Hidden prey

Chapter 13

Jan Walther had honey-colored hair with a few streaks of gray, a round, pink-cheeked face, and worried green eyes. She worried about everybody and everything. She worried that her son, Carl, might be gay, or into drugs. She worried that her mother would have to go to a nursing home, and about where the money would come from. And she worried most of all that she wouldn't make the weekly nut at Mesaba Frame and Artist's Supply, her store in downtown Hibbing.

The one thing she hadn't worried about much was her sex life, for, though the men came around at regular intervals-some nice, respectable guys, too-she'd firmly pushed them away and focused on the business. If a thousand dollars didn't come through the door each week, she'd be out of it.

Now the whole sex thing was coming up again. A guy who owned a steel-fabricating business, a three-year widower with a couple of kids, had come in to get a watercolor framed-a whitetail deer standing in a forest glade, its front feet in a leaf-dappled pool. He'd chatted awhile when he came back to pick it up, and then he'd stopped a couple of times, passing by, he said, just to see how things were.

She'd known him most of her life-he was three grades ahead of her in school-so they were comfortable. He hadn't asked her out yet, but he was edging up to it, and she liked him. She even liked his kids, and she wouldn't mind, after this long hiatus, getting laid again.

Which brought her back to worrying about Carl. Bill, she thought, wouldn't be too happy about a gay stepchild, if that was the situation. On the other hand, she had no reason to think Carl was gay. Maybe he was just a little slow with girls. From what she read in the papers and saw on TV, half the girls Carl's age were already sexually active, and Carl had never been on a date. He was certainly good-looking enough to attract girls, but he had that tall, willowy, clear-complected look that she'd associated with homosexuality-TV homosexuality, anyway. And something sexual was going on with him; she'd been bleaching the semen stains out of his shorts since he was twelve.

She was in that questioning mood when she saw the cut on his arm. She'd come home late-she kept the place open late two nights a week, trying to make that thousand-dollar nut-and she'd heard him in the shower. A strange time to take a shower, she thought; had he been up to something?

She unpacked a sack of groceries, then heard the pipes bang as the shower was turned off. She headed into the back hall a minute later, just as Carl came out of the bathroom in Jockey shorts, carrying his clothes. He jumped when he saw her, and shied away, and that's when she saw the cut.

"Carl," she began, then frowned. "What's that on your arm?"

"Where?"

"There on your arm. What happened?"

"Oh…" He hid it, slid sideways into his bedroom. "We didn't want to worry you. I was helping Grandpa wash some storm windows, and one was cracked, and it broke on me and I cut myself. It's all right now."

"Let me see…"

"Mom, jeez…" But he turned his arm.

The cut was clean, but the stitch holes were still evident. "Oh, God, Carl…" He didn't tell his mother about a cut like this? It made her feel like a failure.

"Mom, this is what we thought would happen," Carl said. "That you'd worry. But don't worry: it's all taken care of. It's almost healed."

"You should have told me." A little angry with him.

"You'd just worry more. You already worry too much."

She knew she did. She sighed, and changed directions. "Are you taking somebody to the homecoming dance?" And if so, would your date be female?

"I don't know," he said. He edged deeper into the doorway, trying to escape into his room. "I don't know who to ask."

"You've got ask somebody sooner or later. You've got to bite the bullet. Don't worry, girls are never insulted by being asked. You're so good-looking, that won't be a problem anyway, believe me. You're the age where you should start."

"Well, I thought about asking Jeanne McGovern," Carl said. "She talks to me in choir quite a bit, and her brother said nobody's ever going to ask her out because she's too smart."

Jan tapped her son on the bare chest: "That's exactly the kind of girl, uh, woman, person, you know, you should ask. Smart women are a hell of a lot more entertaining than the stupid ones."

"I'm thinking about it," Carl said. "But I've been helping Grandpa out a lot…"

"You're over there all the time. What's going on?"

"I don't know. We just like to talk, and Grandma's so messed up, that I feel like I oughta help Grandpa out."

"You're a good boy, Carl," Jan said. "I just want you to be happy. Do ask this Jeanne girl, okay?"

"Okay, Mom."

He eased the door shut and left her standing in the hall. After a moment, she turned away, worried that something about him was being left undone; but also relieved. He wasn't gay. Probably. She'd have to check out the McGovern girl.

Carl got on the walkie-talkie. He'd worked out a routine with Grandpa, both of them a little excited about the small black radios: this was like the Resistance in World War II, calling from the Underground. He beeped him, beeped him again, listened.

