsel, if I recall correctly. I'll have to report this of course, up my chain of command and down yours. That snowball is going to have a lot of momentum by the time it lands on your head."

Severin's eyelid twitched uncontrollably. "My apologies. You are correct of course. I will instruct the quartermaster to return your weapon as soon as we make landfall."

Kismet took another sip of the vile coffee but said nothing more, dismissing the captain with his body language. Severin bristled but before he could speak, a tinny voice scratched from the intercom, summoning him to the bridge.

"It seems we have arrived. I suggest you make ready to depart." He stood up and walked toward the exit. "One more thing, Mr. Kismet. Despite your impressive performance last evening, I am unconvinced that you have no ulterior motives. Your official status-" He filled the words with contempt- "notwithstanding, if you attempt to perpetrate any crime or activity that poses a threat to Russia, her people or her interests, I will be there to stop you. Consider yourself warned."

Kismet matched Severin's smoldering stare without blinking until at last, the Russian took a backward step through the doorway and closed it between them.

"Same to you pal," Kismet muttered to the empty air.

EIGHT

Kismet gazed out across the water at the silhouette of the Boyevoy. The launch that had shuttled Irene and himself to the modestly industrialized harbor at Poti was a barely discernible speck racing back across the dark water to rejoin its mother ship.

Their arrival hadn't drawn much attention. During the South Ossetia conflict, Russia had destroyed the Georgian naval base in Poti and established a permanent and arguably illegal military facility of their own. The appearance of Russian warships offshore no longer struck anyone as out of the ordinary. A handful of swarthy, rugged locals paused briefly from their work to gaze at the tired couple that stood on the dock, but after a few exchanges amongst themselves they turned back to their errands, untroubled and unfazed by the presence of strangers.

Kismet looked over at Irene. She had been cool toward him all day, speaking only occasionally, and only then in reference to what a fool he'd made of himself the previous evening. Her statements were troubling, since it was beginning to look as though she had taken his coarse behavior seriously. Under Severin's watchful eye there had been no opportunity to rectify the situation.

Despite his earlier assurance, Severin reneged on his promise to return Kismet's Glock, claiming that the quartermaster had misplaced the firearm and would of course be disciplined. The captain had then bidden them farewell, assigning his executive officer the duty of shuttling them ashore. Kismet had made a pretense of thanking Severin for speedy passage, and then climbed down into the launch. Irene had accepted his offer of assistance, but did not relent in her silence. Now that they were safely at their destination, away from Severin and his tricks, it was time to set matters straight.

"Listen Irene. About what happened last night—" He moved his head, trying to make eye contact with her. She dodged his stare at first, and then faced him squarely, cocking her jaw to one side, her dark eyes blazing with fury. The look pained him. "It was all an act. I was trying to—"

She looked away suddenly, unable to hold her expression. Uncontrollable laughter bubbled from her lips and she fell against him.

He caught her in a cautious embrace. "What the hell?"

Irene continued to laugh. Her rage had slipped away like a paper mask revealing a look of pure delight. "Sorry Nick, but as an actor, you make a hell of a good — well, whatever it is that you do."

Kismet rolled his eyes. "Christ, Irene. Don't ever do that to me again. I thought you were really mad at me."

"So did Captain Severin."

Kismet shook his head in disbelief. He hefted their luggage, one bag in either hand. "Next time give me some kind of signal so I'll know it's just an act."

"You were really concerned, weren't you?"

"Well, yes. What I said was pretty crude. I was afraid you'd taken me seriously. I don't want you thinking I'm that sort of guy."

Her humor subsided, and gave way to perplexity. "I don't understand you Nick. You treat me like a child, yet you claim to care about my feelings. Which is it?"

Kismet suddenly felt very foolish. He had intended only to apologize for the previous night’s drunken act, but had instead opened an entirely different can of worms. "Can we discuss this later?"

"Why not?" She stalked off ahead of him, leaving him more troubled than at the start.

"Wait." He ran to catch her. "Where are you going?"

"My father's closest friend was a fisherman here. He kept his boat at this pier. I'm looking to see if it's… there it is."

"Irene, we need to keep a low profile. How do we know we can trust this guy?"

She dismissed his concern with a wave. "Anatoly's like an uncle. He would never betray us."

"Maybe not intentionally. But Severin let me know in no uncertain terms that we will be watched. I doubt he would have let us go so easily if he didn't have an informant keeping tabs on us. Maybe it isn't your friend, but you can bet they'll be watching him as well."

"Anatoly can keep a secret, Nick. I trust him, and you should trust me."

Kismet frowned. "Let's just tread carefully. Don't tell him everything all at once."

"I'm sure you'll see that he's trustworthy once you meet him." While they were talking, Irene had continued to lead the way toward a large wooden fishing boat. The craft looked to be about forty-five feet in length, considerably smaller than Achmet's vessel, and whereas the Turk's boat was for hauling cargo across open water, Anatoly's boat was clearly designed and equipped to harvest the sea's bounty closer to port. Heavy nets dangled from overhead booms and were spread out across the deck. A shaggy form was hunched down in their midst, performing some intricate operation on a section of netting.

"Anatoly Sergeievich!"

The wooly head swung in their direction, whereupon Anatoly rose to his full height and darted toward them. He moved so swiftly that Kismet was startled into dropping their luggage. He was reaching for his bag, intent upon brandishing his only remaining weapon, the kukri, when the bear of a man swooped Irene up in his arms.

"Irina!" he roared. "My little Petrovna. You've come home to us."

It took Kismet only a moment to comprehend that he was witnessing a joyful reunion and not an attack, but his instinctive reaction was understandable. Built like an ox, the fisherman was half a head taller than Kismet and positively towered over the shorter Irene. A bushy black beard and an unruly mop of coarse hair shot through with some gray mostly hid his weathered, craggy face. He reminded Kismet of the pictures he had seen of Karl Marx, the German philosopher that had invented Communism, an image that triggered an admittedly irrational wariness toward the big fisherman.

Anatoly lowered Irene to the dock. "You've grown up, little one. You are the very image of your beautiful mother."

"And you seem to have grown even larger," she retorted. "Anatoly, this is—" She hesitated for an instant—"My fiancé, Nikolai Kristanovich Kismet. Nick, meet Anatoly Sergeievich Grishakov."

"Greetings to you," the fisherman boomed in Russian.

Kismet frowned and scratched his head. "I'm sorry, but Irene's only taught me a few phrases of your language. Do you speak English?"

"Nick." Irene was frowning at him for the deception, but he remained unwilling to invest his trust in the big Russian.

Anatoly simply laughed. "I speak your tongue, like you speak mine, I think." His accent was heavier than Severin's and true to his claim, his pronunciation was very poor. "But, if it makes you happy, I try. I am pleased to know you, Nikolai Kristanovich."

Kismet offered a half-hearted smile, and stuck out his hand. Anatoly guffawed yet again, causing the pier to tremble, and then scooped Kismet up in his embrace. Before he could react, the fisherman had kissed him squarely on the mouth and set him back down.

Kismet resisted an impulse to wipe his lips. The fisherman had already turned back to Irene and launched a barrage of questions in their shared tongue. Before she could answer any of them, Kismet cleared his throat to get her attention. "Dearest, before we get carried away, shouldn't we find a place to settle down for the night?"

"You will stay with us of course," declared Anatoly.

"Great," Kismet replied, disingenuously.

Irene glared at him, but it was Anatoly that answered. "Da. Very good. It is very good to see you again, Irina. We have much catching up."

As he led the way up from the pier, Irene turned on Kismet, barely restraining her ire. "I thought we agreed to trust him."

"I didn't agree to any such thing.”

“Then would you at least trust me?”

“I trust you.” But I don’t necessarily trust your judgment, he didn’t add. “So tell me about Uncle Anatoly.”

She sighed and gestured for him to follow her. "Anatoly is Russian. Back in the sixties a lot of Russian men — engineers like my father — came here to develop the area; they built railroads and conducted geological surveys and so forth. And like my father, Anatoly fell in love with a local woman and settled down. It’s a whole different world out here."

Irene's statement about the Georgian community seemed true enough. Although the harbor had kept up with current industrial technology, the rest of the area appeared to have undergone its last period of urban renewal in the 1940's. The dominant structures at the heart of the city, including a spectacular Neo-Byzantine cathedral, built in 1907 as an homage to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, had more visual appeal than the products of Soviet central planning that made up the balance of the cityscape, but were themselves not much older. Poti might have had a long and storied history, but very little of it had been preserved through the ages.

Anatoly led them to a mongrelized pick-up truck. He shoved aside the haphazard scattering of fishing gear in the bed to make room for their luggage, and then he eased down onto the bench-style seat in the cab beside Irene. Kismet's sense of having surrendered all control of the situation was even more pronounced than when Severin had taken them aboard the Boyevoy, and in the absence of any real choice in the matter, he climbed inside and shut his door.

Their Russian host drove them away from the harbor and through the maze of city streets until they eventually passed into a rural area beyond the outskirts. The paved road soon gave way to what seemed like a deeply rutted trail through a forest of deciduous trees, denuded by the onset of winter, where they pulled over in front of a large house on an isolated piece of property. There, they were warmly greeted by Anatoly's wife, a hale Georgian woman whose head barely reached her husband's chest. It was only after what seemed like hours of reunion, during which Kismet sat patiently feeling like a third wheel, that he got a chance to speak to Irene in private.

"Anatoly was the one who found out my father was in danger," she explained, distilling the revelations her old friend had made in the earlier conversation. "He heard a rumor that the local political officer was going to have the KGB arrest father. He passed along the information, and we fled."

"Arrest him for what? Was your father outspoken about his political views?"

She shrugged. "I was a child. I don't remember and he never spoke of it."

"I wonder how Anatoly avoided trouble for having warned your father."

"Maybe no one ever realized that he is the one who warned us." Irene's answer was offhand, as if she found his line of questioning irrelevant. "Nick, I'm more concerned about what we're going to do next."

"We're going to do what we came to do: find your father. The longer we wait, the more likely we'll be exposed to whomever Severin sends to watch us."

"Where do we start looking?"

"You told me that your father did his surveying in the mountains," replied Kismet. "I'm betting that's where he'll take Harcourt. We need to narrow down the places where your father might have found those artifacts. I want to figure out exactly where they are before we launch our little rescue expedition."

"Nick, we can't just hike up into the mountains. They're covered in snow. We'd freeze to death before we even got started."

"I'm open to suggestions.” When she didn’t offer any, he continued. “I’m counting on you to help narrow the field."

She sighed resignedly. "Father kept extensive survey maps. One of them will likely pinpoint the site in the mountains where he found those artifacts. Anatoly put all our things in storage; that's where we should start looking."

Anatoly had indeed stored away all of Petr Chereneyev's belongings and equipment in a dim corner of his cellar. Armed with an old kerosene lamp, they commenced the search right away. As soon as Kismet pulled back the sloping wooden hatch, Irene stepped into the darkness.

Two indistinct shapes suddenly broke from the shadows and flapped soundlessly up at them. Startled, Irene fell back and lost her grasp on the lantern. Kismet reflexively thrust out his hand and caught the base of the lamp, but a splash of fuel suffocated the wick, plunging them into darkness. An instant later there followed the sound of glass shattering on the steps.

