Dark Watch

“It’s the gomuls,” the guard replied with an air of mock conspiracy. “They’re the native spirits who hunt whales at night and return to the mountains to roast the meat on giant fires.”

“When I find whale bones in a volcanic caldera, I’ll blame the gomuls, my friend. For now I suspect it’s tectonic activity.”

Savich had returned to Moscow following his recovery in the hospital and lived and maintained his silence concerning his find, all the while continuing his work for the Bureau of Natural Resources. He led an unremarkable life through the waning days of the Soviet Union and managed to keep his position secure during its collapse. In the wild aftermath he had actively sought foreign contacts, cultivating some he thought would eventually allow him to see his plan to fruition.

His chance had come through a Swiss metallurgist he’d met at a symposium who in turn eventually led Savich to the banker, Bernhard Volkmann, and the current deal he had under way. Backed by Volkmann, and using the companies controlled by the loathsome Shere Singh, Anton Savich had returned to Kamchatka countless times over the past year, laying the necessary groundwork under the cover of a volcanologist. With the numerous eruptions all across Kamchatka, he had become a common sight at the airport and maintained a standing reservation at the Avacha Hotel, just a short walk up Leningradskaya Street from what was possibly the only Lenin Square in Russia still dedicated to Lenin.

He collected his bags and went straight to a counter run by a heliski company. The sport had grown popular along the rugged peaks of the peninsula, and there were several companies willing to take skiers up the mountains by chopper. The company, Air Adventures, actually did book ski trips to maintain legitimacy, but it was a dummy company Savich had funded through Volkmann in order to have rapid but unobtrusive transportation to the site. A private helicopter at Elyzovo would have drawn too much attention.

The woman behind the counter put away a Japanese fashion magazine when she saw him approach. Her smile was fake and perfunctory. He didn’t recognize her, and he certainly didn’t look like a thrill-seeking tourist.

“Welcome to Air Adventures,” she greeted in English.

“My name is Savich,” he grunted. “Where’s Pytor?”

Her eyes registered surprise, then fear, as she blanched. She vanished into a curtained-off section of the kiosk. A moment later, Savich’s pilot, Pytor Federov, stepped from around the curtain. He wore an olive drab flight suit and retained the cocky air he’d earned over the missile-filled skies of Afghanistan.

“Mr. Savich, good to see you. I assumed you’d go to your hotel for the night and we would fly out in the morning.”

“Hello, Pytor. No. I want to see this latest eruption for myself before it gets dark,” Savich replied in case anyone was paying attention.

“Say the word, and I’ll file a flight plan.”

“Consider it said.”

Forty minutes later they were a racing down a twisting valley. The rugged mountains flanking the Air Adventure’s MI-8 helicopter towered some eight thousand feet above them. Several peaks on the Kamchatka Peninsula topped fifteen thousand. The air was hazy with fine ash particles from the eruption farther north. Even with headphones it was difficult to speak in the forty-year-old chopper, so for the two hours it took to get to the site, Savich was content to let the landscape unfold around him.

He hadn’t drifted off to sleep, the helo was too loud, but his mind had gone so blank he was surprised when Federov tapped him and pointed ahead. He hadn’t been aware that they were about to arrive.

From above and at a distance, the area looked pristine except for the spreading brown stain that bloomed in the black waters of the Gulf of Shelekhov. A ring of containment booms had been strung along the coastline, but sediment from the workings drifted far beyond their reach. The reason the site looked so good was that much of it was hidden by acres of tarps strung atop metal poles. The tarps had been painted to look like snow, and the ash that had drifted onto the upper surface furthered the illusion. The ships had been beached and had also been camou-flaged, first with dirt and rock from the workings and then with more fabric coverings to break up their shapes.

The only sign of life for a hundred miles was the thin wisps of smoke that coiled from the ships’ funnels to provide heat and warm food for the workers.

Savich looked out to sea. A trawler was returning to the site, its wake a fat wedge, for she ran low under the weight of her catch.

With the ship’s bunkers full of fuel, fresh water available from a nearby glacial river, and food provided by a pair of trawlers, the site could remain self-sufficient for months, perhaps years. He was rightly proud of his accomplishment, but then he’d had half a lifetime to refine every detail.