“Oh, it’s you,” Mack said. “Shut the door.” Daniel shut the office door behind them, and Mack fell back in his desk chair and rubbed his hands over his stubbly face. “I can’t believe Gilman saddled me with a KGB agent.”
“I am not a KGB agent,” Matskevich said.
Mack gave him a long look. He let out a rattling smoker’s cough, then stabbed a finger at Daniel. “Listen, Hawthorne. It’s going to be a big fucking international incident if anything happens to that guy, so you treat him like he’s the president and you’re the whole goddamn Secret Service, all right? I don’t want to deal with the press, and I especially don’t want to deal with the paperwork.”
“Yes, sir,” Daniel said.
Mack sighed and rolled out a drawer. He slapped a file down on the desk. “Here’s what I got for you.”
Daniel flipped it open. “A missing Mauser!”
Mack drank the last two inches of coffee from a mug on his desk, and winced. “I hope to God it doesn’t come to anything.”
“What? Oh…” Daniel had continued reading. “Stolen from the office of State Congressman James Abbott.” He sat back in his chair. “Well, that’s… fun. Who is he?”
“Commie-baiter,” Mack said. “Always in the papers. Decorated World War II veteran.” He removed a newspaper clipping from his desk and shoved it to them. “I did a little digging. He was part of the delegation that met Khrushchev at Garst’s farm on the day of the shooting, so he can’t be the shooter, thank God. Just imagine the press.”
“He didn’t have the gun to shoot with, anyway,” Daniel pointed out. “It was stolen…”
Matskevich was already checking the date. “In April. Before the Chairman’s visit was announced.”
“You mean the theft might be entirely unconnected?” Mack sounded like he had been given a Christmas present.
“Might be. We’d better check it out, anyway.”
“You’d better check it out,” Mack corrected Daniel. “I’m sure as shit not sending a Russian spy to a congressman’s office, even if he is only a state congressman.” He attempted another drink from his coffee mug, and frowned at finding it empty. “Guess who visited the Congressman’s office the day of the theft?”
Daniel scanned the police report till he found the list. “The entire state of Iowa,” he cracked.
Mack gave him a withering look. “Funny guy.”
“All of his staffers,” Daniel said. “His wife and kids. A delegation of constituents from… Where’s Appaloosa?”
“Wrong side of the state,” Mack said.
“People have cars, Mack.”
Mack grunted.
“Plenty of fellow state congressman… Any anticommunists?” Daniel said.
“All of them. This is Iowa, kid.” Mack ran a hand over his balding head, and added, “Most of them were at Garst’s farm, too.”
“Fine. There was a class field trip from a local elementary school. A Boy Scout troupe…”
Daniel looked up, and found Matskevich looking over at him. “There is a Boy Scout camp near Honeygold,” Matskevich said. “Camp Dubois.”
(The very first night they had set out on the road, they had spread a topo map of Honeygold County on the floor of the motel room and spent some time studying it.
“Camp Dubois would’ve been a good place to stash a getaway car,” Daniel had commented, tapping his finger on the spot on the map. “A Boy Scout camp would’ve been closed for the season in September.”
“Closed? Hard to get into?”
“No, probably just a wooden barrier on the gate. Easy to move aside.”)
“You can’t harass a whole troupe of Boy Scouts just because there’s a Boy Scout camp in Honeygold County,” Mack said.
“No, of course not,” Daniel agreed. “But we might just drop by to have a chat with… who wrote this police report? Daniel Jones,” he said, answering his own question, and grinned. He always tried to find a commonality with anyone he needed to interview: that made it easier to get chummy, make them want to talk. The shared first name was an easy in. “We’ll drop by the police station and have a chat with him.”
“So he can tell you in person that the Iowa PD doesn’t have any leads on the theft?” Mack asked.
“Sometimes people have a feeling,” Daniel said. “Maybe not enough evidence to put into the official report. But that’s something, anyway.”
