Siberian Treasure

30

Whether they were in Siberia or not, Marina didn’t want to remain in the chamber any longer. She supposed GPS devices weren’t incorrect very often, but she still found it hard to believe they could have traveled thousands of miles in three hours.

The pod they’d traveled in sat in its place, wedged into the metal-edged wall just as it had back in Canada. She brushed her hand over its smooth surface as if touching it would explain its mystery; but it remained silent. To her surprise, it wasn’t hot. It was barely warm.

“Seems like if we’d been traveling so far so quickly, our space ship would be burning with heat,” she commented, walking toward Gabe, who held his gun like an extension of his long arm. Pointing down.

“You’d think. Maybe the sat phone’s got an error and we really didn’t travel that far. We won’t know until we get out of this underground launching pad.”

“Let’s go.” Marina, suddenly antsy, started toward the far wall. She presumed there was an exit just as there had been an entrance at the beginning of their journey.

“Hold up,” Gabe ordered. “Let’s wait a few to make sure that the arrival of this — ping pong ball — didn’t send some kind of alert.”

“I’d rather not wait in here and be cornered if it did.”

“So you’d rather rush out to meet whatever’s coming?”

“Guess that’s the difference between you and me. And you the trained spook; me, I’m just an ordinary girl.” Marina continued her way to the wall she was sure contained a door.

“Ordinary’s not a word I’d use.”

The next thing she knew, the wall was rough and cold against her back, and Gabe was looking down at her, fingers solid on her arms. His eyes were very blue, and very serious. And very close. “You might be used to taking risks in rescue missions, but this is different. This is guns and terrorism and God knows what else — it’s my expertise, Marina. You’ve got to take a step back.”

She knew he was right. Even though his sudden proximity sent her mind spinning in a whole lot of different directions, she nodded. “All right.”

He nodded back at her. And then he bent forward.

His mouth fit over hers and she lifted her chin to meet him head-on. Her eyes closed, and she settled her hands against his warm chest, curling her fingers over the tops of wide shoulders. He was good; it was good. A delicious warmth erupted under her skin, sending little shivers down her back and along her arms as they tasted and sampled and tested out the attraction between them. Hip to hip, thigh sliding between thigh, cold, rough wall scraping the back of her.

After awhile, he pulled gently away and she opened her eyes when their mouths broke apart. His lips were full and they parted in a little smile. “I’ve been wanting to do that since you stepped out of the shower,” he said. “At the hotel.”

“I hadn’t…until I saw your face after that plane ride.” She slid her hands down from his shoulders, feeling the solidness of his pecs, then pulled away. He was still smiling, his eyes glinting with humor at her comment.

Then, as if a switch had been turned on — or off, depending how she looked at it — he sobered. His face tightened, his gaze sharpened, his muscles tensed against her. He was back in the game. “I don’t know if we’re really in Siberia or not, but either way, we’re at a disadvantage.”

“Yes, but if we find the Skaladeskas, I’ll be the one they’ll listen to,” she reminded him. “I’m one of them.” Marina felt along a groove in the wall and slipped her fingers in. Nothing happened when she pressed or pushed.

“If you’re looking for the way out, it’s over here.”

Marina turned just in time to see the door open. She moved along the wall to stand next to Gabe, out of sight of whatever might lie beyond the opening.

She realized she was holding her breath when she was forced to expel it, several minutes later, when nothing happened. No sounds of alarms, no alerting cries, no booby-traps springing up or open around them.

Just silence.

She started forward, but Gabe snatched her wrist and propelled her behind him. “I’m going first. I’ve got the weapon.”

“Yeah. Okay. Maybe I do need to learn how to fire one.”

“A little late for that now, don’t you think?”

“It’s never too late.” She followed him through the doorway into a passage of sorts. A hall, not a cave chamber, of pure white. The ceiling was rounded and she felt rather like a hobbit stepping through a round door, into a hall illuminated by the glow of lights set into the ceiling, studded along the way every six or eight feet. “Guess we’re not in Kansas anymore, huh, Toto?”

She wiped damp palms over her jeans, realizing her only tool was that small light slipped into her pocket. She wished she’d taken up Gabe’s offer of a gun.

They’d walked perhaps a mile in the white corridor without meeting anyone, or hearing any sound but the dull pad of their own footsteps. The air and the temperature remained constant, so Marina couldn’t tell if they were still underground, or heading further into the earth. If the passage tilted slightly downward at one point, it rounded back up at another.

The air was fresh, not stale or musty as one might expect a long, uninterrupted hall to contain.

At last, they came to a door. The same pure white as the walls, it nevertheless differentiated itself by its smooth metal and a barely discernable line down the middle where it likely split open.

