Just after full dark had fallen, while Annja was getting her gear from the back of the SUV, Roux grabbed her arm.
"Quiet," he whispered.
Like her, he was dressed in winter camouflage gear that they'd gotten at a military surplus store in Liepaja. The camouflage gear was Russian made and didn't fit very well, but it was patterned in white and brown and would hopefully offer some invisibility in the snowy night.
Annja had pulled the SUV into the trees nearly a quarter mile from the Roman catacombs. No one else had been on the road when she'd hidden the vehicle with Roux's help.
They were still and silent. Just when Annja was about to ask Roux what was wrong, she realized something.
We're not alone.
The thought struck her like a physical blow.
Roux pointed to the left, along the ridgeline of the hilltop overlooking the ruins. "That way," he mouthed.
She could see just well enough in the darkness to read his lips.
They went together, moving silently through the brush. Before Annja knew it, she had the sword in hand. The possibility existed that whoever was closing in on them was purely innocent, maybe inquisitive kids or teenagers wanting some privacy, but she wouldn't have taken a bet on it.
Whoever was coming was approaching stealthily.
Roux knelt in the brush and pulled the lower part of his mask up over his mouth to keep his breath from showing. He had a Russian-made Tokarev pistol in his hand. He'd purchased two of them. Annja had preferred the sword and hoped it wouldn't come to that.
A few minutes later, shadows formed in the darkness and gathered around the SUV. Annja recognized Erene Skujans from the picture Mario had carried in his wallet, but she didn't know the big man with her.
Other men moved in the darkness around them.
Annja pressed herself more tightly against the pine tree at her back.
****
Erene Skujans surveyed the landscape. She laid a hand over the SUV's engine. "Still warm," she said.
Dalton Hyde stood at her side, his pistol visible in a shoulder holster. "They're still here somewhere," he said quietly. "Must have heard us coming. Don't worry about it. We'll find them."
Erene didn't say anything, but she was worried. When she'd woken in the morning after the fight with Ivanov, she'd had a hangover and been in more pain over Mario's death than ever. The violence and the vodka had stripped her of the wall she'd used to dam up the emotions that had lain in wait.
Hyde had taken care of her, helping her through the sickness, fixing her meals and talking to her. It was a lot like it had been in the old days when he'd first agreed to tutor her in burglary.
In the end, he'd asked her why she had come back to the village – besides the botched job she'd been part of. There hadn't been any use lying about it. Mario had left the house covered in the research he'd done regarding the Norse legend he'd been pursuing.
So she'd told him. After that, he'd stayed and they'd talked about what she was going to do when she left the village with him. It had been a foregone conclusion that she would go. There was nothing to hold her there.
Erene thought of the little girl whose arm she'd rebroken and splinted. Erene had told Hyde that she wanted to wait a couple more weeks before leaving, at least long enough to see if the bones were going to knit properly this time.
Hyde had agreed with less of a fight than Erene had expected. But he'd talked about a few of the jobs he was looking into where her skills would be invaluable.
While they'd been in the tavern earlier in the day they learned Ivanov had fled the village and they heard about the chestnut-haired woman who was at the old Roman ruins. Hyde mentioned that she sounded like the picture of the woman he'd seen in one of Mario's albums, and that there had been a lot of pictures shot at the Roman ruins. When they'd shown the photograph of Annja Creed to the man who'd seen her, he'd said it was her.
"You know," Hyde had said, "it would be a shame if Mario told her where to find that treasure."
Jealous and angry, Erene had quickly agreed that they should investigate. He'd made a call and men he'd brought with him had shown up in the village, fully armed and ready to move.
Hyde broke the SUV's window and reached in to pop the hood. Using a flashlight for just a moment, he reached under the hood with a knife and slashed the spark plug wires.
Then Hyde called to his men and they moved quietly through the night. Erene moved after Hyde, just as she'd done while they'd worked together. Despite the familiarity, though, everything felt different.
So many things had changed since she'd met Mario.
****
"Well," Annja whispered, looking at the hood raised on the SUV, "we're not going to be driving out of here."
Roux looked up at her. Even though she couldn't see his lower face due to the mask, Annja sensed he was grinning.
"You didn't want to just drive away now," Roux said. "Not when things have gotten so interesting." He nodded toward the men and the woman moving down toward the ruins. "And someone down there is responsible for the death of your friend."
That was true. Annja took a fresh grip on the sword hilt. Watching the big man moving so effortlessly through the night, she thought about Mario's note, about how a big man claiming to be an international bounty hunter had told him of Erene Skujans's past.