Mack shrugged, as if to say, Suit yourself. He looked at them both for a long moment, and suddenly smiled at Matskevich. It made his worn hangdog face oddly beautiful. “My unit met up with some Soviets at the end of the war,” Mack said. “Nice fellas. ‘Course, we didn’t have a single word in common, but we just handed cigarettes and pictures of pin-up girls back and forth, and everyone got along swell. Always thought it was too bad our two countries couldn’t remain on good terms after the war.”
Matskevich looked startled. “Yes, sir.”
“Doubt it’ll last long now,” Mack said. “But I hope you have a good time while you’re here.”
***
“I wish I could help you.” Officer Daniel Jones was a pudgy young man, and his round moon face looked genuinely distressed. “But stolen property – if you don’t find it fast, it’s usually gone. Unless it’s something rare and valuable. Then sometimes it shows up years after on an auction block. Just last month, Daniel Green…”
“Another Daniel!” Daniel joked. “Is he here? We’d have a quorum.”
“Naw. He’s retired now, practically. But last month he was at an estate sale, and he recognized some pearls that went missing about thirty-five years ago – Roaring Twenties, those big long necklaces? – well, he found them at the sale, and that got him looking at the other jewelry, and it turned out that little old lady who died must’ve been the biggest klepto west of the Mississippi, because she had three whole jewelry boxes of stolen property.”
“Gosh!” Daniel said, heartily admiring.
Officer Jones grinned, as pleased as if it were his own case Daniel had admired. “But we never got any leads on the Mauser. And believe me, we tried. Congressman Abbott’s a personal friend of the Chief’s.”
“And there’s no way to narrow down who might have taken it? Who had access to the key, or anything like that?”
Officer Jones shook his head. “He had it in a display case, you know, not locked or anything. Chief chewed him out for that, but of course it was too late to do anything.”
Matskevich looked up from the wanted posters on the wall. He had obligingly effaced himself for most of the interview, but now he said, “Is this normal? An unlocked gun in a government office?”
Officer Jones looked abashed. “Well, it wasn’t loaded or anything,” he protested. He rubbed the back of his neck, and added semi-belligerently, “Why are you asking about the gun, anyway? It’s been missing six months.”
“We believe it was used in the commission of a murder,” Daniel said. That was the cover story he and Matskevich had agreed on when asking questions about the Mauser.
“Gosh!”
“Of course, it’s not definitive,” Daniel said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “We’d have to have the gun to match ballistics. That’s why we dropped by to talk to you, actually,” he said, and slipped a business card from his wallet. “If any leads turn up, can you contact me? I’m not likely to be in town long, but a message to the Des Moines field office will find me.”
“Of course!” said Officer Jones. His shoulders straightened, then slumped slightly: “But it’s not likely, you understand. After it’s been so long, and everything.”
“Of course,” Daniel told him. “I know it’s a long shot. We’ve just got to explore all avenues, that’s all.”
It was trending on toward dusk when they left the police station. “Let’s leave for Honeygold tomorrow,” Daniel suggested. “Hit the town tonight. Want a tour of Des Moines?”
Matskevich made a dismissive gesture. “All American cities are the same.”
D
aniel smiled and let that ride. “At least let’s do something this evening,” he said. “Catch a movie, maybe. Go to a strip club.”
“A strip club!” Matskevich sounded appalled. “We have known each other for three days, and already you are trying to gather blackmail?”
“No!” Damn Mr. Gilman, anyway. Naturally a Soviet agent would take it that way. “No. I just thought it would be a good way to relax, blow off steam…” He was digging himself in deeper. “Or we could go duckpin bowling,” he suggested. “I saw a sign for it just a couple blocks away.”
“Duckpin bowling. What is this?”
“It’s a game…” Daniel wasn’t sure how to explain bowling. “It’s fun,” he said. “C’mon. Aren’t KGB agents allowed to have a good time?”
Matskevich’s eyes narrowed. “I am not a KGB agent,” he said, and for a horrible moment Daniel thought that his careless strip club suggestion had destroyed the friendliness that had grown up between them, and they would spend the duration of the investigation in stony professional silence.
But then Matskevich added, “So there are no rules that say I cannot have a good time. If that’s what duckpin bowling is,” he added, in a tone of skepticism.
Daniel gave a shout of laughter. “Well, we’ll go to the bowling alley, and you can decide for yourself.”
