Page 117 of Backtrack

Cutter pulled one of the small dinette chairs closer and took the piece of yellow cedar from the pocket of his fleece.

“Mind if I work on this carving while we talk?” he asked. “It helps me think.”

Polina gave a wan smile, hands clasped in her lap. “This is your cabin, sir.”

Lola came back with the manila case folder and plunked the sketch of the mysterious brand on the table. She took a seat on the couch beside Polina.

“You were saying at the restaurant that this isn’t a wolf?”

Instead of answering directly, Polina took a deep breath and said, “Do you know ofOprichniki?”

Lola shook her head.

Cutter stopped carving and looked up. “Oprichniki,” he said, trying out the word. It sounded familiar.

“Some called them theCromeshnina—the selected. The handpicked guard of Ivan the Terrible. There are those in the old Soviet Union who believed the KGB’s goon squad were the modern embodiment of these enforcers. The KGB did nothing to suggest otherwise.”

“So, the brand,” Lola said, pointing to the drawing. “What is it, then?”

“A dog and a broom,” Polina said.

Cutter glanced up from his carving.

Lola frowned.

“What?”

“Oprichnik swore a solemn oath on the Cross to sniff out any hint of rebellion against the tsar. Their commission was to sweep it away, blood and bone. They were said to have dressed in long black robes and ridden black horses with a severed dog’s head and a broom tied to the saddle.”

“A severed dog’s head,” Lola mused. “I’ll take the grossest thing you could think of for three hundred, Alex …”

Polina furrowed her brow, missing theJeopardy!reference.

“There are stories of Oprichniki fitting the skin of the dog’s head over iron jaws so the teeth would snap open and shut as they galloped after their quarry,” Polina said. “These men hunted, tortured, and murdered anyone who stood in their way, guilty or not.” She reached for the drawing. “May I ask about the murdered woman?”

Lola looked at Cutter for guidance. He raised his brow and gave a slight shrug. This was her show.

Polina spoke again. “I am guessing there was more than one?”

“That’s right,” Lola said. “And I’m guessing there’s something else you came to tell us.”

“How many women?”

“Six,” Lola said.

“All branded?”

“Yes,” Lola said. “And one man that we know of. Most of them seemingly unrelated to one another.”

“How did you know it’s a brand?” Cutter asked. “This is a pencil sketch.”

Polina pushed the drawing across the coffee table with trembling fingers, then leaned back against the sofa. She folded her arms tight across her chest. “I have worked aboard ships for nine years,” she said. “I keep to myself. Send most of the money I make home to my mother in Lviv. I do not want to cause any trouble.”

She stopped talking, leaving nothing but the hum of the ship’s systems and the hushed hiss of the sea slipping by outside.

Lola knew enough to let the silence do the work. Polina had come to them. She wanted to talk. She just wanted to do it on her own terms.

“This is my eighteenth Alaska cruise,” she finally said, like a dam bursting. “We take turns for liberty ashore but get to know the locals after enough trips to the same port.The Polar Staronly goes as far north as Skagway, then turns for Seattle, but many of my contracts took me much farther up. Two years ago, I shared a few drinks with a bartender at the Yukon Bar in downtown Seward. She is about my age, easy to talk to. Anyway, Roxie told me once of a Russian girl named Irina who had gone missing. Irina was one of those Seward transients who come to work the fishing charters. No family, few friends. The ones she did have reported her disappearance to the police, put up flyers. You know bars. Some said Irina was abducted by aliens. The police assumed she’d returned to the Russian Old Believers settlement above Homer, where she was from. Wherever she went, she’d just vanished.