White Star

by James Thayer

  Schneider reached for his clipboard. On it was the bulletin given every Minnesota law officer that morning. He read again about the Russian. "Sweet Jesus, I don't want to do this."

  Deputy Mike Dickerson pulled his patrol car into the slot next to Schneider, who waved him toward the passenger seat of Schneider's car. Dickerson stepped toward the cafe, but then saw that his boss was not getting out of the car. He squinted in puzzlement through the window, then opened the door and slid into the passenger seat.

  "I got some bad news for our lunch plans," Schneider began. "You see that man at the counter, last one on the right?"

  "Yeah," Dickerson said. "The big guy?"

  "That's the Russian we were told about at lineup this morning. Same guy that's on the FBI bulletin."

  Dickerson stared into the cafe. The deputy had a long face and a chin that protruded beyond his lips. He wore a burr cut with almost no hair showing under his cap. He was a veteran of twelve months in the sheriff's department. "What're we going to do?"

  "We're going to do what the taxpayers pay us for. Arrest him."

  The deputy asked, "Shouldn't we call in reinforcements?"

  Schneider rubbed a temple. "There's two of us. He's sitting peaceably at that counter. He doesn't even know we're here yet. I'm going to walk right up to him and stick the Remington barrel into his face and tell him he's under arrest. I don't need reinforcements for that."

  "He's tough." Dickerson wet his lips. "You read what he did to that gas jockey in Cleveland."

  The undersheriff's eyes seemed to have moved even closer together. "He's not tougher than my shotgun. We're going in."

  "The Russian is a commando. According to what I read, he's been at war for most of his life. He's probably pretty good at it."

  "Probably," Schneider granted.

  "I ever tell you I've got a three-year-old son?"

  "For Christ sake, Mike, I've eaten dinner at your house a half dozen times, your kid sitting there oinking down his food each time. I know you've got a kid." He paused. "Hell, what's the Russian doing now?"

  Nikolai Trusov was rising from the stool. He placed his napkin on the counter next to his plate. He spoke several words to RayAnne, who pointed over her shoulder toward the rear of the cafe. He walked behind the other counter customers, then disappeared down the aisle between the booths.

  "He's going back to take a leak."

  "There's no rear door back there, is there?" Dickerson asked.

  "Just the bathrooms. Mike, the men's room has a window in it. As I recall, it might be big enough for a man to climb through. You go around the north side of the cafe and wait next to the window. I'm going in the front door."

  Dickerson nodded and unsnapped his holster.

  The undersheriff laid a hand on Dickerson's arm. "Mike, we only need to make an attempt to arrest this guy. If the son of a bitch looks sideways at you, shoot him. Don't give him a break. He won't give you one."

  Dickerson yanked the door handle. He pulled his pistol from the holster as he exited the car. The deputy rounded the patrol car and the Caprice, then disappeared around the north corner of the cafe. The undersheriff clicked the pump shotgun from its mount. After he got out of the vehicle, he thumbed the safety off. He entered the cafe.

  A few customers turned toward him. Acquaintances nodded, then stared at the shotgun. His eyes on the rest-room hallway, Schneider sidled up to the doughnut case. Her hand at her mouth and wide eyes on the shotgun, RayAnne Folger moved to the end of the counter.

  Schneider said, "That big fellow who just went back into the hallway. What'd he just say to you?"

  She had the look of a deer caught in headlights. Her voice was scratchy. "He asked for the men's toilet."

  "He speak with an accent?"

  She pounced at the question. "Yeah, he did. Pretty bad one, even those few words I heard."

  The undersheriff slowly walked down the aisle toward the rest-room hall. The customers followed him with their eyes, their burgers and fries forgotten. He passed a high chair, two stacked booster chairs, and the pay phone. He held the 12-gauge in front of him like an infantryman, expecting the Russian to emerge from the rest room at any moment. The door remained closed.

  Schneider paused in front of the door. He could feel his blood pump, and his tongue seemed stitched to the top of his mouth. He whispered hoarsely, "Christ save me, I don't want to do this."

