The Last Oracle (Sigma Force 5)

Only then was his blindfold removed.

Yuri found himself in a small hospital room. One wall was mostly mirrored, surely two-way glass. Two people stood guard over the child: a tall auburn-haired woman who introduced herself as Kat Bryant and Dr. Lisa Cummings, whom he’d met at the restaurant. Lisa held out a stack of medical reports.

“We’re at your service,” Lisa said. “Tell us what must be done.”

Yuri set to work. He read all the reports, reviewed the latest blood chemistries. It took him another ten minutes to calculate the dosages. McBride tried to help, watching over his shoulder.

Yuri had growled at him, “Stay out of my way.”

The Americans did not know the alchemy in preserving the children. Yuri intended to keep it that way, and the method was too complicated to torture out of him. But he could not let Sasha die without trying to save her, so he had to let McBride watch. But once Sasha was safe…

Kat interrupted his reverie, standing behind him. “Will she be okay?”

Yuri tapped the drip. Satisfied with the flow, he turned and found the woman’s eyes upon him. Her hair was braided back from her face, revealing the worry in the hard edges around her eyes and mouth.

He sighed and offered her the truth. “I’ve done all I can. We’ll need hourly renal tests, urine specific gravities. It will give us some idea of the progress, but it will take five or six hours before we know if she’ll survive.”

His voice cracked with his last words. He turned away, embarrassed to show weakness to these strangers. He found McBride staring back at him, a callous glint to his eyes. The man had retreated to a chair by the door. He sat smugly with his legs crossed.

“All we can do is wait,” Yuri mumbled and found a seat beside the bed. A child’s book lay open atop it.

Kat reached down and collected it. “I was reading it to her.”

Yuri nodded. On the plane ride here, Sasha had leaned her head on Yuri’s arm while he quietly read her Russian fables. He smiled softly at the memory. They were trained not to grow attached, but she was special.

His hand drifted to where one of her fingers poked from the sheets. A blood pressure monitor was clamped to it. He ran his finger down the thin digit, so like a porcelain doll’s.

Finally he leaned back into his chair. It would be a long wait. McBride tapped his shoe on the floor. Machines shushed and beeped. After a few minutes, Dr. Cummings slipped from the room to discuss matters with the group’s pathologist. Kat settled into a chair on the opposite side of the bed.

As the first hour slowly passed, Yuri noted a pile of papers on the bedside table. A corner of a sheet caught his eye. It was heavily scribbled with a black marker. Glimpsing just the edge, Yuri recognized Sasha’s work. He shifted through various sheets, not comprehending their meaning. But on the last sheet, Yuri found a familiar face. He stiffened in his seat with surprise.

It was their prisoner back at Chelyabinsk 88.

Yuri kept the picture flat. McBride knew nothing about the capture of the American. He’d never been told. Still, Yuri must have stared too long at the picture.

“My husband.” Kat spoke up from the opposite side of the bed. “Sasha drew it. I think she saw his picture in my wallet.”

He slowly nodded and covered the picture.

Her husband…?

“Why would she do that?” Kat asked. She stared at him with a bit more focused intent. “Draw such a picture.”

Yuri stared back at the girl. His heart pounded harder, and his vision narrowed. It was Sasha’s drawings that had saved the man’s life. And now here was the same man’s wife. It was beyond coincidence, outside probable chance. What was going on?

“Dr. Raev?” the woman pressed.

He was saved from having to answer by the flutter of tiny lashes. Sasha’s eyes opened, revealing their watery blue depths. Yuri scooted closer. The woman stood up.

Sasha remained groggy, her gaze unfocused. But her heart-shaped face turned toward Yuri. “Unchi Pepe…?”

That name.

Yuri’s blood pounded in his ears and iced through him. He flashed to a dark aisle in a cold church, to a child clutching a rag doll before a stone altar, staring up at him with the same blue eyes.

Here were the same words. The same accusation.

Unchi Pepe…

The pet name for Josef Mengele, the Butcher of Auschwitz.

He took Sasha’s hand, knocking loose the blood pressure monitor.

No, he promised to her. Not ever again.

Tears blurred his vision.

Her tiny fingers clamped weakly to him. Her lids fluttered. “Papa…Papa Yuri…?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “I’m here, baby. I won’t leave you.”

Her lips moved as she faded back to sleep. Her fingers relaxed and slipped from his. “Marta…Marta’s scared…”

11:50 P.M.

Southern Ural Mountains

The body was still warm, but the blood was cold.

The kill was an hour or so old.

Lieutenant Borsakov lifted his palm from the flank of the dead tiger. He reached to the head, grabbed an ear, and tugged up. The other ear matched the first, marking this cat as Arkady.

He dropped it and stood.

In his other hand, Borsakov carried his sidearm, a Yarygin PYa. He kept it raised, wishing it was chambered in something stronger than 9 mm. He searched for Zakhar. There was no sign of the cat.

Behind him, the old ibza still smoked and smoldered.

Impressed at the escape, he crossed back to the airboat. A pilot and two other soldiers sat aboard, bearing assault rifles, covering him. The headlamp of the swamp boat speared out into the darkness. The giant fan at the back of the craft slowly spun as the pilot idled its engine.

Borsakov climbed back aboard and waved them out into the dark swamp. The engine whined, the fan spun to a gale, and they sailed away from the glowing ruins of the hunter’s lodge and headed back out into the night. The hunt would have been easier if they’d had the use of infrared scopes or night-vision goggles, but Borsakov had discovered someone had sneaked into the supply shed sometime during the past day and damaged their limited equipment.

Either the American or the children.

They’d known they would be hunted.

“Should we not report in with General-Major Martov?” his second in command asked and reached to the team’s radio.

Borsakov shook his head.

The general-major did not take setbacks well.

The airboat flew through the swamp.

He would call when the American was dead.

As they fled, Borsakov glanced back to the island, to the smoldering ruins and dead cat. He pictured the American and what he had accomplished.