"Nick, I'm sorry." Irene was breathless from being startled. "Was that the lamp?"

"Just the chimney." A match flared in his hand and he relit the wick.

"Why don't you go first?" she suggested.

Without the glass flute, the lamp burned too rich, polluting the cellar's mildewy air with long tendrils of soot. They ignored this inconvenience and finished the descent without disturbing any other denizens — bats, rats or otherwise.

The cellar was a monument to one man's lifetime of clutter. There was no distinct pathway leading through it all. Rather, they had to pick their way across the heaps and place their feet on the sturdiest objects where the floor was completely obscured.

Although Kismet had witnessed the discovery of relics from the ancient world, mysterious devices the purpose of which had died with their creators, he found himself hard pressed to identify half of the objects strewn about on the cellar floor. There was an array of mechanical parts, gears and shafts — no two of which seemed to belong to the same machine. There were sheets of metal, flaky from oxidization and corrosion, and an assortment of heavy lead pipe-fittings. Two pieces of equipment in one corner looked vaguely familiar to Kismet; one was definitely an air compressor fitted with an enormous reservoir tank. The other, which also looked like a compressor, had been augmented with a series of mesh screens. Lying haphazardly atop the former was something resembling a folded up canvas tarpaulin, patched in several places and something else that looked vaguely a copper cooking pot, tinted with a patina of green corrosion. Kismet stared at the collection of items for a moment trying to ascertain what their function had been.

A makeshift workbench dominated the far wall of the cellar. It was there that Irene found her father's survey maps stored in long plastic tubes that had once been used to protect artillery shells. Kismet climbed over to join her, and together they unrolled the maps. Each one overlapped the next at the edges, piecing together to detail the topography of several thousand square kilometers from Sevastopol to the shores of the Caspian Sea, and south as far as the mountains of Ararat. Irene thumbed through them and selected the one pertinent to their search.

The map was divided by a grid, spaced approximately at five-centimeter intervals. Kismet reckoned that the reproduction was on the order of one grid equaling one square kilometer — a standard military scale. Irene pointed out their present location relative to the map. The port community did not actually appear on it, but Kismet recognized the sheltered inlet that formed its harbor. The scope of the map extended out into the sea and contour lines illustrated how the seafloor dropped from only about forty fathoms near the coast to almost a thousand fathoms only a few kilometers offshore. By contrast, the land surface went from sea level to over six thousand meters — the highest peak in the Caucasus and what had been designated the tallest mountain on the European continent, Mt. Elbrus in Russia. The latter was a tricky distinction; the border between Europe and Asia was more an intellectual concept than a physical one. The bottom line however, was that in a linear distance of only about a hundred miles, one could go from sea level to the highest point on the continent. Kerns' surveys evidently had not reached as far as Mt. Elbrus, but the maps showed that his explorations had taken him into the lesser peaks of the Caucasus.

Some of the squares were marked with numbers and Cyrillic letters; a private code detailing Petr Chereneyev's geological survey of the region. Irene pointed to one area marked by a broad circle near the eastern edge of the map, A dotted line trailed away from it following a narrow gully that wound a vague course toward the coast.

"That's a dry riverbed, probably the original course of the Rioni River. My father discovered it shortly after we came here. One theory holds that the name Poti comes from an ancient word for 'gold river.' I'll bet that is where he found the artifacts."

Kismet leaned forward, placing his palms at the lower corners of the representation. He counted off the squares separating Poti from the site in the mountains. "The roads will get us most of the way, but it looks like we'll have to go about twenty-five miles overland."

"As the crow flies," Irene countered. "But you've got the change in elevation to contend with. And it's virtually impossible to travel in a straight line up there."

Kismet nodded. The contour lines illustrating relative elevation showed the site to be more than a thousand meters up — well above the snow line. "Well, I suppose it could be worse."

Before he could opine further on the trials that lay ahead, a booming sound rolled through the cellar. It was unmistakably the voice of Anatoly Grishakov, calling out to Irene. Kismet hastily gathered up the maps and rolled them into a tight tube, which he folded over and slipped into the side pocket of his jacket.

Irene frowned. "We need his help, Nick. To get up that mountain, if for no other reason."

"Are you down there, Irina?"

"All right," Kismet whispered. "But not a word about the Fleece. I still don't trust him."

The Russian's voice grew louder as he tramped down the steps. He poked his head out from the stairway, catching sight of them. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

Irene turned to face him. "Anatoly, old friend, we need your help."

Kismet pulled his heavy leather bomber jacket tight across his chest, trying in vain to shut out the permeating chill. While the landscape around him was blanketed in snow, it was the altitude that made the air so unbearably frigid. He found himself wishing that he had worn an extra shirt, but his duffel was back at Anatoly's house, now several kilometers away. His black waist pack held only his kukri and a few other utilitarian items, nothing that would fend off the cold.

Anatoly's assistance had proved to be more than worth the risk of trusting him. The big Russian had in fact closed his ears to the details of their quest, staunchly proclaiming that it was better for him not to know. As matters stood, Anatoly knew only that Irene and Kismet needed to trek into the mountains. To that end, he had supplied them first with a hearty meal and a good night's sleep; and secondly, with transportation into the foothills. At dawn, the big man had awakened them, stuffing yet another feast into them before loading them into his truck. Although the vehicle was lacking in creature comforts, the brief ride on the primitive roads that carved up toward the mountains cut their trip in half and Anatoly delivered them to a snow-covered farm at the base of the Caucasus in time for lunch.

The farmer, one of Anatoly's wife's many relatives, required even less convincing than Anatoly before volunteering his help. After dining, Kismet and Irene were taken to the barn where the farmer stabled his horses.

Kismet was duly impressed by the draft animals. Although he had done his share of riding as a youth, he had little experience with these enormous equines. Their hindquarters were nearly as tall as he was, supported on thick legs that rippled with muscle. Before he could inquire as to their purpose, the farmer selected two of the horses and led them to another part of the barn. It was there that Kismet finally began to understand.

Resting on a layer of straw, alongside a wheeled cart and various plowing implements was a sturdy sleigh. The horse drawn sled was almost exactly as Kismet had envisioned every time he heard Christmas carolers sing 'Jingle Bells.' While they watched, the old farmer strapped the horses into a yoke harness and hitched them to the sleigh.

"Can you drive this, Kristanovich?" Anatoly asked.

"I'll manage." Kismet climbed up into the bench seat and took the reins from the farmer. Irene hopped in beside him. Her colorful dress had been replaced by less elegant but more practical clothes; heavy trousers, a flannel shirt and a cable knit sweater. The farmer's wife appeared at the door, her arms piled high with hand-woven blankets of wool and even a few crudely sewn animal pelts. Kismet accepted these, grateful for the supplemental warmth.

Anatoly pulled Kismet aside for a final conference. "Kristanovich, the farmer tells me that three days ago, a group of men went up into the mountains."

Kismet forgot about the cold. "How many men?"

Anatoly repeated the question to the farmer in a tongue Kismet did not recognize. The farmer began to babble forth information, which Anatoly passed on to Kismet. "A dozen men. Six of them were soldiers — no, that's not right." His craggy brow furrowed, and then he shrugged. "He said 'sailors.' They wore naval uniforms. The others looked like laborers. He thinks they are prospecting for gold. Foolish of them to venture into the mountains in winter."

"Did he recognize any of the men?"

Anatoly gave Kismet an odd look, but passed the question along to the farmer and similarly relayed the answer. "No, but they were wearing heavy coats and mufflers."

"How were they traveling?"

"A truck. It is doubtful that they got very far. The snow is deep and hides much. There are many ravines and cliffs concealed by the drifts."

Kismet nodded. "That's very helpful. Thank you."

"I thought it might be. The farmer says you should watch out for them. He doesn't trust them. The search for gold makes men do wicked things." He looked Kismet in the eye. "Are you looking for gold also, Nikolai Kristanovich?"

"No, but if I see any, I'll definitely pick it up."

Anatoly laughed, stepping back and swatting the lead horse on the rump. The animal whinnied, then leaned into its yoke and strained to draw the sleigh forward. In minutes, the powerful team had pulled the sleigh out of the barn and into the snow. The farmer and his wife made a second trip out with supplies, this time in the form of dried foodstuffs, much more than Kismet anticipated needing. Nevertheless, he nodded his head to the farmer in gratitude.

They quickly found the tracks left by the vehicle the farmer had seen three days previously. The snow had partially filled in the ruts, but the long, perfectly parallel lines made them easily identifiable.

"Do you think my father is with them?" asked Irene.

"I'd say it's a good bet. Harcourt wouldn't attempt trying to find the site based on someone's directions alone. The fact that he took your father out of the United States in the first place suggests that he'll hold on to him until he has what he wants."

"It's been three days. Do you think they've found it already?"

Kismet sensed the unasked question in her voice. "I'm sure your father is fine. If the farmer was right, their progress will be slow. The trucks could only take them so far. They might have even had to finish the trek on foot. They may have reached the site, but I doubt they've excavated much. Harcourt is a fool to try doing this in the dead of winter. Either that, or he’s desperate."

Kismet's words had been meant to reassure her, but he noted right away that they had the opposite effect. "Irene, we'll get him back. Don't worry."

The horses tirelessly drew the sleigh in the trail left by Harcourt's truck. Over the course of the afternoon, the grade increased from a slight incline to a slope of nearly thirty degrees. The tracks in the snow soon began to tell the story of the difficulties experienced by the group in the truck. Erratic variations led to massive drifts, evidence that the vehicle had on more than one occasion veered off track and become mired in deep snow. The laborers in Harcourt's party had probably been called upon to dig the truch out and carve a path back to the main road. Kismet estimated that there was an accumulation of ankle deep snow atop an icy hard pack of nearly five feet deep. With the use of traction chains, the heavy truck tires had penetrated down to the base, permitting them to make gradual progress up the mountain.

Soon, Kismet realized that their course was taking them laterally across the face of the mountain. Although there was no road marked on this portion of the survey map, he surmised that the primitive track they were following probably cut back and forth across the range in a series of switchbacks. Their own progress was apparently better than Harcourt's had been. The horses' hooves bit into the packed snow, but did not sink as deeply as the truck tires had, and the sleigh glided across the powdery surface with negligible resistance. As the incline grew steeper, the horses had to exert themselves more, but they required little more than a verbal command and a shake of the reins for motivation.

With the increased elevation, the chill factor grew more intolerable. Irene unfolded two of the blankets, wrapping them about both their shoulders, so that their shared body heat kept the cold at bay. Kismet found the arrangement especially pleasing, if a little distracting.

Night fell gradually as the sun dropped into the distant Black Sea horizon. With Irene pressed tightly against his chest and her arm around his waist, he realized absently that his vigilance was slipping. As they rounded a corner, the horses stopped abruptly, giving him a much needed wake-up call. Lying in the path, directly in front of them, was a body.

Irene's hold around him went slack, and Kismet immediately sensed her terror. He thrust the reins into her hands and shrugged free of the blanket. "Stay here," he directed, in a tone that brooked no refusal.

