The driver turned around to face them with a generous smile. “Where to?” His English was serviceable.
Before Lourds could reply, the white pickup roared out of the alley and swerved recklessly out onto the street. The three pre-teen boys inside seemed to be having the time of their lives.
The taxi driver shook his head in disgust. “Foolish children.”
***
“Are you certain this is the best place we could find?”
Lourds led the way through the booths and tables of the small restaurant’s outer dining area. “I like the view. We’ll be able to see anyone coming.” He claimed a table and sat, putting the backpack on the bench beside him.
“The view?” Anna sat beside him and wrapped her arms around herself. “It is cold out here.”
“And that’s just one of the reasons the people who could be looking for us won’t think to look in this place.”
The restaurant booths sat outside a small building used for preparing food. A curved canopy overhead was supported on metal struts. A low brick wall enclosed the dining area, and engraved concrete squares marked the walkway across the floor. There were no walls and no windows. To the south, tall government buildings stood, but they were dwarfed by the mountains that rose against the horizon. Only a short distance from the government building, a blue-domed temple squatted.
Despite the fact that it was February and winter, the temperature was in the low fifties.
Lourds took off his coat and placed it on the bench on the other side of his backpack.
“You are insane. You will freeze out here.”
“No. I’m quite comfortable, thank you. If you want to see cold winters, you should stop by Cambridge, Massachusetts, in January. We have cold winters there.”
“Not as cold as those in Moscow.”
“Then you shouldn’t be cold here either.”
Anna frowned, then shivered. “I do not mean to be disagreeable.”
“You’re not. You’re in shock.”
“And you are not?”
“Of course I am.”
“You do not appear to be.”
“I’m working. It’s my way of coping.”
He took his notebook computer from his backpack, then the scrolls in their protective case, and his digital camera. The camera came out in pieces. Evidently the bullet that had struck the backpack had torn through his camera and his trail bars. Granola and nuts lay strewn through the backpack as well. The ring box was intact, and he held it for a moment before placing it on the table.
Seeing the broken camera and the full extent of the damage to his backpack and its contents, it suddenly struck Lourds just how close he’d come to death. Again.
Anna seemed to understand what he was feeling. “You are alive, Professor. Do not forget how fortunate you are.”
“But Boris wasn’t very fortunate, was he? That tomb, Boris lived for finding something like that. And in less than a day, it was lost. And so was he.”
“I am sorry for your loss. I wish there was something I could do.”
“There isn’t. I can’t do anything either.” Lourds thought of Lev Strauss. Lev had been a friend much longer. His death had hurt more than Boris’s, and the pain was still there too.
“So what do we do?”
Lourds looked at the protective scroll case, then at Anna. “It’d probably be better if you got out of this now. Just walk away and return to whatever it was you were doing.”
Anna spoke precisely. “What I was doing was interviewing Professor Boris Glukov on the discovery he had made. I had hoped to follow that up with an interview with Professor Thomas Lourds.”
“We’re past that now.”
“I’m not.” Anna’s gaze dipped to the protective case, then back at Lourds. “Something in there got your friend killed. We need to find out what that is.”
“I need to. You need to be safe.”
Anna frowned at him. “Yakov Fursin saw me with you. He is still alive. Do you not think that perhaps I am in danger now, too?”
She had a point.
“All right. As long as we can stay ahead of this thing. If this gets worse, you can go home to your father.”
“No.” She shook her head vehemently. “That I will not do. I left his house to become my own person.”
“This isn’t about being a person, Anna. It’s about being alive. You said your father was a military man. If this thing turns any worse, he should be able to protect you.” Lourds sighed. “If Boris had known investigating that tomb would get him killed, he wouldn’t have done it.”