Head Of The Snake. G. Rehder

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      Chapter 10

      Mariya Kamanev’s cell phone buzzed. She looked at the screen. Klopov’s name appeared. She turned the phone so Viktor could see it.

      “Should I answer?”

      “Da!” Viktor said. “Remember the plan.”

      “Matvej, where are you?” she asked when she answered.

      “Moscow, I am back. I can’t reach Bogdan. Is he with you?”

      “Nyet,”

      “I am worried. He always answers his phone,” Klopov said.

      “I am worried too. Viktor is not back. Now Bogdan is missing. I feel something is wrong. I have left my apartment in Moscow, just temporary for now. I don’t feel safe with these mysteries, Viktor and Bogdan, not hearing from them.”

      “So, Mariya, where are you?”

      Mariya hesitated on purpose before answering. She wanted Klopov to think she was reluctantly letting him in on where she was.

      “Can I tell you in confidence?” she asked. “We have trusted each other in the past. We need to do that now more than ever, da? Matvej?”

      “Da, da! You have my word.”

      “I am at Pleshcheyevo Lake, at my dacha, can you come here, meet with me so we can make plans in case things have gone wrong?”

      “Da, I can be there in three hours. I have to get fuel. Should I bring a go bag and weapons?”

      “Da, Matvej, and make sure you are not followed. Take longer if you feel you are being tailed. I am not going anywhere.”

      “I will see you soon, Mariya.”

      Pleshcheyevo Lake is located in the Ozero National Park and Yaroslavi Oblast about 150 kilometers from Moscow, once a summer home to the Czars, now a tourist destination. Mariya purchased her dacha from an old woman from a once royal bloodline.

      Her family had miraculously held onto the property during the revolution. The price paid for keeping this dacha in her family was not something that the aged Faina Plotnikov wanted to talk about. But old rumors in the village of Pereslavl indicated that some family members were eager to turn over the names of other family members who were still supportive of the Czar.

      With these revelations, the new revolutionary regime we’re provided with “traitors” to execute and given the opportunity to make examples of those who supported the old way. In turn, the rest of the Plotnikov family and their property were left alone.

      The dacha Mariya occupied had six bedrooms and three updated bathrooms, a formal dining area, a large kitchen, and a huge great room with an enormous rock fireplace. She had a private study and a large basement. There were several secret tunnels leading out of the basement. They ran hundreds of feet out from the dacha and exited in the deep forest that surrounded the five-acre estate.

      She had walled off the tunnels about twenty feet out and took pride in the wine cellars she had created in the stone passages. When the outside January temperatures would dip to eleven degrees Fahrenheit, her cellar stayed at a consistent forty-two degrees, a great temperature for the dessert wines she loved to collect.

      The basement also had a very large coal burning furnace located in a far corner. She planned on updating the heating system as more illicit money rolled in.

      In October, it generally did not get colder that thirty-four degrees. Tonight, she had a large fire going in the great room, thanks to Viktor. He would rather deal with firewood than shovel dirty coal in the basement.