It had snowed at least once since the person had fallen in death. A layer of crystalline precipitation had accumulated on the corpse, partially melted, and then frozen into a translucent crust. Kismet hastened to examine the body and quickly realized that the dark spots on the ground around the motionless form were not shadows but bloodstains. The person had died within a few steps of whatever trauma he had suffered. He knelt beside the corpse and brushed away the shroud of snow.

A pair of blank eyes stared up at him, causing him to start. He took a deep breath to compensate for the surge of adrenaline that left his lips feeling numb, and then resumed his inspection.

The body was male, no more than twenty years of age. The young man's hair had been cut in a close, military style, but he was clothed in ill-fitting civilian garments. Kismet noted the eastern European facial characteristics, but there was nothing to indicate what he had been in life. It was far easier to determine how he had died.

The man's chest was a mess of ravaged flesh. Kismet immediately recognized the ragged tears as exit wounds. The tight grouping was unmistakably a burst from a sub-machine gun at close range. He had been shot in the back.

"Nick?"

Kismet looked up, reading Irene's concern. "It isn't your father," he answered, trying to comfort her. "I'm not sure who he was. Only that he was shot trying to run."

"Should we do something for him? Bury him?"

Kismet frowned. "Yeah. But we don't have the time." In the end, he settled for dragging the corpse off the track and covering the young man with heaps of snow. His efforts to close the young man's eyes were in vain; the flesh had frozen beyond any postmortem manipulation. Ten minutes after discovering the fallen man, he returned to the sleigh.

He silently cursed Severin for having confiscated his gun. All that remained in the way of defensive weaponry was his Gurkha knife. Although he was confident of his ability to use the heavy blade for self-defense, he doubted that it would help much if they were pinned down by foes armed with assault rifles.

Nevertheless, he positioned the haft of the kukri where he could reach it in a hurry. It wasn't his pistol, but it made him feel a little more secure. "The stakes just went up," he declared in a tight voice. "Harcourt and his men have killed. They won't hesitate to do it again."

Kismet checked his watch; it was after midnight. They had journeyed for nearly six hours after sundown to reach their destination. Now, perched behind a snowdrift, they gazed down at a loose collection of tents lit up by a chain of klieg lights and the lazy half moon overhead — Harcourt's mountain camp.

They had left the sleigh and horses some distance away in the woods to avoid detection. Harcourt's party had been blessed with extraordinary luck, driving their truck — a beat-up deuce-and-a-half — all the way to the site, in spite of the heavy snow. This had in turn worked favorably for Kismet and Irene, enabling them to travel on into the night. The trail was not without perils however. The track often skirted steep drop-offs, with overhanging shelves of ice and snow posing a constant threat of avalanche. Their caution and persistence paid off though, delivering them to their destination in one piece.

A single sentry patrolled the perimeter of Harcourt's camp, a limit that was delineated by a triple thickness of concertina wire. He had worn a path in the snow, the sharp tips of the crampons strapped to his mountaineering boots biting into the subsurface ice. Kismet could not make out the man's face, but his marching steps were rigid and uniform; he was not taking his duty lightly. His routine of moving from one edge of the camp to another was as regular as clockwork and that, Kismet surmised, was the weakness that would allow them to slip in unobserved.

Kismet carefully monitored his wristwatch as he watched the guard make three circuits; each round was within twenty seconds of ten minutes. He estimated that it would take four minutes for them to steal down to the edge of the camp, during which time they would be exposed to any watchful eyes. He saw no evidence of other lookouts, and thought it unlikely that Harcourt would be expecting intruders, but Kismet was nonetheless cautious.

The rolls of razor wire, which were stretched out to form a barrier around the camp, were merely an inconvenience. Because they were staked down to the snowpack, Kismet needed only to burrow out a crawlspace, which he did using his kukri like a shovel, during the moments when the sentry was out of view. With this one difficulty surmounted, he prepared to infiltrate the camp.

"I'll go first," he whispered. "Keep an eye on me. When I give the signal, you follow. But if I get caught, promise me that you'll go straight back to the sleigh and down the mountain."

She nodded, but he could tell that she wasn't committed to the idea of leaving him. He saw that it was pointless to argue the issue, and refrained from further exhortation. Instead, he waited until the sentry had turned his back on their position, and then started down the hill.

The descent went smoothly. In less time than anticipated, he reached the outermost tent and ducked behind it. He could hear the sound of the guard's boots crunching in the snow as the man marched his patrol route. Less distinct was the sound of a generator, humming as it produced the electricity to power the lights.

Kismet checked his watch again; five minutes until the sentry completed his round. He decided to use the time to reconnoiter the immediate area. He began by looking back for Irene. She was not visible, wrapped in the shadows where she hid, but something he did see started his heart racing.

Leading from the top of the snowdrift, directly to where he stood, was a succession of enormous black spots — his footprints. Each step he had taken had left a depression in the snow, which in turn cast a shadow in the harsh glow of the artificial lights.

I couldn't have been more obvious, he thought, if I had come down blowing a trumpet. It would be virtually impossible for the sentry not to see his tracks; the only question was how would he react? If he sent up an alarm, then Kismet was as good as dead.

Kismet's hand dropped to his belt, gripping the haft of the kukri, ready for the inevitable. The crunch of the watchman's boots grew louder. Kismet heard the drawn out sound of the man turning ninety degrees on his heel, and could almost visualize each step that brought him closer to where Kismet was hiding. He began counting the paces, dreading the instant when the steps would grind to a halt, the sentry suddenly aware of an intruder in the camp. His hand tightened on the wooden grip of the knife.

The guard marched by without breaking stride.

Kismet nearly collapsed in relief. The watchman had passed right by the telltale footprints without even stopping to scratch his head. Kismet wondered if the man had been miraculously struck blind. Rather than waste the reprieve, he kept listening until he heard the heel grind of a right turn, and then signaled for Irene to join him.

As she darted across the snowfield, creating a second set of incriminating prints, Kismet wondered again at the guard's failure to notice. The shadows were so glaringly evident from where he waited, standing out in stark contrast to the pale snow. After a moment's contemplation, he figured it out. From his position, staring up the hill with the klieg lights shining from behind him, the shadows were perfectly visible, but from the guard's perspective, walking perpendicular to the light source, the shadows would look irregular, masked by the uneven contours of the snow. The sentry's night vision was also likely diminished by the glare, making it even less probable that their intrusion would be detected. Once Irene reached his side, they remained motionless until the guard completed another pass without noticing their tracks.

The nearby tent was the largest of the camp. Its olive drab canvas clothed a surface area comparable to a circus big top or a backwoods revival tent. The overwhelming size of it piqued Kismet's curiosity. There was only one reason he could imagine for such an enormous covering. Using his folding Balisong knife, he sliced through the fabric and peeked inside.

His suspicions were confirmed. Beneath the great tent, Harcourt had begun an epic archaeological excavation. All of the snow had been cleared away and tons of dirt had been loosened and moved into heaps around the tent's perimeter. Near the north edge Harcourt had exposed a cave entrance, possibly where an underground river had issued from the mountainside. Kismet knew intuitively that this was the location marked on Kerns' survey map.

A handful of incandescent bulbs were strung throughout the tent, providing enough light for Kismet to conclude that no one was in the enclosure. "Let's go in."

"What about my father?"

"Once we find him, we're not going to have the luxury of time. I'd like to have some answers before I leave here. And I want to make sure that Harcourt doesn't get his hands on the Golden Fleece."

"I thought getting my father out was our first priority." The implicit accusation in her caustic tone stung.

He turned and took her shoulders in his hands. "It has always been my first priority. But the Fleece is something I can't ignore."

"Sure. If you find the Golden Fleece, you'll be rich and famous." She struggled free of his grasp. "I can't believe I ever thought you cared."

Fearful that she was going to blunder off in her rage and expose them to Harcourt's guards, he gripped her arm, causing her to wince. "Damn it, Irene, you've got it all wrong."

If the Fleece did exist — if it was composed of the strange reactive element that could be turned into a weapon — then it was more than just an important archaeological find. More importantly, it was exactly the sort of thing that might lure the agents of the Prometheus group into the light. But how was he to explain that to Irene before she betrayed their presence with an emotional outburst?

"It's not about fame or wealth," he continued. "It's about a relic of enormous historic value, and possibly incredible power, falling into the wrong hands. And I don't mean Harcourt. He's just a puppet, working for evil men who will use the Fleece in terrible ways. We can prevent that. We have to."

She shook her arm, trying to break his hold. "Let go of me. So help me, I'll scream."

"Five minutes," he pleaded, relaxing his grip, but unsure of how she would decide. "If we stick together, there's a chance we might pull this off. But if you go off on your own…"

Her eyes did not lose their hard edge but she relented. "All right. Five minutes."

He let go of her arm, nodded and commenced inserting himself through the rent in the canvas. Irene however, wasn't finished. "Nick. This changes everything."

He didn't know how to respond. Damn her for not understanding, for not realizing that his motives weren't selfish and for complicating his decision with emotional blackmail. But there was no way, given the urgency of the moment, to make her comprehend that his decision to find out the truth about the Golden Fleece in no way eclipsed his commitment to helping her. And valuable time was being lost as he wrestled with the problem. Unable to explain, he turned away and threaded himself into the tent.

After climbing over a heap of dirt, he found himself standing above a trench, six feet deep and terminating at the tunnel mouth. He squatted down at the edge then lowered himself in. A shadow fell over him and he looked up to see Irene, arms folded across her chest, watching him. He decided to ignore her.

Harcourt had been exceedingly professional in his excavation. Kismet could see the attention to detail; the careful laying out of reference grids with string lines and markers to indicate when and where something of importance was located. Chalk marks differentiated the soil horizons and rock strata on the trench walls, highlighting approximations of how the sediment had built up over the course of several millennia.

Kismet wished that he could have been more than just a hasty spy making a cursory inspection of the dig. Instead, he had to settle for making a few quick mental notes before hurrying toward the cave entrance.

Harcourt had been more successful there. A number of markers highlighted his discoveries: the petrified remains of a fire-pit, possibly used as a forge; animal bones in such a concentration as to indicate a refuse heap; even one wall of a wooden structure embedded in the embankment. Kismet pushed on and entered the tunnel.

It was darker here, and he paused to take the MagLite from his pack A red filter muted the intensity of the light, but provided enough illumination for him to survey the smooth rock walls, examining the marks left by the passage of time. The history of the place spoke to him. He lingered for only a moment, then shut off the light and hurried back to Irene.

When she saw him return empty-handed, she registered a puzzled expression. "Are you satisfied?"

"More than you can know." He scrambled up the side of the trench and brushed himself off. "Come on. Let's go find your father."

The next tent they looked into turned out to be a supply depot, piled with fuel cans, foodstuffs and other crates of unknown purpose. "They're being supplied by air drops," he deduced aloud. "There's no way they could have brought all this stuff up in a single truck."

"Supplied by whom?"

He raised his eyebrows knowingly, but did not answer her question. "I'd say they're planning on being here awhile. That could work to our advantage."

"What are you talking about?" He was intentionally evasive, more to annoy her than anything else. If she wasn't going to trust him, why should he be cooperative? He knew it was petty, but she had put him in a vindictive mood. He simply grinned and led her from the enclosure.

