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  "Potentially," Robert conceded.

  "Then you're going to need all the men you can spare to tackle them."

  "I suppose I..." Robert suddenly realised where this was heading. "Look, Mark, we've talked about this before."

  "I know, and it never gets any further. I'm ready; you know it and I know it."

  Robert sighed, looking from Mark to Mary, then back again. "What is this, some kind of ambush? I've only just got back, I'm tired and hungry, and you two are on me as soon as I get through the gate. We'll discuss this some other time."

  Mark wasn't sure whether he meant his problem, or Mary's, but persisted. "I want to talk about it now." Robert began to walk away from both of them. "Please!"

  The man stopped, hung his head, then said simply. "I'll have a word with Jack about beginning your training." With that, he carried on up the path towards the castle.

  Mark smiled, then saw Mary was still frowning. He put an arm around her shoulder. "Hey, you don't have to worry about him. He really loves you, you know."

  She shook her head. "I just wish sometimes he'd show it more."

  "Yeah, I know what you mean."

  Mary followed his gaze across to Sophie. "They're friends. That's all."

  Mark shrugged. "I can understand it. He's older than me, gets to go out, play the hero..."

  "Is that what all this is about? The thing with the training?" Mary asked him. "Because if it is -"

  "No," he replied, but didn't sound very convincing. "Not really... Mary, do you ever think about the past, about what we all went through? About what happened here?"

  "You mean, do I miss it? Being in the thick of things, even though we were all nearly killed?"

  That wasn't quite what he meant, but he nodded anyway.

  "Sometimes. But not as much as he does." She gestured towards the figure heading towards the castle. "I just don't know what I'd do now if I lost him."

  Mark pulled her in closer and she put her arm around his shoulder. He thought about saying, "You won't" but they both knew he couldn't make that kind of promise.

  "Come on," Mark said to her, more to get away from Sophie and Dale than to follow Robert.

  So much had changed, thought Mark again. Yet it was true: so much was still the same. But there were so many questions left unanswered. Questions he was trying not to think about as they walked towards the castle.

  Questions like what exactly had happened to Tanek's body during that final battle? Mark had seen him go down, seen him die. So why did the man who'd tortured him haunt his thoughts? Another phantom pain that refused to go away? Or something more?

  It was then those words of De Falaise's came back to him and he gave a shiver that had nothing whatsoever to do with the cold.

  "It is only just beginning, mon ami. It is only just beginning..."

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was cold, the snow was falling.

  But then, wasn't it most of the time here? And he liked that; it reflected how he felt inside. He'd grown up in this environment, learned to block out the freezing temperatures. No, not block them out - welcome and embrace them. Let them influence who he was, who he would become. Let the cold touch his very heart.

  To be fair, the temperature wasn't the only thing that had frozen that particular muscle. The death of his parents in one of the 'post war' Gulags - they were among the last to still be held after Khrushchev began his de-Stalinisation of the homeland - saw to that. Though officially their camp should not have even existed in the '60s, somehow it had slipped through the net - probably because it was in such a remote region, but also it paid to keep just a few of them operating. It contained some very dangerous prisoners, though in his mother and father's case it had just been an excuse to keep those with certain political or religious views out of circulation. He was too young to remember much of his infancy, just his mother's eyes, so full of love for him...

  He found out later that the men who ran the camp treated prisoners like dogs. His father had been tortured regularly, his mother raped and beaten (the thought sometimes occurred to him that the man he thought of as his father might not actually have been that at all, but in the end did it really matter?).

  When the camp's activities had finally come to light - or rather whoever had been sheltering and subsidising it finally decided to tie up a few loose ends - it was too late for his parents. He'd been shipped off to an orphanage in southern Siberia, to allow the weather to finish the job the Gulag had started.

  In charge of that place was one Leonty Kabulov, a sour-faced man who believed in discipline to the nth degree. The slightest step out of line was met with severe punishment. Kabulov's role models were the Emperors of old, and he ran the place as one - delegating power to his underlings, including a brutish physical education teacher called Nikolin, who would run the children ragged on treks through the snow. But even Kabulov realised the necessity of letting his 'subjects' blow off steam every now and again. Which was why he often turned a blind eye if a fight broke out in the orphanage's playground. Many children had been badly injured that way, though the crowds that gathered round were thoroughly entertained.

  He himself had been picked on by one lad called Yuri and this had ended in a fight. Yuri had pummelled him with his fists, breaking a couple of ribs and putting him in the infirmary, tended by a nurse who looked like something Dr Frankenstein had created in his spare time. He never complained; as bad as it was there, it was nothing compared to what his parents had endured.

  When he was old enough, he was conscripted into the army. If he'd thought tolerating the orphanage was hard then training in the military taught him how easy he'd actually had it. They taught him how to kill, and it wasn't long before he'd had to use that particular skill fighting in the Soviet War against Afghanistan. It wasn't his natural environment - dealing with the heat to begin with had been difficult; it made the mercifully short summers back home seem chilly in comparison - but he'd soon proved himself one of the best fighters in his squad, eventually gaining the rank of Commander. During the '80s, and fuelled by the aid the USA was giving the enemy, his hatred for the West - and especially America - grew. Nuking would have been too good for them in his opinion. It was just a pity that plans to invade Western Europe, which were only uncovered much later, never came to fruition. By the time the Cold War ended, he was back in the motherland and, though he was grateful for the cooler air, he was not so enamoured with the way things were suddenly changing; spitting every time he saw a McDonalds. He fell victim to the army cutbacks Gorbachev initiated, and witnessed, with disdain, the eventual collapse of the Soviet Army.

