They hit the arena floor at a jog, scuttled into the corridor and ran around the stadium to the opposite side. It felt like their college days, when a short skirt and a saucy smile had them fighting for position. Roman shot him a cocky grin.
They dodged a woman selling programs and skidded to a halt near the entrance to the arena where Mae had been standing.
“Do you see her?” Vicktor asked, hands on his knees.
“You’re breathing like you’ve run a marathon.” On tiptoe, Roman peeked over the shoulder of a man in a Bulls sweatshirt. “Don’t see her.”
Vicktor stood up, disappointment slowing his pulse. “Are you sure it was her?”
“Are you?”
“Point taken,” Vicktor acknowledged. “Okay. Where would she go?” He searched the crowed. Traffic thinned now and again as people streamed in and out of the arena, on their way to refreshments or facilities. Vicktor stepped aside to let pass a babushka toting a toddler by his collar. From inside the arena, ecstatic fans erupted, fanning the flames of victory for the Khabarovsk team.
Roman raised his hands and shrugged.
“Excuse me, sir?”
Vicktor whirled and nearly upset the popcorn of a young boy. The kid’s eyes widened with fear.
“Are you talking to me?” he asked, catching a few kernels.
The boy nodded and held out the popcorn. “This is for you.”
“For me?”
The boy shrugged. “Some lady asked me to give it to you.” Vicktor took the popcorn and noticed a slip of paper nestled between dry kernels. He grabbed the paper. “Here, kid,” he said, handing back the popcorn.
“So? What does it say?” Roman breathed over his shoulder.
Vicktor opened the note. “‘Shadow, 2:00. Springtime, 11:00.’” He glanced at Roman and they exchanged grins.
“I’ll get the shadow,” Roman said, and turned on his heel, heading for a stout-looking solider in plainclothes hovering near a potted floor plant at two o’clock on an imaginary clock face. Vicktor so wanted to linger. The soldier had no idea he was about to be dressed down by a Red Beret captain, on loan to the FSB COBRAs. But Vicktor had to find out why Mae had risked her stripes trying to contact them at Yanna’s volleyball match.
Vicktor strode northeast, toward eleven o’clock and Mae Lund/Springtime. As he passed a cotton candy vendor, a hand snared his arm and yanked. He stumbled into the shadows of an unlit doorway, whirled and fell into the laughing embrace of Mae Lund.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered, holding her tight. She always smelled so fresh and clean, and he noticed her hair had grown longer, below her ears. Pulling away, he held her at arm’s length. Tall and wiry, she still came only to his shoulder.
“Major Ward loves volleyball. He and Commander Belov are in a private military booth on the north end of the arena.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
She grinned. “Picking up pointers for our team. You know the commander’s daughter is on my squad.”
“You amaze me.”
Her hazel-green eyes sparkled and her nose wrinkled, blurring the array of freckles dotting it. “I’m supposed to be using the facilities. But I saw you and Roman, and you looked so down, I just had to see you. I missed you at our last online getaway.”
Vicktor felt something unravel inside him and he glanced away. Mae could always read him like a book, and despite the fact they hadn’t seen each other in nearly two years, she knew how to peel away his defenses and peek right into his soul.
“Are you okay?” she asked, smoothing the collar on his leather jacket.
“It’s been a tough week.”
“It’s Monday,” she said, but sadness ringed her eyes.
It sent him back five years, to a time they’d been stuck in her car in Alaska, waiting for help in a whiteout. She’d nearly convinced him to surrender to her God that day. Thankfully, help had arrived and he’d come to his senses.
“Yanna told me about your finding your friend murdered.” Her voice was so tender it made him flinch. “I’m sorry.”
“Da. And today we found two missionaries murdered in their flat,” he said quietly.
Her mouth opened a long second before she asked, “Missionaries—how?”
Vicktor shoved his hands into his pockets and peeked around the corner. Roman had the shadow turned and staring at his shoes. Good boy, Roma. “We think it was the Wolf. Typical Wolf M.O.—stealth entry, as if he knew the folks, and jagged knife wound across the neck.”
“Oh, Vita. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. He’s back and maybe I have a chance to catch him this time.”