"Do we want to wait until they find the Viking treasure?" Roux asked.
"No," Annja answered.
They started through the night together.
****
While Roux waited to cover her from a dozen paces away, Annja came up behind one of the men without a sound. Still, the man must have somehow sensed her and started to turn at the last moment. She hit him with the sword hilt, crashing it against the back of his skull.
The sound was muffled but it traveled, alerting the man farther to the right.
Annja caught the unconscious man as he fell, lowering him more gently to the ground. She stayed low, moving slowly to take advantage of the brush as she closed on the next man.
The second man called out to his friend twice, then Annja was on him, wrapping her left arm around the man's throat to keep him from crying out and to shut down the blood flow to his brain. She stomped the back of his right leg, causing the man to collapse, and rode him down to the ground. By the time they hit the ground, the lack of blood carrying oxygen to the brain rendered him senseless.
Pushing herself up, Annja nodded at Roux. He held up a circular shape and made a tossing motion. Annja caught it one-handed, then realized he'd thrown her a roll of military friction tape. She used it to quickly bind and gag the unconscious man.
As she stood, she saw lights fill the horizon to the west. In another moment, the lights separated and became the headlights of four distinct vehicles, all traveling at the same speed in a straight line along the narrow, twisting road that led to the village and the ruins.
"It appears," Roux said grimly as he knelt to pick up the AK-47 the unconscious man had dropped, "that our timing tonight lacks."
Around the catacombs, Erene Skujans and her party went to ground, taking cover where they could.
The four SUVs pulled off the road together and charged across the patches of snow, frozen mud and frost. They flared out with military precision, swooping in like predatory birds.
Annja searched the unconscious man's pack and found a pair of night-vision binoculars. She pulled them to her eyes and scanned the arriving vehicles.
Wolfram Schluter got out of the first SUV. Garin Braden followed. Both of them were clad in military combat harnesses.
"Schluter?" Roux asked.
"Yes," Annja said. "And Garin."
Schluter's men advanced cautiously.
"It appears we're about to witness a bloodbath," Roux said. "That could be a good thing. At least that way the odds would be cut down."
Instead of a bloodbath, though, the big man with Erene Skujans suddenly stepped out of hiding. He held a pistol to the woman's head as he walked over to Schluter, calling out a greeting.
Erene was forced to her knees between the two men in the full light of the SUVs.
"That was unexpected," Roux commented dryly.
Schluter and the big man talked for a while. The big man pointed toward the surrounding forest.
"Do you think they'll kill her?" Annja asked.
"I don't know," Roux answered. "Nor is it our problem." He looked at her in the darkness. "We've come as far as we can with this one, Annja. We need to let it go."
Regret washed over Annja. She'd come this far and she wasn't going to be able to find what she'd set out for.
"We can't stay here," she told Roux.
Roux visibly relaxed. "At least we're in agreement on that. Going up against these odds isn't a pleasant prospect. Perhaps they'll claim the treasure, but they're known to us. And it wasn't treasure you were after anyway, is it?"
"No," Annja replied. But she had wanted Mario's killers brought to justice if possible. More than that, though, if some bit of history – important history – existed in those catacombs, she wanted Mario to get the recognition he'd always craved.
Schluter stood beside the lead SUV, taking cover there. He raised his voice. "Annja Creed!"
"Ignore him," Roux said. "We're leaving. Erene Skujans and her friends came by some vehicle. Even if we can't find it, we can always walk out of here." He started to slide away. "Come on."
Schluter stepped away from the SUV and reached inside. He hauled out a struggling figure and threw him on the ground in the light pools.
Stanley Younts, his hands cuffed behind his back, flopped weakly on the ground. Blood smeared his face.
Roux cursed.
Schluter pointed an assault rifle at Stanley. "Come out, Miss Creed. You and the old man, or I'm going to kill this man."
"That puts things in a different light," Roux said. "I liked Stanley, and I'll miss reading his novels." He shrugged as he looked at Annja. "Admittedly, it'll be a little harder to walk away from this, but it's still the safest – "
"I can't leave him like that." Annja stood up and started down the hill.
"You're a fool," Roux called after her. Harsh anger stained his accusation.
Annja listened, but she didn't hear him coming down after her. She was on her own. She tried to tell herself that she wasn't disappointed to be abandoned. She'd been abandoned most of her life.
And she couldn't fault Roux for wanting to save himself. She let the sword fade from her hand just before the adjustable searchlights on the SUVs threw her into sharp relief.