The next tent was the smallest of the camp. They did not go in, but Kismet cut a peephole, which revealed it to belong solely to Harcourt. Given the austere conditions, the interior was furnished like an upscale luxury hotel room, replete with a glowing space heater at its center. Repressing mischievous desires, Kismet led the way to the next structure.

"This is interesting," he whispered. "It looks like the main bivouac for the troops."

"Troops? Anatoly said there were only a few soldiers."

Kismet looked again. "Well, now there are a few dozen. Probably paratroopers who dropped in with the supplies."

Irene shook her head in confusion. "I don't get it. I thought this was just about Harcourt and Grimes trying to get the Fleece. Now they have an army on their side? Did they make a deal with the Russian government?"

"These aren't Russian soldiers. Could be mercenaries, or…” He thought about the computer file he had helped Lyse smuggle into the U.S. “Or KSK — German Special Forces."

Irene's stunned silence indicated that their earlier argument was all but forgotten. "German soldiers have invaded Georgia?"

"Hard to believe, isn't it? I suspected that Grimes was working with German intelligence agents when I found you in New York. One of the dominating tapestries in that underground hall belonged to an old papal order called the Teutonic Knights; that's what got me thinking there might be a connection. Then a few other things happened." He did not elaborate with mention of the file on the SD card or the spy that had accosted him at his brownstone. "But I really didn't expect them to make such a big production out of this. It looks like they're willing to risk an international incident, maybe even war with Russia, if that's what it takes to find the Fleece."

"Why didn't you tell me this earlier?"

"I wasn't sure. You didn't need to know. What difference does it make?"

"What difference?" Her stage whisper could barely contain the strident tone of her rising anxiety. "There's no way we can get my father out of here, much less the Fleece."

"Irene, I swear to you that we'll get your father out."

"And the Fleece?"

"Since when does that matter to you?"

"Since I found out that the people are willing to go to war over it."

"Fortunately, that won't happen." He eased away from the bivouac then walked over to the remaining tent.

"How do you know that?" Irene persisted, her whispers growing uncomfortably loud.

"Because the Fleece isn't here." He raised a finger to his lips to silence any further discussion, and then cut a tiny slit in the fabric wall of the shelter. After peering inside, he pulled her close and whispered into her ear. "Pay dirt. There's one guard, and I count five prisoners tied on the floor. One of them is your father."

Irene drew in a breath, suddenly overcome with emotion. "Is he all right?"

"They all look a little thin. My guess is that Harcourt's been using them for slave labor." He looked over and saw tears welling up in her eyes. Impulsively, he reached out to her, hugging her to offer consolation. "Hey, it's going to be all right. We'll have him out of there in no time."

Together they crept around to the opposite side of the tent, to the place Kismet approximated to be directly behind the guard. A second incision revealed his estimate to be correct, and he noiselessly sliced apart the canvas. The guard was standing at attention with his back to them, less than three feet away. After a moment of preparation, Kismet reached in and wrapped his arm around the man's neck.

Rather than raise an alarm by firing the rifle in his hands, the guard instinctively dropped his firearm and tried to pry loose the stranglehold. Kismet yanked him backward through the rent, maintaining constant pressure. After a brief struggle, the man went limp in Kismet's arms.

Like the sentry roaming the perimeter, this man also wore snow camouflage fatigues. The white nylon shell offered no indication that the man belonged to any nation's armed forces. Similarly, his weapon, the AK-47 Kalashnikov semi-automatic rifle — was an anonymous choice, easily obtained by anyone with the right connections and ready cash. That way, if anyone from the expedition was discovered or captured, the German government could simply claim that it was a mercenary force working for private interests. Kismet confirmed that the man was unconscious then dragged him through the hole, back into the tent.

The struggle had awakened some of the prisoners. Except for Kerns, who was still sleeping, the prisoners were all young men, dressed only in trousers and undershirts, with close-cropped hair. It was evident that the body they had found on the trail had once belonged to their number. Kismet gestured for silence and the young men nodded eagerly, understanding that liberation was near.

Irene pushed past him and rushed to her father's side. Kerns awoke gradually, and when his eyes focused and recognition dawned, grief twisted his countenance. "Oh my daughter, they have brought you here, too."

She laughed and pushed away the tears that had were beading at the corner of her eyes. "No, papa. Nick and I are here to rescue you."

Kerns' expression changed to confusion. He looked over to Kismet, who was busy cutting the young laborers free. "Nick?"

"Nick Kismet. It's true, sir. Your daughter and I are going to get you out of here." He extended his hand to the other prisoners. "All of you."

The other young men responded with looks of incomprehension. It was obvious that they did not speak English. "They are Russian sailors," supplied Kerns. "The Germans captured their patrol boat and took their uniforms. Then they forced them to dig."

Kismet nodded. He would have preferred to keep his knowledge of the Russian language a secret, but time did not allow him that luxury. "Which of you is the leader?"

One of the young men raised his hand and started to speak, but Kismet cut him off. "Listen, I can set you free, but this place is crawling with soldiers. If you go to the supply tent, you can get enough food and clothing to make the trip down the mountains."

The young sailor nodded. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. You'll have to go through hell to get out of here alive."

He bent over to Kerns, cutting his bonds and helping him to his feet. Kerns looked thinner than when Kismet had seen him in the hall of the Teutonic Knights. His face was bruised and cut, and when he stood he seemed frail, but after a moment he straightened, addressing Kismet in deeply accented English. "They've already been through hell. Getting off this mountain will be easy by comparison."

"I hope you're right." He saw one of the men stooping over the fallen guard, fishing in the man's jacket pocket. A moment later he drew out a silver flask stamped with the insignia of the old Soviet military, a five-pointed red star. The sailor took a long drink from the flask then passed it around to his comrades. A few moments later, the de facto leader of the group offered it to Kismet.

After taking an obligatory sip of the vodka, a somewhat superior distillation than what Severin had served aboard the Boyevoy, Kismet proffered the flask.

The Russian sailor shook his head, indicating that Kismet should keep the container, and then bent over the guard to commandeer his firearm. Kismet frowned. "I recommend you shoot only as a last resort. The sound will awaken the camp."

The young man nodded, but nevertheless drew back the bolt partway to inspect the weapon, then let it go, leaving a round into the chamber. Kismet shook his head in resignation and turned back to Kerns and his daughter. "Are we ready?"

After receiving affirmative nods, Kismet led the way, exiting through the door flaps while watching out for the lone sentry. Once more, the marching soldier's bootsteps betrayed his location. They had only to wait until the footsteps grew softer to make their move. The Russian sailors waited for Kismet's signal then darted into the supply tent.

"They're on their own," Kismet declared. "Now it's our turn." The three of them crept from shadow to shadow until reaching the edge of the camp. The sentry marched past a few minutes later. Once he rounded the next corner, they started moving again. Kerns was slow, his limbs stiff from the cold, but with Kismet on one side and his daughter on the other, they made the top of the snowdrift with a minute to spare.

Irene was giddy with relief, as they reached the sleigh. "I can't believe we pulled that off."

"Wait until we're back home before you start celebrating," Kismet chided. "We've got a long trip ahead of us."

"Yeah, but it's all downhill from here. How long before they know we're gone?"

"It depends. If our Russian friends don't do anything foolish, we should be well on our way before anyone knows what happened. Hopefully, the Germans will think that their prisoners escaped on their own. I don't want Harcourt knowing I'm here if I can help it."

Irene and her father got into the back of the sleigh and bundled up together in the blankets, while Kismet took the driver's seat and coaxed the team into motion. The horses effortlessly drew the sleigh in a wide circle until the iron rails slipped into the tracks they had earlier cut. From that point on, the ride was virtually self-guiding.

Kerns gradually revealed the events that had transpired since his separation from his daughter in New York. Harcourt and two of Grimes' agents had crossed the Atlantic with him, stopping in Germany long enough to assemble a team of Bundeswehr Kommandos Spezialkrafte elite soldiers. Together they infiltrated Russian controlled waters, captured a Svetlyak class patrol boat, the Zmeya, and used it to make a surreptitious landing at a remote point just south of Poti. Much of what Kismet had supposed was verified; the death of the fleeing sailor, the airdrops and the arrival of fresh troops parachuting in under cover of darkness.

Kerns had cooperated for fear of his daughter's life, taking Harcourt directly to the site of the ancient mining camp. Kismet did not comment, but continued to listen as Irene spun the tale of their own adventures. Soon thereafter, both father and daughter were lulled to sleep, while Kismet continued to tend the horses.

Traveling on the decline was more difficult than Kismet had anticipated. The sleigh naturally wanted to race downhill. The horses were no longer serving as a means of locomotion, but rather as a brake to prevent the sleigh from running away out of control. Since this was not the task for which nature had so perfectly endowed them, they were having difficulty in maintaining surefootedness on the icy slopes. Kismet's attention was totally focused on controlling the team.

The lights of dawn were beginning to shine over the crest of the Caucasus six hours after they left the mountain camp when Irene stirred from her sleep and crawled forward to sit beside Kismet. "What time is it?"

"After seven. It should be light soon."

"How much farther?"

"I'd say we're about halfway." Kismet relaxed his tense grip on the reins as the track leveled out briefly. The horses, sensing that their yoke was no longer pushing them from behind, also relaxed and began trotting forward as if grateful for the exercise. The track led into a narrow pass, with snowdrifts piled high on either side for several hundred yards. Kismet remembered that the defile curved around to the left, and began to gradually decline again before leading into the switchbacks. Nevertheless, he was happy for the brief respite.

"But they're probably awake up in the camp. They know my father is gone."

Kismet shrugged. "They've probably known that for hours. But even with the truck they can't make it down this path any faster than we can. We've got a good lead on them."

Irene cocked her head to one side. "What's that sound?"

Her hearing was sharper than his, but before he could enquire, he heard it too; the unmistakable sound of an engine. He turned his head sideways, trying to isolate the source. It wasn't coming from behind them, but rather from further down the trail. Suddenly, a massive vehicle rounded the corner, its headlamps blazing.

Reflexively, Kismet reined back the horses, halting them fifty yards from the turn. An enormous tracked snow-cat, the kind used to groom ski slopes at mountain resorts, rumbled toward them. Two more just like it followed close behind, their tracks digging deep parallel grooves in the snow pack. Painted white to blend in with the wintry background, each vehicle carried a complement of barely distinguishable figures, likewise camouflaged.

"Troop carriers," Kismet realized aloud.

As the driver of the lead vehicle caught sight of them, Kismet could hear gears whining as they were shifted down. The troop carrier ground to a halt less than twenty paces from the sleigh. Kismet's heart skipped a beat — not because of the standoff, but because of what he saw in the cab of the snow-cat.

He did not recognize the two men sitting in the front of the vehicle, but the identity of the third man, leaning over the back of the driver's seat, was beyond question. In a frozen moment, they recognized each other.

Through the frosty pane, he saw Halverson Grimes' lips slowly form a single word: "Kismet!"

NINE

Grimes' incredulous expression mirrored Kismet's own. Both sets of eyes narrowed into defensive slits as each man recognized the other's presence on this remote mountainside. Grimes broke the visual deadlock, turning to the driver beside him to bark an order.

