The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [83]
‘He is just a name you tell me is being whispered in the underworld.
You also say that Maraschenko is most likely an opportunist. He saw his chance with Anya and took it off his own initiative. But is all this guesswork helpful?’ He pulled his forelock, staring into the fire. ‘How do we know Dragoman or the siloviki have anything at all to do with Anya?’
From the corner, Irina spoke, her eyes fixed on the tapestry in her lap. ‘We are not investigating. I don’t care who took Anya. All that matters is that we follow the instructions and get her back safely.’
Irina was right. Anya’s safe return was the only thing that mattered. The rest—truth and justice—was garnish.
Suddenly, Irina stopped sewing and looked up. ‘Listen. Shh . . . can you hear that?’
They all stilled. There was only the crackle of the fire. Saskia stood up, the hair on her neck rising.
‘What is it, Irina?’ Stevie barely whispered. Could the house be under surveillance? Had Rice kept his men on after all? Was someone else out there?
Then it came, the long hollow howl of a wolf. The sound crept in around them like a low wind. It was, even as they sat safe around the house fire, a lonely and frightening sound. They listened as the invisible wolf howled in wave after wave, building up to some sort of crescendo.
‘She’s hungry.’ Vadim spoke normally. ‘I’ve heard the howls before, when we were in the Caucasus. It’s a hungry she-wolf. She’s probably calling the pack to help her hunt. She must have found tracks.’
Vadim kept his face turned to the window, staring at nothing. ‘This area was known for its wolf packs. In particularly hard winters, the wolves would get so hungry they would try to bring down the horses pulling the sleighs.
‘The sleigh would flee as fast as it could from the pack,’ Vadim continued, his voice as flat as the white plains outside, ‘hoping to outrun it. The horses would get too tired to outrun the wolves, no matter how frightened they were. So the footman would begin to throw some of the luggage off to lighten the load. Still the wolf pack would gain on the fleeing sleigh.
‘When all the luggage was gone and there was nothing left to throw, they would pick the most dispensable person—usually a young servant girl, or perhaps the footman—and thrown them off the back of the sleigh. The person would fall straight into the path of the wolves.’
No one could speak when the story finished, and Stevie knew she was not the only one in the room who saw Anya’s face on Vadim’s servant girl.
‘How far away do you think she is?’ Stevie’s voice was as soft as the falling snow.
Kozkov poked a fallen log back into the fire. ‘Not very.’
Stevie was woken the next morning by sweet Saskia sniffing her chin.
She reached out and stroked the gentle hunter’s sleek head. Outside it was still dark. The starlight, reflected and magnified ten thousand times in the ice crystals of the snow, cast an eerie glow in the pre-dawn. Stevie lay still, wishing today was not the day that they would take the life of a teenage girl into their hands.
After dressing, she made a pot of strong coffee and re-set the fire, then stared out into the grey snow. A low-lying fog surrounded the dacha like a petticoat, creeping up the windows and hovering there.
With a start, she noticed a man walking towards her through the snow. He was carrying a torch and his lower body was obscured by the fog. The flames lit the mist around him and he seemed almost to float, legless, through it. It was Valery Kozkov.
A raven began to caw, then another. Stevie was surprised that birds would sing (could you call it that? They sounded more like angry children . . . ) in the darkness. Perhaps the star-lit blush of the snow had been enough to disturb them. She caught sight of one perching in the bare branches above Kozkov, watching him. It was as big as a cat.
Kozkov stamped his boots on the verandah. ‘I couldn’t sleep— went out to look for wolf tracks,’ he explained. ‘I wanted to take Saskia but she was hiding from