“Max told me that’s a name that has cropped up all during your investigation, although I confess I never came across his name during mine.”

“All we’ve learned is that he was a functionary for the Soviet Bureau of Natural Resources, and after the collapse he worked for the Russian equivalent. We have no clue how he got tangled up with a smuggler like Shere Singh.”

“Are there any natural resources on Kamchatka? Maybe something he came across in a report when he worked for the bureau? Like precious gems or metals or something?”

“Mark Murphy checked a bunch of databases and found nothing in any appreciable quantities.”

A light shone in Tory’s eyes. “What if it’s something that never got reported? What if when he was working for the Soviets a report crossed his desk that indicated a major find of some kind, and he quietly buried the discovery?”

Juan nodded. “That’s a distinct possibility. We all believe that they’ve brought a lot of Chinese labor up there. It could be he has them working in a mine of some kind.” Then he got a sudden burst of inspiration. He plucked his encrypted cell phone from his pocket and dialed. On the third ring of the Oregon’s private cellular system, Mark Murphy answered. “Murph, it’s Juan. Where are you?”

“Down in the Magic Shop fixing my skateboard,” the weapons specialist said.

“Hop on a computer terminal and tell me if mercury is used in any kind of mining techniques.”

Used to obscure requests, Mark said he would get right on it and killed the connection.

“What’s this about mercury?” Tory asked.

“Julia found heavy doses of mercury poisoning when she performed autopsies on the pirates who tried to attack my ship — the ones who dumped the container carrying those Chinese immigrants.”

“You think they picked it up on Kamchatka?”

Cabrillo nodded. “The Chinese weren’t contaminated, just the sailors. If they’d been up there a lot, say dropping off other workers or on guard rotation, then its possible that’s the source.”

A companionable silence passed while they waited for the couple of minutes until Juan’s cell chimed. He answered it by saying, “What did you find?”

“Mercury is the only element that bonds with gold,” Mark replied. “It’s been used to separate raw gold from ore. The practice is banned in a lot of countries because of environmental and health concerns, but it is still widely employed by indigenous miners in South America.”

Juan mouthed the word gold to Tory. “Thanks, Murph. You can get back to your skateboard now.”

Tory leaned back in her seat. “So Anton Savich is using Chinese slave labor, provided to him by Shere Singh, to mine gold on the Kamchatka Peninsula, most likely under the nose of the Russian government.”

“I think that about sums it up,” Juan agreed, taking another healthy swallow of his beer.