Kismet also looked away, refocusing on the snow-cats and the terrain they dominated. The vehicles had turned the corner sharply, staying close to the right hand side of the track — Kismet's left. On the other side however, to his right, the gap between the snow bank and the sides of the vehicles was considerable, possibly even wide enough to….

Kismet did not hesitate. Grimes and his troops were already starting to move, beginning the process that would result in their capture or death. "Hold on!"

With a shout to the horses and a shake of the reins he urged the team into motion. Immediately as they began to move, he pulled them right, angling toward the gap between the drift and the leading snow-cat. The horses could not comprehend his urgency, but the ferocity of his manner sufficed to motivate them to a trot.

He heard Irene shouting in his ear, demanding an explanation but there was no time for him to give one. The side of the sleigh banged into the front corner of the first vehicle, sending a shock wave through the sled and jostling its passengers. The iron rails bounced out of the grooves in the snow, skipping sideways as the horses' forward motion pulled it into line. The hop carried the sleigh into a snowdrift and dislodged a torrent of the frozen powder into the interior before it straightened out.

Kismet kept at the horses, shouting for them to go faster as they threaded the narrow gap. They shot past the first snow-cat and into the open space between it and the next vehicle in the convoy. The commandos clinging to the open platform on the rear of the transport stared in disbelief. Each one fingered his weapon nervously, but without orders from their commanding officer, chose to fire nothing except for harsh curses.

Abruptly, Kismet realized the fallacy of his thinking. The snow-cats were not in a perfect line. In fact, the second one was nearly two feet closer to the bank on Kismet's right side. He swore under his breath, unable to judge the distance between them and the gap or to tell if the space was wide enough to allow them to pass.

The problem solved itself. Ignoring the possibility of failure, Kismet adjusted the course of the horses so that the edge of the snowdrift was virtually brushing against the right horse's flank. The rest he left up to luck.

The horses balked, but Kismet shook the reins vigorously, snapping them like whips against the animals' hindquarters. Grudgingly, they responded and burst forward into the narrow pass.

Each horse tried to turn inward to avoid striking whatever lay alongside. The harness allowed for very little of this sort of movement, but somehow, the two mighty horses squeezed between the icy wall and the metal behemoth. The sleigh however was another matter.

The front end was too wide by a fraction of an inch, but that was enough for it to come to a dead stop, wedged between the unyielding fender of the second troop mover and the snowbank. The sudden halt confused the horses, causing them to slide and stumble in their rig.

"We're stuck!" Irene shrieked, once more stating the obvious to Kismet's continued chagrin. He ignored her. The horses were strong enough to get them through, even if it meant shaving off the side of the snowdrift with the sleigh. All that was required was the proper motivation. Shouting meaningless vocalizations at the pair, he repeatedly shook the reins, trying if nothing else to aggravate the horses into reacting. Eight hooves bit deep into the snow; massive legs that were nothing less than great pillars of muscle strained against the grip that held the sleigh in place.

"It's working," Kerns shouted, now completely awake. Kismet did not relent in his efforts, nor did he look to see if the assessment was correct. There was still a long way to go.

A towheaded man, about Kismet's age, looked down from the window of the vehicle directly above them. He shouted in German for them to surrender, and brandished a sidearm to enforce his command. In the reflection of the windscreen, Kismet saw the troops from the lead cat disgorging onto the snow and advancing on them with rifles at the ready.

The sleigh lurched forward nearly a few feet before binding up again. A second violent movement took it further, and this time it was not halted, but merely slowed as it scraped through. A burst of noise rattled the mountain pass as one of the Kalashnikovs discharged, and Kismet ducked reflexively. An instant later, the sleigh burst into the clear between the second and the last snow-cat in the convoy.

Troops from both vehicles were spilling out onto the snow, bent on impeding their escape. It seemed obvious that commandos were linked by radio and getting updates from the front. The men in the last vehicle had probably known about them almost from the start, and had formed a human wall in the narrow gap beside their cat.

The troops behind them had also closed the gap, the foremost attempting to manually seize control of the sleigh. Kerns roused himself to fight them off with his fists, and unprepared for foot pursuit in the icy conditions, the men slipped and fell against each other like dominos. Soon white clad commandos were piled up behind them in the narrow space.

Kismet leapt forward, onto the back of the left-hand steed, and used the reins like a whip against the soldiers directly in their path. The leather straps proved more intimidating to these well-trained warriors than a blazing muzzle flash from a machine gun. The thought of the rawhide burning into their exposed faces, tearing out their eyes or disfiguring them with long, painful cuts, caused even the toughest of them to recoil, and the human barrier crumbled.

The draft horses plowed forward. The troops ran from before them, knowing that a slip might find them crushed beneath the massive hooves or sliced apart by the iron rails of the sleigh. With Irene and her father successfully repelling the advances from their rear and sides, the sleigh passed the final snow-cat and burst into the open.

Right away Kismet found himself imperiled by a new threat. Beyond the mountain pass the trail began declining again. Moreover, a broad corner loomed ahead, with a precipice on one side. He immediately let the horses' pace slacken as to approach the curve at a less hectic clip.

As he clambered back to the bench seat of the sleigh, he risked a rearward look, confirming his belief that the pass was too narrow to allow the snow-cats to turn and pursue. Like the barbs on a fishhook, the vehicles were firmly inserted into the narrow passage. They might, with great difficulty, be able to back up, but the only viable way of using the caterpillar driven transports to pursue the sleigh would necessitate driving them forward until a space wide enough to come about could be found.

However, Kismet quickly realized the commandos would not need their vehicles to mount an effective pursuit. Dozens of the soldiers were breaking out long containers, from which they took narrow strips of carbon fiber, each as tall as a man, which curved like scimitars at one end.

"Skis," rasped Kismet, as if the word were an oath. The elite soldiers had brought along cross-country skis. In a matter of seconds, the first of the troops had secured his boots in the toe bindings and pushed off with his ski poles.

Kismet brought his focus back to the trail ahead. The snow-cats had stamped a broad path of packed snow leading back down the mountain. That was the good news. Their speed was gradually increasing as the slope began to drop away beneath the rails. Kismet felt the shift in their momentum as first, the horses altered direction, and then the sleigh, like a pendulum, swung into line.

Beyond the corner, the track led into a rapid descent across the face of the mountain. Sheer ice rose above on one side, while a drop-off opened up on the other. The side nearest to the edge of the precipice put them dangerously close to going over, but there was no way to effect a change. The only option was to once more put their fate in the slippery hands of luck.

Three fearless ski-troopers screamed toward them, leaning forward as the slope increased their own speed. The first tucked his poles under one arm and brought his rifle around. Using the web sling like a bracing arm, he fired the weapon one-handed into the air. They were only warnings shot, but nonetheless close enough to let the fugitives know where the next discharge would be aimed.

Kismet found the threat bitterly amusing. They were committed to a descent of the mountain; they could not stop now, even if they wanted to. Any attempt to slow the draft horses would end disastrously, with the sleigh jack-knifing and causing a lethal tumble down the trail, or shooting out over the edge. The commando dropped the smoking weapon, allowing it to dangle impotently from the strap and tucked in to increase his speed. As he maneuvered closer to the speeding sleigh, Kismet saw what he was up to.

Despite the urgency of the moment, gears were turning in Kismet's head. In the back of his mind, he was putting seemingly unrelated facts and observations together. It was glaringly apparent that Grimes and Harcourt still had a use for Peter Kerns. Perhaps Harcourt had begun to suspect what Kismet now knew; namely, that Peter Kerns had deliberately misdirected the British archaeologist, that he had not discovered the artifacts in the mountain camp, and that in all likelihood, the Russian engineer had already laid eyes on the Golden Fleece and probably concealed it somewhere far from the Caucasus. Irene was merely a pawn, useful alive, but no loss if killed. What was not so obvious was the value of his own life to Grimes. The pursuit in New York had seemed openly hostile, yet throughout Grimes had made a pretense of wanting Kismet's assistance. What was his value to the traitor now? Had Grimes ordered the soldiers to kill him, or to simply commandeer the sleigh and return all three to the mountain camp?

Because life or death odds gave him an adrenaline edge, Kismet chose to believe the worst. As the ski trooper drew alongside the sleigh and reached out to pull himself in, Kismet unleashed his kukri.

The wounded soldier cartwheeled away, his skis whirling like fan blades. His crash created an obstacle in the path of his confederates. The second commando's skis hit the motionless form of the fallen man, ripping his feet from the bindings to send him sailing through the air, over the cliff. The third skier turned hard, angling into the snow piled up along the wall. Rather than losing control, he skillfully negotiated the sheer wall and actually advanced upward as his skis cut a new path through the accumulated snow. Without slowing, he angled his skis down and skipped across the nearly vertical surface, directly ahead of the sleigh. As the horses passed beneath him he pushed out with his legs and launched himself at the sleigh.

Kismet had followed the soldier through his maneuvers, but the last move caught him by surprise. Unable to throw together a last-second response, he simply ducked his head as the skier slammed into him.

He felt a searing pain along his back as the sharp edge of one ski raked through his thick leather jacket, gouging a bloody trail from his shoulder blade to his waist. Before he could give voice to his pain, a second blow exploded like fireworks in his skull; the trooper's gun, swinging wildly from its sling, had chanced to clout him in the back of the head.

As he crashed down on top of Kismet, the soldier wrapped an arm around his neck. His head presented a perfect target for the German's blows. Flashes like lightning swam before his eyes while the dull hammering left his ears ringing. In desperation, he drove backward with his elbow. A grunt signaled that the blow had done some harm and was accompanied by a momentary respite in the assault.

Kismet became aware of two things in that instant. First, that Irene and her father were struggling to overpower the unwelcome visitor. This gave him the strength of will to muster his own retaliation, in spite of his indefensible position. The second observation, which lent urgency to the first, was that no one was driving the sleigh.

A second blow from Kismet's elbow elicited an outcry from the soldier. As his stranglehold weakened, Kismet changed his aim, driving downward into the man's genitals. The attack drew a primal response. Howling, the German's hands flew to protect his bruised groin. Kismet raised his head, and with a vicious grin, launched a cross-body left to the man's jaw. The commando rolled over, making a desperate effort to save himself with one hand, but was unable to resist the persuasive power of Kismet's boot in his back. He flipped over the side railing and tumbled into the snow as the sleigh raced away.

Through a haze of pain, Kismet looked with groping hands for the reins to the sleigh. Although several seconds had passed with no one to guide them, the horses had maintained reasonable control over the descent. Holding the reins loosely, he let them have their head and turned to scan the slopes behind for signs of other pursuit.

He quickly found it. Charging in loose formation down the trail were at least a dozen more skiing commandos. With their bodies crouched low and their weight forward over the curving tips of their Nordic skis, the soldiers were rapidly gaining on the sleigh.

Ahead, the trail was starting to level out. The merits of this fact were eclipsed by his realization that the short flat stretch was followed by a hairpin turn that led into a switchback. He had precious few seconds in which to slow almost to a complete stop, or their momentum would carry them past the turn and headlong into certain disaster.