  But he did. The undersheriff lurched forward, his shoulder slamming into the rest-room door, which jumped back and banged against the wall. He charged into the room.

  One hand on his belt and the other on his privates as he stood in front of the urinal, Don Hansen dried up. His mouth fished open, and he backstepped, still exposed and dribbling.

  Schneider ignored him. He turned to the stall and kicked in the door. He jabbed the shotgun into the space. It was empty.

  "What the hell, Mel?" Don Hansen demanded. He adjusted his pants. "All I'm doing is relieving myself here. That ain't against no law I know of."

  The window was closed and the sill was dusty. Nobody had used it. Schneider turned a full circle. Don Hansen, and that was it. A knot formed between the undersheriff's eyebrows. He turned back to the stall, staring at the toilet-paper dispenser, as if a man could hide somewhere in there. How had the Russian disappeared? He shook his head slowly and gestured vaguely toward Hansen.

  Schneider pulled open the rest-room door to return to the hall. And across from him was the door to the women's rest room. And then he understood.

  Knowing he was too late and just going through the motions, he lowered the shotgun, and bulled his way into the women's head. No one was in the room. A breeze poured through the open window, freshening the air. The window exited south, the opposite side of the building from the deputy. Nobody in the two stalls.

  Schneider hurried from the room and sprinted down the aisle. Customers' eyes followed him once again. The under-sheriff said aloud, "How did the bastard spot us?"

  He stopped in front of the stool where the Russian had been sitting. He stared across the counter to the backbar. Reflected in the stainless steel coffee urn was the parking lot behind him, and his patrol car, clear as day, just like in a mirror. He moved by the stools and yanked the cafe's front door open. He went on his tiptoes and looked south. The Caprice was a block away and accelerating. The green baseball cap was visible through the rear window.

  He yelled, "Mike, hurry up."

  Undersheriff Schneider was going to give chase, but when he reached for his door handle, he had to bend slightly lower than usual. He glanced back. The rear tire had been slashed and the car had sunk to the wheel rim. Schneider stepped around to Dickerson's patrol car. It, too, was low on its rear axle. RayAnne and her customers were at the window staring at Schneider.

  The deputy arrived panting, his pistol in his hand.

  "He's gone. And we're stuck here." He waved a hand at the flat tires.

  Dickerson looked down the road, but the Caprice had already vanished. "I can't say as I'm disappointed to miss him."

  "Me, neither." Schneider slipped into his car and reached for the radio handset. Before he pressed the button, he said, "He'll soon be out of Polk County, and that's the last we'll have to think about him."

  "The hand of God made these mountains." Owen Gray's voice was soft with wonder at the panorama before them.

  "It was glacial ice, not God." Adrian stopped beside Gray on the bluff overlooking the valley. "Those peaks are made of granite that crystallized below the earth's surface, then pushed through to create fault blocks. I read about them in a book about Idaho on the flight from New York. The granite crags are called batholiths. They were eroded by glaciers."

  Gray said wearily, "And I'm telling you it was the hand of God."

  Below them, filling Gray's vision and bringing forth a rush of childhood memories, were the narrow defiles of river canyons, topped with sharp ridges and peaks jutting forth at confused angles. Glacial gouges and cirques and horns gave
the range an air of unyielding wildness. Douglas fir and lodgepole pine fought for purchase on the granite. The lower slopes were covered with blue bunch grass, wheatgrass, and Idaho fescue. Near the peaks, blue and yellow lichen colored the granite. When clouds passed overhead, the mountains changed hues, quickly purpling, then changing to gray, then lightening again to blue and gold as the billows passed. In the distance was Lewis Mountain.

  Gray was wearing a Goretex backpack. The Weatherby rifle was over his shoulder. He pointed. "Look, there's a bird called a Clark's nutcracker. If you hold out a sandwich, it'll only take him a few minutes to get the courage to land on your hand."

  The bird was perched on the low branch of a whitebark pine. Black wings rested against an ash-gray body. It peered at them intently, then hopped along its branch toward them.

