by Dinah McCall
Rostov frowned, then reread the first entry. We? Who was “we”? Gut instinct told him he needed to know more about what Waller/Walton had been working on and why he’d been allowed to leave the Soviet Union at the time of his death. Even more disconcerting was the fact that Waller had not acted alone.
He looked up at his surroundings, at the dust on the floor and the sunlight coming through a dirty, curtained window. He was a very long way from home and seriously out of his depth. Not for the first time, he wondered if he’d been sent because he was expendable. Then he sighed. That was nothing new. A spy was by definition expendable. That much was always understood.
He turned back to the book and began to read.
7
Rostov got up to get himself a drink, still reading as the walked. He knew from the entries that Vaclav Waller had made that something big was going on, but the entries were too vague to know exactly what it was. He filled a glass and drank it dry, then returned to his bed. This time he crawled all the way onto the mattress and leaned against the wall, using it for a backrest as he shifted to book a bit more toward the light. The day was passing, but he was so engrossed in what he was reading that he hardly noticed.
September 11, 1971
Well, we’ve done it. Right or wrong, the first test case is in place, and this time with no rejections. Only time will tell what the outcome will be, but if we’re successful, the human race as we know it will never be the same.
Is this right? Are we doing mankind a favor, or are we playing at being gods.
Suddenly Rostov heard the squeaking of a hinge as the door to the tool shed was opened. Then he heard footsteps coming across the concrete floor toward his door. With no wasted motion, he stuffed the book beneath his mattress and moved the chair from beneath the door, then crept onto the bed and closed his eyes.
“Hello in there! Mr. Ross! Are you there?”
Rostov faked a weal voice as he answered.
“Yes, I’m here. Come in.”
He looked toward the door, pretending illness as Thomas Mowry peeked inside.
“I say,” Thomas said. “Are you all right?”
Rostov rolled to the side of the bed and sat up, then swayed, as if struck by a sudden spell of dizziness.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Rostov said. “I’ll get right back to work.”
Thomas hastened to the bedside. “No, no that’s not why I’ve come. Isabella was concerned when she didn’t see you outside. She asked me to check on you. Are you ill?”
Rostov placed a hand on his stomach and shrugged. “I have nausea.”
Thomas shifted his glasses a little higher up his nose as he laid a hand on Rostov’s forehead.
“You don’t have a fever,” he said, more to himself than to Rostov, then picked up Rostov’s wrist and began taking his pulse.
“Please, sir,” Rostov mumble. “I can work. Tell Mess Abbott that I am fine. I do not want to lose my job.”
Thomas shook his head and patted Rostov on the back.
“Lie back down, my friend. You won’t lose your job just because you’re ill.” He pushed gently against Rostov’s shoulder until the man did as he asked. “There now,” Thomas said. “David is back from town. He’s a doctor. I’ll have him come check you out.”
Rostov’ pulse accelerated. “Oh, no sir, there is no need. I’m sure it was something I ate…. Or maybe I just got too hot. I will be fine.”
“Nonsense,” Thomas said. “What’s the good of having a house full of doctors if you can’t get free care when you need it?”
Chuckling at his own with, Mowry left, leaving Rostov in bed.
Rostov sighed. Further reading of the diary would have to wait while he endured a physical examination from a man who treat infertile women. He snorted beneath hs breath and closed his eyes. If he was going to play sick, he might as well get some extra sleep while he was at it.
As he lay there, something about what Mowry had said suddenly clicked. A house full of doctors? Was that an exaggeration, or had it been a slip of the tongue? He’d been told that Frank Walton had been a retired botanist, and yet he knew that in Russia, Vaclav Waller had been a doctor involved in medical research. And there were the constant references in his diary to other people being involved in some big project. The head cook was a talker, and he’d listened more than once to her rattling on about how important the uncles had been in their younger days. How Mowry had been a chemist and John Michaels a geologist. That Rufus Toombs had been an archaeologist and worked in some great museum back East. He knew that Japer Arnold and David Schultz were doctors, because they, along with the recently deceased Samuel Abbott, had founded that fertility clinic in Braden. But he’d assumed that the entries in Waller’s diary had been entered in another place and time, before Waller had grown old. He had assumed that this was a place where the old men had come to retire. What if he was wrong? What if the “house full of doctors” were the others that Walton/Waller kept referring to in his entries? Rostov discarded the thought almost instantly. It seemed too far-fetched to be believed. However, he knew that to get his answers, he needed to do some research of his own. If he only knew the details on how Waller was supposed to have died. What could he possibly have done to fake his death and get away with it for all these years? But Rostov was in over his head, completely disconnected from the powers that be back home. If he called asking too many questions, they would assume that he had failed. He wasn’t ready to give up just yet.
And so as he waited for David Schultz to appear, another idea began to form. One more radical than anything he’d ever considered. With the discovery of the diary, his expectations of finding something that might interest his government were over, but maybe his findings would be of interest to somebody else. The first chance he got, he was going to call his contact and tell him the old man was dead.