Irene saw it too. She slid into the seat beside him and grabbed his arm. He shook his head and pulled free. "No time for that!" Thrusting the reins into her hands, he vaulted over the back of the bench and past Kerns.

With both hands fiercely gripping the backboard, he hurtled out over the snow. Like a crazed gymnast, he dangled behind the sleigh, thrusting forward with his legs. His feet hit the snow heels first. He kept his knees locked and ankles rigid so that the thick boot soles would dig into the icy surface. For a moment his plan seemed to work. Then his feet hit an unyielding bump and his legs were driven backward under his torso to flop uselessly behind him.

Seeing his peril, Peter Kerns leaned out over the back end of the sleigh and grasped Kismet's forearms. At the same time Irene began to haul back on the reins, attempting to convince the horses to arrest their downhill charge, but her efforts were futile. The horses had too much momentum and not enough room to stop.

Kerns' timely assistance roused Kismet for a second try. Swinging his legs forward, he once more attempted to slow their descent. The friction of his heels in the snow, coupled with the leveling of the trail and, in some part, Irene's efforts to control the team, accomplished the impossible. The horses came to a complete stop a few lengths from the hairpin curve.

Kismet let go and dropped back into the snow. Icy shavings had filled his trouser legs up to his knees, but there was no time to shake the cold powder away from his clothes.

The skiers were visible but still a ways off, but in the time it took Irene to maneuver the horses around to face the next leg of the descent, they halved the intervening distance.

"Go!" Kismet urged as he scrambled aboard. He made no effort to take the reins; her control of the draft horses was far superior to her performance behind the wheel of the garbage truck in New York. As they began descending once more, he retrieved his kukri from the splinters of broken skis and poles and slid it into its leather scabbard.

His assumption that his foes would have to slow down before making the hard turn was only partially correct. Several of the more confident among their number elected to cut out the switchback altogether by turning prematurely and charging down the vertical face of the cliff.

"They're crazy.“ whispered Kismet. “And they're about the best damn skiers I've ever seen. We've got to try something else, and fast."

Irene took his final word literally. With a shout, she urged the team into a full run. Their path took them directly under the skiers and just past them before they could complete their descent. Nevertheless, as soon as they touched down on the slope, the commandos were in close pursuit. Less than a hundred yards separated the sleigh from a pack of four soldiers. The rest of the group had already rounded the hairpin curve and was not far behind.

The trail they followed soon opened up into a broad powder valley. The passage of the tracked vehicles had carved a pathway through the soft accumulation, allowing them to proceed without slowing, and soon they were once more following a gradual decline. They were no longer on the trail that they had originally followed up from the foothills. Instead, they were now on the path Grimes' snow-cats had blazed, a route that would bring them east along the southern flank of the range.

"We can't keep running like this," he announced. "Eventually we're going to get chased over a cliff, or worse."

"So what have you got in mind?"

"Change the rules," he replied, understanding even as he said it, what that would mean. "Go on the offensive."

"How?" wheezed the Kerns. "We haven't any guns. And as good as you are with it, I don't think that knife of yours is any match for an automatic rifle."

"You might be surprised," he muttered, then in a more commanding voice added: "Get down this mountain any way you can. Then go to Anatoly's house. I'll catch up to you as soon as I can."

"What?" Irene gaped at him and let her hold on the reins momentarily go slack. The concern in her eyes hit him like physical blow. "Nick, you can't leave me."

Her tone said more than her words. Without even realizing it, she had fallen for him, and the thought that he might vanish forever from her life was too horrible to contemplate. This unspoken revelation filled him with apprehension. He didn't want to leave her behind, didn't want to face the prospect of death or capture alone. More than anything, he wanted her to get away safely. But there was the Fleece….

The Golden Fleece. That was what it was really all about. Men and women would continue to fall in and out of love for the rest of eternity. Once in a millennium such a love might actually shape the course of history, but more often than not, even the greatest lovers faded into obscurity. Not so with power. Power, used or abused, left a mark for generations. Just as it was impossible for mankind to unremember the atomic bomb, so too the Fleece and whatever diabolical machination Grimes and his allies had planned for it, would surely haunt the planet for the rest of its existence. He alone was in a position to prevent that — to stand between that relic of uncertain power and the forces of evil. Nothing else really mattered.

Peter Kerns knew where it was, of that Kismet was certain. He could not allow Grimes to recapture the old man or his daughter.

"If I don't make it back by midnight tonight, I want you both to head two miles north of the city. Wait on the shore for an hour. Lyse — a friend of mine — will rendezvous there and get you back home. As for you, sir, I want you to promise to tell my friend the truth."

Kerns looked back at him with a stupefied expression, but Kismet wasn't buying. "I mean it. Grimes must not be allowed to get it. I think you know that."

The old engineer tried to maintain his poker face, but finally relented, sagging as if the acknowledgment left him drained. Irene was not so quick to accept his decision. "Nick, stop talking like this. We've got to stick together."

"No. That's just it. We've got to split up. I have to slow those soldiers down, or misdirect them somehow." He saw emotion welling up in her eyes, but willfully ignored it. Instead, he rose and crawled out onto the back of the left-hand horse.

It took him less than a minute to loose the steed from the yoke that held it in thrall. Although it continued to trot apace with the other animal, it no longer contributed its power to pulling the sleigh.

Kismet quickly realized how awkward it would be to ride the creature. Its back was virtually twice as broad as any horse he had ever ridden; his legs were spread painfully apart as he straddled its bare torso. He was confident with most horses and had ridden camels and even an elephant, but rarely faster than a brisk walk. There was simply no way to ride the draft horse in the conventional manner. He was unable to exert any pressure with his inner thighs, so instead he leaned forward against its neck, gripped either side of its bridle with his hands and shouted into its ear: "Giddyap!"

Instantly, the great steed pulled away from its shackled cousin. Kismet ran the horse out ahead of the sleigh, and then tugged its bridle to swing it around. As the sleigh drew close, his gaze met Irene's.

"Nick."

He could see it in her eyes; the declaration that she had not quite been able put into words. "Don't say it. You'll only make this harder."

She shook her head, blinking back the tears. "Just be careful."

He knew those weren't the words that were poised on her lips, but was grateful that she had held back. With a nod, he coaxed his mount back up the trail, letting the thump of hoof-beats refocus his attention. After a few moments, he looked back, but the sleigh had already diminished to a dark speck in the snowfield. When he returned his gaze forward, half a score of white-clothed skiers had appeared directly ahead of him, and suddenly there was no more time for emotional turmoil.

Grimacing, he urged his mount onward, racing toward the pack like a runaway boulder down a mountainside. Hugging the horse's neck with one arm, he drew the Gurkha knife and raised it in the air over his head. A moment later, he was plowing through the midst of the loose formation. The knife slashed down repeatedly, causing confusion and not a few superficial wounds. Half of the group, in their haste to get out of the way, went down, crashing into each other or veering off course into the mire of the powder valley. The few left standing after his passage snowplowed to a halt and turned to face him.

Kismet also came about for another pass. One skier raised a pole to block the downward stroke of the blade, only to have it shorn clean in two. A kick from Kismet sent him flailing. A soldier on Kismet's left stood his ground, raising his rifle, but before he could fix his sight picture, Kismet twisted his body in order to launch a vicious slashing attack. The knife quivered in his grip as it struck flesh and smashed through the man's collarbone and stuck there.

He urged his mount ahead with another shouted vocalization. The horse charged ahead and the soldier was dragged along, in shock and unable to resist. Kismet kept his hold on the hilt of the kukri, twisting it until the blade slipped free and the wounded man fell away.

Behind him, the commandos hastened to close ranks and get back on their skis. It was time, Kismet decided, to lure the hunters away from his friends. The trail ahead was marked by the very obvious passage of the sleigh — deep parallel lines cut by the steel rails and enormous craters stomped by the massive hooves of the draft horses. Kismet sheathed the knife and urged the horse forward, all too aware that his back was now a target.

He followed the path of the sleigh for several hundred yards, passing the point where he had separated from Irene and her father. He stayed on that course a while longer, occasionally looking back to check on the pursuit and was dismayed to see that more troops had arrived to supplement the ranks of the fallen.

Riding full out across the flats, the horse was superior in speed to the skiers. Kismet held back however, at all times keeping himself in view of the German troopers. He didn't want them splitting up to follow the sleigh; beyond that, he wasn't really sure what he hoped to accomplish.

The treetops alongside him exploded in a spray of noise and ice. The skiers were shooting after him in a wasteful and futile attempt to slow him down. Because they were in a flat snowfield, the soldiers could not advance and fire at the same time, giving him a chance to widen the gap if he successfully dodged their fusillade. Kismet urged the horse forward, angling right and ducking behind a snowdrift that was twice as high as the horse's head.

The grade of the terrain abruptly began to fall away beneath him. The snow was much softer and deeper here, slowing the draft horse, bogging it down as each step sunk knee-deep. The landscape ahead was clear — a sloping plain with only a few treetops barely visible. The Germans would have the advantage here. They would be able to utilize the slope for locomotion while focusing their attention and their weapons on him. The distant treetops would be his only cover. With renewed urgency, he began coaxing speed from the horse.

At a point midway down the hill, he risked a rearward glance. The commandos were rounding the corner, poling and stepping vigorously to close the gap. Though unable to get a head count, Kismet had the sickening feeling that at least a few of the elite soldiers had veered off in pursuit of Irene and Peter Kerns. The narrow cross-country skis buoyed the commandos atop the powder, and in a matter of moments, his lead was erased. Three of their number blazed a trail down the hillside, compressing the grainy snow deep beneath the curved tips. The tracks they left behind provided an effortless path for their comrades to utilize.

The trees Kismet sought for cover remained frustratingly distant. Only the tops were visible, as if the entire system of trunks and branches had been buried beneath deep snow. The slope remained consistent though and Kismet was plagued by the vague notion that he was failing to see something obvious.

In one heart-stopping instant Kismet saw that the hillside ended at a plunging embankment — the edge of a deep ravine — where the draft horse abruptly halted. As it planted its forelegs, hooves biting into the snow for stopping traction, it also lowered its tremendous head, removing the only obstacle between Kismet and the ravine. He shot forward, hitting the slope six feet ahead in the snow.

As he tumbled toward the edge he frantically plunged his hands into the deep powder, searching for some way to arrest his fall. The snow compressed into a tentative barrier, but his momentum caused his lower body to whip around, his legs sticking out into empty space. He could feel the snow beneath him crumbling and compacting as his weight settled. He drove his hands deeper, desperate to find something solid, aware with each heartbeat that he was slipping away toward the ravine.

A cloud of white sprayed into his face as the leading soldier realized too late that he was racing to his doom. A hasty attempt to turn parallel to the edge threw up a dusting of powder, but failed to stop the skier's doomed plunge. He shot past Kismet, screaming as his skis lost contact. The man made a last-ditch attempt to assume the position for a Nordic ski jump, but his skis and his body were turned irrecoverably sideways. His curses were cut off as he crashed into a web of tree branches.

