time he’d pressed its trigger he’d sent a bullet through the brain of one of the men who had masterminded the death of his wife and child. He’d made the killing look like a hunting accident in order to buy the time he needed to cross the remaining names off his terminal list.
* * *
Later that night, Reece sat alone by a fire at the water’s edge, the Echols Legend across his lap. He alternated his gaze between the empty chair to his right and the mountains across the lake, a wilderness he’d never explore with his wife, daughter, or unborn son. He remained unmoving but for his finger slowly caressing the outside edge of the trigger guard, the fire dying to embers, glowing only when the wind picked up off the lake.
As the sun rose the following morning, Reece’s finger continued to stroke the trigger guard, his only companions the memories of the dead.
CHAPTER 10
Saint Petersburg, Russia
IVAN ZHARKOV PUT DOWN the newspaper and took a sip of his tea. He sat in a leather armchair in his bedroom, unable to sleep. His late wife would have chastised him for taking caffeine this late, but it didn’t make any difference. It wasn’t the powerful stimulant, nor was it the demands of his position as one of Russia’s most powerful figures in organized crime that robbed him of his rest: it was Aleksandr.
His eldest son’s birth had been a difficult one for Katrina, and the depression that followed had been even worse. Ivan was too busy to notice but, in hindsight, she and the child never formed the crucial bond between mother and child. Katrina would stare out the window as the child cried, attending to his physical needs when necessary but never nurturing his emotional ones. She became cold, distant, unattached. When she took her life with a .25 ACP Korovin TK pistol, it was a young Aleksandr who found her, lying in bed after just having finished the last page of Sofia Petrovna. When Ivan entered the room and grabbed his young child to shield him from the grisly sight of his dead mother, he thought the boy was in shock. He didn’t accept until years later that it wasn’t shock; it was curiosity.
Aleksandr remained a mystery to the elder Zharkov. The boy was bright and handsome and, from the outside, was everything a father could want. Inside, though, there was a darkness. Aleksandr could be cruel to his younger brothers, even when they were quite young; their nannies had to protect them from him. His actions weren’t out of anger or jealousy; rather, they were for amusement.
On their first hunt, north of Moscow in the ancient forests of the Yaroslavl District, Ivan’s worst fears were confirmed. They had taken the train together and ten-year-old Aleksandr had watched the country pass by the large windows in silence. It was a beautiful October day when the father and son ventured out from their cabin. This was a traditional European driven hunt, meaning the hunters were assigned stands or positions and the animals were pushed in their direction using hounds. Ivan’s peg was a hundred or so yards away from Aleksandr’s, far enough away to give the boy some independence but close enough to keep an eye on him. To commemorate the hunt, Ivan had given his son a custom 8x57mm Mauser sporting rifle that Ivan’s father had brought back from the Great Patriotic War, no doubt looted from a German officer. The rifle was deeply engraved in the Germanic style and had been fitted with set triggers and a Zeiss scope in claw mounts, a testament to the proud tradition of Teutonic gun making. Aleksandr had long admired the rifle in his father’s cabinet and was delighted to now call it his own. Since so few things seemed to bring him joy, it warmed Ivan’s heart to see his son’s eyes brighten.
The distant bark of the hounds grew louder as the game was driven before them. A boar sped toward Ivan and pitched forward as he made a perfect running shot. The sound ringing in his ears in the stillness of the morning, Ivan saw a brown blur to his right. Moose! A second later, he heard the report of Aleksandr’s rifle and the unmistakable sound of a bullet striking flesh. There was silence and then a crash, no doubt the sound of the moose collapsing. It was a break of protocol to leave one’s stand before the drive was