Chapter Twenty-Five
Quinn sat down at her desk and ordered her thoughts.
She would first pursue the thing that had caused her brain to itch in the first place: Anatoly’s tattoo. Pen in hand, she sketched a crude outline of the double-headed battle axe on a yellow legal pad. She eyed her rendering and snorted. It would never be mistaken for a da Vinci.
Under the axe, she wrote the word Perun using both Latin and Cyrillic characters.
Next, she composed an email to Reem asking if there were any photos of the three men’s tattoos available for her to examine. In the U. S., tattoos could be photographed when a person was arrested and booked. She hoped the police in Russia had a similar procedure in place.
Email sent, she set off on a quest to learn more about Perun. Some sources indicated the storm god sported silver hair and a golden mustache. In addition to his axe, he was also associated with arrows of thunder and lightning, fire, eagles, horses and carts, and hammers. It came as no surprise to read that, like Thor’s hammer Mjölnir, Perun’s axe always returned to his hand after smiting evildoers.
The archeological evidence pointing toward an ancient cult of Perun grounded the mythology in real life. The ruins of a shrine to Perun had been discovered on the island of Peryn not far from Novgorod in the 1950s. It consisted of a circular ditch in the ground with eight round fire pits positioned at equidistant points corresponding to points on the compass. A tall oak idol was likely erected in the hole at the center of the circle. She copied the diagram of the site on her legal pad and jotted a note indicating the layout was similar to symbols of Perun called “thunder marks.” Ancient devotees had hewn such marks on wooden beams of their homes to protect them from lightning strikes.
While new bits of trivia about Perun were now and forever lodged in her brain, it still didn’t get her any closer to Borovsky. Her research path was blocked until she heard back from Reem, so she spent the next hour reviewing books for possible inclusion in the library’s collection.
Duty performed, she checked her email and whispered a quiet “yay” when Reem’s response included photos of the three men’s tattoos. Viktor’s and Yefimov’s had been taken at the time of their arrests. Anatoly’s tattoos had been documented posthumously.
Quinn studied each tattoo. Her disappointment at not finding Perun’s axe on Yefimov or Viktor was short-lived when she recognized a different tattoo on all three. It was the circular thunder mark she’d run across earlier.
They were linked to each other—and to Perun.
Were they modern-day devotees of an ancient Slavic god? Perhaps. Given their associations and occupations, it was more likely they were declaring loyalty to their crime syndicate and its boss, Konstantin Borovsky. Why Perun? Was Borovsky the modern-day devotee? Had he grown up hearing the stories of Perun’s exploits? Maybe he’d lived near Peryn at some point in his life. Maybe he still did. For all she knew, Borovsky was an egomaniac who considered himself akin to the supreme deity in the Slavic pantheon.
She pictured him as a burly, cape-wearing axe-wielder who lived in an underground lair alit by flaming torches.
Borovsky probably hadn’t achieved peak Bond villain status, but what if Perun was his “brand”? She searched the Russian State Registration Chamber to see if any foreign or domestic corporations included Perun or Peryn in their names.
A corporation with the generic-sounding name of Perun Industries popped up.
“Interesting,” she said to herself. She blew a soft raspberry when she noted corporate officer and director information would have to be requested in person. Half the people in the building she worked in could hack into the database, but triggering an international incident was not on the day’s agenda. She would be good and go through the channels. Someone from the Moscow station could make the request on her behalf.
She dropped her pursuit of corporate information for the time being and decided to tug at the yacht thread again. She went to the Cayman Islands shipping registry, where half of the world’s super yachts were registered.
There was no singular list of yacht names she could peruse, but there was an option of searching vessel name availability. If she typed in a name and it wasn’t available, that meant there was a boat with that name. Grabbing her pen again, she wrote a list of twenty names with Perun in them, including Perun’s Axe, Perun’s Hammer, and Thunder of Perun.
She worked through the list and came up empty. Frustrated, she chucked her pen at the notepad. Her quest really was quixotic. The rational part of her brain told her to stop. Their best chance of drawing Borovsky out was with Ziegler’s drug. Finding out the name of his yacht wouldn’t be a bad thing, but it wasn’t mission critical.
But the bloodhound librarian in her wouldn’t let go that easily. She reviewed her notes and made another list. When it was exhausted, she’d call it a day.
Name after name came back available.
Until one didn’t.
Her eyebrows knotted as she stared at the screen. What just happened? Had she made a mistake? She typed Perun’s Chariot again. The response came back as it had before: unavailable.
She tried not to get too excited. Her finding was based on supposition. She had exactly zero proof that a vessel called Perun’s Chariot registered in the Cayman Islands had any connection to Borovsky whatsoever. That wasn’t going to stop her from presenting everything she’d uncovered to Aldous Meyers. If he believed it actionable, he could coordinate with various international maritime agencies and track down Perun’s Chariot. There might even be a satellite or two involved in the hunt.
She typed up a report and attached it along with the tattoo photos to an email to Meyers. Her empty stomach rumbled as she clicked send. She checked her watch and was surprised at how late it was. No wonder she was starving.
James had to be waiting for her in his office. Quinn locked her computer, secured her work papers in her desk, and snatched her bag from a drawer. She bid good night to her coworkers and swept out the library door.
She spotted James halfway down the hall. His eyes lit up when he saw her. “Hey. I was just on my way to see if I could drag you away from your research. I’m hungry and it’s your turn to make dinner.”
When they met, he turned around and walked with her. She looked up at him, side-eyed. “The thrill is already gone, huh? All I am to you now is a cook?”
He heaved a faux sigh of resignation. “It was bound to happen.”
She lowered her voice and said, “And here I was planning on making fajitas wearing nothing but an apron and a smile.”
Her hand shot out and grabbed his arm when he stumbled. Once he was steady again, he gave her a dumbfounded look. “You’re pure evil, you know that, right?”
The expression she wore was the picture of innocence. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Uh-huh.” He gazed down at her. “I know what you’re up to. You’re trying to distract me. We get home and, you know”—he waved his hands around—“do stuff. The next thing we know, it’s too late for you to cook and we’re ordering takeout.”
Alone in front of the elevators, Quinn pressed the down button. “Would eating Chinese naked in bed together be such a bad thing?”
His eyes crossed a little. “No. Not a bad thing. At all. Ever.”
“So my plan worked.”
His enthusiastic grin was infectious.
“Absolutely.”