Kismet was only peripherally aware of the commando's demise. His own situation was growing more precarious by the moment as the snow-bank against his belly eroded. A second wave of snow splashed over him as another skier plowed to a stop right above him. Kismet raised his head enough to clearly see the soldier slowly working his way back up the slope.

As he stepped sideways away from the edge of danger, the commando flashed broad grin of triumph, directed solely at his dangling prey. Kismet saw the taunting smile and grimaced in return as he slipped another inch. With casual slowness, the soldier unlimbered his rifle and flipped off the safety, preparing to blow Kismet into oblivion.

Sacrificing his failing grasp on safety, Kismet drove forward, making a mad grab for his foe. He immediately began to slide into the ravine but before gravity could fully claim him, his right hand found the tip of the man's ski. His fingers wrapped around the carbon fiber, clutching it tightly as he started to fall. Unprepared for the desperate move, the soldier fell back as his leg was yanked from beneath him. The rifle fell from his grip as he began sliding toward the precipice.

Kismet gripped the ski with both hands but was still descending into the ravine as his weight drew the soldier toward him. He stuck his feet out, trying to brace them against the sheer cliff but his boot soles slipped ineffectively on the ice, making it appear as though he was running in place on the vertical wall. An instant later, his downward journey halted and he slammed against the ice encrusted sheer face.

Shaking off the daze of the impact, he looked up and saw a foot, bound to the ski, protruding over the edge above him. Without hesitating, he began pulling himself up. His muscles screamed with the exertion but the adrenaline in his bloodstream provided a surge of nearly superhuman strength. He seized hold of the soldier's ankle and hauled himself above the level of the precipice.

The commando had stabbed one of his poles deep into the snow and was holding on for dear life; it was the only thing preventing him from being pulled over the edge. But when he saw Kismet attempting to climb up his leg to safety, he released one hand and fumbled for his weapon.

Kismet saw the black barrel swing his way and instinctively ducked. On an impulse, he grasped the ski and twisted savagely. Bones and tendons snapped apart and the soldier screamed, forgetting about everything except the pain his foe was inflicting.

The move bought Kismet the time he needed. Grabbing first the soldier's trouser leg, then his belt, he heaved himself onto the slope, away from the deadly drop-off. The German commando faced him, seething with primal rage, but before he could give voice to his wrath, Kismet's right fist battered him senseless.

Escape from the edge of death fueled the fire of Kismet's will to survive. He plucked the fallen soldier's weapon from the snow and ripped the sling free of the man's shoulder. He knew how to operate the weapon, even realized in a distant corner of his mind that it was cocked and ready to fire. He rolled away from the unconscious German and without even picking a target, sprayed the hillside with a storm of lead.

The snow blossomed red as the commandos fell, wounded and dead, in the sweeping volley. Kismet immediately released the trigger, conscientious of the need to conserve ammunition, and scanned the slope for signs of enemies still standing.

His grim satisfaction turned to horror as the crimson-splotched hillside was rent by a jagged, horizontal shadow. The entire snowfield and the hard ice beneath, loosened by the impact of bullets and the percussive explosions of gunfire, split apart. The lower portion fell lazily away in massive chunks, which in turn dislodged everything below.

In the space of a heartbeat, the hillside above him became a tremendous wave of rolling snow, an avalanche that would sweep away everything in its path, including Nick Kismet.

TEN

As she had done every few seconds since he'd left, Irene glanced over her shoulder to see if Kismet had caught up. Once again, there was no sign of him.

Deprived of half its impetus, the sleigh made slow progress across the flats and tended to veer off course in the direction of the remaining draft horse. She had to keep a constant rein on the animal to correct this leaning. Not long after Kismet's departure, the trail took them into a gently sloping pass, following the course of what was likely a snowed-in ravine. The rising walls of snow on either side offered cover from any pursuing forces, and the distinctive pattern left by the snow-cats pointed the way off the mountain.

Peter Kerns crawled over the back of the bench seat and sat beside his daughter. "A brave man," he commented wistfully. "He reminds me of myself."

Irene raised an eyebrow. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

Kerns laughed. "Well, look where it got me; always in trouble and on the run. You should find someone with a little more stability in his life."

Although she had already decided not to have this conversation with her father, she couldn't hold back her riposte. "Someone more pedestrian, maybe? How about a lawyer?"

He shrugged.

She shook her head disparagingly and corrected the horse's path again. She was too confused by her feelings to even attempt to argue them with her father. Her intended but unspoken declaration of uncertain emotion now haunted her with its potential for insincerity. Her thoughts were punctuated by a burst of noise through the trees; the staccato beat of automatic weapons in the distance. The sound hit her like a physical blow. The shots were surely aimed at Kismet.

A wave of nausea clenched her gut, then rose into her throat; a sour mixture of concern, guilt and certainty that he was dead. With a shudder, she fought back the premonition and regained her composure, but there was no stopping the tears.

A fatherly response moved Kerns to place a consoling hand upon his daughter's neck. A second volley of gunfire echoed across the mountainside, shorter bursts at sporadic intervals. "You see?" Kerns whispered. "They haven't got him yet. He'll get away. The horse is faster."

She nodded, blinking at the tears and wiping their trails with the back of one hand. She was distracted momentarily by a sudden cloud of snow that arose for no apparent reason alongside the path of the sleigh. An instant later, another short burst of machine gun discharge split the air, but this time closer. Much closer.

In disbelief, both Irene and her father turned their heads to look. Four shapes, nearly indistinguishable because of their white camouflage clothing, were speeding along their trail, fifty yards back but rapidly closing. Irene swung her attention to the horse and began shaking the reins and shouting for it to move faster. Another burst from the lead soldier's weapon kicked up an eruption of snow to their right.

"Here!" She thrust the reins into her father's hands. His jaw dropped in incomprehension, but his fists tightened on the leather straps. Irene rolled over the back of the seat and stayed low on the floor of the sleigh.

"Be careful, Irina!" Kerns shouted, knowing it was fruitless to ask what she was up to. He was correct in this assumption; Irene herself had no idea what to do next. She glanced around for inspiration, trying to imagine what Kismet would do.

The floor of the sleigh was littered with the broken remains of a pair of skis left behind from the earlier invasion by one of the daring troopers. She gathered the fragments into her arms and hurled them off the back of the sleigh. The lightweight pieces of carbon fiber didn't seem like much, but to a speeding skier any obstacle might prove hazardous, and a sudden turn to avoid such a hurdle might likewise cause a crash. Soon other pieces of detritus were scattered out behind them. Irene even sacrificed a few of their warm blankets.

The jetsam worked exactly as she had planned. The leading soldier was forced to slow and carve a wide turn around the wreckage. A piece of ski pole, all but buried in the snow, caught the left ski of the rearmost trooper, stopping it dead. The soldier flew headlong and went cartwheeling down the slope, his gear flying in every direction.

"One down," Irene muttered under her breath, unable to suppress a self-satisfied grin. The remaining skiers picked their way carefully through the debris field, impeded but only briefly. The delaying tactic had earned Kerns and Irene a few precious seconds of lead time, but in her heart, she knew more desperate measures would be necessary to guarantee their escape.

"Irina!" Kerns shouted. "Listen!"

Climbing into the front seat, she cocked her head to the side. "What?"

"It's stopped. The shooting. A moment ago, there was a long burst. I heard faint screams and a strange noise, almost like distant thunder. Whatever has happened, I fear the worst for our friend."

Irene bit her lip. Somehow, the immediacy of their plight insulated her from a physical reaction to her emotions. She dissociated from her feelings, put them in a distant corner of her mind, and focused on their flight from the commandos. If and when they reached safety, there would be time to grieve.

The pursuing soldiers had retreated to mere specks in the distance. They did not attempt to fire their weapons, yet it was clear that they were once more on the move and gaining ground.

For several long minutes the sleigh held its lead, winding through a needle's eye pass and onto a shallow grade, which cut across the face of a mountain. Kerns had coaxed the horse up to a trot, but controlling the sleigh still proved difficult. It kept veering to the right, toward the edge of the trail and a precipice overlooking a sheer drop. He had to focus all his attention on steering it. Irene, on the other hand, continued to monitor the progress of the pursuit. The three remaining soldiers had lost their advantage temporarily, unable to close the gap because of the shallow gradient. There was no sign whatsoever of the fourth, fallen skier. If he had regained his equipment and joined the chase, he was too far behind to be of consequence.

"Irina!" Kerns' voice was filled with trepidation. Irene had witnessed her father's flight from the Soviet secret police, his captivity to Grimes, and other terrifying events, but had never heard the tone of desperation that now trembled in his words. "Look ahead."

As she turned her gaze forward, she felt the sting of her father's infectious dread. At first, all she saw was the radical increase of the slope. The angle of descent changed from a mere ten percent to nearly forty-five degrees. It continued like this for only a few hundred yards however. After that, it appeared to end altogether.

"A switchback," she gasped.

Kerns nodded. "We'll never make it. We can't slow down. We have to jump."

"No." She didn't have to look back to verify her next statement. "They'll have us for sure if we do."

"We're dead if we don't."

"There's another way." Tearing her eyes away from their doomed course, she began looking for the miracle that would save them. To her surprise, she found it. "Nick had the right idea!"

"I don't understand!" Kerns shouted, his tone more insistent. "And we're running out of time."

"The horse. If we can get onto it, and cut the sleigh loose—"

He nodded, brightening at the suggestion. "Yes. It will be much easier to control the horse. And we'll be able to outrun them."

"You climb out. I'll steer until we're ready."

"No," he protested. "You should go first."

"Not a chance. You're still pretty beat up. It will be easier for me to make the jump at the last second. Go!"

Kerns handed over the reins and leaned forward onto the rigging. At that instant, Irene felt the forward shift of the decline and the subsequent increase in speed. The sleigh began pushing against the horse, causing the animal to behave skittishly. She pulled back on the straps, forcing its head up, but failed to slow their inevitable race toward the edge.

Kerns reached the hindquarters of the massive draft horse without losing his tentative grip. From there it was a simple thing to pull himself onto its broad back. Knotting his fingers in its mane, he dragged himself forward until he was leaning against its neck. The bony fingers of his right hand were white from the intensity of his grip on the coarse mop of horsehair. He cautiously leaned sideways, reaching out with his left to free the animal from its harness.

The yoke was held only by a simple pin and came away in an instant, but the harness strap was more cumbersome. The farmer who had rigged the team had knotted the leather to prevent it from slipping. Subsequently, melting snow had caused the leather to swell and stiffen, and Kerns' cold fingers seemed unable to loosen it. He cursed aloud for not having a knife in his pocket to cut it with. From as early as he could remember, he had always carried a folding knife, and had used its blade for every conceivable purpose, but his captors had taken his knife, and now in his moment of greatest need he was without it. Gritting his teeth, he attacked the knot until the leather yielded and the strap came free. Only the grip of his two hands held the horse in thrall to the sleigh. Fearful that his fingers might slip at any moment, he shouted for his daughter to join him.

His success buoyed Irene’s spirits. This was actually going to work. She knotted the reins together, bunched them into a ball, and tossed them out to her father who awkwardly pinned the bundle between his torso and the horse's neck.

Kerns could feel the harness strap sliding through his fingers. "Jump now, Irina! Quickly!"

