"But you found her now," Rhun said. "How?"

"She called to me," Rasputin said. "Once I left the Sanguinists and embraced my true nature, blasphemare began to seek me out."

"Abominations seeking kinship." Rhun sounded bitter.

"We are what we are, Rhun. Accepting your fate instead of fighting it grants you more power than you can imagine."

"I do not seek power. I seek grace."

Rasputin chuckled. "And, in all these centuries of striving, have you found it yet? Perhaps the grace you seek is within your heart, not within the walls of a church."

Rhun clamped his jaw closed tightly.

No one spoke for several minutes. They hurried along. The only sounds were the crunch of shoes against foul ice.

They passed several other tunnels leading off in both directions, also ladders leading up and down to other levels. Erin usually had a good sense of direction underground, but she would never be able to find the church again. Jordan seemed to be counting, so she hoped he had a better sense of where they were.

Finally, Rasputin stopped and mounted a metal ladder. Erin shone her light up, but couldn't see the end.

"Up we go," Jordan said, craning his neck. "Is it too much to hope that this takes us to a Starbucks?"

In short order, they all mounted the rungs and climbed.

The ladder emptied out into a clean concrete room. Erin was glad to leave the stench far below. She took a deep breath of the fresher air, clearing her lungs. The only feature in the small space was a gray metal box on one wall connected to cables running into the ceiling.

Rasputin ignored it and crossed to a gunmetal-gray door. He used a huge old-fashioned key to unlock it and led them into another room. Another door blocked the way from here, this time guarded by a modern keypad on the wall. His fingers darted across the keys, entering digits so quickly that Erin could not keep track.

The thick steel door, like a bank vault, trundled open.

Rasputin crossed gingerly over the threshold and waved them all into a darkened corridor with ocher walls. Other hallways branched off in many directions. It felt like stepping into a giant labyrinth.

Rasputin's pace hurried from there. Soon even Jordan gave up counting as they delved deeper into the maze.

After another ten minutes of traversing halls, climbing short staircases, and crossing dusty rooms, Rasputin stopped before an unremarkable wooden door with a black glass doorknob. It looked no different from a hundred others that they had passed.

Rasputin pulled free a massive key ring out of the folds of his robes. He fumbled through what must have been fifty keys before finally selecting one.

As he inserted the key, Rhun stationed himself between Erin and Rasputin. Jordan stood on her other side. The congregants from the Russian church stood in a semicircle behind them.

Rasputin twisted the key with a tired creak and pushed open the door. "Come!"

They followed him into a shadowy room that smelled of rust and mildew. Erin's throat itched, drawing a cough out of her. She wondered how long it had been since the room had been aired out. The scientist in her wanted to ask for a dust mask.

A few steps away, Rasputin pulled a string attached to a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Dim flickering light fell on piles of junk stacked against the walls. It looked like a hoarder's living room.

"Here we are!" Rasputin turned to his followers. "Wait outside. I think we are already too many for this space."

"Where are we?" Jordan asked as the lightbulb buzzed overhead.

"We are beneath the Hermitage," Rasputin said. "One of the largest and oldest art museums in the world."

Jordan glanced around the crowded room. "It doesn't look like much."

"These are the museum's storage areas," Rasputin said with a glare. "Above, the actual museum is quite lovely."

Erin felt a twinge of professional irritation. Like most academics, she had heard of the sorry state of the Hermitage's long-buried and decaying collection, but never had she imagined it would be this neglected. As she stepped forward, mice erupted from a pile of mildewed quilts.

She stumbled back, aghast. "This is where and how the museum stores its extra collections?"

Rasputin merely shrugged, as if to say, What is history to someone who has lived centuries?

She wiped her hands on her jeans and looked around in dismay. A framed picture leaning against the wall behind the quilts looked like an original Durer woodcut of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The priceless woodcut had been tossed in haphazardly with broken tools and old rotting tapestries. Overhead, a black bloom of mold stained the roof, marking an old leak.

"This can't be the right place," she insisted.

Rasputin chuckled and nudged Rhun good-naturedly. "She is endearing, isn't she? This Woman of Learning of yours."

Rhun simply turned to Jordan. "You should try the detector in here."

As Jordan set about booting up the explosives sniffer, Erin refused to let it go. "Why has none of this been cataloged?"

Rasputin pulled what looked like a dirty dishcloth off a sculpture, like someone rummaging through a garage sale.

"Careful!" Erin touched the top of the exposed sculpture's downturned head, ran a finger along an extended leg. "This is a Rodin. A dancer. It's priceless."

"Likely," Rasputin agreed. The monk moved to a stack of leather-bound books, picking through them. Scraps of paper fluttered out of his hands to the ground.

Erin closed her eyes. She couldn't watch, and she hated to think of the damage that had been done to the artifacts in the museum and to the historical record.

Rhun sifted through a crate. "Why do you believe this is the right room, Grigori?"

"The date." Rasputin fingered a yellowed card affixed to the wall by a rusty nail. "This is one of the rooms where Russian forces, those returning in late May, warehoused the treasures plundered from Europe."

"How many other rooms are there?" Jordan had finally booted up his detector and swept it from side to side.

"Several," Rasputin said.

