“I suspected as much, Comrade Fursin. I don’t run into many fans this far from Moscow.”
“Well, you have today. I read your pieces in The Moscow Times on a regular basis.”
“Oh really?” Anna cocked a skeptical eyebrow.
Fursin put his hand over his heart. “Truly. I do. You wound me. I especially loved the piece you did on President Nevsky’s comparisons of himself to Alexander Nevsky. The artist you had working with you on that piece has a fantastic eye.”
“Zagnetko? Yes, she is wonderful. Very witty all on her own as well.” Anna warmed slightly to the man as he mentioned other articles she had written. “What can I do for you?”
“I am told that Professor Glukov is only allowing select members of the media in to the cave.”
“That’s correct.”
“I’m also told that you are one of those members.”
“I am.”
“You also did the piece on the dig months ago not far from here where Professor Glukov first picked up the trail to this place.”
“You are very well informed.”
He smiled again and appeared even more dashing than ever. “I would like very much to get inside that cave when Professor Glukov performs his unveiling.”
Anna smiled and shook her head. “Sadly, that is beyond my power to do.”
“Please.” He placed his hand over his heart again and looked entreating. “This will mean very much to my career.”
“You can be charming all you want, Comrade Fursin. I will enjoy your efforts, but in the end it will be for naught. The passageway, I am told, is very small, and Professor Glukov is keeping a short list of attendants. I am sorry. But hopefully this story will be big enough that you will get something that helps your career.”
Fursin nodded. “I completely understand. Please do not hold my need to ask against me.”
Anna laughed. “You were very pleasant. You should see how much I push, beg, shove, and plead to get my foot in the door for a story.”
“Be well.” Fursin bowed his head and walked away.
For a moment, Anna watched the man. There was something about him that caught her subconscious attention. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she thought that beneath that charming exterior, there was a very hard man.
In that way, he reminded her of her father.
***
As he walked away from the woman, Colonel Sergay Linko gazed in frustration around the campsite and cursed his situation. During the flight to Herat, he’d learned his orders were to get close to Professor Glukov and find out what the man had discovered.
The news stations Linko had watched had revealed that Glukov had found something related to the missing tomb of Alexander the Great. Glukov had stated as much but had given nothing further.
Linko didn’t know why President Nevsky would be interested in Alexander the Great’s tomb, and Linko hadn’t even known the man’s tomb was missing. And he was only vaguely knowledgeable about who Alexander the Great had been.
To Linko’s way of thinking, Alexander the Great had been on the same par as the bogatyr of Slavic mythology. When he had been a child, his grandmother had read him epic poems written by the storytellers of the Kievan Rus’, the old nation of Rus. Linko had liked the stories of the wandering knights, then discovered they were much like the European knights, such as King Arthur.
But it wasn’t real. And childhood things had to be put away. Just as he had put his grandmother away when it fell to him to take care of her when she grew too frail to live without assistance.
Linko’s mother and father were gone by that time, one to cancer and the other to drink, and no one had survived to take care of the old woman. After a month of assisted care and the first bill had come due, Linko had decided he didn’t want to pay the monthly fee. So he had visited her late one night, pinched her nose shut, and held a hand over her mouth.
The next month’s bill was reduced, and that was the end of it.
Calm in his frustration, Linko went to the next group of journalists and hoped he would have better luck. He would not be deterred.
***
Lourds got out of his rented four-wheel-drive pickup and walked down to the dig site. To his relief, none of the media pointed him out or came hurrying over for a quote.
During the short flight to Herat, Lourds had looked at the photographs of the tomb that