He made his way to the cafeteria line where a bar had been set up and ordered a bottle of vodka. The bartender took his money and handed him a bottle and a glass. Macready took it to a table at the edge of the room with a view of the entrance and the musicians and poured himself a shot. He sipped slowly and let it all soak in—the alcohol, the music, the loud boisterous chatter, the warm smoky air.
Gradually, he became more attuned to the ebb and flow around him picking up snippets of conversations here and there—a bragging match about whose girlfriend back home was not only better looking but better in bed; a disgruntled contractor complaining to two other men in civilian clothes that the military was gouging him so badly he’d never be able to make the payments on the dacha he’d bought on the shore of the Caspian Sea; a new recruit wondering if the island weather was always this bad. But Macready finally tuned in to a voice at the next table that complained loudly enough for him to hear, yet remained discreet enough not to attract unwanted attention.
“I shouldn’t be here,” the man said to his companions. “There’s been a huge mistake.”
“The military doesn’t make mistakes,” a tablemate said with a laugh.
“I’m telling you, I was two months away from finishing my second year of medicine at the state academy in Izhevsk.”
“Whose wife did you sleep with?” another airman said.
A flush crept up the man’s neck into his face. “What are you talking about?”
Macready smiled and stood, grabbed the vodka bottle and approached their table. “I think your comrade simply suggested you might have pissed someone off.”
The medical student jerked his head up. “I have done no such thing.”
Macready reached over the man’s shoulder and poured a generous shot of vodka in his glass then offered the bottle to the airman next to him.
“No matter,” Macready said, pulling out a chair and sitting next to the med student. “You’re here now, among friends. Za fstryétchoo!” He raised his glass.
An airman across the table chimed in. “Za zhénshsheen! To women!”
The others laughed, finally drawing a smile from the medical student. He stuck out his hand. “Rostropovich. Yevgeny Rostropovich.”
Macready matched his grip. “Borodin. Aleksei.”
Now that he was closer, Macready could see that Rostropovich was just about the same size as he. Younger, of course, much younger. But who wasn’t these days? Insignia on his uniform indicated his rank as mladshiy lyeytyenant—junior lieutenant.
“You just flew in? Macready said.
Rostropovich nodded. “I have to report on board that destroyer out there in two hours.”
“You don’t seem happy about it.”
“To be so close to finishing preclinical training … I was going to choose my specialty next year. And now I’m in some godforsaken place to serve on a navy ship as a glorified orderly.” His mouth twisted in disgust.
“Surely they’ll have more for you to do on board than clean up officers’ vomit.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps. With my training they might let me treat minor issues.”
Macready poured him another shot and clapped him on the back. “That’s the spirit. Learn everything you can.”
For the next ninety minutes Macready was Rostropovich’s best friend and second best friend to everyone else at the table. While he kept an eye on the door and an ear out for trouble, he laughed and told tall tales like the rest of them. But he was careful to watch his vodka intake.
When it came time for Rostropovich to catch his transfer out to the destroyer, Macready tapped his watch. “Time for you to go?”
Rostropovich blearily glanced at his own wrist. “Dermo! I’ll be late.”
He got to his feet and wobbled as if he might fall over.
“Whoa!” Macready said, grabbing his arm. “Let me help me you.”
Macready stood up, threw on his coat and helped Rostropovich into his while the others hooted and laughed at the two of them nearly falling over each other. Macready hefted Rostropovich’s duffel onto his shoulder and wrapped the man’s arm around his neck to steady him. With farewells to the rest of the table, the pair stumbled out into the frigid night.
Outside, Macready straightened and took more of Rostropovich’s weight, hustling him along the snow-covered dirt road between the buildings. Instead of walking toward the waterfront, though, Macready took him on a course parallel to shore, toward the end of the base where he’d seen piles of construction material. The blowing snow obscured buildings only a dozen feet away,
Rostropovich raised his head and slurred his words. “Where is the ship? I don’t see a ship.”