A piece of plaster fell from the ceiling, narrowly missing Erin's head.

"Are they all this disorganized?" Her head throbbed in time to the flickering bulb.

"Many are worse."

Sighing in defeat, she joined Rhun in his search.

It took them an hour to go through the first nest of rooms. Rasputin's minions did not help. They stood out in the corridor and smoked. Smoking wasn't doing the artifacts any favors either, but Erin supposed it was just another grain of sand in the hourglass marking the inevitable decay of these treasures.

Rasputin remained as gratingly cheerful as ever.

"One down, but more to come!" he announced, and led them down a damp corridor.

The next room, like the first, was crammed to the ceiling with a mishmash of useless and priceless objects, but here there was at least a theme-a martial or military one. Erin stared across the panoply of old Russian flags, piles of helmets, bayonets stacked up like cordwood, and what looked like a giant propeller stretching across the room.

The space was cavernous. They could search a lifetime in just this one room and never find something as small as a book.

Then Jordan's machine beeped.

51.

October 27, 7:18 P.M., MST The Hermitage, Russia Jordan whooped with delight.

Now we can get down to business-and soon, hopefully, get the hell out of here.

"Is the book here?" Erin hurried to his side, looking over his shoulder. Her breath brushed the back of his neck.

He had to step away. "Maybe. I don't know. But at least it's a positive reading. Something with a chemical signature equivalent to Nobel 808 is close. That's what I picked up on that chunk of rock in your pocket."

He swung the detector from side to side, almost bumping her. The sniffer led him to a tattered tapestry. He lifted it and it disintegrated under his finger, tearing apart with a quiet sigh.

This time Erin didn't scold him. She stuck close to his side.

Jordan stepped past the tapestry, following each beep of the detector deeper into the room. It led him toward the giant propeller that rested atop a wooden crate in the center of the room.

"I think that's from a MiG-3," he said, stroking a hand along the smooth metal. "Only a few thousand were ever made, but they kicked butt in dogfights on the eastern front."

"Is that what's setting off your detector?" she asked.

"Noooo ..." He slowly knelt, pointing the tip of the device forward. "Whatever is triggering the detector is underneath the propeller. Probably in that crate."

"We will move the propeller," Rhun said, nodding to Rasputin.

Jordan glanced over his shoulder at the other men. It would normally take six or seven guys to lift this steel monstrosity. But then again, there was nothing normal about the pair.

The two men crossed to either side of the giant propeller, each shouldering himself under one of the steel blades. At a silent signal, they both straightened, lifting the massive hunk of aeronautics with a groan of metal. From the strain on their faces, the weight was taxing even their strength.

Jordan wiggled under the blades, trusting them not to drop it on his head. He reached the exposed crate and stared into its straw-filled depths. His heart thudded into his throat.

Oh, God ...

"Anything?" Erin called.

To either side of him, Rhun and Rasputin struggled with the sheer mass of steel. Overhead, the propeller began to shake in their weakening grips.

"Freeze!" Jordan yelled. "Nobody move!"

7:22 P.M.

Hearing the panic in the soldier's heart as much as in his words, Rhun went dead still, as did Grigori. A fleeting fear passed through him with razored wings, cutting through his resolve: had the propeller crushed the book?

"What is it?" Erin asked. "Should I help you?"

"No!" The salty scent of fear wafted from him. "Stay where you are. And I mean everybody. Or we'll all die."

The soldier crawled backward away from the wall, his heart skittering.

Rhun waited, the propeller growing heavier in his hands.

Grigori gave him a mischievous grin. "Here we are, working side by side, one step from death, my droog. Just as in the olden days."

Jordan slowly rose to his feet. "You can't put the propeller back down. There's an unexploded ordnance stored in that crate. The detector did what it was designed for. Unfortunately, it found a bomb, not a book."

"Are you sure it's a bomb?" Erin asked.

"It's a Soviet antitank missile. And yes, I'm sure."

As always, Erin kept arguing. "Maybe the book is under the missile-"

"If it is, I'm not getting it out." Jordan pointed to the hall. "Sorry, guys, but I think you're going to have to take that to the far side of the room. If so much as a pound of weight presses on that missile, we're all dead."

"Did you hear that, Rhun? We must be cautious." Grigori gave a carefree laugh.

The sound took Rhun back decades. Grigori had been the most foolhardy member of the trio, unconcerned about the prospect of death-not for himself, not for others. His blithe bravery had saved Rhun's life many times, but it had also endangered it.

"Should the two of you evacuate before we attempt to move it?" Rhun asked.

"It wouldn't help," Jordan said. "If that missile goes off, it'll take out the building and half a city block around it."

Erin's heart sped up.

"I suggest everyone make their peace with God, then." Grigori's lips curved into a familiar half smile. "On three, Rhun?"

Together they lifted the propeller higher and inched toward the back of the room. Jordan and Erin ducked under the blades and helped clear the path for the others' burdened legs.

Once he was far enough away, Jordan waved them to lower the propeller to a mound of crates near the back of the space.

"What if there are bombs in these crates, too?" Rhun asked, his voice strained by the sheer weight of the engine blades.

Jordan swore, and Erin's face paled.

"Life is always a risk." Grigori began lowering his end. "I see no point in perishing while holding this."