Lucas Davenport Collection: Books 11-15

by John Sandford

  “The Minneapolis cops have it right now. We’ll put it on the search warrant return, and then you guys can pick it up.”

  “How soon?”

  “Hour?”

  “Excellent.”

  MARCY TOOK THE COMPUTER, left another of the intelligence cops in charge of the scene, and then, back in her car, led them a mile or so to a coffee bar where they got coffee and scones.

  “Tell me everything,” she said. “I read the story in the Pioneer Press, said you were up to your ass in spies . . .”

  They talked for half an hour, about spies and Marcy’s love life, catching up on old times. Then Marcy got a phone call, listened for a minute, and said, “I’m on the way. Fifteen minutes.”

  To Lucas: “Gotta go. That was the feds. They want the computer.”

  On the street, Lucas said, “Stay in touch,” and Marcy stood on her tiptoes and pecked him on the lips.

  BACK IN THE CAR, Nadya asked, “How long—is it permitted to ask?—since you were romantic together?”

  Lucas cut his eyes at her, then smiled and said, “Pretty obvious, huh? It’s been a while. Three years, four years. Only lasted a month or so.”

  “Your wife knows about this?”

  “Yes. She wasn’t my wife at the time. Weather and I had been seeing each other, then we had a big problem and stopped seeing each other—actually, she stopped seeing me—and then there was the little episode with Marcy . . . and then Weather came around again.”

  “You’re a very busy man,” Nadya said.

  “Didn’t seem busy,” Lucas said. “I like women, and I was lonely without one around. Now I’m married, and I have kids, and I’m happy.”

  “Good,” she said. “I’m happy that it works. My life . . .”

  She looked out the window and Lucas did a U-turn in traffic, hoping that the screeching turn would distract her, that Nadya wouldn’t start some goofy rambling about her problems; listening sympathetically to one woman’s problems was enough.

  WEATHER AND NADYA got along famously. Weather was wide-eyed at the idea of a spy in the house, although Nadya said she was not a spy but a policewoman; and Nadya seemed genuinely interested in Weather’s reconstructive surgery work. Weather had dozens of photographs and computer graphics of a young girl born with a deformed head, for whom Weather was planning to construct a new eye socket.

  Then Sam was brought out and fed and changed, and the two women ganged up on Lucas when Weather accused him of not doing his share of the diaper changing, and Lucas excused himself, got a beer, and parked in front of the TV to sulk. A little later, the women brought Sam in, in his walker, and let Lucas watch him as he rolled around the room pulling at upholstery and trying to eat magazines.

  At dinner, the discussion focused on the upper limit of a woman’s ability to have babies, and the technicalities of the problem. Weather mentioned that aging men were also to blame for prenatal problems—it wasn’t just older women—and again, he felt that he was being ganged up on. When the conversation drifted from obstetrics to gynecology, and stories of postmenopausal women and their hot flashes, Lucas again moved into the TV room.

  He’d returned to the kitchen for another beer, when Ellen Jansen, their housekeeper, returned; she’d been out having dinner with a new beau, and Weather asked, “Well, did he kiss you good night?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Lucas said. “I’m going for a walk.”

  At seven, Weather and Nadya left for the Megamall, and didn’t make it back until ten. Nadya looked at Lucas and said, “Hooters,” and laughed.

  At bedtime, Weather took Nadya to the guest room and showed her how to plug her laptop into the phone jack and then came back downstairs and asked, “I’m sorry; have I been neglecting you?”

  “You guys . . .” But he was mildly amused. They went around and checked doors and turned off the lights, made sure Sam was okay, both kissed him and headed down the hall to their bedroom; and then Nadya called, across the house, “Lucas, are you there?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  He walked back toward the guest room, Weather a step behind. Nadya came around a corner, still dressed. She held a finger up, and said, “I must tell you, I have not been completely truthful.”

  “What?” Lucas looked at Weather, who shook her head.

  “Truthful. I have not been completely.”

  “What, uh . . .” Weather stepped up to Lucas and put her hand on his biceps.

  “I have a shadow; this I knew.”

  Lucas shrugged: “So did everybody else.”

  “This shadow, I do not know him. He was assigned by the embassy, and he was investigating beside us. This morning, I told you, a man telephoned the embassy and asked to speak to a man in intelligence. I didn’t tell you that he mentioned some . . . items . . . that told us he was genuine. He spoke in Russian. He arranged to meet the shadow this evening at the Greyhouse Bus Museum in the town of Hibbing. You know this museum?”

  “Never heard of it, but it’s probably the Greyhound Bus Museum. So what happened?”

  “The shadow is missing. His cell phone rings, he doesn’t answer. He always answers. There is a strict rule that he call back every half hour with information about destination and names and he had one of these, eh, photographic telephones, but his telephone now rings without answer and he took no photographs . . .”

  “When was the last time they heard from him?” Weather asked. “The last moment?”

  “Tonight, as he arrived at the bus museum. Since then, nothing.”

  “Let me make a call,” Lucas said.

  She was anxious, twisting her hands. “Could you hurry? People are very worried. This shadow has a daughter, but his wife died three years ago, and everybody is worried for this man and especially the daughter.”

  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 strang
e 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 façade 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.