Marina looked at Gabe, who’d found the small niche which contained buttons and switches.

“The labels are in English,” he told her. “Ready?”

She nodded and he flipped a switch.

The doors peeled apart and they found themselves in a spacious room. Room wasn’t quite the word, Marina considered, stepping through the door. It felt more like an airport terminal; in particular, with its four-storey ceiling, glass walls and open stairways, the building reminded her of Munich Airport.

They had entered at the highest of four levels, and could look down from a shiny silver railing. Each floor had rubber-like flooring with flat circles raised no more than three or four millimeters as if to provide traction on what would have been a smooth surface. One side of the building was a dark and solid wall, while the other, made of huge triangular-shaped pieces of glass fitted together with massive metal rods, allowed a noon-time-strength burst of sunshine in. The railing at which Marina and Gabe stood was a mere eight feet wide; behind them was a dark wall, and in front of them was a drop clear down to the first level.

As soon as she’d stepped from the center-splitting door, Marina had registered the buzz of activity below and backed away. People moved about their business below, and it was only good fortune that no one had cause to look up in their direction. And a blessing that they’d come out on the uppermost floor instead of any other.

Gabe nudged her with his elbow, and raised his eyebrows. Did she want to go further?

Damn straight. She nodded back. She was in this up to her gills; and besides, if this was possibly a community of Skaladeskas — or at least people who knew them — she was bound to find out something about her father. And if they were, indeed, responsible for the three earthquakes.

Marina looked down again, huddling behind one of the great steel columns that held up the ceiling, which was made of the same material as the walls as they curved up into a half-dome above them. There were about two dozen or so people visible at any given time.

Could she and Gabe blend in among them without being noticed? Certainly they’d have to change their clothing, as the people moving below were all wearing light-colored, loose pants and shirts. Not a uniform exactly; at least as far as she could tell; but definitely not the jeans and flannel shirts she and Gabe had donned.

Was this a company; a business? Or a residential community of sorts? Despite its similarity to one, it wasn’t an airport terminal. Or would strangers stick out like the intruders they were?

Gabe had begun to move along the solid metal wall behind them, and Marina turned just as he opened a door that had previously been hidden. She hurried to his side and, when he slipped through the sliver of entrance, she followed without hesitation.

An office.

The door closed behind them and they stepped into the room with perfect synchronization. Computers lined one half-moon wall made of glass, and chairs that reminded Marina of the stools in a beauty salon studded the long workspace that lined a blank wall.

Flipping a switch that appeared to lock the door behind her, Marina felt safe enough to wander over to one of the terminals and sit down at the chair. The monitor screen showed white fuzz and its computer keyboard was tucked under the desk on a movable tray, just as ergonomically correct as her own workstation back at the University of Michigan.

When Marina pulled the tray out, she was slightly surprised to see that the characters were the standard QWERTY-format keyboard. She’d half-expected there to be the foreign characters of a non-Anglo language ….most particularly, Skaladeska.

When she shifted the bullet-shaped mouse, the white fuzz evaporated from the monitor and she found herself looking at the very familiar Windows Desktop screen.

That clinched it for her. Gabe’s GPS phone was wrong. They had to still be in Canada — or perhaps they’d shifted back to the States.

An idea perked in her mind, and on a whim, knowing it was a long shot, she clicked on the email program icon. Perhaps, perhaps, there was something interesting in there. Like maybe an email from Victor to herself?

The email program popped open, but before she could begin to scroll through it, Gabe came up behind her and tossed a bundle of clothing into her lap. “Let’s get out of our clothes and into something less obvious.”

“All right, but cream is so not my color.”

Gabe ignored her; instead, he jabbed a thumb toward a half-open door at the end of the worktable. “I’ll be the lookout while you change.”

She slid off the chair, noticing that he’d already made the switch. Gone were the jeans and green and rust plaid shirt; replacing them were a pair of off-white linen-like trousers and a natural-fiber-colored top that buttoned down the front. His feet were still clad in the same hiking boots he’d been wearing since they’d been kidnapped back in L’Anse.

The fabric of the slacks was unlike anything Marina had ever felt before. Woven like fine linen, the cloth bore a silky sheen yet felt lightweight. It wasn’t silk and it wasn’t linen … it was something in between, and it didn’t appear to be wrinkle-prone. Not quite as nice as stretchy matte jersey, Marina decided as she pulled them on, but pretty close.

When she stepped back out of her temporary dressing room, Gabe was clicking away on the computer. She walked up behind him and saw that he had opened a browser window and was surfing the Net.

“This is no time to be shopping at Amazon,” she commented. “But I’d like to check my email if that’s connected to the Net. On the off-chance Dad’s been in touch again.”