***
After duckpin bowling, Matskevich insisted on trying the pinball machines in the bowling alley, and then getting a beer at the bowling alley bar. “We could have been drinking all this time as we bowled?” he asked Daniel.
“If you wanted to drop a bowling ball on your toes, sure,” Daniel returned.
“Well, so, perhaps it is better we waited.” Matskevich drained his beer, and gestured at Daniel’s half-full glass. “Drink up!”
“No, no, one’ll do me,” Daniel said, laughing, but firm, and Matskevich shook his head and sighed and drank two more beers on his own.
He seemed none the worse for it in the morning, when they drove off early into the crisp clear autumn day. Farm equipment clogged the narrow county roads: the corn harvest was underway. “It’ll be nice if they ever build that interstate highway system,” Daniel said sourly, as they crept along County Road K22 behind a combine. Daniel had agreed to do most of the driving if Matskevich wouldn’t smoke in the car. “Oh well. I guess this’ll give you a good look at America, huh?”
Matskevich didn’t reply, just peered thoughtfully at a scarecrow wearing a battered Dodgers hat. He had rolled down his window earlier, and sometimes leaned out of the car to take in the sights as they passed through little country towns with jack-o-lanterns on the porches and American flags flapping in front of the post offices.
“You remember our cover?” Daniel asked.
Matskevich turned away from a farm stand piled with pumpkins. “We are pollsters. We have come to investigate how Khrushchev’s visit affected American views about Communism and the Soviet Union.” He paused. “People will believe this?”
“Oh yes,” Daniel said. “Americans are very gullible.” Possibly not the best tidbit to share with a Soviet agent. Oh well. “We’ll stop by the minister’s house first,” he added. “Methodist, if they’ve got one. If he takes to us, that will clear the way for us with everyone else in town.”
***
“I’ve always thought,” Daniel said, “that the ministers are the beating heart of any American town, so of course I wanted to talk to you before we began to poll more widely, Reverend Johnson.”
Daniel had headed for the Methodist minister’s house directly upon arriving in Honeygold, and now he and Matskevich sat ensconced in Reverend Johnson’s pleasantly cluttered front room, drinking cups of coffee provided by Mrs. Johnson.
Matskevich sat with a steno pad on his knee, poised to take notes once Reverend Johnson started sharing useful information, but right now he was looking at Daniel incredulously, as if he thought Daniel were laying it on far too thick. Daniel ignored him. He had grown up in the Midwest. There was no such thing as too thick here.
“We’re looking to interview a broad cross-section of the town,” Daniel went on. “We’re particularly interested in people who opposed the visit, to see if seeing Khrushchev changed their views… If they went down to the whistle-stop at all, that is.”
“Oh, just about everyone went,” Reverend Johnson said. “Even most of the Baptists, never mind their preacher told them they shouldn’t go see a godless Communist.” He smiled just a little.
Daniel matched his smile. “I’m guessing you didn’t tell your congregation the same thing?”
“No, no. I thought it might be asking just a little bit too much of human nature to tell them not to attend the most exciting event that’s ever happened in Honeygold. In any case, it seemed to me that the right thing to do was to show Mr. Khrushchev a warm welcome. Maybe he’ll be less inclined to shoot missiles at us if he remembers friendly crowds.”
“That’s exactly the sort of thing we’re looking for,” Daniel said warmly, and Matskevich’s pen began to scratch. “If you could just help us reconstruct who all went to the whistle-stop…?”
“Oh, well, it truly was most of the town,” Reverend Johnson said. He thought for a moment, then proceeded to list a who’s who of Honeygold: the mayor, the sheriff, the newspaper editor (“Milly Douglas, she took it over after her husband died; you’ll want to talk to her”), the librarian, the high school principal. “The whole high school went, in fact. I guess he figured he’d have an epidemic of truancy on his hands otherwise, so he gave the whole school a field trip. The marching band played the Marseillaise when the train came in. I suppose it should have been the Internationale, but somehow no one could bear to order the sheet music…”
At last Reverend Johnson wrapped up: “Even Eddy Wright and his cronies went, and they were violently opposed to the visit.” (Daniel noticed Matskevich’s pen pause at the word violent.) “I suppose curiosity won out in the end. They all fought in Korea and I suppose they saw the Communists do some pretty nasty things…”
“It was the Chinese who fought in Korea,” Matskevich said. “Not the Soviets.”