“Short cut,” Macready murmured.
Rostropovich’s head lolled on his shoulders as he tried to focus on his surroundings. The storm’s gloom had settled where the lights from the buildings hadn’t chased it away. Macready managed to pick out the dark mass of the fenced supplies area against the white snow. Rostropovich tried to pull away now, pawing at Macready’s grip on him.
“Where we going?” he said drunkenly.
Macready pointed. “Just over there. The transport is just past that fence.”
Rostropovich stopped and thrust his chin forward, peering through the blowing snow. Macready crouched, slipping out from under the arm over his shoulders and stood up behind Rostropovich. With lightning quickness his arms snaked out to grab the man’s jaw and the back of his head, and with a fierce yank he snapped Rostropovich’s neck. Before the man crumpled, Macready put an arm around his chest and dragged him toward the fence. Snow had drifted against it at the rear of the yard, and Macready quickly pulled the body to a spot where he couldn’t be seen from the barracks or mess hall.
Working as quickly as the cold would allow, he stripped the body, rolled it next to the fence and covered it with snow. With any luck, no one would find it for a while. Shrugging out of his own clothes, he changed into Rostropovich’s uniform, trying not to look at the dead man. He’d started to like the poor bastard, and killing him had given Macready no pleasure. No time for regret. Rostropovich had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’d had no choice, no other way off this base except forward. And if he’d left the Russian alive, he wouldn’t last five minutes aboard the destroyer. This way at least he had a chance.
The cold numbed Macready’s fingers and toes, making him fumble with buttons and zippers, but he managed to get the clothes on, looping the dead man’s dog tags over his head last. The boots were about a half-size too small, but they’d have to do. Disarray was fine given that he’d been drinking. He stuffed his old clothes into the duffel and quickly went through the pockets of the uniform he’d donned to find Rostropovich’s ID and orders. As soon as he was sure he had everything, he grabbed the duffel and moved away from the fence.
He glanced at the luminous dial of his old Vostok watch—less than five minutes to make the transport on the beach. He shouldered the duffel and started to run.
Chapter 7
July 25—Seattle
Killing a man changes a person. For some, the taste of blood becomes an addiction that strips them of their humanity and sets them off on a spree of serial murders. For many, guilt, shame, horror, fear and a hundred other emotions tear their souls apart, leaving them as much a victim as those they killed. Most, like me, fall somewhere in the middle. Depending on the situation, we wrestled with the moral ambiguity of whether our actions were right or wrong. We dealt with guilt and shame, but somehow managed to put the incident behind us.
Despite playing games of G.I. Joe or cowboys and Indians what kid says, “I want to kill people when I grow up?” Not me. I’d even considered once or twice what I’d do if I had to protect my family from an armed intruder, or how I might react in combat. I’d never had the chance to find out, yet in the short span of a year, I’d morphed from mild-mannered public affairs consultant to killer. I’d shot not one but several men dead. What was it Twain said? “If th
e desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?”
It wasn’t something I wanted, though. I’d had no choice, really. All of them deserved it, and would have killed me had I not shot them first. So, I didn’t feel too guilty. Oh, I still had dreams on occasion that woke me, sweating and breathing hard. But the deaths of those men didn’t bother me nearly as much as my son Cole’s. His suicide a couple years earlier still gave me nightmares, kept me up nights, guilt clinging to me like wet clothes. The pain had diminished some, but for all the time I spent at Jeri Nolan’s teen suicide prevention program, both in group sessions and manning the hotlines, I thought I’d have a better handle on it by now. I didn’t. Sleep, already a precious commodity, had been hard to come by in recent weeks. And Jeri had banned me from working the phones and sent me to Brian Whitney.