“I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a firewall or anything that would keep us from browsing the web. But much as I’d like to check my messages, and possibly send an email to Bergstrom, we shouldn’t. This machine could be monitored.”

“Okay, then let’s get out of here and see if we can figure out if Dad’s here or not.”

“Or at least where we are.”

“Everything’s in English. We can’t be outside of North America, regardless of what your phone says.”

“Split up or stay together?”

Marina considered, then replied. “I’m for staying together at this point. After all, you’ve got the gun.”

“Right answer. Let’s go.”

Marina felt the tension that had begun to leave her shoulders seep back as Gabe unlocked the door. “What’s the plan?”

“We look in every room we can for your father or something else of interest. We stay out of sight. If someone catches us, run like hell and if we get separated, meet back here.”

The hall was just as deserted as it had been when they came through the door from the cave-travel. Marina glanced toward the entrance, which had opened in the middle like an elevator door, and she marked where it was and what it looked like in case a speedy escape was necessary.

“This must be a restricted floor,” Gabe commented, looking down at the activity below. All three floors below them had at least two people moving about with purpose. “I hope there’s no alarm that goes off when we go down.”

“Let’s check out that one there,” Marina suggested, pointing to an entrance she had just noticed at the end of the hall at the opposite side from which they’d initially come. In fact, the door was set into a small alcove, and its boundary seams were nearly lost in the shadows.

He nodded in agreement, and they started off, silent-footed, down the hall.

The door opened with little effort. Marina was startled at how easily the panel slid to the side. If it was a restricted area, it was easy to leave. Perhaps not as easy to return, however.

Pushing past Gabe, she peered through. She felt strangely in her element here; as if she should be the one leading the way; making the decisions. It was something inside her, calm, yet nervy, that prompted her to step through the door and allow Gabe to follow ….if he dared.

He started, then stopped just before he stepped through. “Metal detector. Security screen.” He jerked a thumb toward the walls. “I can’t walk through with a gun.”

“Go hide it by our clothes. We can’t take the chance of setting any alarms off.”

“Marina, I’m not going to walk around in here unarmed.”

“Then it appears you’re not going to walk around in here at all. I’m going to go on.”

She started to walk through the screen, but he pulled her back. “Wait a minute—“

“Your gun didn’t help you when we were attacked at the hotel, anyway. It’s not a lifeline. We’ve only got another hour anyway before we need to report in to Bergstrom. I’ll just take a quick look and then we can leave.”

“Wait.” Marina watched while he jogged back silently to the room where they’d changed.

But once he walked through the security screen, Gabe allowed her to set the pace, and as the door slid closed behind them, she chose their path: to the left, into the side of the building opposite the glass windows. The corridor was short, the walls the same white, sloping into the same rounded ceiling. Marina realized how easily they could become confused in the endless, identical hallways, and she stopped.

“I’m going to mark this. The last thing we need is to get lost in here somewhere.” She dug in her jeans and pulled out a plastic tube of lipstick. It was warm from being in there, which meant it would be soft, so she took care when she made a small little dab on the base of one of the walls.

Gabe watched incredulously as she made sure the mark shifted into a sort of point, so they knew which way to go.

“What, you never saw a woman with lipstick in her pocket before?”

“I didn’t figure you for a lipstick kind of woman.”

“I don’t go many places without it. You never know when you’re going to need it.” She stuffed the tube back into her front pocket. “My expertise.”

“I suppose that’s what you use to mark your trails when you’re caving,” he commented as she continued their walk down the hall.

“No, you don’t mark your trail when caving. That would be defacing the cave. You have to use a map and or look behind you as you’re making your way through.”

She didn’t hear his response clearly; but it sounded suspiciously like a snort of disgust. She ignored it and hurried on down the short hall.

As they came around a corner, Marina nearly ran into a wall. Or, rather, when she looked closer, she realized it was another door. “How many of these halls are we going to be walking through that don’t lead anywhere?” she grumbled.

“I don’t know, but we’re going to either have to turn around or find a way through this one.”

Marina nodded, and moved toward the door, but just as she began to run her fingers around the edge of it, it began to move. Open.

Whirling, she turned and slammed into Gabe, and they both turned and dashed around the corner from which they’d come. Keeping her footsteps light took effort, but Marina didn’t want the pounding sound of her running to alert the person behind her.

Suddenly, a hand yanked her arm, and she felt herself pulled into a room. She landed in Gabe’s arms, felt them come around her as if to steady her. Then he dropped his hands away and they moved together to the wall, pressing up against it behind the door in case it slid back open.

But then a noise behind her made her stiffen.

She grabbed blindly for Gabe’s wrist, slowly turning.