'I don't know what happened. If there is a shadow, I don't know it. But there are other possibilities, than a shadow for me.' She stood up. 'I will call now, with the e-mail. I will find out now if there is a shadow.'
'And you'd tell me.'
'Probably,' she said. 'As I say to you, I… we… don't give two shits for Oleshev. All we want to do is get clear.'
As she stepped away, Lucas said, 'Did you ask about the laptop?'
She stopped and turned: 'I did. The captain of the Potemkin said Oleshev definitely had a laptop, a small silver Sony and very expensive. The man who interviewed the crew in Toronto said that some accessories… this is correct? Accessories?' Lucas nodded. '… that some accessories remain in his cabin. A CD drive with some games that plugged in with a PCMCIA card and also one of the small disk drives.'
'All right. Go make your call, and then I've got another thing to talk about.'
'What? Tell me now.'
She came back to the booth, leaned a hip against the table, and crossed her arms as Lucas told her about the call from the woman the evening before. He concluded by saying, 'She was the real witness. I'm sure of it. She put the laptop on the street.'
'You can find it?'
'We're trying.'
Nadya went to check with the embassy. When Reasons showed up, Lucas told him about the hassle at Spivak's, again leaving Andreno out of the equation, and about the call from the anonymous woman.
'Well, shit,' Reasons said. 'We've got to get more pressure out on the street. You find the laptop, we'll get a name for her. Somebody's got to know who she is.'
'There's another problem for your guys,' Lucas said. 'There's almost no point in chasing after the Wheaton murder, if it was a mistake. You won't find any connections. There aren't any.'
'Yeah.' Reasons thought for a minute. Then, 'I gotta talk to the boss. He's not gonna be happy.'
Reasons ordered pancakes and Lucas got a Diet Coke and a waffle, and they talked about the case and the view out toward the lake and about Nadya's ass. Nadya came back and slipped into the booth next to Lucas. She wore a very light fragrance, like apple blossoms.
She exhaled and said, 'Well: they say to me that there is no shadow. But.'
'But,' Lucas said.
'Yes. But. But somebody else called to the embassy this morning and asked for the intelligence officer. When he got the duty officer, he asked for the shadow to be put in touch with him. This call came in twenty minutes ago.' She looked from Reasons to Lucas. 'This was not you?'
'Not us,' Lucas said.
'What about your shadow? The FBI man you talk to-there must be one.'
'I'll ask,' Lucas said. He pulled his phone from his pocket. 'What was his name again?'
Nadya smiled and said, 'I wouldn't know that,' and waved at a waitress. 'But say hello for me.'
Lucas called Andy Harmon again and said, 'This is Davenport. I'm sitting here eating a waffle and talking to Nadya. She says hello to my shadow. She says somebody just called the Russian embassy in Washington and asked to be put in touch with Nadya's shadow. Nadya says she doesn't have one, and she wants to know if it was you guys who called the embassy. 'Cause if it wasn't, that would mean that the embassy is probably talking to the killer.'
'Wasn't us,' Harmon said. 'It just flat wasn't us. If the embassy will give us the time the call came in, we could try to trace it.'
'Just a minute,' Lucas said. He turned to Nadya and said, 'If the embassy can give us the time the call came in, we can trace it.'
'Let me talk,' she said. Lucas passed her the phone and she and Harmon talked for a minute, and she gave Harmon the name of a man at the embassy he could check with.
When she was done, Lucas took the phone back and asked, 'What are the chances?'
'I don't know,' Harmon said. 'But we'll check it. By the way, she's lying to you about the shadow. She's got one. Be nice to find him, or identify him, anyway.'
'Yeah, well…'
'Get back to you,' Harmon said.
For breakfast, Nadya had a bowl of strawberries with a smidgen of cream, and two cups of coffee. She was a slow eater, and they went over the case again, piece by piece, as she worked her way through the strawberries. Finally, Reasons said, 'I'm gonna go talk to the boss. What are you guys doing?'
'Maybe I oughta go back to Virginia and jack up the Spivaks.'
'Couldn't hurt,' Reasons said.
'Then that's what I'll do,' Lucas said.
Nadya went with him. Before they left, they both went to their rooms to check for messages, and Lucas used the break to call Andreno in Virginia. 'Anything?'
'No. I just got going a couple of hours ago. Spivak's gonna be checked again this morning and then they're gonna let him out. They're gonna take him down to the police station and get a drawing of the guy who hanged him, for whatever that's worth.'
'Where're you?'
'In the van across from the hospital. His son went in fifteen minutes ago, and since Spivak doesn't have a car here, I'd guess the son is picking him up.'
'All right. Stay with him. I'm coming up that way with Nadya. I'm gonna jack the guy up a little. Maybe his kids, too.'
Lucas and Nadya drove north mostly in quiet, at the start, Pink Floyd's A Collection of Great Dance Songs playing soft on the CD. Nadya, it turned out, was married, now separated, and had three children, two boys and a girl, one at Moscow State University, the other two in secondary school. Both her husband and her father were professors at the university-her father had, in fact, introduced her to the man who'd become her husband. Her father was a chemist, her husband did computer software research.
'I once owned a software company,' Lucas told her.
Her eyebrows went up. 'This is serious?'
'Sure. Davenport Simulations. We made software programs that would simulate different kinds of emergencies on police computer systems to train people to respond. You know, you have a centralized communications center, and you get two car accidents with injuries and then a shooting, all coming in at the same time, and then one of the cars you expect to send is off the air, and another one breaks down on the way to a scene, what do you do, where do you put your people? We had dozens of different scenarios. I'm out of it now, but the company still exists. I hear it's been making a bunch of money since the World Trade Center attacks. Government contracts.'
'You don't look like, mmm, a technologist,' she said. She had more questions, and Lucas found himself being thoroughly and pleasantly debriefed. When she'd finished, she said, 'Hmph.'
'Hmph., what?'
She smiled: 'I would prefer to work with somebody a little stupider.'
He laughed and his cell phone rang. 'Yeah?'
Marcy said, 'Lucas. I think we have a line on your guy. What do you want to do?'
'What do you have?'
'He's a student, majors in psychology. Name is Larry Schmidt. Twenty-four. Six years in school, hasn't graduated yet. He might be hanging around because it gives him access to his market. Handles hot electronics- mostly computer equipment and sound stuff. He's been busted twice, walked both times. He's not big, he's not small, he's just… profitable.'
'You got enough for a warrant?'
'Absolutely. We've got three different people who name him as a fence and who tell us he sells out of his apartment.'
'Get one. I can be down there…' He looked at his watch. 'By four o'clock. I'll see you at your office.'
'Do that.'
Nadya said, 'What?'
