A soldier went towards the door on The Comrade's order and knocked it. An old lady opened the door. She was not less than seventy. She wore a long blue pull over which carried up to her feet. She was quite surprised to see us.
'What?! Dreaming, am I? How did you guys know, I need you?'
'Mam,' said Ionen 'at your service, we are. Please help yourself by giving us the location of Cruisons.'
'Yes of course, I will tell you. He is the one who kidnapped my boy, and blackmailed me for money. I couldn't afford that much money and...'
The woman remained mum. She didn't speak a word and was looking towards her feet. Then she looked up at Ionen with a revengeful look.
'I'll tell you, sir.' said she and pointed her right hand towards a snow dune. 'After that dune there is another dune. His igloo is in the base of that dune in the other side. Go, get him, and take the revenge of my son.'
We started our journey. It was not at as easy as we thought. The altitude was high and thus we were tiring very soon. The dunes were very high, it quite seemed impossible to us. We somehow reached the cliff, fully tired. Our eyes fell towards the next dune, and we were even more exhausted. We still didn't surrender. How could we, after reaching so close to our target? We did it, and now we all were more energetic than ever.
From the cliff, we could easily see the igloo at the base with a helicopter parked near it. The Comrade was about to attack, but Ionen didn't let him do that.
'Now what?' asked The Comrade.
'Comrade, don't attack straight away. First go and check, whether indeed it is Cruisons' igloo or not, and ask the helicopter to come and hide behind this dune. It will be needed if we need any medical emergencies or an emergency.'
The Comrade was about to argue back, but he didn't. He quietly listened to Ionen and called down the helicopter. It landed behind the dune. The Comrade said us to stay safely right there in the cliffs and gave us a walkie-talkie to communicate. The soldiers charged.
The soldiers surrounded the main door and cocked their riffles, and were pointing towards the door. The Comrade went and knocked the door. An ugly man with long beard and white hair was the one to do so. The moment he saw soldiers, he screamed at the top of his voice and shut the door with a bang. The Comrade with the help of his riffle destroyed the lock and all the soldiers broke into the igloo.
The sounds of the raging bullets could be heard with ease. I looked at Ionen's face. He looked at me back and said:
'The chances of Cruisons' team to win is more, because they outnumber The Comrade by twenty. If we see anyone of Cruisons' team coming out of the igloo, we must run and get to the helicopter.'
'Alright.'
The sound of the raging bullets were not stopping until a long wait of thirty minutes. The scene we saw after the stopping of the bullets really stopped our heartbeats for a few seconds.
A gang member, holding the half dead body of The Comrade with one hand and a revolver in the other came out of the igloo. The Gang Member said:
'You can never get us, your highness. Now that you all are killed, the news of our presence in here will never reach Russia. Wait a minute. How did you guys get here? Surely not by foot, so a helicopter with a few people is there out there, right?'
The Comrade didn't answer. The Gang Member killed The Comrade.
'That's Cruisons Macadam, the only survivor in his own side. C'mon Mark, run for your life.'
And at that moment we were horrified to see that Cruisons looked up and spotted us. He immediately pointed his revolver towards the both of us. We both ran with full force towards our back and at that moment I heard a bang and saw Ionen falling down.
'IONEN!' I screamed. He was struck in the hand.
'MARK! RUN! DON"T WORRY ABOUT ME! JUST RUN!'
I knew I had to do something fast right now which would save both of our lives. I rushed into the helicopter, as I knew that the revolver used by The Comrade to threaten Ionen was still up there on the table. I took it in my hands and just ran out. I saw Cruisons pointing his revolver towards the half dead body of Ionen, about to shoot him. I held up the revolver, pointed it towards Cruisons and pulled the trigger.
To my surprise, my aim was appropriate. The revolver fell from his hand and Ionen got saved.
'Hands up!' I cried. Cruisons did as he was told, with an expression of a defeat. By pointing the revolver at him, I went up to Ionen and dragged his unconscious body all along the snow to the helicopter. The doctors immediately started his treatment. I kept on pointing the revolver at Cruisons, asking him to come inside the helicopter. I tied him up with a pillar.