Grandpa picked up-"Yes"-and Carl said, "Mom came home before I got out. Call and ask if I can come over. Tell her the car's got a flat."

"Yes." Click.

The phone rang a minute later, once, twice, and then stopped. A minute after that, his mother knocked on his door. "That was Grandpa. It's late, but he says the car's got a flat and he wants to go out early tomorrow…"

"I can get it," Carl said. He'd already put on the camouflage shirt. He opened the door. "I left a book over there, too, I can get that."

"Jeanne McGovern," Jan said.

"Mom…" But he smiled at her.

He thought about Jeanne McGovern on the way to Grandpa's. McGovern wasn't great-looking, but she had all the necessary equipment, and Carl was attracted to the freckles scattered across her face; the freckles made her seem approachable, somehow. He thought of himself playing football, basketball, baseball, hockey, all the things he didn't play, with McGovern looking on, watching him score-would a smart girl be impressed? Did a smart girl give blow jobs?

He was still working on the question when he pulled through the alley to Grandpa's, and parked. They wouldn't be taking the Chevy.

Grandpa was wearing a dark turtleneck shirt and jeans, which looked strange on him: the turtleneck over Grandpa's withered neck, the jeans flapping around his elderly ass and matchstick legs.

"Plenty of time," he said. "He won't be there for half an hour."

"Unless he's scouting it out ahead of time."

"I think he would have already done that," Grandpa said.

They went back out to the garage, got in the Taurus, and headed north across town, out past the park, the night growing deeper and darker as they got away from the main city lights.

"You actually talked to the head of intelligence at the embassy?" Carl asked.

"Yes. They were quite… interested."

"What did you tell them?"

"I told them the truth-that I was working with Oleshev, that we had to coordinate, that we were running an operation approved by Moscow and what the hell were they doing in going after Spivak-that they'd given him away to the Americans."

"The truth?"

Grandpa grinned: "Maybe I fictionalized it a little bit."

"Oh, yeah. A little bit."

The road was narrow and bumpy, and went nowhere-there was a tourist site that overlooked one of the mine pits, but that was long closed. Nothing else was out there: they saw no cars or house lights.

"If people saw us out here, they'd wonder."

"Won't be here for long," Grandpa said. He looked at his great-grandson. "When your grandfather was still alive, he used to come up here and neck with his girlfriends."

"I think Dad and Mom did, too. I probably will, if I ever get a girlfriend; Mom's been bugging me again."

"You're a man now. You should learn about women."

"Yeah, yeah." Not a conversation he wanted to have. "I know all about the birds and the bees, Grandpa, so don't lean on me, okay?"

Grandpa laughed, and then coughed. "Where's the gun?"

"Right in the back of my pants. In the belt."

"Remember what I told you about it hanging up."

"That's why I'm wearing the shirt. I was practicing with it before Mom came home."

"There are schools for these things," Grandpa said, looking sideways out the passenger window, into the dark, remembering. "I'm trying to teach you the best I can, but I'm not as sharp as I used to be."

"Grandma used to say that I'm the Imperfect Weapon," Carl said. "Remember? You said you'd make me the perfect weapon."

"You'll get better. But you have to think about it. Then you have to go practice. But thinking… thinking is the thing. You have to imagine all the things that can happen and prepare contingencies."

"I haven't thought of everything, but I'm trying," Carl said.

"You've been doing very well. One thing I've learned in all these years is that nothing ever goes exactly as planned. You plan, and then you adapt. You've done that." After a while: "You know what Lenin said. 'One man with a gun can control one hundred without one.' What you are learning, this is critical for your life in the underground."

A bit later, he said: "I talked to Lenin once. My father took me to…"

"The workers' hall near the Kremlin, and it was snowing out…" The story was a familiar one.

"He said, 'You'll grow up, and you'll be a soldier like your father.' And he slapped my father on the shoulder."

"Your father had medals on his coat…"

"He was buried with them. He was there at the beginning…"

"And that was one of the great days of your life."

"Yes, it was," Grandpa said, and a tear trickled down his cheek. He wiped it away and said, "You'll be a soldier, too. Maybe someday, you'll tell your grandson about driving out here with me."

A minute later: "I like the walkie-talkies. That was a stroke of genius."

Carl smiled in the dark.

Then they were there. Carl swung the car into the parking lot, the red-white-and-blue facade of the Greyhound Bus Origin Museum lit in his headlights.

"Down to the end," Grandpa grunted.

"If the cops come, they'll look at us for sure."

"Football game. It should be getting out about now. Every cop in town will be down there."

"Hope," Carl said.

