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  PRAISE FOR DANA STABENOW AND THE KATE SHUGAK NOVELS

  “Dana Stabenow keeps getting better.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Alaska’s rough-and-tumble history fascinates, and Shugak is an eloquent voice for Native Alaskan concerns in changing times.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Stabenow plumbs new depths.”

  —Mystery

  “These Kate Shugak mysteries are seriously addictive. It is hard to put them down once you start.”

  —Fairbanks Daily News

  “Alaska’s finest mystery writer.”

  —Anchorage Daily News

  “In powerful prose, Stabenow evokes Alaska’s rugged physical splendors and the toll taken on the humans who live there.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Kate Shugak is something of a tribal legend-in-the-making.”

  —Rocky Moutain News

  “Stabenow is completely at ease with her detective and her environment. The Alaskan wilderness is as much a character as any of the realistic, down-to-earth folks who people her novels.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “Stabenow’s…books are always welcome for their Alaskan scenes and their true-to-life characters.”

  —Rocky Moutain News

  “If you haven’t discovered this splendid North Country series, now is the time…. Highly entertaining.”

  —USA Today on Hunter’s Moon

  “Stabenow handles her evergreen story with a wit and urgency that make it as fresh and exhilerating as the Alaskan wilderness. Part whodunit, part actioner, part thriller, all of it a new gold standard for Kate’s nine cases.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review on Hunter’s Moon)

  “Dana Stabenow’s plot is taut and the suspense gripping. As always, in this superb series, the Alaskan wilderness, with its beauties and perils, is both setting and character.”

  —Romantic Times on Hunter’s Moon

  DON’T MISS THESE OTHER NOVELS BY DANA STABENOW

  Blindfold Game

  A Taint in the Blood

  A Fine and Bitter Snow

  The Singing of the Dead

  A Grave Denied

  AVAILABLE FROM ST. MARTIN’S PAPERBACKS

  MIDNIGHT COME AGAIN

  DANA STABENOW

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  FOR JEANNIE DELAVERN STABENOW—

  THANKS FOR LOVING DAD

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  PROLOGUE

  ST. PETERSBURG, MARCH 25

  The elegant columns and fabulous spires of the old city seemed to float in the pale gold light of the soft spring dawn, adrift on a sea of morning mist.

  And why not, thought Kiril Davidovitch, bouncing in his seat as the armored truck lurched through yet another pothole. With Lake Ladoga to the northeast and the Gulf of Finland to the southwest and the Neva River and its many tributaries between, the buildings designed with such grace and style by Peter the Great’s imported French and Italian architects almost three centuries before were in perfect position to set sail at the first high tide.

  He propounded this thought to the truck’s driver. The burly man with the bushy eyebrows deepened his scowl, shifted down to take the bridge over the Kanal Griboyrdova and growled, “Good. Ship the whole goddamn place across the Atlantic and let the Americans buy it. They’ll buy anything, even,” he sneered, “St. Petersburg.”

  Fyodor still resented the return to Leningrad’s original name. It was an insult, to the state, to Communism and to Lenin himself, that poor mummified bastard. He’d roll over in his glass casket if he knew.

  After seven months of riding next to him, Kiril was aware of Fyodor Chirikov’s deep resentment over the fall of Communism in Mother Russia. That fall had, in Fyodor’s view, led directly to the loss of his subsidized apartment in the Nevsky Prospekt, which in turn compelled him to take his present job with Security Services, Inc., one of the new companies springing up like weeds all across the new nation, half of which were fronts for what Bobbie Batista had taken to calling the Russian Mafia.

  Kiril loved Bobbie Batista. He loved CNN, and the ten-second clips of pictures showing him life in the West. One day he hoped to travel there, and perhaps convey his respects to Ms. Batista in person.

  Just past the Gostiny Dvor Department Store Fyodor swerved the truck around a shabby orange barricade with “Detour!” marked in large, hand-painted letters. Kiril didn’t flinch. Nobody obeyed street signs in the city. They had a nasty habit of having been set there by thieves who had the intention of separating you from your vehicle and putting it up for sale in pieces in the city marketplace a kilometer away.

  Fyodor spoke Kiril’s thoughts out loud. “Lousy thieves. Stalin would have known how to deal with them.”

  Kiril was more tolerant. What could you expect? The only people who had any knowledge of a free market were the crooks who had been running the ubiquitous and extremely profitable black market since before Lenin was elected. It was natural that the crooks would step in to fill the gaps in supply and demand, in production and distribution.

  He, Kiril, was content to wear a stiff blue uniform and ride shotgun, like John Wayne in Stagecoach, to earn enough to buy black bread and sausages and the occasional bottle of vodka. It was also enough to pay for his own bedroom in a shared flat, to which more often than not he could entice a girl to share his bed. His bed was his most prized possession; a four-poster relic of a more gracious (Fyodor would say degenerate) age, with a marvelously carved headboard and box springs, and a mattress and linens he had cheerfully beggared himself to buy.

