Plus, that grief taught him an important lesson.
He stared over at Marco.
Never again will I allow myself to be held back.
He cleared his throat and nodded at Elle, ready to change the subject. “What about you? How did you end up being a botanist? Especially one who specializes in carnivorous plants.”
She looked like she wanted to press him more, but she let it go. “I grew up in Saint Petersburg, raised by a single father. He was an agronomist, specializing in crop production during the Soviet era. I spent summers at the city’s botanical gardens, often acting as my father’s lab assistant, sometimes traveling across Russia with him. While he leaned toward the practicality of food production, specifically grain crops, I found myself more fascinated by the unusual strategies plants employed to survive, to compete, to thrive.”
“And I suspect nothing is moreunusualthan plants that become carnivorous.”
She gave him a tired smile. “It’s actually an old strategy, going back eighty million years. A way of adapting and surviving in regions ofnutrient-poor soils. Even my father was interested in their genes. It was part of his research, to see if some of the thirty-six-thousand genes that are unique to carnivorous plants could be incorporated into food crops to make them hardier.”
“So, he wanted to create a field of wheat that would eat locusts, rather than the other way around.”
Her smile widened. “Nothing so dramatic. He simply wanted to increase the rate of nutrient acquisition from poor soils.”
“Was he successful?”
She looked down. “He had some minor success, then he got cancer, pancreatic, nine years ago, when I was still at the university. Took him down in six months. He died before the advent of gene technology that would have accelerated his research.”
“And you’re continuing in his footsteps.”
“Tangentially. I’ve been working with those same genes, creating hybrids, studying how certain traits arise from combinations of different chromosomes. It’s fascinating how similar so many of those genes—those that produce digestive enzymes or allow for movement—have analogs in animals. It’s a stunning example of parallel evolution between flora and fauna. In fact—”
A loud bang made her jump. Even Marco sat up sharply.
Tucker turned toward the door.
A tiny, barred window allowed him to spot the tonsured head of Yerik Raz rush past their cell, heading toward the stairs leading up into the church.
Tucker frowned, sensing the monk’s tension.
Did that mean Sychkin had arrived from Sergiyev Posad? And if so, what does that mean for us?
Elle swallowed hard and looked at him. The question was easy to read on her face.
What are we going to do?
As Tucker listened to Yerik’s heavy footsteps echo away, he knew only one certainty.
We’re running out of time.
5:09P.M.
Kowalski hopped out of the Siberian bush plane—a single-engine Baikal LMS-901—which sat atop a small lake ten miles south of the town of Severodvinsk. As his boots hit the ice, a loud cracking sounded underfoot. He crouched for a breath, waiting to fall through, but it held—for the moment.
He eyed the parked aircraft with suspicion, expecting it to plummet through the ice.
Off to the side, Yuri crossed with two of his handpicked men, Vinogradov and Sidorov. The trio opened the plane’s rear cargo hatch and began tossing out duffels of equipment. The two brothers were twins, but only fraternal. Blond-haired Vin stood a few inches shorter than Kowalski with a quarterback’s build, while Sid stood a foot shorter with the stocky bulk of a linebacker. The only feature that was identical were their hard expressions, and even harder eyes.
Both had served with Yuri in the Russian Navy.
Another young man, no older than twenty, named Fadd, had been the Baikal’s pilot. The guy spent more time yammering than paying attention to airspeed, altitude, and angles of approach. Still, Fadd landed them squarely on the lake without crashing through the ice.
Not that Kowalski didn’t expect that still to happen.
Monk finished making final arrangements with the pilot, then joined Kowalski out on the lake. The last member of their extraction team hopped out. Kane lifted his snout, testing the air, already searching for his missing partners.
