Spartan Gold

“Right.” She lifted the nearest seat cushion and dug around until she found a rag, which Sam pressed to his wounds. Remi gestured tentatively toward the water. Is he . . .”

“Gone. He didn’t give me much choice.” Sam sat up, rolled onto his knees, and stripped off his Windbreaker and sweatshirt. “Wait, the gun . . .”

“Already got it. Here.” She handed him the revolver, then settled into the driver’s seat as Sam untied the bow line. Remi turned the ignition and the engine rumbled to life. “Hold tight.” She shoved the throttle to its stops and the speedboat surged through the doors.

“Look for an emergency kit,” Remi said. “Maybe there’s one of those space blankets.”

Sam checked beneath each seat cushion until he found a large tackle box. Inside, as Remi had predicted, he found a rolled-up silver Mylar sheet. He unrolled it, draped it around him, then settled into the passenger seat.

Later Sam wouldn’t remember hearing the sound of the other engine over the roar of their own—only seeing the white wedge of the speedboat’s bow emerging from the mist to his left and the orange firefly winks of Kholkov’s gun.

“Remi, hard right!”

To her credit, Remi reacted instantly and without question, spi

From the floorboards, Sam asked, “Remi, you okay?”

“Yeah, I think so. You?”

“Yes. Turn hard left, go for five seconds, then shut off the engine.”

Again Remi asked no questions and did as Sam asked. She throttled down, shut off the ignition, and the boat glided through the water until finally stopping. They sat in silence, the boat gently rocking from side to side.

Sam whispered, “He’ll circle back. He’ll assume we kept going in the same direction for a while.”

“How do you know?”

“Natural instinct to panic and run directly away from him.”

“How many bullets do we have in that thing?”

Sam pulled the revolver from his belt. It was a five-shot Smith & Wesson .38. “Two gone, three left. When we hear him off to our right, head left toward the shoreline. Go as fast as you can for thirty seconds, then throttle down again.”

“Another hunch?”

Sam nodded. “That we’ll run straight for Schönau.”

“We’ll have to eventually. It’s either that or we hike for three days through the mountains in this snowstorm.”

Sam smiled. “Or plan C. I’ll explain later. Shhh. You hear that?”

Moving from left to right off their bow came the sound of an engine. After a few moments the pitch changed, echoing off the shoreline.

“Go!” Sam rasped.

Remi started the engine, jammed the throttle forward, and swung the boat to port. They drove for a count of thirty, then throttled back down and coasted to a stop. It was silent save the lapping of waves on the boat’s hull. The wind had slackened to an almost dead calm; fat snowflakes began piling up on the gunwales and seats.

“What’s he doing?” Remi whispered.

“Same thing we are. Listening. Waiting.”

“How do you know?”

“He’s a soldier; he’s thinking like one.”

Directly astern, perhaps two hundred yards distant, they heard an engine revving. Remi’s hand moved to the throttle. Sam said, “Not yet.”

“He’s close, Sam.”

“Wait.”

Kholkov’s engine kept coming, closing the distance. Sam pointed astern and to their left, then held his index finger to his lips. Barely visible through the falling snow, a ghostly, elongated shape glided past. They could see a man-shaped silhouette standing behind the wheel. Kholkov’s head pivoted left and right. Sam raised the revolver and took aim, tracking the boat until it faded from view. After ten seconds Remi let out a breath and said, “I can’t believe he missed us.”

“He didn’t. It was barely noticeable, a little pause when he turned this way, but he saw us. He’ll double back now. Reverse engines. Take us backward—slowly. Quiet as you can.”

Remi did so. After they’d covered fifty feet Sam whispered, “Slow ahead. Angle us back toward shore.” He grabbed the eight-foot boat hook from its mount below the gunwale and peered through the mist. To their left he heard water lapping on rocks. “Okay, shut it down,” he told Remi. “Ease right.”

She did so.

Silence.

Off the beam the fuzzy, conical outline of a pine tree appeared, then another. Branches stretched out toward them like skeletal fingers. Sam snagged a larger limb with the boat hook, dragged them to a stop, and hauled until the hull bumped against the bank. The snow-laden boughs formed a canopy over their heads, drooping to within a foot of the lake’s surface. Sam knelt beside the gunwale and peeked through the branches. Remi joined him.

From ahead and to the right came the revving of an engine. After ten seconds it stopped. A moment later, their boat started wallowing as Kholkov’s bow wake reached them.

“Any second now,” Sam whispered. “Be ready to move.”

As if on cue, forty feet away Kholkov’s boat drifted past, heading back toward the church docks. His engine was gurgling softly, just above idle. Then he was gone, lost in the snow.

“He didn’t see us,” Remi whispered.

“Not this time. Okay, let’s move. Follow him. Five seconds of low throttle, ten seconds of glide.”

Remi got back into the driver’s seat and they pulled out from under the boughs, came about, and fell into Kholkov’s wake.

For the next twenty minutes they continued their glide-and-throttle headway, always keeping Kholkov’s engine noise directly on their bow, going silent when he did, moving only when his engine resumed. Their progress was slow, covering less than fifty feet at a time. Saint Bartholomae’s docks drifted by on their right, the red-roofed onion domes seemingly floating in midair.

Directly off their bow Kholkov’s engine spooled up and began arcing away to the left. Sam gestured for Remi to ease right, back toward shore. “Slow and easy.” Kholkov’s engine noise was moving toward the center of the lake.

“Cut the engines,” Sam whispered, and Remi did so.

“He thinks we’re hiding out or heading back to Schönau, doesn’t he?” she asked.

Sam nodded. “He’ll set up an ambush somewhere to the north. Unfortunately for him, we’re not going to play his game.”

The minutes slipped by. Five turned into ten, then into twenty. Finally Sam said, “Okay, let’s keep going. Follow the shoreline south. Keep it just above an idle.”

“Something tells me that warm brandy is going to have to wait.”

“Would you settle for a roof over your head and a cozy campfire?”

CHAPTER 51

HOTEL SCHÖNE AUSSICHT GRÖSSINGER, SALZBURG

Message from Evelyn Torres,” Remi said, sitting down on the king-sized bed and kicking off her shoes. “Just a ‘call me.’ She sounded excited, though. She lives for this stuff.”

“First that brandy I promised you, then Evelyn,” Sam said.

“We’re going to need clothes and essentials.”

“Brandy, Evelyn, sleep, then shopping.”

Since eluding Kholkov on the Königssee, they’d been awake and on the move for over twenty-eight hours. Heading south along the shoreline at a snail’s pace, they reached the Obersee’s Salet docks an hour later and disembarked. Sam opened the boat’s scuttle cock, waited until a foot of water was sloshing on the deck, then pointed the bow toward the center of the lake and eased the throttle forward a notch. It disappeared into the snow.