All this was an explanation, not an excuse, for not taking my meds before I left for the Seattle Times warehouse a little earlier. At least that’s what I told myself. And forgetting my meds, I reasoned, was why I’d been preoccupied with a stream of disjointed thoughts that flipped in and out of my brain faster than a channel surfer changing stations. So absorbed that I failed to lock the car when I got out to deliver a stack of papers to an apartment building on my route. I’d made it a habit after another driver’s car got jacked, and normally left the engine running and carried a spare key when I had to leave the car. But I was in a relatively safe neighborhood, and I’d seen no one on the streets at that hour.
Most of my route customers live in houses on the north and east sides of Capitol Hill. I can toss their papers on their driveways from my car. But I service several apartment buildings, too. Some building managers prefer that I leave the papers inside the lobby so they aren’t taken. After one such delivery, I got back in the car and threw it in gear. Before I’d gone ten feet, I felt something cold and hard shoved up against my skull behind my right ear. My heart leaped into my throat, and I would have jumped out of my seat except that my way-above-average height jams my head against the headliner of the small car.
“Don’t turn around! Keep driving!”
I glanced in the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of a gray-haired man in his mid to late sixties. A neatly groomed full beard tried but failed to hide the loose skin at his throat. Eyes glinted under bushy eyebrows, their color hidden in shadow. Jowly, but not obese, he was short enough to fit comfortably in the back seat of my old Toyota, a space I’d always thought suited only for pets or small children. Since I no longer had either, I rarely used it.
“I don’t carry any money,” I said, glancing in the mirror again.
He settled into the far corner, holding the gun with both hands resting on his lap. His gaze met mine briefly before sliding away to take in the view out the windshield and rear window.
“Just drive,” he said, fixing his gaze on the back of my head. “Normally. No funny stuff.”
“Where to?”
“Anywhere,” he snapped. “Away from here.”
I shrugged and focused on driving for a minute. My knuckles looked skeletal on the steering wheel under the streetlights. I pried my fingers loose and flexed them, and practiced bhastrika—forceful breaths in and out—for a few moments.
“What the hell are you doing?” the man said.
“Yoga,” I said. “Pranayama. A breathing technique.”
His harumph turned into a coughing fit. He winced and took one hand off the gun to dig in a pocket of his windbreaker. He pulled out a tissue and used it to dab the corners of his mouth. It came away spotted black in the dim light.
“You could have just taken the car,” I said.
“Not interested.” He swiveled his head again, looking out the back window as if he expected someone to follow.
Some of the tension flowed out of me. While I was puzzled, I didn’t feel I was in much danger. The gun said differently, but the man holding it seemed almost dispassionate about it, as though he wasn’t even aware he held it in his hands.
“You’re sure?” I said. “I mean I know it’s a piece of shit, but you can have it if you want it. Time I bought a new one anyway.”
He glanced down at the gun in his lap, raised it and waggled it at me.
“I need to think!” he said. He suppressed another cough, jamming a fist in his mouth. When the spasm subsided, he swallowed and said, “Ergo, I need a driver. Now, shut up!”
I heaved a big sigh and focused on the streets ahead, thinking about where I should go. I wiggled my way out of the neighborhood and came out on the boulevard that winds through the arboretum. I flipped a mental coin and went north. Ergo? A lawyer, maybe, or a professor at UW. No one used language like that anymore. I shook my head and glanced at the reflection of the man behind me. He was nicely dressed, educated, obviously no street punk. So why was he holding me at gunpoint?
“You could’ve asked,” I said.
He frowned. “What?”
“I would have given you a ride. All you had to do was ask.”
He winced again, in some kind of pain. “This seemed more expedient.”
“Look, if you’re in trouble, maybe I can help.”
He caught my gaze and threw it back with a look of disgust and a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a cackle.
“Seriously,” I said. “You don’t want money, you didn’t jack my car, and I’m still alive. So you must be in some kind of trouble. I’ve been in a scrape or two. Maybe I can help.”
“The best you can do after this is over is forget you ever saw me.” He watched me in the mirror until I looked away. “Besides, you did help by getting me out of there.”
