Page 113 of King’s Ransom

She was right.

December 21st had been a weird, wild and nonstop day.

If what Oberov suspected was true—and it seemed true—this only made it weirder.

For it meant that someone had drugged the Grandmaster and the two thugs, brought them comatose to the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, placed guns in their hands, and woken them up with naloxone just before we arrived in the FBI helicopter. And then they’d been shot when we encountered them.

‘Yeah, it is . . .’ I said slowly. ‘Let’s go. I want to check something out. It’s not far from here.’

‘Where are we going?’ Georgy said.

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

28 December, 1615 hours

Snow was falling when we arrived at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

We went directly to the open shallow grave that seven days earlier had held the richest man in the world, Aristo King.

The grave still had a ring of crime-scene tape around it.

It was just after 4 p.m. and dusk was already falling.

The cemetery was silent, all sound dampened by the snow.

No wonder Washington Irving had set his famous short story here. It was a creepy place even without a headless horseman prancing about.

I gazed out over the cemetery.

‘What are you thinking, little man?’ Heidi asked.

I scanned the old graves and mausoleums until my eyes fell on the tree line to the northeast.

‘If we accept the proposition that the Grandmaster and the two Russian thugs were drugged—and then re-awoken with naloxone just before our arrival in the chopper—then we have to work backwards: whoever drugged them must’ve kept them nearby. I mean, it’s not easy to drag sedated dudes a long way. Whoever did it would’ve been keeping them somewhere close.’

I strode over to the tree line with Heidi.

Georgy hurried after us.

I stepped into the tree line and through a small cluster of pines until suddenly I came to a stream with an old structure built alongside it.

It was a water mill.

Dilapidated. Covered in moss. Walls overgrown with weeds. A ruin.

And a perfect location to keep some unconscious men.

We walked over to it.

As I grabbed the handle of its warped wooden door, Heidi drew a short-barrelled Glock 43 pistol from the back of her waistband and held it poised.

‘Where did you get a gun? We can’t conceal-carry in New York,’ I said.

‘Not all of us follow the rules like you do, little man,’ Heidi said. ‘I borrowed it from my friend for a little reassurance.’

I regripped the door.

It opened with a rusty squeal.