Free Siberius by Kenneth Cran Page A

irritated.
    “ There’s bread in the sack on the shelf and dried meat in that can.”
    Nick searched around and found the stash. He slapped a few chunks of the meat on a piece of flatbread, folded it over, and dove in. His face lit up as he chewed.
    “Last meal I had was a soggy MRE.” He swallowed without enough chewing, and the food strained to get down to his stomach. Nick reveled in the sensation. “Know what an MRE is?”
    “ Uh-uh,” said Talia. She didn’t look up from her book.
    “ Meals Ready to Eat. Worst invention in the Army, unless you’re starving. And even then…” Nick gulped down the rest of the sandwich, licked his fingers. “Kinda tender for beef jerky.”
    “ Musk-ox,” she said. Nick stopped chewing. “Actually, musk-ox calf. It was left over from a wolf kill.”
    “ Well, that was some fine musk-ox,” he said. Pouring another cup of tea, he knocked it back, unsure if the aftertaste was his own imagination or not.
    Nick stood up and glanced over the books on the shelf. Most of them were in Russian and German, but Nick was fluent in both, which is why he had been recruited to join the OSS in the first place. He read the spines: The Changing World of the Ice Age by R.A. Daly . He perused some more. Great Animal Migrations by J. Obenheiffer and P. Dickson , Phylogeny of the Felidae by W.D. Matthew, Panthera Tigris by J.K. Rachinov. Extinction Theory by R. Lydekker. Across the Bering Strait by H. Melskin. And one unusual one: The Scythian People of Siberia by L. Andrychenko.
    “ Those are some interesting books, miss,” Nick said. He pulled the Lydekker book and opened it. “What are you, some kind of scientist?”
    “ Zoologist,” she said while writing in the notebook.
    “ Oh, yeah? So you study what-” He turned pages past long stretches of text and stopped at an illustration. “Zoos?” A black and white painting of a herd of giant wooly mammoths marching across a snowy conifer forest spanned two pages. The caption read: A typical scene on the Somme in France during the last ice age. Painting courtesy of C.R. Knight, American Museum of Natural History.
    “ Hey, elephants in France?” he said with genuine excitement. “Don’t that beat all?”
    Talia grabbed the book out of his hands and slammed it closed. Nick backed away as she returned to her notebook. The cabin now felt very small, and he wished he were somewhere else. Anywhere else.
    “ I’ll be out of you hair in the morning,” he said sitting down on the edge of the bed.
    A moment of uncomfortable silence followed, then Talia looked over at her guest and sighed. “Here,” she said tossing the book back to him. “Animals. That’s what a zoologist studies.”
    “Oh,” was all that Nick could manage.
    Talia went back to her writing. After a few minutes, Nick opened the book and flipped through the pages. He closed it again, then wandered around the cabin. Assorted odds and ends littered the walls, but they all had some semblance of order. Animal pelts, most of them squirrels and foxes, were nailed to the blanketed walls. Steel leg traps rusted beyond use hung from ceiling beams, their chains draped like Christmas garland. In one corner of the back wall, an assortment of antlers hung from a line of hooks. Upon closer inspection, Nick saw that they were elaborate hats, like the kind American Indians would wear. They were decorated with small bones and quail and partridge feathers. There were also several ornate gowns made of pelts, bones and beads. Nick reached out, ran his finger along one of the gowns. They all looked and smelled very old.
    “Those are my husband’s,” said Talia. “Please don’t touch them.”
    “ Sorry,” he said. “What is he, a witch doctor?”
    Talia sighed again, a long, loud sigh so Nick could hear her. “No,” she said. “He’s an anthropologist.”
    “Uh-huh. Should we expect him back soon?”
    “ Who?”
    “ Your husband.”
    Talia closed the notebook, shook her head. “I