by Ty Patterson
South Washington Street was crammed with TV vans, police cruisers, and throngs of spectators.
People bunched in front of the nursing home, many of them recording on their cell phones. Reporters thrust their mics in front of random townspeople and asked them about Duhan.
One intrepid newsman approached Meghan as the sisters shoved through the crowd towards the home.
‘Ma’am, do you know Leroy Duhan?’
The next moment he fell back, his nose bleeding.
‘I’m sorry,’ Meghan gushed sweetly. ‘Someone jostled me.’ She shoved him away and raced to the entrance.
She pushed the door open, Beth crowding behind her, and froze.
Debbie faced them, her hands on her hips. Gone was the smiling woman who had welcomed them.
‘Get out,’ the receptionist hissed.
‘Debbie, this wasn’t our—’
‘Out! John.’ She waved imperiously at a security guard. ‘Make sure these two don’t enter the building.’
‘We can’t blame her, sis.’ Beth patted Meghan’s hand.
They were in a café on Main Street, watching a wall-mounted TV along with fifty other customers in the room.
They had slunk away, unable to meet the receptionist’s eyes.
The restaurant provided a refuge as they watched the events unfold.
Farrell and Patten drove up in an SUV with tinted windows, cops clearing a path for it. Reporters surrounded the vehicle when it rolled to a stop, but neither of the men answered any questions. They ducked from the cameras, ran to the nursing home and disappeared inside.
Daniel Lavrov came fifteen minutes later. He stepped out, buttoned his jacket, smiled a lot, and answered a few questions.
He stood at the door, turned and waved at the crowed, and went inside.
‘I want to wring his scrawny neck,’ Beth muttered, drawing a weak smile from her sister.
Forty-five minutes later, Farrell and Patten emerged. They were tight-lipped, their faces pale, and they didn’t take any questions.
‘No comment,’ were the only words that escaped the lawyer’s lips as he escorted his client to the waiting vehicle.
‘That’s not a good sign,’ Beth whispered and zipped up when Meghan shushed her.
Lavrov appeared thereafter, a triumphant look on his face.
He addressed the reporters like a general who had won a war.
‘Like we suspected, Mr. Duhan’s testimony wasn’t conclusive. I can’t say anything more, except this. We still believe the man posing as Cole Patten is a fake. An impostor. We will prove that in time.’
The crowd exploded. Questions were hurled at him. Cameras flashed. People surged forward.
Lavrov milked it, dishing out high-wattage smiles until he too left in his vehicle.
The nursing home’s director was the last person to come out. He made a brief statement accusing both parties of causing distress to Leroy Duhan. Of sucking the vet into their petty fights.
‘Mr. Duhan has served this country well. He is a hero. He is dying. He suffers from PTSD.’ The crowd fell silent.
‘We told both parties that interviewing him was pointless. He frequently gets his facts wrong. He should be left in peace. However, each party bulldozed their way in before we could stop them. You have seen the results. I would like the town of Fredericksburg and all visitors to leave us alone. To let us do our job—which is caring for our heroes.’
Beth felt small, and when she snuck a glance at her twin, she knew Meghan felt the same.
They had set out to prove Cole Patten’s identity. All they had succeeded in doing was shredding a war hero’s dignity.
Chapter Fifteen
They didn’t quit, and neither did they give up. They returned to New York that night and made a call to Cole Patten.
Farrell answered.
‘We don’t want to speak to you,’ Beth told him.
‘I’m sorry,’ the lawyer told them awkwardly. ‘I mishandled that one. I should have heeded your advice.’
Maybe he’s not that bad, Meghan mused as Beth stared at the speakerphone.
‘Where’s Mr. Patten?’
‘He’s right here.’
‘You don’t have any scars on your chest?’ she asked when the CEO came online.
‘No, ma’am. If what Duhan told you originally was right, I am Cole Patten.’
‘Doesn’t mean anything now. Not after what your fancy lawyer pulled off. I bet your stock has plummeted some more. Maybe your board has called you to whisper some sweet nothings in your ear,’ Beth said derisively.
Patten’s silence was his reply.
‘Your Chisholm home—any caretakers there?’
‘Yes. You’re going there?’
What do you think, dumbass? Beth nearly spat out, but she restrained herself when her sister placed a calming hand on her shoulder.
‘Yes. Neither you nor Farrell went through your family’s belongings, did you?’
‘Not to any great extent, ma’am. Ken sent some people, but they returned with no proof.’
‘Tell the caretakers we’re coming. Any of your mom’s relatives still there?’
‘An aunt. Maybe more, I don’t know. They aren’t of much help—’
‘We’ll decide that,’ she cut him off and hung up.
‘Dumbasses,’ she snarled at the phone, smiling reluctantly when her sister laughed.
‘Go to bed,’ Meghan urged her. ‘We’ll fly out early in the morning.’
‘And if we don’t find anything there?’
‘Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it.’ The elder twin waved dismissively.
Meghan sat alone in the office once Beth left, watching the city lights through the darkened windows. They were thick and had all sorts of proofing on them. Only a rocket or a tank round would get through them.