  Which reminded him of the little cashier in the black sedan in front of them. She was pretty, with smooth skin, velvety brown eyes and little breasts like apples pushing up the front of her suit jacket. It had been cold outside the bank that morning as they stood waiting for the branch manager to unlock the door. The little cashier had had no coat on, and the rough wool fabric over her breasts had peaked where her nipples had hardened. He would have liked to have slipped a hand beneath that jacket to see if those breasts were as firm as they looked. She had caught his appreciative glance and her smooth skin had flushed a delicate pink, the color of the dawn sky above, but she hadn’t looked angry and she hadn’t looked away.

  The neat blond head was framed now in the rear window of the sedan, and he imagined that she could feel the weight of his gaze, enough so that he wasn’t surprised when she turned to flash him a shy smile. The truck’s windshield was masked with plate steel, leaving only a narrow horizontal slit through which to see and be seen, but Kiril knew she smiled at him. The branch manager next to her must have thought so, too, and must not have liked it, because he snapped something that had her obediently facing forward again. Strands of blond hair cupped her collar in a neat, shining line. Kiril imagined running his fingers through t
hat hair, imagined the little cashier rubbing her head against his palm like a cat, purring like a cat, too. She would purr, he was sure of it. He couldn’t wait to find out if he was right. That night, perhaps.

  Fyodor observed all this with a sour expression. “The Romeo of the Rentacops strikes again.”

  Kiril grinned and gave a modest shrug. “What can I say? The ladies, they love me.”

  Fyodor grunted. The heavy truck bounced again as they ran over another, deeper pothole.

  “Whoa there, pardner,” Kiril said in his best Duke impression, and grabbed hold of the armrest to keep from rolling into Fyodor’s lap. “Watch it. Don’t want to upset all those rubles riding around in back.”

  Fyodor grunted again, disdainfully this time. He didn’t approve of money, or currency transfers, or banks either, for that matter. Property, all property, should be held in common, by all citizens. Profit, especially profit earned by lending money at extortionate rates to those who knew no better, was an abomination.

  Still, it wouldn’t do to lose their escort entirely. The truck slowed almost to a halt. “Can you see the soldiers?”

  Kiril bent down to peer into the rearview mirror. He laughed. “Yes. One fell off the outside of the troop truck. They’ve stopped to wait for him to catch up.”

  Fyodor swore and double-clutched into second. The gears crashed together and the armored truck began to jerk forward.

  Kiril braced both hands against the dash and tried to keep his spine from snapping off at the neck. “What are you doing,” he said, dutiful but not really alarmed. It was only Fyodor, rebelling against the new world order on schedule. “You know the rules, we wait for the soldiers.”

  “Fuck their mothers,” Fyodor said, and broke another rule by opening the door to spit contemptuously. The door crashed shut again and they roared over the Nevsky Prospekt bridge, only to be brought to an abrupt halt on the other side when Fyodor cursed and slammed on the brakes.

  Kiril’s hat fell over his eyes and the knuckles of one hand hurt where it had slipped and hit the dash. He swore a few times himself and shoved his hat back on his head.

  The square was teeming with soldiers, commanded by a tall, broad-shouldered captain in a pristine uniform with knife-sharp creases down the legs of his pants and red tabs on his epaulets. He strode toward them, an expression of sharp annoyance in his hard blue eyes. His cheekbones were high and flat in a narrow face and his mouth was a wide pair of thin lips pressed together in an uncompromising line. Kiril, who had served thirteen hellish months in Chechnya before the pullout, recognized at a glance the look of a professional officer, one who got the job done and never bothered before the fact to count the cost in soldiers’ lives. No matter what the situation was, no matter what Fyodor said, they were going to wind up in the wrong, Kiril thought glumly, and cast an anxious look at the sedan in front of them. The little blond cashier had twisted around in her seat and was watching the officer approach the truck. He hoped that wasn’t admiration he saw in her eyes.

  The army officer arrived at Fyodor’s door and thumped it with an imperious fist. Without much hope Kiril said, “Don’t open it, Fyodor, you know it’s against the rules.” Fyodor ignored him and opened it anyway, and Kiril gave up and sat back with a sigh.

  “Captain Kakhovka,” the officer said. “Fifth Battalion, assigned to assist the St. Petersburg militia in keeping the peace.”

  And not liking the situation, Kiril thought. The captain would rather be in Chechnya, slaughtering civilian rebels and having his own troops slaughtered in turn.

  “What’s the problem, captain?” Fyodor said.

  The captain, still tight-lipped, said, “There were reports of violence in front of the General Staff Building this morning, a workers’ demonstration gone bad.”

  Fyodor’s lip curled. “Another one?”

  The captain gave a curt nod, his field cap squared just so on his brow. “We’ve had information that some had weapons. You should have stopped at the barricade.”

  Fyodor spread his hands. “What barricade, Captain? There was no barricade.” He looked at Kiril for conformation.

  Kiril opened his big brown eyes as far as they would go. “No, no barricade.”