They sat in silence for a minute or two, in the dark, and then Grandpa said, "Do it as soon as you can be safe. Even if I seem to be agreeing with this man. I will seem to be agreeing. Lenin said, 'It would be the greatest mistake to think that concessions mean peace. Concessions are nothing but a new form of warfare.' The same here. I agree, I agree, I agree, I talk, talk, talk, and then you act, when he begins to go to sleep."

"Yes."

"I want you to treat me like I'm a little senile. Help me out of the car, talk me around a little bit. Sit here, Grandpa, like that." A set of headlights flickered through the trees to the south. "He's coming. Remember, do it as soon as you can be safe. Control your fire, control the gun. And remember what he did with Anton. He'll have a gun of his own."

"Should we have some sort of signal, in case you want to call it off?" Grandpa nodded. "Yes. Good thought. I'll say, 'Carl, not tonight.' If I don't say that, kill him."

The oncoming car slowed, turned into the museum parking lot, hesitated, then turned toward them. The car stopped, the headlights on them for a moment, then it came on, swung out, pulled into a space about twenty feet away stopped. The lights went out, and Carl got out of the car.

The driver's-side door on the other car opened, and a man got out. He was dressed in a black raincoat and he said, "You are…"

"Here to meet you," Carl said. "Anyway my grandpa is."

"Come around the car with your hands up where I can see them." The Russian looked like a Mafia guy from television; but then, so had Oleshev.

Carl lifted his hands over his head and the other man moved closer, darkly visible in the thin security light from the museum. Carl saw that one hand hung down, long; he had the gun out. As he cleared the car, hands up, Carl said, "I'm not the one, I've got to get, uh, help Grandpa…"

The passenger door popped then, and Grandpa pushed it open. He croaked, "Carl? Is this the man?"

The man had moved closer and now his hand was up, at his side, the gun pointed at Grandpa's door. The car's interior light had come on when Grandpa pushed the door open, and the old man swiveled, and put his feet on the ground, his hands on his knees.

"Carl? Could you help me get up?"

"Yeah… Uh, he's got a gun, I think…"

"Of course he has a gun," Grandpa said. "Could you help me, please?"

The man was closer now, watchful, and Carl edged up the side of the car, both of his hands overhead, and he said, "I don't have any kind of a gun or anything…"

Grandpa tried to heave himself out of the car and stumbled, went down on the blacktop. "Ahhh…"

"Ah, Jesus, Grandpa."

Carl stooped to lift him; actually had to lift him, and was amazed as his great-grandfather's feathery weight. The old man might not weigh even a hundred pounds, he thought. Grandpa had him by the sleeve, steadying himself, and the other man was now only eight feet away.

"Tell me who you are," the other man said.

"I'm the man who called the embassy," Grandpa said. "I am the head of the Cherry Orchard ring."

"What? I was told that you were with Rodion Oleshev…"

"What'd you expect me to say? The last man you talked to, you tried to kill. We want to know what's going on-we've been working loyally for seventy years, and here you come trying to kill us."

"There hasn't been a Cherry Orchard ring since the nineteen sixties," the other man said. "We looked at the histories."

"That's one thing you're wrong about," Grandpa said. He looked at Carl. "Carl, you don't want to hear this." He pointed to the swale between the parking lot and the road. "Stand over there where you can look down the road."

"I'd like to hear it," Carl said.

"Not yet," Grandpa said. "Over there."

Carl moved twenty feet away, and Grandpa slumped back against the car. He began talking to the other man, gesturing. Carl could feel the gun pressing against his back, walked over to a curb, stood on it, then stood on his tiptoes, saw from the corner of his eye the other man glance at him, then turn back to Grandpa. Carl pulled the back of his shirt over the butt of the gun, so the butt was clear.

The other man said, "Nineteen eighty-one, we'd already lost touch with Glass Bowl." Carl could tell that he was focused on Grandpa now.

"I believe you…"

Carl said, "If we're going to have a long talk we should go somewhere else. Somebody's gonna come. Kids'll be coming down here to neck after the game."

"The game?" the other man said.

"Football," Grandpa said. "You probably saw the lights when you came into town."

Carl stepped toward them. "Grandpa?"

"We should talk some more," Grandpa said to the other man. He glanced toward Carl, but he never said the words. "You should know that we are not interested in Russia, per se. We are Communists, and we are proud of it, and the party will come back. When that happens, we'll be waiting."

"The party," the other man said contemptuously. "The party is…"

They never found out what the party was, because Carl, in one smooth motion, lifted the gun from his belt, leveled it, and fired a single shot through the back of the other man's head. The other man dropped straight down and his gun clattered on the blacktop.