It was the first time he had spoken, beyond the first exchange of greetings, and Reverend Johnson looked at him in some surprise. “Is that a Polish accent, son?”
Now Matskevich looked surprised, just for a second. “Yes,” he said, with a razor smile. “So you see, I know my Communists.”
Reverend Johnson smiled too, with genuine sympathetic warmth. “Of course you’re right,” he said. “It was the Chinese in Korea, not the Soviets. But I imagine Eddy and his friends were thinking that a Communist is a Communist, at the end of the day. Maybe it was good for them that they came and saw that Khrushchev was just a man, in the end.”
“When you say they were opposed,” Daniel said, “what sort of things were they saying?”
“Oh, well. They were talking big in the roadhouse, so naturally I didn’t hear it myself. But it would be easy to arrange an interview with Eddy,” Reverend Johnson added. “If you need a place to stay, his mother rents out rooms to travelers. Edna Wright. She hasn’t had an easy time of it. First her husband died in World War II, and then Eddy… well, like I said, he had a bad time in the war.”
“We are looking for a place to stay, thank you,” Daniel said, instantly recalibrating his plans. “Is there anyone who didn’t go?” he added. “A sort of control group, if you will.”
“Oh, well, Mr. Purcell, of course,” Reverend Johnson said, and again he gave that small smile. “He was leading a prayer meeting down at the Baptist Church. He’d be a good one to interview. Naturally I don’t accord with his views on everything, but he’s got quite a lot to say.” The indulgent smile briefly grew wider, and Reverend Johnson hid it by taking a sip from his coffee cup. Then he looked at his cup in surprise. “My goodness, it’s gone cold. Have we been talking for so long?”
He sounded dismayed. Daniel stood up, and Matskevich followed his lead. “I think we’ve taken too
much of your time,” Daniel said.
“Oh, not at all, not at all. It’s been a pleasure. It’s just that, well, there’s a church supper tonight – you’re invited, by the way; please come – and I haven’t finished my part of the preparations…”
Matskevich’s eyes lit at the words church supper. “We will come,” he said, and then glanced at Daniel. “Won’t we?”
He looked as eager as a child who had just been invited to a circus. “Well, I don’t know,” Daniel hedged, mostly to tease him; but when Matskevich’s eyes widened, Daniel couldn’t help grinning. “Of course we will. I expect much of the community will be there, won’t they, Reverend Johnson?”
“Oh yes,” Reverend Johnson said. “And I’d be happy to introduce you to anyone you’d like to talk to.”
“Wonderful. Then if you could just give us directions to Mrs. Wright’s house…?”
“Head on south to Pear Street, then four blocks down to the left. Church supper starts at five. I’ll have my eye out for you.”
They crunched through the fallen leaves on Reverend Johnson’s front walk, back out to their car. Once they were in the car, Matskevich said, “If we stay at Mrs. Wright’s, we will have to pretend to be pollsters even in our sleep.”
“I know,” Daniel said. “But think how much information we could gather this way! I’m hoping she’ll be an incorrigible gossip.”
“Yes,” Matskevich allowed. “It’s a good idea. Only you must remember to remain in character.”
“Well, same to you, partner,” Daniel reminded him. “You’re not just a pollster; you’ve got to remember that you’re Polish as long as we’re in Honeygold.” He turned to look at Matskevich. “Are you Polish? Matskevich doesn’t sound like a Russian name.”
“It’s Belarusian.” Matskevich sounded faintly belligerent. “From my father’s side. On my mother’s – mostly Russian; a Polish grandmother. But now we are all Soviet.”
Daniel had known that there were a lot of different ethnicities in the Soviet Union, and yet somehow he had simultaneously considered it an ethnically homogeneous mass of Russians. “A Soviet melting pot,” he mused. “Your country is like America that way.”
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