  Captain Kakhovka looked skeptical. Kiril didn’t blame him. “You’ll have to go around. We’ve rerouted the traffic down Plekhanova.”

  Indeed, the black sedan was already turning. The little blonde was still twisted around in her seat, wide curious eyes on the truck.

  Fyodor muttered a curse and slammed the door to put the truck in gear again and jerk forward in pursuit of the sedan. In the rearview mirror Kiril noticed the captain waving the truck filled with soldiers to a halt, and that the soldier who had fallen off the truck into the pothole almost fell off again. He laughed.

  “What?” Fyodor said grumpily, and, when Kiril relayed the news, grumbled, “We’ll have to go all the way down to Gorokhovaya, maybe even Antonenko.”

  Plekhanova was a narrow street lined with tall, thin buildings blocking out the morning sun. Its surface was even rougher than Nevsky, and the noise the steel plates of the truck made as they rumbled down it precluded any conversation. Fortunately there was hardly any traffic, Kiril thought, because between the narrowness of the street, the width of the truck and Fyodor’s sunny disposition, oncoming vehicles would have been at severe risk of winding up in someone’s parlor.

  They came upon an intersection with another, smaller street with no street sign and were there halted by yet another soldier. “What now?” Fyodor grumbled.

  The soldier was carrying an automatic rifle over one shoulder. He waved at them, indicating an even tinier street to their right. The black sedan obediently turned down it.

  “What the hell?” Fyodor said. “This isn’t the way to Gorokhovaya.” The soldier looked stern and waved again, and Fyodor swore and jammed the truck into gear. “Goddamn military. Fuck all their mothers. We are never going to get our lunch.”

  This street was if possible even narrower than the previous one, the houses smaller and leaning up against one another like they could use the support. They weren’t fifty feet down it when the taillights of the black sedan flashed six feet off their front bumper. This time Kiril had himself braced against the dash before Fyodor stamped on the brake.

  Another soldier was standing in front of the sedan. He, too, was armed with an automatic rifle. An older-model Kalishnikov, Kiril had just enough time to see, before, in a single, practiced motion the soldier had the muzzle trained on the black sedan.

  “What the hell?” Fyodor said, startled out of his sulk.

  Time seemed to slow down, enough for Kiril to notice the total lack of expression on the soldier’s face as the rifle went off with a stuttering clatter, shattering the glass of the sedan’s windshield. The branch manager’s shoulders jerked once and went still. Half of the little clerk’s blond head separated from the other half and flew back to smear against the rear window. The perfect little body seemed to relax back against her seat, as if she had decided to take a nap.

  “No!” Kiril yelled and opened his door.

  “Don’t! Keep the door closed!” Fyodor shouted.

  “No!” Kiril yelled again, already half out of his seat when he heard the quiet burping of automatic-rifle fire and felt a bullet slam into his right side. He bounced off the door, spun around and fell clumsily to the street, face down, his cheek pressed against the damp, patched tarmac, his outflung hands grasping at the cobblestones, the light layer of frost dissolving at his touch.

  From a great distance he heard what sounded like a lot of firecrackers going off all at once. They weren’t firecrackers, though; he knew that sound all too well. All he could think of was the smear of red against the rear windshield of the black sedan, all that was left of the little cashier’s head. “No,” he whispered, and tried to pull himself up. His arms and legs would not obey. The right side of his chest was warm, the warm area growing larger the longer he lay there.

 
; A foot clad in highly polished army boots stepped over him. “What the hell?” he heard Fyodor say again, just before the shot that killed him.

  “Set the charge,” a familiar voice snapped. It was the officer with the blue eyes, Kiril thought. He remembered the coldness in those eyes, and with the small remnant of reason left to him concentrated on not being obvious about breathing.

  A few minutes later there was a loud Crump! The truck rocked forward, the right rear wheel almost rolling over his arm. The two rear doors fell into the street with loud clangs that reverberated painfully inside Kiril’s head.

  “All right, bring up the truck.”

  There was the sound of an engine approaching. Tires rolled into Kiril’s view. Feet clad in bright red Reebok sneakers thudded to the pavement next to the driver’s door. Kiril heard more doors slam and more footsteps. Someone gave an excited laugh.

  “The soldiers?” the first voice said.

  “No problem,” a second voice said cheerfully.

  “All right. Come on, get it out, all of it. Let’s get going before the real militia show up.”

  There was another laugh. “Aren’t they getting their share?”

  “This time it’s all ours.”

  “America, land of the free, home of the brave, here we come!”

  “Come on, move it!”

  There was a flurry of furious activity between the back of the armored truck and the new vehicle. It lasted about ten minutes. For every minute Kiril lived a year. His side was beginning to hurt, but he knew enough to make no sound. He had not survived Chechnyan rebels to die at home, on a street in St. Petersburg not a mile from his apartment. He thought about the carving on the head of his bed. He thought about the little blond clerk lying beneath it, smiling and holding out her arms, before half her face slid off. A scream fought its way up his throat. He held on to it, repressing the fine trembling that had begun in his legs.