A quiet street in a nice neighborhood at three in the morning? I wondered what I’d missed. I watched the trees on either side slide out of the twin cones of the headlights. I’d put the offer out there, crazy as the idea had been. Now it was up to him. When I glanced back again, he’d let the gun fall to one side so it rested on his knee, pointed at the door. His face was pale, and streetlights we passed reflected off the sheen of sweat covering his forehead. He looked even more exhausted than I felt.
“Pull over,” he said a few moments later. His voice sounded weak. “Off the road. Somewhere private.”
We’d almost reached the north end of the arboretum where I would have to choose between the ramp onto the eastbound floating toll bridge or swing westbound back toward the city or Montlake Boulevard and the bridge over to the university. I remembered a side road that circled back around to the Arboretum Foundation. There were a couple of small parking lots in there, trails that led off in several directions, and a boat launch where kayakers could put in and paddle through the marsh out to Lake Washington or the Montlake cut. The turn came up quickly, and I pulled into the first lot I came to a few hundred yards in. The lot was empty, but it wouldn’t be long before the diehard paddlers would arrive for their early morning workouts.
I twisted to face him. He’d slumped so his head barely came to the top of the seat. Light through the rear window illuminated the pallor of a shut-in who hadn’t seen sunlight for years, and his face was creased with pain.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “You look terrible.”
He waved feebly and attempted a wan smile. “Thought I’d have more time.”
“Are you sick? Do you need a doctor?”
“Too late, I think.”
His gun hand lay lifeless in his lap. Struggling with his other hand, he reached into an inside pocket of the windbreaker, pulled out a small snapshot and handed it to me. The effort drained him, and he sagged against the seat. I turned the photo to the light. A young girl, maybe six or seven, with brown hair parted in the middle and tied into pigtails, smiled at me from the sunny place where she stood. A granddaughter, maybe.
“Find her,” he said. “Please. Keep her safe.”
I got the sense he was as close to begging as he’d ever come in his life, but his eyes implored me in a way his words couldn’t.
&
nbsp; “Promise me,” he said fiercely. His gaze bored into me.
“Sure, sure, I promise,” I said quickly, hoping to appease him. I glanced at the photo again. “Who is she?”
He managed a smile, but before he could speak he coughed once softly. Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth, staining his gray beard black. His face went slack and the light suddenly faded from his eyes.
“Shit, wait!” I said. “What’s her name? What’s your name?”
I don’t know why I bothered. Dead is dead. I slammed a fist against the headliner.
“Son of a bitch!”
I turned and stared at the lifeless man in the back of my car. I’d thought my day—night, to most folks—had been screwed up enough before he’d surprised me with a gun to the back of my head. But to have the temerity to up and die in my car? That really pissed me off.
Chapter 8
July 25—Seattle
The dead man stared at me accusingly. I shifted a little to the left and his accusations flew out the window. I looked down at the photo in my hand again. Protect her from what? From whom? I sighed. I’d promised. Had he coerced it? The guy wouldn’t know if I kept it or not, but I would. I had to at least make an effort. ADD logic.
With a muttered apology, I leaned over the seat and patted down the man’s pockets looking for his wallet. His right front pocket yielded fifty-seven dollars in neatly faced, folded bills, and twenty-three cents in change. The left windbreaker pocket held another tissue and a half-empty pack of spearmint chewing gum. The right jacket pocket gave up a key ring with five keys—for the doors to his apartment building and apartment, his car, and mailbox from the looks of them; one I wasn’t sure of.
I also found a slim electronic box about half the size of a cell phone, the only controls on it an on/off switch and two LEDs, one green, one red. A trigger? The man didn’t strike me as a terrorist. Frowning, I toggled the tiny switch on and the green LED glowed. I turned the device off. The light went out. No bombs exploded. The red LED probably indicated low battery or battery charging, but the purpose of the box eluded me. I slipped the gadget into my own pocket and resumed the hunt for ID of some sort. A tad squeamishly, I slid my hand under the body to check his back pockets. Empty.
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