The thoughts raced through his head as he began to smile. Vaclav Waller wasn’t the only one who knew how to fake a death. Rostov loved his country, but he was getting old, and he wasn’t a fool. After all the years he’d given to her, she’d given little in return. His pension was paltry, his room hardly better than this gardener’s shed. He’d seen plenty of opportunity for a man with his background while he’d been in Brighton Beach. It would be easy to assume a new identity. All he needed was something to get him started on the right track. The diary had possibilities. Maybe there was something in there with which he could work a little blackmail. He wouldn’t be greedy. Just enough to set him up in an apartment in Brighton Beach. All he had to do was make a call.
He was still smiling when he heard someone approaching his room. Reassuming a weakened demeanor, he closed his eyes as David Schultz knocked and then entered.
Isabella slept through lunch and then busied herself in the office with some overdue bookkeeping, thereby removing herself from curious stares. The swelling in her lip was almost gone, but the cut was still evident, as was a darkening bruise. Bobby Joe Cage had certainly done a number on her. It would be a long time before she forgot the panic she’d felt in knowing things were out of her control. She paused at the computer, her fingers on the keyboard, and almost immediately Jack Dolan’s face, dark with anger, popped into her mind. He had appeared without warning, like an avenging angel. If it hadn’t been for him, this evening might have taken on a whole different character.
Her expression twisted angrily. Was this something every woman had to go through when cast into the world on her own? She wouldn’t know. Before her father’s death, she’d taken her security for granted, but after today, she wasn’t sure. Dejected, she slumped forward and covered her face with her hands.
“Oh, Daddy, why did you have to dir? I wasn’t ready to let you go.”
The words were little more than a whisper, but spoken just the same. Isabella shoved the keyboard aside and stood abruptly, her eyes filling with tears. She strode to the windows overlooking the front grounds and pulled the curtain aside. A couple of unfamiliar vehicles were in the par
king lot. Probably more clients for her father’s clinic. Only it wasn’t her father’s clinic anymore.
Loneliness swamped her as she let the curtain fall into place. Granted, those couples yearned for a child of their own, and she wasn’t denying their right or the intensity of their desire to make it happen. But she wondered if they knew how truly blessed they were? At least they had each other. She had no one. She knew it was foolish, but her heart ached for something she’d never known.
Brighton Beach P.C.—The Same Day
Detective Mike Butoli’s broken toe was getting better, but his attitude wasn’t. Even though the John Doe who’d been found murdered in the alley behind Ivana’s Bar and Grill now had a name, Butoli still didn’t have a clue as to who had done it. One of his snitches had claimed the rumor on the street was that it had to do with the Russian Mafia and the dead man’s past. He knew it was a possibility, especially after the dead man’s prints had come back from Interpol. Granted, it had become quite a puzzle after they’d proved conclusively that the dead man’s prints belonged to a Russian doctor who had supposedly died back in the seventies. And there was another odd but pertinent fact. The autopsy had confirmed that while the old man had died from the stabbing, his days had already been numbered. He was suffering from an advanced case of stomach cancer. Traces of a chemical compound called EAP had been in his system, a drug that was now being used in such cases.
At that point the Feds had gotten involved and Lieutenant Flanagan had told him to back off, but Butoli wasn’t buying it. The man had died on their beat, and he wanted the man who’d killed him, which was why he was still following up lease. And after the phone call he’d just finished, he had discovered some very unusual facts.
Fact number one:
Walton/Waller was definitely dead. He’d died on a Saturday night right before the storm front that had blown through and topple the old lifeguard tower out on the beach.
Fact number two:
Butoli had been in the moregue, watching as the coroner sliced the old man open from stem to stern.
And give that set of facts, then the question still remained as to fact number three:
How had Frank Walton been on an American Airlines passenger list the next day, with a destination of Braden, Montana?
Butoli got up from his chair and circled the desk heading for Flanagan’s office.
“Hey, Lieutenant. Got a minute?”
Barney Flanagan waved him in. “Barely,” he said. “What’s up?”
“You know that dead defector we found?”
Flanagan frowned. “Damn it, Butoli, I thought I told you to—“
Butoli held up his hands. “I know, I know. But just hear me out.”
Flanagan’s face was as red as his hair, but he held his tongue, waiting for the detective to speak.
“Okay,” Butoli said. “It’s like this. The investigation was already rolling when the Feds stepped in, right?”
Flanagan crossed his arms over his belly without giving Butoli the satisfaction of a nod.
Butoli ignored the pissed-off expression on his lieutenant’s face and kept talking.
“So what was I to do? I mean…you can’t just cancel something that fast once it’s in motion. So… I had already put in a call to LaGuardia, as well as the bus terminals and the train stations. You know…checking to see when the old man had come in. The way I figured it, the Georgian Hotel might not have the first place he stayed, and to know for sure, I had to know how long he’d been in the city, right/
Flanagan shrugged. Butolie was a good detective, thorough, and as honest as his mother’s priest. So what he was saying did make some sense.
“Yeah, so?”
Butoli grinned. “So I just got a call from LaGuardia. According to their manifest, a man named Frank Walton had flown into LaGuardia about two weeks before the day he was killed.”
