Hidden prey

Chapter 22

Grandpa watched them go, and without turning to his wife said, "They know all of us. I'll have to do the rescue."

She said nothing; stared sightlessly at the TV screen. He turned, stepped over to her, put his hand on her head: "We had a really good run, and we can still save the others. I'm going to start it."

She seemed to nod under his hand, and he bent, kissed her forehead, glanced at his watch, went to the kitchen, opened a drawer, and took out the walkie-talkie. A van was parked up the street, one that he hadn't seen before, but not unlike one that had been parked across the street the day before-they both had dark windows, and he could feel the surveillance.

Was the house bugged as well? He thought not, because for the last three days he'd been putting telltales on the doors before he went out, a hair stuck on with a little spit, and they'd been undisturbed.

Still, there was no point in taking chances. He carried the walkie-talkie to the front hall closet, climbed inside, sat down, pulled the closet door shut, and beeped Carl. Carl, he thought, should be finishing lunch.

Two minutes later, he got a patch of static, and then, "Yeah. I'm bringing the two-by-fours."

"The inspectors came by," Grandpa said. "We passed, but they'll be back. I need to fix the door. You'll have to pick me up."

"What time?"

"Eight o'clock."

"Eight? Can it wait that long?"

"It'll have to. I'm waiting for a guy to get off work."

"Okay. I'll see you then."

"I've got a watch; call me ahead of time, though."

"Okay."

"I'm out."

"Out."

Simple voice code, a crude effort to sound like a construction site. The key was the time: Carl would add three hours to the specified time, and would come by at eleven o'clock.

A long wait. Melodie was fine in her wheelchair. Grandpa went to the kitchen, pulled out a silverware drawer, nearly dropped it, put it on the kitchen table, and felt back under the sink until he found the pistol.

The gun was old, in a way-it had been made in the 1930s-but guns hadn't changed much. He pulled the magazine, looked at the shiny new shells stacked inside, put the magazine aside and dry-fired the pistol a hundred times, aiming at a can of soup on the kitchen counter.

There was no need for great accuracy: he'd be shooting from four feet. Carl had cleaned the gun after the last use, and the cleaning oil was pungent and not at all unpleasant. The gun felt just fine; nose heavy, because of the suppressor, but he was used to the weight.

After a hundred practice snaps, he reseated the clip and put the gun back. His hand touched the second pistol, the one they'd taken from the Russian in the parking lot outside the bus museum. That was a piece of luck-they wouldn't have to find a second pistol.

At loose ends, he went back to the living room, looked at Grandma-she was asleep, he thought, her breathing imperceptible, but he touched her neck anyway, to find the artery, now so close to the skin… found it, and the thready beat, and felt the usual trickle of relief. Still alive.

He could work a chess problem, but the thought bored him. Big events were under way. Lives were coming to a close. He checked Grandma again and then back to the bedroom, lay on the bed and closed his eyes.

The cop, the state cop, had seemed bright and tough, and the Russian woman just as bright. He knew their types from the early days. He'd learned, though, that the young feared dementia-Alzheimer's they all called it-and he knew how to play that card. He was old enough that not only did they believe the act, they expected it. He smiled and drifted…

The feel and smell of the gun took him back, all the way back. He'd been a young boy in Moscow when the revolution swept through. He could remember the crowds in the streets, the excited arguments between the adults, people rushing into the house with newspapers. His father was a Bolshevik from the start; when his father died, too young, in the winter of 1921, Sergey Vasilevich Botenkov had been taken in by his old comrades, shown how to use a rifle, and had gone off to fight the Whites.

He'd been little more than a boy, but he'd done well. He was trusted. And when he was grown, when he was eighteen, he'd been sent to the Ukraine to help with the elimination of the kulak class.

He remembered one place, one city, where they'd brought the kulaks in trucks, unloaded them in the city park, hands tied behind them by the soldiers. He and the other executioners shot each one in the back of the head and let them topple into the grave; nine shots and reload, nine shots and reload. A cigarette, a bottle of tea, another truck full of the enemies of the state.

Sergey Vasilevich Botenkov lay on his bed and remembered.

And smiled.