Mae’s eyes flickered with worry. “Be careful.”
He kept his voice light, dodging the significance of that warning. “Of course.”
“Any leads?” Mae ducked her head around, snagging a glimpse of Roman and her Russian guard. A smile tugged at her mouth.
“No, but there is an American missionary who found them. I had to pull her off a train to Vladivostok this afternoon.”
Mae’s eyes widened. “An American missionary,” she repeated. “A lady?”
Vicktor flattened a pile of dust into the cement floor with his foot. “Da.”
“She’s cute.”
His gaze darted up and he scowled at her smirk.
“I recognize that particular shade of red on your face.” Her eyes twinkled, sweet like fresh-cut grass. She folded her arms across her chest. From the arena, a thunderous roar signaled another point won by Yanna’s Dynamo team. “What’s her name?”
Vicktor considered Mae, testing for any shred of romance left in their friendship. It seemed awkward to discuss women with a lady he’d once dated. That had been nearly a decade ago, however. Since then she’d dated other men and been quite vocal about it. Just because he hadn’t moved on didn’t mean she still lingered in his heart. Vicktor saw sincerity written in Mae’s eyes and released a sheepish grin. “Grace Benson. She’s blond, but feisty just like you.”
Mae raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows. “She’d better be more than feisty, if she wants to outwrestle your pride.”
Vicktor’s smile dimmed. “Is that what went wrong between us, Mae? My pride?”
Mae touched his cheek with her hand. “You’re a tiger, Vicktor. Stalking alone in your private forest. There was no room in your world for another tiger, even a mate.”
“From what I remember, you didn’t want to be a part of my forest.”
Mae shook her head. “I had my own worlds to explore. Still do. But God has a woman out there for you, Vicktor. Just don’t let your hard crust keep her from the marshmallow inside.”
Before he could respond, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “See you online, Stripes.” She glanced at Roman, then turned back and winked at Vicktor. “Tell him that he’d make a great spook.”
Then she shot off, quick-stepping toward the military section of the arena.
Chapter Eight
“So you think these people were spies?” Nickolai Shubnikov asked. The early morning sun fell at his feet, dappling the painted burnt-yellow floor and highlighting a layer of dust.
Vicktor scraped a greasy Russian pancake from the cast-iron pan and tossed it onto the top of a hot buttered stack in front of his father. “No, not spies, but maybe smugglers.” He smeared butter over the blini. It melted through and dripped over the edge. “Whatever they were into, they crossed the Wolf, and he killed them for it.”
His father digested the news with harrumphs and mutters. Vicktor tapped the spatula on the side of the pan, watching the next pancake bubble and spatter. The memory of the Wolf and his bloody trail drenched the room in silence.
“Are you sure it was the Wolf’s handiwork?” his father finally asked.
Vicktor blew out a breath. His stomach tightened as he squinted at the old cop. Nickolai had washed, slicked back his gray hair and shaved off the night’s whiskers, as if he were heading to the office, but
his ratty brown bathrobe and worn cloth slippers betrayed the day’s events: Santa Barbara and maybe a dose of Dallas reruns on the side. And, if he was lucky, a documentary on World War Two.
“Arkady thinks so,” Vicktor answered.
A muscle tensed in Nickolai’s jaw as he turned and stared out the grimy kitchen window.
Grease smacked and spattered in the cast-iron pan, layering the air and the pumpkin-orange wallpaper with sunflower oil. Vicktor wrinkled his nose against the pungent smell and turned back to his work, trying to ignore his father’s drooping shoulders.
It irritated him that plaster curled from the ceiling and the lace curtains appeared more gray than ivory. His mother never would have let it decay like this; she gave the ceiling a fresh coat of paint every year before Easter, and re-wallpapered often enough to keep up with the trends. This year it would have been a mint green. He made a mental note to pick up some paint, soon, and to sweep before he left today.