What would Zeb do?
She turned it over in her mind, tempted for a moment to message the operative and seek his advice.
Nope. He’s in Syria. In a war zone. He’ll have enough on his plate.
Zeb had changed their lives. Before they’d met him, they were running their web and design agency in Boston. They were doing well. Good clients. Steady growth. But they both knew something was lacking.
They came from a cop family in Jackson, Wyoming. Their father had been a highly decorated officer who had lost his life in the line of duty.
The sisters always received a warm welcome whenever they returned to their hometown.
They had met Zeb in Wyoming while on a vacation. That holiday had turned into a nightmare when a gang of assassins had pursued them for no apparent reason.
A lean brown-haired man had come to their rescue. Zeb. They had discovered much later who he really was, and from then on, had discovered purpose in their lives.
Doing something that was bigger than running a business. Serving their country. Helping the vulnerable.
They had badgered Zeb to let them join him. He had refused. They had then gone after Broker and had gotten him to make a case for them. Zeb had then caved in.
They’d sold their business in Boston and relocated to New York, and they hadn’t looked back.
This is our town now. New York. This is where we belong.
Along the way, Beth had found love. Not me.
Meghan knew she wasn’t cut out for the kids-and-white-picket-fence lifestyle. The Agency. Zeb. The rest of the operatives. Beth. They were her universe.
A light rain started, became heavy and diffused the streetlights, blurring the outside world.
She padded silently to the elevator and left for her apartment.
They flew to Chisholm the next day.
The city was in the center of the Mesabi Range, one of the four large iron ore deposits that made up the Iron Range in Minnesota. The minerals were scattered around Lake Superior and extended into Canada.
The mining towns in the region experienced a boom or bust depending on the vagaries of the national economy and int
ernational trade.
Back in the fifties, the mines had supplied steel to Detroit, supported construction jobs and war efforts.
As the world’s economies had become more interdependent, imported steel had become cheap, and that had led to the decline of the Iron Range mines.
There were still a few operating mines that transported mineral by rail to Duluth. From there, they were shipped to processing mills in Indiana and Ohio.
Chisholm wasn’t a large city. Approximately five thousand people in a five-square-mile area. A mining museum, a lake, Lake Longyear, and a few other attractions.
The sisters flew to Range Regional Airport in Hibbing, where another black SUV was waiting for them.
Their destination was twelve miles away from the airport, and by ten am, they were driving through the quiet streets of the city to West Lake Street, which proceeded towards the lake.
They didn’t go to the lake. Meghan hung a right on Second Avenue and crawled to a stop in front of a large red brick house with white pillars.
The residence had several parking spaces in front of it, and a stone driveway that was guarded by imposing metal gates.
She announced herself at the metal box next to the tall barriers. The gates swung open silently, enabling her to drive inside.
She parked in front of a porch, and they climbed up a few steps.
A uniformed black man rose from behind a desk.
‘You’re the Petersens?’
‘Yes.’ She removed her shades and looked around.
The lobby was converted into an office. Doors at the far end presumably led to the inside of the house.
‘It’s very quiet,’ Beth remarked.
Carl, the guard, shrugged. ‘It’s an empty house, ma’am. Not a museum. No one other than me.’
‘You come here every day?’
‘I stay in the compound, ma’am. There’s a small house behind the main building. That’s where I live.’
‘Have you been here long?’
‘My pappy used to be caretaker. I took over when he passed away. Been a few years now. It suits me. It pays reasonably well. It’s quiet. Just what I wanted.
‘All the boxes are over there.’ He pointed to the doors. ‘If you go past the living room, and to the library, you can’t miss them.’
They didn’t.
The cartons were stacked on the floor, neatly labeled and wrapped.
The library had a handful of shelves, on which were a few books and record albums. It had two round tables and a few chairs arranged around each.
Meghan heaved one carton onto a table. Beth attacked another carton, and they delved into Billy Patten’s life.
Their day was interrupted just once, when Meghan’s cell rang.
‘Are you still in Texas?’ Bwana inquired.
‘Nah. In Minnesota today. Why?’
‘Minnesota? What’s there?’
‘Checking out Cole Patten’s folks. You need something?’
‘Rog and I wanted the jet. Never mind.’
‘You going somewhere?’
‘Florida. There’s nothing to occupy us here.’
‘We’re on a case. Work takes precedence over a vacation. You’ll have to fly commercial.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
She hung up and went back to her files. It was later that she realized Bwana could have looked up their location on Werner. He would have known they were in Minnesota.
Each one of them had GPS tags in their clothing and shoes. Their supercomputer tracked them at all times. Except when they were undercover, as Zeb was.
Bwana. She shrugged mentally. He doesn’t like Werner.
‘You think they bought it?’ Roger asked his friend.
‘Yeah.’ Bwana stifled a yawn and stretched his legs.
The two of them were in a black van a couple of hundred yards away from the Patten residence.
They were equipped for surveillance. Binos. Listening devices. Thermal imagers. Drones.