  Gray looked at her a moment. "I was startled when Pete Coates told me you were in Afghanistan."

  "I was only gone two days. Even so, I'll bet you missed me."

  "Well, I feel safer when you're around." He was deliberately cheery, not wanting to inflict his grief on Adrian. "I won't get mugged, anyway."

  She smiled quickly and he generated a grin in return. Then he lowered himself to his haunches. "Look closely at the trail and tell me what you see."

  Adrian squinted at the ground. "Dirt and some pebbles and a few twigs."

  "See these slight depressions in the surface of the path?" Gray traced them with a finger. "They are paw prints. They tell us that an hour or two ago a yellow-bellied marmot passed by this way."

  "What's a marmot?" Adrian asked.

  "A big leaf-eating rodent."

  "Like a rat?"

  "Much cuter."

  "How can you tell it's not a house cat lost up here in these mountains?"

  Gray smiled. "A marmot has four toes on its front feet and five on its back. A cat has four all around. And cats walk like babies crawl, moving diagonal limbs at the same time. But a marmot moves both legs on one side of its body at the same time, like porcupines and skunks. See, you can tell by these prints that the marmot is shuffling both right legs, then both left legs at once."

  "How do you know those tracks weren't made by a skunk?" she asked.

  "A skunk has five toes in front. And we're too high for a skunk."

  "Or a porcupine?"

  "They like the woods, not the rocks."

  Adrian was wearing a light blue jacket, jeans, and Eddie Bauer climbing boots. She persisted. "And how do you know the marmot came by here an hour or two ago, not yesterday?"

  "The peaks of the marmot's prints have just begun to deteriorate, with grains of dirt falling into the base of the tracks. There's a five-to-ten-mile-an-hour wind today, so I know from experience that an hour or two of loose grains have fallen into the paw print." Gray could not resist showing off. "I also know that there were no hawks flying overhead when our marmot walked this way. And no coyotes around either."

  Adrian pursed her lips. "I'm stuck out in the wilderness with Mr. Nature."

  Gray hurried on. "And the reason I know is because the size of these tracks tells me this is an older marmot. He has survived several years of predators and is therefore smart about them. And had the marmot sensed the predators he would have been running and his stride would have been about fifteen inches instead of the seven or eight you see here."

  A paintbrush plant, with its delicate orange blooms, was growing among balsamroot leaves near their feet.

  She said, "I didn't come to Idaho to learn about rodents."

  Gray shrugged. "So you found Nikolai Trusov's spotter?"

  "Yakub Nadir was a member of the same faction, the Parcham, as Babrak Karmal, the Soviet puppet. Nadir worked as Trusov's spotter for almost two years. I found him in a tiny hill town outside Kabul, one of the villages still controlled by his tribe. He fell into the hands of Tajik mujahideen after the Soviets left, who, finding out his role, dug out both his eyeballs. Nadir is blind. He was wearing Soviet fatigue trousers, Afghan army boots, and a flat woolen cap called a pakol. I met him at a teahouse, then he took me to his home."

  "He didn't mind talking to a westerner?" Gray asked.

  "I think he enjoyed it. Nadir is an educated man. He attended the prestigious French-run Istiqlal School in Kabul and speaks French. He was studying to be an engineer when the Soviets invaded. He chose the wrong side, as he readily admits. He wears no eyepatches or dark glasses, and it's hard not to stare at the ragged holes in his head when talking with him. The mujahideen used a heated bayonet, and they weren't careful. So not only did he lose his eyes, but much of his face around his eyes is livid with scars."

  "They have always played for keeps over there. Tell me about the interview."

  "I was his mehman, his guest, and he made me feel welcome. His wife served us green tea and nan while we spoke. His home had one room with a high ceiling. To keep out the heat a ragged white curtain was drawn across the one window, but beams of sunlight came through the holes in the curtain. I sat on a couch with old cushions, and he sat on a patch of worn carpet. The plaster walls were flaking, and on one was a poster of Karmal. There was also a sentence painted on a wall in bold calligraphic letters, but I didn't find out what it meant."