“That doesn’t tell us anything new,” Flanagan said.
“No, but this does. Either Frank Walton’s nasty little habit of resurrecting himself after death is still ongoing, or we’ve got a rat in the woodpile.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Flanagan muttered.
“The day after his body was discovered in that alley, someone name Frank Walton boarded an American Airlines plane on a return ticket to Braden, Montana.:
Flanagan came out of the chair, his eyes wide with disbelief.
“You’re sure?”
“Dead sure…and pardon the pun.”
“Holy shit! There’s a good chance that this is something the Feds don’t know. It’s my understanding that they’ve sent a man to Braden. He needs to know that the killer might be there, too.”
Butoli sighed. “I figured you were going to say that.”
Flanagan picked up his phone and started to dial.
“Sit,” he ordered. “You’re going to tell them exactly what you just told me, you hear? And then you’re going to file that case away and get to work on something you can fix. Understand me?”
Butoli hesitated, then shrugged. “Yeah, Lieutenant, I understand.”
And he did. There was every chance that the man who’d gotten on the plane as Frank Walton was the man who’d killed him, and if he was, he had more of an itinerary than they had believed.
Flanagan handed him the phone. He took a deep breath, introduced himself to the Federal agent on the other end of the line and started to talk.
Jack stepped out of the barber shop, rubbing the back of his neck and feeling the short strands of his hair. It was a good thing he’d told them to just take off a little. Any more and the old barber would have given him a buzz cut.
He glanced across the street, remembering how the last time he’d been in Braden, he’d watched Isabella come out of that store. His gut knotted as he imagined her coming toward him with that long lanky stride. HE dark hair swaying with the rhythm of her body as she moved closer to where he was standing. Her eyes lighting up in recognition, her mouth widening in a smile. Her arms sliding around his neck as she leaned…
A horn sounded on the street beside him, and he jumped as if he’d been shot, then turned and glared at the teenager behind the wheel.
Damn kid…the least he could have done was waited until my fantasy was over.
Disgusted with himself, he turned and began walking up the street. The more people he visited with, the more information he was gleaning about the permanent residents of Abbott House. He now knew that all seven men had arrived in Braden together, which he found very odd. And that Samuel Abbott had been the only one who was married. A few of the older people remembered his wife, Isabella, commenting on the tragedy of her death as she’d given birth to their only child.
He thought of Isabella, growing up without knowing a mother’s love, then remembered the adoration with which the old men treated her and decided they had more than made up for her loss.
As he turned the corner, a tall, angular man with a mop of long black hair stepped out of an alley and started walking toward him. His appearance was strange, his behavior even stranger. When they drew abreast of each other, the young man started to talk, moving his hands in short, jerky motions as his hair swung across his face.
“I’m gonna get me a guitar and go to Memphis,” he said.
Jack’s heart went out to the man. Despite his obvious problems, he still seemed to have a dream.
“That’s good,” Jack said, and started to walk on by. To his dismay, the man turned and followed.
“I can sing,” he said. “I can sing real good. I always sing for my momma.”
Then he grabbed a handful of his hair and suddenly pulled. Jack knew it must hurt. The action was hard and brutal.
“Hey, buddy,” Jack said. “Take it easy there.”
The man sighed. “I can’t find my momma. Is this Memphis? I gotta find momma.”
“No, buddy, this isn’t Memphis. You’re in Montana. Real pretty country here, don’t you think?”
The man raised his hea
d, but even then, Jack could not get a clear view of his face for the hair in his eyes. He might as well have been wearing a veil.
“See that store over there?” the man said. “They sell guitars. I’m gonna get me a guitar and go to Memphis.”
Knowing that any further conversation was going to be a repeat of the last, Jack tried to walk away.
“Okay. Good luck,” he said.
The man was still talking as Jack started across the street.
“I can sin! I can sing real good. I sing for my momma. She likes to hear me sing.”
The bell jangled over the drugstore door as Jack walked inside. The woman behind the counter looked at him closely, as had nearly everyone else that he’d met. They weren’t unfriendly, just cautious, as was the way in so many small towns.
“Afternoon,” the woman said. “I see you met John.
Jack looked back across the street, watching the black-haired man as he shuffled off into an alley.
Is that his name? I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, John Running Horse.”
“He’s Indian?” Jack said. “I didn’t realize.”
“The Blackfeet Reservation isn’t far from here, but he wanders off all the time.”
“He said he was looking for his mother.”
The woman shook her head. “His mother is dead. Has been for more than ten years, I guess.”
“What about his father?” Jack asked.
“Killed in a car wreck about a year ago. John’s been sort of lost ever since.’
“Isn’t there anyone to look after him?”
“Oh, he’s got family all right, but they’re all kind of scared of him, I thin.”
Jack turned, staring at the woman in disbelief.
“Scared? Because of his mind?”
“No…because they say he’s not one of them. They say he’s a spirit that doesn’t belong.”
Jack frowned as the woman continued.
“Who’s to say?” she muttered. “He’s lost in his head, whatever else is wrong.”