Irene eased forward and reached out for the horse, but was suddenly pulled back. Confused, she turned and found herself staring into a pair of blue eyes. A young soldier, a mere boy, had managed to board the sleigh and had wrapped his arms around her torso, pinning her arms to her body. She felt the shift of his weight as he attempted to launch them both away from the doomed vehicle.

She heard her father cry out frantically, a single word: "No!" The strap slipped from Peter Kerns' old, cold fingers and the rigging tackle, no longer connected to anything, fell into the snow.

Irene's stomach dropped. Her mind could not keep up with what was happening, but she was aware that the sleigh had become airborne and the she and the young soldier were still its passengers. Her captor let go in a survival reflex, and both of them clawed at the air, knowing that it was already too late.

Nearly two thousand cubic yards of snow and ice had been displaced by the avalanche. The movement had scraped away a layer of accumulation to a depth of nearly six feet, revealing a glistening ice pack that remembered none of the crimson stains left by Kismet's counterattack. It was as if the slide had erased the violence done upon the mountain. In the chaos below, where shifting snow had all but filled the ravine, there was no indication that any living thing had survived. The snow had broken away in great fractures, piled up in thick sheets, like the walls of a collapsed house of cards, and buried everything. It was inconceivable that any man, even having survived the impact of the avalanche, would be able to free himself from the crushing snow.

Remarkably however, mere minutes after the turmoil had ceased, restoring quiet to the mountainside, something began to move beneath the frozen covering. Massive pieces of ice rose and slid away near the edge of the ravine, as something larger fought its way to the surface. Snorts and grunts of exertion heralded the rebirth of a survivor from the dark, icy womb. A regal head broke through the frozen scree, followed by a pair of equine forelegs.

The draft horse, with power that dwarfed the reserves of the strongest man, and hooves capable of digging into the hardest ice, wrestled itself free from a prison of cold nearly a fathom deep. Had the covering been any greater, perhaps even the animal's prodigious strength would have been insufficient to save it, and therefore, though the horse could not comprehend such things, it owed its survival, more than anything, to simple luck. After a few more minutes of thrashing and pulling, the great beast slipped free of the ice and stood on all fours upon the surface.

Yet it remained anchored to the snow; the long reins attached to its bridle were still buried deep in the avalanche. Planting its hooves firmly, the animal struggled against the final impediment to its freedom. The muscular legs, capable of drawing a heavy plow or pulling large trees from the forest, strained and pulsated with each backward step, and once more the ice yielded to its might.

It was not the leather straps that prevented the animal from getting loose, but rather something larger; the motionless figure of a man. With a final heave the horse pulled the body from the grip of the snow and was free at last. The man remained prone upon the surface of the snow. The beast tried to move away from him, but succeeded only in dragging the man along behind. Its reins were wrapped around his waist and tied in a hasty knot. The animal relented, choosing instead to satisfy its instinctive curiosity. Lowering its head, it began prodding at the man, exhaling hot steam onto an ice-encrusted face.

From the depths of a great darkness, like the frozen grave from which he had been liberated, Nick Kismet struggled to the surface of consciousness. He could not feel any of his extremities, nor could he make sense out of the lights and sounds flooding into his brain. The breath of the horse, a strange sour vapor, evoked nothing, even when he was able to bring into focus the bestial muzzle, with its gaping nostrils and liquid eyes.

His cognitive abilities gradually returned, commencing with a sense of grim satisfaction. He had survived. Slowly, his memories began to fall into a logical chain, allowing him to reconstruct everything leading up to the slide. At the same time, he began to regain the use of his body. The first message his nerves sent him was brief and to the point: cold! Snow had penetrated his clothing and was leeching away his body heat. It was a wonder that hypothermia and frostbite had not already claimed him. He knew that he had to get moving right away if he wanted to live.

Concentrating on a single effort, he swung his hand up and grasped the horse's bridle. Immediately the animal pulled away, but Kismet kept his grip. The result was that he was lifted erect. He quickly flung his arms around the animal's neck, clinging to it because he couldn't trust his legs to hold him up. His recovery culminated when he hauled his cold, tired body onto the back of the draft animal, and gathered its reins into his hands.

Although the horse was damp from melted snow, its warmth penetrated Kismet, stirring him to do what he knew must be done. Irene and her father were still out there, still fleeing from Grimes and the commandos. He had to go to find them.

At his urging, the horse scaled the remaining few steps onto the newly uncovered ice field. It then negotiated the slippery ascent, roughly thirty feet of hard ice, and plowed into the deeper snow above the fracture line.

At some point in the ascent, Kismet became aware of the rifle, clogged with snow, but still containing half a magazine of ammunition, dangling from a web strap slung over his shoulder. His kukri was also still with him, shoved into the sheath at his belt.

He had a vague memory of the preparations he had taken, just before diving onto the loose reins of the horse. As the great sheets of ice had begun to tumble down, he had spied the horse, already attempting to dance its way over the crashing wave of snow. Inspired, he had lashed himself to the beast in the final moments before it was overwhelmed. Nevertheless, those few seconds where the draft animal had evaded the slide had placed both it and Kismet, near the surface, making possible their eventual liberation.

He ceased reflecting on the past, and focused on the immediate situation. He brushed the snow from the assault weapon, checking its barrel and internal mechanisms, and popped out the magazine. Ice crystals that had accumulated around the 7.62-millimeter cartridges and a sheen of verglas now laminated the inner working of the assault rifle. When the hot metal had been immersed in snow, melted ice had seeped into every cavity and then frozen again. There was a good chance the gun would misfire or even blow up in his face if he attempted to use it.

He contemplated throwing it away, but decided it might still have value as, if nothing else, an instrument for intimidation. Besides, escaping from the mountain wouldn't necessarily mean the end of his battle with Grimes. In fact, with the information he expected to get from Peter Kerns, a future confrontation with his nemesis and the soldiers the portly traitor commanded was almost a certainty. Twenty rounds from the AK might not count for much, but it was a difference he could ill-afford to dismiss.

Once above the line of the fracture, Kismet easily distinguished the pattern of hoof prints and ski trails that had brought them all to that fateful last stand. From there he needed only to backtrack. He urged the horse to a trot then coaxed it to a full gallop across the snowfield.

As his body grew warmer, he began receiving urgent messages from every quarter thereof. He envisioned himself now as a living mass of bruises, and the pounding motion of the horse's gait did nothing to assuage his discomfort. Just as quickly, he realized that his mount had been buried in the slide as well, and was likely in just as much pain. Without being conscious of it, he reached out and stroked the mane of his savior.

It took only a short time for Kismet to reach the place where he had separated from his friends, and what he saw hit like a physical blow. The signs were all too easy to read. The sleigh pulled by the remaining horse had gone off in the path of the vehicles that had ascended earlier in the night. Four deep ruts, interspersed with numerous small holes, followed the same path. Kismet quickly surmised that at least two pairs of skiers had pursued the sleigh. Because they had traveled in only two columns, it was conceivable that many more soldiers had gone after the sleigh. Kismet turned his mount and charged off after them.

A few hundred yards down the road, he spied evidence of the Kerns' countermeasures against their pursuers. A large depression in the snow showed that one of the commandos had crashed after striking a piece of debris. Apparently, the soldier had picked himself up and rejoined the pursuit.

He caught up to the straggler a few minutes later. The young skier was huffing through the flats, making too much noise to hear the muffled thumping of hoof-beats in the snow. Kismet pulled alongside him, and as the soldier became aware of his presence and looked up at him, Kismet planted his boot in the man's face. For a second time, the unlucky ski trooper went tumbling, this time to lie in a senseless heap. Kismet pulled back on the reins, causing the massive animal to rear up. When its hooves came down, they smashed one of the soldier's skis, snapping it in two.

Only moments later Kismet caught a glimpse of the sleigh, and the three soldiers chasing it. The trail led out onto the face of the mountain, gradually descending at first, but an ominous hairpin turn lay directly ahead. Kicking the horse's sides with his heels, he charged after them. As he neared the rearmost skier, he saw Peter Kerns climbing out onto the draft animal, and knew what they were attempting. A desperate measure, he reflected, but possibly their only chance at evading the commandos and surviving the switchback in the path ahead. Swinging the rifle by the barrel, he clouted the skier in the back of the head with the rifle butt and hurried onward.

As he pulled within striking distance of the second soldier, Kismet saw the leader of the pack make a courageous attempt to thwart the Kerns' escape. With an all out effort, the commando caught the back end of the sleigh and pulled himself aboard unnoticed by Irene. He kicked his skis off, and leaped forward to wrap his arms around the young woman.

Swinging the rifle like a club, Kismet downed another skier and charged after the doomed sleigh.

At that instant, Peter Kerns lost his hold on the harness. The rig slipped down, burrowing into the snow like a vaulting pole, and the entire sleigh jack-knifed, catapulting into the air and flipping over in a deadly arc. The bench seat struck the horse's hindquarters, knocking it and Kerns to the ground. Irene and her captor separated in mid-air and flew out ahead of the sleigh, which in turn hit the snow behind them and bounced up and over the edge of the trail. Irene and the soldier rolled uncontrollably toward the precipice, and then vanished from sight. Kismet reached the edge in an instant that seemed to stretch out into an eternity, a sickening certainty forming in his throat.

Miraculously, the falling soldier had found a tenuous handhold; the ice shelf was solid enough — for the moment at least — to bear his weight. His gloved fingers dug in with almost superhuman determination. As he depended from the precipice, Kismet saw another shape directly below him.

With equal tenacity, Irene clung to the soldier's boot. Kismet felt weak-kneed with relief. Peter Kerns was at his side a moment later, hesitant to look over, knowing that his daughter was surely dead three hundred feet below.

Though Irene's grip was unbreakable, Kismet knew that the soldier's hold on the ice might fail at any moment. He drew his kukri and sliced off a long section of leather from the reins of his horse, then looped the stiff line around his fist and knelt at the edge to lower it down. Kerns saw what he was attempting, and moved to secure Kismet's legs, allowing him to extend his reach out over the precipice.

The soldier chattered in German, begging for Kismet to simply pull them both to safety, but he ignored the young man. Irene's safety was the priority; saving the commando would depend upon how charitable he was feeling afterward.

"Irene. Grab it."

She looked up, into his eyes, and was magically transformed. Her fear vanished, melted by the revealed glow of his appearance. Kismet had survived, against all odds, and charged in like the prince in a fairy tale to rescue her from the jaws of the dragon. Without hesitation she released one of her clinging hands and grasped the strap. Wrapping the leather around her palm, she hugged it to her breast, and then grabbed hold with the other hand. As she swung away from the soldier's feet, Kismet began pulling on the line, reeling her in. With Kerns' help, Irene was drawn to safety in a matter of seconds.

Almost as an afterthought, Kismet reached down and grabbed the soldier by the back of his collar. "What the hell," he muttered through clenched teeth, pulling the man to safety. "I'm feeling generous."

Irene appeared in front of him and wrapped her arms around him. He grimaced involuntarily as her embrace aggravated bruises on his torso too numerous to count, but it was only when the soldier was lying face down in the snow, hands behind his head, that Kismet relaxed and allowed himself a contented sigh of relief.