Page 114 of The Oligarch's Daughter

He froze. He couldn’t judge how close they were. He had no idea whether they’d made out his hiding place. So he decided to wait in place, breathing silently. If they’d found him, they’d found him, and there wasn’t a lot he could do about it.

He waited in fear for twenty minutes. Were they Russians? Feds? The transmission from the portable radios had faded. So had the audible tramping of feet. Whoever it was seemed to have passed by.

Then he heard a male voice in the darkness. “Let’s go.” The voice was close to where he was hiding, within mere feet.

Paul held his breath, hoped against hope that the order wasn’t directed at him.

“I mean it, let’s gonow.” Even closer.

Another male voice, just as close: “They’re on to you. Get up and go.

Wait. Were they speaking tohim?

“We can help you,” the voice said, “but only if you move your fucking ass.”

Theywerespeaking to him. Paul was perplexed. Maybe it wasn’t the FBI. Anyway, what choice did he have? He made a decision and spoke:

“Who the hell are you?” he croaked.

In the next instant, he felt himself grabbed on both sides. Four sets of arms reached into the shelter beneath the tarp. Someone had his left arm, someone else had his right, and as they pulled at him, he stumbled to his feet, his entire body vibrating with fear.

“Hey!” he protested. “What the hell?”

“We’re trying to help you, man,” one of the men grunted. “Keep your fucking voice down.”

Someone else said, “Grab his backpack.”

Both men had full beards, one man’s black and white, the other’s entirely gray. Paul had a vague feeling he’d seen them before.

Now, suddenly, they were trundling him through the dark woods. He limped, trying to keep up with their pace. They torqued him in one direction, pulled him into a stand of trees, then yanked him in another direction through another bunch of trees, then uphill.

“Who the hell are you?” Paul said again.

One of the men hissed at him to shut up.

The other muttered, “They’re after you.”

“Fucking feds are coming,” the first man said. “They’re fanning out across the terrain. They know you’re in the Pemi.”

In a couple of minutes, they came to what looked like a tiny, narrow log cabin in a dense, dark copse. The first man fiddled with the lock on the cabin door, and the door, built of split logs, swung open.

“Get in there,” the second man said. “The feds don’t have keys. Move it.”

Paul wanted to ask these men again who they were, why they were helping him. Were they themselves fugitives, too?

Instinctively, he trusted these guys. He didn’t understand their motive, but his gut feeling was to go along with what they were telling him to do.

It was either that or give in to being arrested by the FBI.

“Move it!” the second man said again.

Paul stepped into a darkness that smelled of pine tar and heard theclick-clickof a door being locked behind him.

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Knowing he was locked in didn’t calm his nerves. He didn’t feel at all protected.

For several minutes, he stood there in the pitch black, breathing carefully so as not to make a noise. His heart beat so loudly he swore it would have been audible to others, if there’d been any others in there with him.

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