  But there were still jobs to be had for a man of his talents. He began working for the mafia, operating out of central Moscow, during the '90s, with a hand in everything from extortion and porn to caviar smuggling. The opening up of trade routes with other countries helped build up organised crime, with the mafia itself taking on more of a Westernised, business-orientated approach. On the other side of the law now, it left him just as much scope to get his hands dirty; a bullet in the head here, a snapped neck there. Little wonder he rose in the ranks, from general muscle and bodyguard, to actually getting involved behind the scenes. Before long he was in charge of one of the largest criminal networks in the country, soon gaining the name he still went by today: hiring others to do the dangerous stuff for him. While his former comrades struggled to earn a pittance, he was actually better off than he had ever been. And he liked the feeling of being in control. One day soon, he knew, he would be running more than just this operation. In fact he already had plans to expand ever further abroad.

  Then it happened; the whole world froze.

  He could remember seeing reports on television about the epidemic, and in his mind there was no doubt whatsoever that it was of Western origin. Probably from the US - an attack on his country! He took every precaution against catching it, including wearing a gas mask. But when people in his organisation started dropping like flies - one of his cl
osest aids, Gerasim, virtually exploded right in front of him, blood jetting from every orifice - he figured it was already too late. It was in his system already, so he might as well face his inevitable demise.

  Except it didn't come. The more he waited, the more he found out about this thing they were calling the A-B Virus. It wasn't just affecting his nation, it was killing people all around the globe. Whether it had started out as a weapon in the West was still unclear, but if it had then the plan completely backfired. The only ones safe were those with a certain blood type: his type of blood. At least here they were spared the secondary infections from the dead littering the streets. Such was the climate during those long winter months that the corpses were preserved and, yes, they were still out there - rotting much more slowly than in other parts of the world: a reminder of what had happened. Icy, once-living statues.

  At first he had been frustrated. Just when he was getting somewhere, he suddenly found himself right back at the bottom.

  But, in time, survivors began to emerge. He saw them flitting between the buildings in Moscow, chased some of the first few down, armed with his custom-made machine gun and Gursa self-charge pistol. Most had already heard of him and surrendered gladly, welcoming someone to show them the way. Others had been less easy to persuade, so he'd put a bullet in them.

  It wasn't long before he'd gathered a decent force, just like the one he'd commanded in Afghanistan - and he soon had a protective ring around himself once more. What worked in their favour was that the amount of survivors here reflected the fact that this was the largest country on the planet. Of course, that also meant that there were pockets of resistance dotted all across the land, in towns, villages and, especially, in the cities. There were some even now who were not a part of his new Empire, but given enough time...

  For that's what he was building, he'd decided. An Empire. If Kabulov and the Cold War had taught him anything it was that the old ways were the best. He would rule with an iron fist, ensure that, once again, they would be the force to be reckoned with; even in this post-apocalyptic world. In fact, hadn't the virus done them a favour - weeding out the influence of the West so they could start again as something purer?

  How much more fitting his mafia name was now. The Tsar. A monarch whose influence had steadily spread as far East as Magadan, using Moscow as his base. Loyalty was rewarded with protection, treachery with death. Once he had enough troops to spare, he would think about branching out further, reaching into other territories. That day was coming soon and he knew it. A day when he'd have enough power to tackle America itself. Stories had reached him of what was going on there, of factions taking charge and organising themselves, just as he was doing. It was simply a question of who would assemble a big enough army and how quickly. He already had access to all the military equipment and weapons he'd ever need.

  The Tsar was pleased when he realised his reputation was already stretching beyond borders. Indeed, his most trusted allies were from China and the Ukraine. The female Liu twins - Xue and Ying - never far from his side, had come to him and offered their services, mistakenly playing the Communist card. As if he gave a shit about that. He was more interested in their ability to carve up half a dozen of his guards without breaking a sweat, using those deadly Hook Swords of theirs, before surrendering and kneeling before him. Their oriental beauty was captivating, and so he kept them around not only as his personal bodyguards, but also his lovers.

  Bohuslav was a different matter altogether. In him, The Tsar had recognised a kindred spirit: a soul as cold as his. It was there in those steely eyes. His methods were different to all the others in The Tsar's service, coming as he did from a background of serial killing. He had murdered more than fifty people even before the virus swept Russia, using his favoured weapons - small hand-held sickles - but had never come close to getting caught. No-one should ever trust Bohuslav, yet oddly The Tsar did. He trusted him with his life, which he knew Bohuslav could take at any moment if he chose to. He also trusted him with authority over the day-to-day running of his realm.