  "Doesn't Nadir fear for his life? Why isn't he on the run?"

  "He thinks his eyes are all the mujahideen will take from him."

  "So what did he say about Trusov?"

  "Nadir said the Russian was a master of his craft."

  "I already knew that."

  "And Trusov enjoyed it. Sometimes he would fire many shots at the same target, hitting a knee, then a hand, then a foot, and so forth, taking a lot of care to place the shots where they wouldn't kill the target immediately. Nadir claims he saw Trusov fire twelve shots at a mujahideen, all hits, before the coup de grace. Trusov told Nadir that his twelve shots before the kill must be a world record."

  "For Christ sake, that's not soldiering."

  "Trusov knew about you."

  Gray's head came up.

  "That same day, after the killing shot, the thirteenth, Trusov said to Nadir, 'Not even the great American Owen Gray could place twelve non-lethal shots.' " Adrian Wade lowered herself to a boulder. She crossed her legs. "Trusov frequently talked about you."

  "Why? Did he tell his spotter he had ever met me?"

  She shook her head. "I gather he knew of your Vietnam reputation. I questioned Nadir closely about this. Trusov never claimed any acquaintance with you, or said he ever met you. He knew of your reputation. He was envious of it."

  "How did he get the big scar on his head?"

  "Nadir didn't know. He had that groove in his skull when they first teamed up in 1985."

  A bluebird on the bough of a subalpine fir chirruped noisily.

  Adrian put her hand under her coat to adjust her holster, then continued, "Nadir said Nikolai Trusov was crazy."

  "I already knew that, too."

  "He meant that while Trusov was a superb soldier during his first years in Afghanistan, the Russian became increasingly unstable. Doing erratic things. But he was so valuable to the Soviet war effort that he was tolerated for a long while. Then he snapped."

  "What happened?" Gray asked.

  "There was bad blood between Trusov and his captain. Nadir didn't know how it started, but the two were always at each other. The captain didn't have the leeway to deal with Trusov like he would any other subordinate because Trusov was an Olympic hero and a brilliant sniper. Trusov detested the captain, an up-and-coming Moscow University graduate trying to make a mark. Nadir doesn't know what set Trusov off that day, but when the captain drove by in an open GAZ field car, Trusov put a bullet through both the captain's wrists as his hands gripped the steering wheel."

  "Did the Afghan spotter actually see this happen?"

  "Nadir was there, and he said it was a phenomenal shot. Four hundred yards at a moving vehicle, and Trusov called it before he fired, just like you'd call a pool shot, telling the Afghan he'd take out both
the captain's wrists."

  A nutcracker landed at the other end of the boulder and dipped its beak at Adrian, hoping for a handout.

  "Trusov may have been a hero, but no soldier gets away with that." Gray opened his backpack and brought out a peanut butter sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

  "He didn't," Adrian said.

  Gray tore off half the sandwich and tossed it to the bird. The nutcracker squawked and leaped onto the handout. Two other nutcrackers instantly appeared to tear at the bread. They flapped and hopped and quarreled, flipping bits of bread down their gullets.

  "Trusov was arrested and court-martialed," Adrian said. "He spent the next eight years at hard labor in the Red Army's First Military District prison. He was released six months ago."

  "I thought the INS was supposed to keep criminals out of this country." Gray tried to keep the touch of desperation from his voice. "Didn't they check him out before they gave him a visa?"

  "A visa to accompany someone coming to the U.S. for surgery isn't examined closely."

  Gray wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. The day was warming, and the sun was high in the pale rinsed sky.

  Adrian continued. "But the people at the INS are helping our investigation. They checked with their counterparts in Europe, and the Swiss came up with something. Victor Trusov could have had his operation three months earlier in Geneva. The Swiss had given both him and his son permission to enter their country, and the Red Army had made arrangements for the operation at St. Paul's Hospital in Geneva. But the Trusovs refused, apparently waiting for the U.S. visa."

  "So Nikolai intended to come here all along, and was willing to make his father wait for the surgery until things worked out. Old Victor could have died in the meantime."