"Good," Grandpa said. He smiled and rubbed his hands together. "Quick now, put him in the back. And get that gun. We'll find a place…"

Carl dragged the man to the back of the Taurus, popped the hatch, picked him up, and threw him inside. They took one minute to look at the other man's car: took the keys, took a briefcase, looked in the trunk. The trunk was empty. Carl scooped up the other man's gun.

"Move, move," Grandpa said.

Carl hurried around the car, got inside, pulled the door shut. "I know where there's a hole in the mine fence. We could throw him off the side. He's in a black raincoat, they might not find him, you know, for a long time."

"Good as anything, if we can get there with a car," Grandpa said.

"We can get close enough," Carl said. Grandpa was touching his own face, looking at his fingers. "What?"

"I don't know."

They were backing out, then out to the road. Carl risked flicking on the interior lights, looked at Grandpa. "Oh, Jesus, you've got blood all over your hair. Must've come out of the guy."

"I need, I need…" Grandpa scuffed open the center console, got out a travel pack of Kleenex, and began wiping his hair. "Just drive."

They were moving again, down the dark roads. Grandpa said, "Much farther?"

"A minute. Did he tell you anything?"

"Yes. They don't know who we are. Not our names. They only know the Spivaks, and they're not sure about them. But this Oleshev called me. So there must be an Oleshev group that has my name, and an official group that has the Spivaks' names."

"It wasn't possible to make a deal?"

"No. He had seen our faces, he'd seen this car, he would have seen more before he left. He no longer had to make a deal; he had the information he wanted. He had to be erased. When in doubt, erase."

Carl, nodded, eased his foot off the gas, and said, "This is close. It's right up over that hump, by the curve sign."

"I don't see anybody. We must be quick."

Carl pulled to the side, got out, popped the hatch, grabbed the other man by the back of his raincoat. He dragged him up through the bushes, the other man a dead weight, his feet bouncing over the loose rock. Once away from the car, the night was almost perfectly dark. This wouldn't work. Carl let go of the body, found his way back to the car.

Grandpa: "What?"

"Isn't there a flashlight in here?"

"Glove compartment."

Grandpa fished out a cheap plastic flashlight, tried it, got a thin, pale light. "Will this work?"

"Have to," Carl said.

"Hurry."

Carl took the flashlight, went back to the body. Took the man by the collar, dragged him to the break in the chain-link fence, then across. The Rust-Hull mine was an open-pit mine, with vertical rock walls hundreds of feet high. Carl, like most kids, knew it reasonably well; and knew he didn't want to fall in.

The flashlight worked just well enough to pick out the ground a few feet ahead, and then the downslope that led to the vertical wall of the pit. He pulled the man down the slope, braking him on the steeper parts, onto a shelf. He edged up to it, then peered over the side of the shelf with the flashlight. He could see nothing at all. Nothing but air.

He pulled the body around, ready to launch it over the edge, and as he did, the man moaned.

Carl was so startled that he dropped the man's collar, staggered backwards, and nearly went over the edge himself. "Whoa," he muttered. He took the gun out of his belt, shined the flashlight on the man's face. His eyelids flickered in the light. Carl leveled the pistol and shot the man between the eyes.

"Jesus." He should have checked to make sure the man was dead; but now, there was no question. He was dead, and in another ten seconds, he was over the edge. Carl listened for a thump, heard nothing, and scrambled back to the car.

"Done?"

"Done." Carl put on the safety belt and started the car. "You cleaned up?"

"Good as I can," Grandpa said. He looked stressed now, and even older than he usually did. "I think I got some on my shirt… I didn't even notice when it happened, the noise, the flash… it's all over me."

"Back home in five minutes."

"All over me," Grandpa said, scrubbing at his hands with the last of the Kleenex. "All over me…"

Carl didn't get home until after midnight. Jan Walther was ready for bed, and came out to see him. "It's late," she said. "Your homework?"

"Done. Did it in study hall," Carl said, hand on his bedroom doorknob.

"Still have to get up early. What kept you?"

"Ah, you know Grandpa. He doesn't sleep so well anymore. He wanted to talk."

She smiled and said, "Okay, big guy. But get some sleep. You have to be in school in less than eight hours."

"No problem," said the Imperfect Weapon.

He never dreamed about the dead: he dreamed of girls in varying states of nakedness, of black cars street-racing in LA, of himself posed in a shadowed hallway somewhere with a pistol, muzzle upraised as he slid along the hall, back to the wall…

Carl still dreamed a child's dreams.