  All three were with him today, riding in his bulletproof limousine. Bohuslav was driving, with the twins in the back, flanking The Tsar. As they travelled the distance between the Mariott Grand Hotel to one of the warehouses that had once stored goods for his business, The Tsar looked out at the falling snow. Where others might have seen nature's magnificence at work, he was comforted by the fact it showed temperatures would be well into the minuses. The white spots fell on those human statues outside, like Pompeii's ash. His face showed no reaction, no emotion. It wasn't just that he'd seen them many, many times: it was the fact that there wasn't any emotion to show. On the road ahead of them were two guards on motorbikes, and he knew the same number were behind. They pulled in at the rear entrance of the warehouse, and Bohuslav followed, bringing the limo to a halt by the pavement.

  His second, dressed in his usual sharp suit, got out first and opened the car's back door; there was the merest glint from the sickle hanging at his belt. Xue hopped out next to check that it was safe for their important passenger. He watched the tight black leather of her outfit mould itself to her body as she did so, sword up and ready almost before she cleared the car. Her head appeared then, nodding that it was safe for him to get out. The Tsar's own red leather outfit - more military-based than hers - creaked as he stood up, and he pulled his greatcoat around him. Then he placed the peaked cap on his head, tugging it firmly down. Ying wasn't far behind, as elegant as her sister, and just as dangerous. With the specially trained guards now in tow, the group entered the building, striding through a series of corridors and climbing steps to reach a converted office with an open front; a good fifteen feet or more above ground level. It had once been used to oversee production at this facility, but now it was his official box. The noise drifted up to meet them even before stepping out onto this: raised voices, whistling and whooping.

  Once they were sure it was safe to do so, Bohuslav and Xue parted, allowing The Tsar to stand at the front, viewing his subjects below.

  Crammed into the warehouse were dozens on dozens of people, and in the centre itself was a raised, cordoned-off ring. Inside this were two men, each armed with axes and shields. One was taller and bulkier than the other, the vest he wore showing off his well-developed biceps. His dyed-blond hair was spiky, and his fair eyebrows made it look like he had none at all - giving him a slightly alien appearance. In spite of his size, he moved like a cat, dodging a blow from the other man, whose clothes were virtually rags. His tattered shirt and trousers, coupled with his untidy beard, made him look like a tramp. He was certainly no athlete like his opponent, and that was also clear from the way they both moved. One of them had done this before... and it wasn't him.

  The man in the vest avoided yet another clumsy blow, much to the crowd's delight. They cheered again for their favourite, for The Tsar's favourite: Glazkov.

  He was pleased they hadn't missed the first kill of the evening. Sitting down on what could only be called a throne, The Tsar watched the match. It was yet another idea he'd taken from Kabulov and the orphanage; a way for his subjects to let off steam. It was just like the fights in the playground, except this was organised. It gave his people something to look forward to and indulged their bloodlust, turning it away from any thoughts of rebellion which might arise. This way he could control them more easily, and it made his iron rule much more palatable. It was also a good way to get rid of the dregs of humanity who didn't fit into his vision of a future Russia.

  Sometimes the men would fight with their fists alone, sometimes - like tonight - they would be given weapons like the gladiators of old. At any rate, it provided much needed entertainment, not only for the crowds, but for The Tsar. Nobody had even noticed he was here yet, and he would have been well within his rights to draw their attention to the fact he was observing. The fact that they should all be saluting. But he was loathe to stop the proceedings at this critical juncture. After all, he'd granted permis
sion for them to start without him while he oversaw some pressing issues of state.

  Glazkov was obviously having fun with this one, dancing round, tiring him out before having his turn.

  Which came now, as the tramp swung his axe again, and missed. Glazkov pivoted, hitting the man on the back with the flat of the blade - sending him sprawling across the ring onto his hands and knees. Glazkov smirked at the audience's bellows and claps. His opponent picked himself up, and came running back for more. He growled as he swung his axe again and Glazkov easily blocked it with his shield. This time, though, Glazkov struck with the sharpened edge of his axe, plunging it into the tramp's thigh. It buried itself deep; so deep that when Glazkov yanked it out, a warm redness came jetting out with it. The man let out a cry, immediately dropping his own shield to clutch at his wound. He hobbled back out of Glazkov's reach.

  At the sight of the blood the crowd went wild, chanting Glazkov's name over and over. He held up his bloodied axe triumphantly, and they cheered even more.

  The Tsar leaned forward in his throne, hand on his chin.

  Tossing his shield aside, Glazkov was on the offensive. He ran at the wounded man, twirling his axe like Fred Astaire with a cane. The tramp's survival instinct kicked in, urging him to meet the next blow with his own axe. They clashed together, but it only succeeded in pushing the weaker man back once more. He barely avoided the blow that followed, aimed at his chest, the wind whistling as the blade swiped through the air.

  Glazkov was all for a good show, but it was time to finish this and get on with the next fight. Perhaps it would offer him more of a challenge. Springing forward, he swung the axe twice again, this time almost severing his opponent's arm below the elbow, causing him to drop his weapon. The tramp shrieked in pain, looking from the damaged appendage - hanging by threads of tendons - to Glazkov's face in disbelief.