Vicktor flipped the skinny pancake. They weren’t his mother’s, but the texture seemed okay and it was definitely a tasty alternative to the stale bread his father had been about to slice up when he walked in the door. Toeing off his running shoes, Vicktor had tossed his cap on a bench and shouldered past the old cop with a bag of eggs in one hand and a bottle of milk in the other. Surprise, or perhaps relief, flickered in the old man’s eyes before he dropped into a chair. Vicktor had stirred up the familiar batter and muttered generalities about his new case.
Forking the last blini onto the stack, Vicktor slathered on more butter. His father continued to gaze out the window, his face vacant.
Vicktor poured them each a cup of tea and found two spoons in the sink. He wiped them clean and placed one before his father. No reaction. He stood there for a moment, wondering if he should interrupt. Was the old man in mourning, thinking about the blini his wife would have created, or merely wishing he still had a career?
“I think you need to find that chauffeur.” Nickolai’s voice held a spark of the old days when he had talked his cases through late into the night with Antonina.
“What? Why?” Vicktor covered his shock by piercing a blini with his fork, folding it twice and sliding it onto his tea saucer.
His father mimicked his action. “These are too thin.”
Of course they were. Vicktor stared past him and listened to street traffic suggest the time.
“Because he was there,” Nickolai answered, talking with his mouth full.
“How do you know that?”
“No forced entry. The doors were open, both of them.”
Vicktor turned the blini over on the saucer, pushing it through a puddle of butter. “It could have been anyone—a neighbor, a friend. Or maybe they just forgot to shut the door.”
“Nyet. Think it through, son.”
Vicktor’s mind scrambled for an answer while Nickolai forked another blini and sipped his tea, all the while unsuccessfully hiding a smile.
“Okay, what?”
Nickolai leaned forward, one elbow on the table, his eyes alight. “The Wolf knew these Americans. They let him in. More than that, when they did, they didn’t bother locking the steel door behind him. As if they weren’t expecting him to stay. What type of visitor doesn’t stay when he calls?”
Vicktor grimaced. “A driver.”
“This chauffeur fella didn’t show up for his morning appointment, and for some reason the girl expected him to report to the Youngs. Maybe they were his boss, or scheduled his appointments. Whatever the reason, I think he did go there. They let him in, expecting him to leave in a moment…and, well, there’s your perpetrator. Find the chauffeur and you’ll find the Wolf.”
“Oh, that’s too easy. The chauffeur had to know we’d suspect him.”
Nickolai fingered his teacup. “You didn’t.”
Thanks, Pop. Yet another reminder that he would never fill the shoes of the cop who sired him. “Well, I would have, in time.”
“But maybe not before he hid himself in some remote village. You haven’t found him yet, have you?”
“We just started looking. I don’t even know if Arkady put out a warrant for him.”
Nickolai stabbed his fourth blini. Vicktor wondered what he’d eaten for dinner last night. Maybe a can of sardines.
Vicktor swallowed the last of his tea. “I gotta go.” His appetite had disintegrated.
Nickolai shrugged. The spark in his eyes died to an ember.
Vicktor pushed his stool away from the table.
“By the way, what were these Americans doing here?”
Vicktor ran tap water over his plate, the water beading on the grease. “Besides smuggling?”
Nickolai harrumphed.
“They were missionaries. Working with the Russian church.”
Nickolai stared at him for a moment before he blinked and looked away. “Be careful, Vicktor.”
“So, I called Yuri and he said he’d call your organization. He told me to tell you not to worry.” Larissa sat cross-legged on the living room floor watching Gracie pace the room, clutching socks in one hand and a Grisham book in the other.
“Funny they haven’t called yet,” Gracie said. But to have to talk about it, explain the story, voice the words—“The Youngs have been murdered.” No, maybe it would be better to hop on a plane and do the explaining in America. Far, far away from the crime scene, the memories, the failures…
“Have you heard from the Consulate? Are they sending someone?”
Gracie shrugged, staring first at the socks, then at the empty suitcase. “I don’t know. I figure the cops will call the Consulate.” Did it really matter who they called? It certainly wouldn’t change reality.
Evelyn and Dr. Willie had been murdered.
“You have to pack something, Gracie. You can’t go home naked.” Larissa’s cat-eye glasses slid down over her nose, making her appear a disapproving schoolmarm. She sounded like one, as well. “Pack the socks and give me the book.”