They didn’t expect any hostile action; however, they were prepared for that too. The rear of the van had enough weapons in it to start a war. Or end one.
The sisters had no luck with any of the cartons. They contained mundane papers. Bills. Letters. Certificates. Purchase documents for the house. School report cards. Vehicle purchase records.
No photographs. Nothing to shed any light on their case.
Beth rose and stretched several hours later and watched her sister wander down the shelves.
Meghan picked up books randomly and leafed through them.
There were several on Vietnam and mining. She flipped through the pages quickly and put them back.
Beth joined her. Two could go through the library faster.
Afternoon became evening. Shadows lengthened. Outside, a chair creaked.
Beth sensed it first.
Her sister freezing. Going still.
‘What?’
Meghan didn’t reply. She turned a magazine around for Beth to read.
There was a report on the page about Tunnel Rats. Nothing about Billy Patten or his unit.
Meghan pointed to a scrawl in a margin.
A simple sentence.
Dang changed my life.
Chapter Sixteen
Zeb was hanging around outside Gorbunov’s Central Park residence again.
He had followed the tall, pale man the day Bwana and Roger had confronted Gorbunov. However, he had lost the man in traffic.
Werner had run the man’s face through all the databases it had access to and had come back empty.
Zeb had then emailed the photographs to his contacts—the heads of several intelligence agencies around the world.
Mossad had been the only outfit that had returned a positive response.
Avichai Levin, the head of the Israeli unit, had sent another photograph to Zeb.
Kirilov. Former Spetsnaz. Killer. Runs Gorbunov’s criminal enterprise. Gets involved in special situations, Levin wrote.
Why isn’t he in any database? Zeb asked him.
No one knows he exists, came the reply. Except us. We know everything.
Zeb knew Levin’s boast wasn’t far out. Mossad’s intelligence-gathering ability was the envy of many Western agencies.
He studied Mossad’s photograph of Kirilov as he waited.
It had been taken in Moscow and showed the killer emerging from a nightclub. Even in the picture, his alertness came through. His flat eyes had been sweeping the street as the camera had clicked.
Levin’s dossier had been thin. Kirilov had grown up in the same town as Gorbunov, in Salaluga. He too had been an orphan.
No one knew how the two had met. However, if there was one man Gorbunov trusted, it was the killer.
He has no nicknames, Levin had warned him.
Zeb knew what that meant.
The most lethal men didn’t need alternate names.
Zeb pulled his cap lower over his head as Kirilov came out of the building.
Zeb was on the other side of the street, a backpack on his shoulder, a map in his hand.
He studied it every few moments as he watched the Russian linger on the pavement for a few seconds.
Kirilov went to the nearest subway. Zeb followed, paralleling him.
The killer didn’t go underground. He continued walking, seemingly lost in thought, and reached the West Sixty-Sixth Street entrance to Central Park.
He looked back once and then entered the oasis of green.
Zeb hung back.
The park had less traffic. The Russian would make him.
I can wait outside.
In Chisholm, the twins compared the line in the magazine to several of Billy Patten’s letters.
That scrawl was his.
They took photographs and sent them to Farrell and Cole Patten, along with a question.
Who is Dang?
They checked into a hotel near the lake, and the next day, they went to visit Ginny Davis.
Davis lived in a
small house on Eighth Avenue Northwest, in Chisholm.
A four-bedroom house with a neatly maintained front yard. A truck in the driveway, no sounds of pets, as they approached her door.
Meghan rapped the knocker, and presently, an elderly woman opened the door.
She had a small hunch, thinning white hair, and wrinkles on her face, and she used a cane.
‘No donations,’ she told them firmly. ‘I give to the church each month. I have no more to give.’
‘Ma’am, we aren’t here for that.’
She pushed her glasses back on her nose and came closer to them.
‘I don’t know you.’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘I don’t talk to strangers.’ She started to close the door.
‘Ma’am, we’re here about Billy Patten.’
The door stopped moving.
‘Him?’ she exclaimed in disgust, but she opened the door wider.
No love there. Meghan smiled as she and Beth followed Davis inside.
‘Who are you? Why are you asking about him?’
‘We’re from New York, ma’am. I don’t know if you follow the news.’ Beth took the lead and gestured at the silent TV in a corner. ‘Those accusations about Cole Patten’s identity. We’re looking into those.’
‘Why?’
‘He hired us, ma’am.’
‘You’re detectives?’
‘No, ma’am. But—’
‘Private investigators?’
‘Not exact—’
‘What are you exactly?’
Beth waited before responding, to see if she would interrupt again.
Ginny Davis didn’t. Her eyes were bright behind her spectacles, her hands steady as they clutched her cane. She sat upright in the quiet home, but for the hum of a fridge from somewhere inside.
‘We’re consultants to the NYPD, ma’am.’ Beth reached out and presented her card to Davis.
She glanced at it once and placed it on a table beside her.
‘I watch TV. Follow the news. I know what’s happening. How does this concern me?’
‘Can you identify him?’
‘No. Saw the boys just a couple of times, when they were very young. I wasn’t close to them.’