I went up to The Igloo to see if I find out something important. There were about ten children tied up with pillars. I rescued them and brought them to the lady we asked about Cruisons' location, asking her to send the children to their rightful homes. I went back to the helicopter and we took off. Ionen was back to his senses. He said softly:
'I am proud of you, Mark. Well done. Can I have a talk with Mr. Macadam for a sec Mark?'
'Yeah sure. Wait.'
I brought Cruisons to him, his hands tied with a rope. Ionen said:
'Finally we meet after a long time. Eh, Macadam?'
'Yeah Delbis, after a long time. I am sad that I couldn't take the revenge of my full gang by killing you because of your brother.'
'Yeah, that's fortunate. You've been always attempting to murder me since I became a detective, and now, it's really fortunate for you to get sad as in your final attempt, you were unsuccessful in spite of being so close to it.'
'You're absolutely correct, Delbis.'
'By the way, a question that I've been dying to ask since a long time, why did you ever want to kill me?'
'It's a long story Mr. Delbis.'
'And it's a long journey Macadam. You may say it now.'
'Alright Delbis. Anyway I am getting arrested. I want to ask you something before I start. Do you remember Mr. Hammond?'
'Mark remembers him more than I do. He is one of his colleagues.'
'He was a member of my gang, but was a quite a wise man. He intentionally became a part of my gang as he was an unemployed man and he badly needed money at any cost, and he came to know about us.'
'What?! I cried. 'Was he indeed a part of your gang? I can't believe this.'
'I know it is becoming difficult for you to believe this. But it's true. He had no other choice. He had to do that, but he was too wise to commit a crime.
'He would try his best for not doing any crime we wanted him to do. And that left us only one option.'
There was a big pause until Ionen asked him:
'What did you do to him?'
'Do you know the only way people can make the things possible which are impossible for them?'
'So you blackmailed him?'
'No, we had to do something of that sort in which he himself doesn't have any problem to do the crime.'
'What's that?'
'We started to give him excess amount of drugs and he got addicted. In his that situation we asked him to do several crimes. In return we would provide him with an employment in a good job if he does whatever we say him to do. He agreed. From that moment he started committing crimes like murders, robberies etc.
'Then one day while having a stroll in the park and he met your father, Nora. They quite had a long chat about each other's private lives and they soon became best friends. Hammond didn't reveal a bit about me and my gang because he knew he would get hanged if he did so.
'Your parents invited him to a school carnival, in which he saw Ionen Delbis for the first time, drawing out wide conclusions about his friends' and their parents by minute observations. He was just being like a celebrity. He informed me about him, that he might get us when he grows up and thus he was needed to be murdered for our own safety.
'He was out of his frenzy when we asked him to murder you, Delbis. He refused. We made him drink about two litres of alcohol at once. We waited till he woke up. By that time my spies had collected the data about you and your parents taking you to the doctor that evening to check upon your paralyzed fingers and we used that opportunity and----'
'Wait a second.' interrupted Ionen. 'So it was Mr. Hammond who was the truck driver and who killed my parents??'
'Yes, he murdered your lovely parents who were taking you that night for a checkup of your fingers so that you don't lose your dream. Mr. Hammond was arrested and later on when he got freedom, I was so happy with him that I gave him money and he finally found an employment in Mr. Nora's industries. But as he was over addicted with drugs, he died soon.
'But we realized later on that it was a huge mistake done by us as you survived. If we hadn't attacked you that night, neither would you have been a detective nor would you be ever after catching the sixty four of us.
'After that when I was here in the Finland border, I heard of you being a detective. I sent the thirteen of our gang there in Moscow by train. We did many attempts to murder you, but you always survived, and today, you finally won the game as you brought all of the twelve of us behind the rods, except for James Beard who was burnt alive, Clark who died in the hospital and my gang here at Finland border with me.'
'Oh yes, one more thing. Why did you want to kill Mark? Your enmity was with me. Right?'
'Yes, I was afraid that if anyhow you survive, like you always did by his wits, by Mark's death he would be depressed and would surrender the case.'
The case was all over, now. The twelve of them were arrested for their whole life. Ionen had got a sum of a million euros, for his brilliance. We bought a deluxe apartment and a brand new car. He had now became a professional detective, and he was always at his favorite getup, whenever handling a case later on.