“I know that look,” Remi said. “The mental gears are turning. Let’s hear it.”
“A little MacGyver-inspired goose chase.”
Remi said, “As ruses go, it’s a bit transparent.”
“I agree, but they’ll still have the same the dilemma: follow, split up, or sit tight. They can’t afford not to follow, on the off chance it’s real. Either way, our odds are improved.”
They slipped outside, followed Kholkov’s footprints back to the path, then turned left. Ahead the trail forked around the last outbuilding before the chapel. The fluffy snow had piled up quickly; three to four inches of it lay on the grass and the trees were shaggy with powder. Alpine spring had turned to winter wonderland.
Kholkov’s prints went right, so they took the left path, then pressed themselves to the building’s wall and slid down its length, ducking beneath windows and pausing every few feet to look and listen. They reached the front corner and stopped. Directly ahead lay the lodge portion of the chapel. To their right lay the split-rail fence, the meadow, and the path back to the dock landing. To their left they could just make out the sextant statue; beyond that the fjord, shrouded in snow and surface mist.
Remi stopped suddenly and tugged on Sam’s sleeve to get his attention. She nodded with her chin at the wall behind them. With her palm against the wood, she mouthed, Vibration. He pressed his ear to the wall. From inside footsteps clunked on wood. Around the corner they heard the creak of a door swinging open. Sam peeked, then jerked his head back. He pressed himself flat against the wall. Remi did the same.
Moments later Kholkov and his partner appeared on the path on their way to the chapel lodge. Sam and Remi waited until they disappeared through the rear door, then sprinted ahead, dropped into a crouch, and duck-walked into the open-fronted firewood shed beside the door.
“Let’s give them a minute,” Sam whispered. “If they’ve already searched the chapel, they’ll come out pretty quickly. If not, I’m going to make a run for the boathouse.”
“And in the meantime, I’m doing what? Sitting here?”
“More or less.”
“Forget it.”
Sam gripped her hand. “Once I go, you block yourself in with this firewood and sit tight. Two of us on the move doubles our chances of being seen.”
“Then you better keep up,” Remi said and stood up. “You coming?”
Sam sighed. “I’m coming.”
Hunched over, they took off at a flat-footed sprint, circling left around the chapel, careful to stay on the grass and off the gravel path. Within a minute they’d reached the transition where the lodge’s wooden wall became the white stucco of the onion domes. They slid down this wall, following its curve to where it joined the shoreline path. They stopped. Down the path, not more than fifty feet away, was the boathouse.
The door was standing open.
Just inside the dim interior they could see movement. Kholkov stepped out, followed by his partner. They looked around
, each pointing this way and that as they talked. Finally Kholkov pointed toward the landing and they headed in that direction. Sam and Remi waited until they were halfway down the path then sprinted forward and slipped into the boathouse.
Roughly the size of a two-car garage, it was divided into thirds by plank docks suspended by cables from the rafters. In each slip was an orange and white fifteen-foot Hans Barro work boat. The barn doors were closed and locked by a horizontal two-by-four cross brace.
Sam walked down the center catwalk, lifted the cross brace to its vertical position, and pushed the doors open a couple inches. A blast of icy air pushed through the gap.
“Check for keys,” Sam whispered.
They checked each boat; there were no keys in the ignitions. “Guess that explains what Kholkov was doing in here,” Remi said.
“Cutting off our exit. It’s either that or the staff keeps the keys in another location.”
“Either way, something tells me he wouldn’t have relied just on keys to keep us here.”
In turn, Sam lifted each boat’s engine hatch and checked the system under the glow of his LED microlight. In each case a wire had been removed from the engine’s starter solenoid.
“Not cut,” Remi said, looking over his shoulder. “Removed.”
Clearly Kholkov was planning his own eventual exit strategy.
“Smart, but not smart enough,” Sam murmured. From the time he’d been old enough to work a screwdriver, he’d been tinkering with things, starting with his mother’s toaster when he was five years old, and both his degree and his work at DARPA had only honed his do-it-yourself skills.
“Keep a lookout,” Sam said. Remi moved to the door and dropped to her knees, peeking through the gap between the hinges.