Gracie plopped both in Larissa’s lap.
“I don’t care what I bring home…everything I care about is here.” Was here.
Larissa stared at the socks.
Gracie cringed at her words. What was wrong with her? Here, Larissa had taken the day off to help her and Gracie had the sensitivity of a lizard. She sat and squeezed Larissa’s knee. “I’m sorry.”
Larissa’s eyes glistened. “I understand.”
Tears stung Gracie’s eyes. She bit her lip and forced them back.
“I need to pack the mail, at least.” Gracie crawled over to her satchel and pulled out the plastic bag of letters Evelyn had given her only two nights before.
“Can you mail these for me? It’ll take a decade from Russia. I’m terrified of the Russian mail service.”
The irony made Gracie’s throat tighten. Evelyn had certainly known real terror in the last moments of her life.
Gracie wrestled the thought into captivity lest it consume her, and flipped through the letters. One to Des Moines, the Youngs’ daughter and son-in-law, two to relatives in Georgia and one to a son in college in Ohio. The last was an oversize bright blue envelope, addressed to “Cowboy Tyler” and his parents, from Grandma and Grandpa.
Sorrow tightened like a fist. The Youngs had lived a good life—honest, hardworking, devoted to serving the Lord. They both deserved to die in their sleep after another forty or so years. Life had been cruel, or maybe God had been cruel. She didn’t want to hash out her theology now. She wanted to blame someone. To hurt them. It was un-Christian, unforgiving and she knew it. Still, someone had to pay.
As if they ever could.
She put the letters aside and fingered a manila envelope protruding from the bag. It was thick, bulky and taped three or four times, with a veritable ribbon of stamps pasted in the top right hand corner. Gracie read the address, written in black marker—Karin Lindstrom, M.D., c/o University of Minnesota Cancer Center, and an address in Minneapolis. No one she knew. Gracie gathered the env
elopes into a pile and tucked them between two sweatshirts in her suitcase.
“There. That’s done. Now, what else?”
“How about this stuff?” Larissa gestured to a stack of Russian memorabilia—birch-bark pictures, matroshka dolls, blue and white painted zhel china.
Gracie grabbed a sock and tossed it into Larissa’s lap. “Start wrapping.”
Two hours later, Gracie closed the second of her two suitcases, gritting her teeth as she worked the zipper. Grabbing the weathered handle, she muscled the bag off the sofa to the floor. “This thing weighs a ton. They’ll never let me on the plane.”
Larissa tested the other suitcase. “You’ll have to buy an extra ticket.”
Gracie stepped back, her hand on her hips, and scowled.
Larissa pushed her glasses up on her nose. “I know, let’s call Andrei. He can come and get us and we’ll weigh these at my office. Then you’ll know whether you should give me that Irish wool sweater and your Gap jeans.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier just to buy a bathroom scale and bring it here?”
“And risk having to dump out your bags in the middle of check-in? You want the other passengers to know you travel with a worn teddy bear and a bottle of Pepto-Bismol?” Larissa reached for the telephone. “Aeroflot has accurate scales.” She gave a chuckle. “The last thing you need is Customs Control rifling through your baggage while you try and repack.”
Why not? The FSB had her phone number. Why shouldn’t Customs know the color of her socks? Gracie rubbed her temple with her thumb and forefinger, aware suddenly that she’d glanced at the telephone one too many times today.
FSB Shubnikov hadn’t called. Good riddance.
Except, of course, when he came to her in her rebellious dreams, concern in his blue eyes and his comforting hand on her shoulder. Had she completely forgotten that he’d treated her like a suspect? Wake up and see the bright interrogation lights in your future, Gracie. She shook free of Mr. FSB’s tempting memory.
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s call Andrei.”
Vicktor leaned against the door frame, steeling his stomach against the rancid odor of formaldehyde, and watched Medical Examiner Vladimir Utuzh prod a gray cadaver. Utuzh’s assistant, a bald, spiny man named Shiroki, scurried to the coroner’s side, utensils in hand. Another man sat on a high stool, bony knees poking out between the buttons of his lab coat, taking notes in Russian shorthand.
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