Barbour oilcloth jacket that the salesman said was an excellent counterpoint to his blue eyes and his stonewashed Levi's. Lucas couldn't help but agree.
'When you're right, you're right,' he told the salesman, looking at himself in the triple mirror.
Harmon called at four forty-five and said that he had rented a conference room on the first floor; he didn't want to meet in the FBI offices, which were across the street from the hotel, because he didn't ever want to have to explain Nadya.
Lucas called Nadya and Reasons, gave them the location, and at five o'clock, met Nadya in the elevator on the way down. Reasons was already there, with Harmon and a local Duluth FBI man named Amery. Harmon shook hands with Nadya, said, 'I hope everything's okay with Piotr Nikitin.'
'It does not look so good,' she said.
'We need to put more pressure on Spivak,' Lucas said, when they were settled around the conference table. 'Is there anything in the antiterrorism stuff that you could use to lean on him with?'
Harmon glanced at Amery, then looked back at Lucas and nodded. 'There are some provisions under the Patriot Act that would allow us to hold him for a while, without charging him, and without access to the outside, except for an attorney. Or, we could simply bust him under federal statutes on suspicion of espionage. We can also offer him a deal: give us the rest of the ring, and the killer, and he walks. His family walks. So we have some weapons.'
'I don't think we should isolate him so much,' Nadya said. 'Threaten, threaten, threaten, but always allow him to talk to the outside. Always with surveillance on his family and this new family, the Svobodas.'
'Is everybody tapped?' Reasons asked.
'We have warrants in the process of being issued,' Harmon said. 'We will have taps on the whole damn group of them by tonight-and we're looking at ways to tap the Wal-Mart there in Virginia, since that seems to be their regular outside call spot. The problem there is, we'd pick up more than the target, but our lawyers are figuring a way to work it out with the court.'
'We could put one of the phones out of service, so they'd always be forced to use the tapped phone,' Amery said. 'Technically, it's not hard, if the court says okay.'
'Do they suspect yet that we're watching?' Nadya asked.
'The Spivaks are probably looking around,' Harmon said.
'Here's a risk we could take,' Lucas said. 'You bring in some guys, and watch all of the Spivaks full-time. Then you go over, bust Spivak for espionage, and mention the genealogy that Oleshev had, about the hospital that burned down, the four families, and so on. Then arrange for Marsha Spivak or one of their kids to see Anton, in private. And track what happens. If they make phone calls, if they warn somebody… They'd have to do something, wouldn't they?'
Amery shrugged, and Harmon looked at Nadya, and Harmon said, 'Unless they've buttoned down the whole organization.'
'This they might have done,' Nadya said.
'Then there wouldn't be any harm in doing it, if they feel that they can't warn anyone,' Reasons said.
Harmon said, 'It's a plan. What else?'
'We'll need some kind of timetable for you to put your people on, and for me to get my guy out of your way,' Lucas said. 'We don't want them running over each other…'
At the end of the meeting, Lucas said, 'What we don't have is a rationale for the killings of Oleshev, Mary Wheaton, and Piotr Nikitin. Wheaton was probably done to eliminate a witness, but the other two don't connect.'
Harmon picked it up: 'We have two Russian groups trying to contact the same spy ring, and the reaction is to kill people on both sides. I don't have a tight grip on that, either.'
They all looked at Nadya, who smiled and shook her head. 'There are three groups represented. The Russian government is the first; then, what we believe is a criminal group or perhaps some runaway business group, is the second; and the Communists here in Minnesota is the third. Perhaps the Communists don't want to deal with anything Russian.'
'So it's our Commies against your businessmen,' Amery said. He squinted sideways and did a Maxwell Smart imitation. 'Whatta we do next, Chief?'
Harmon was offended, cleared his throat, and said, 'Anything else?'
More drift time; time not even spent thinking about the case. What could be done was being done. Reasons had walked out through the front door of the hotel when the meeting ended, never looking back; and Lucas wondered if he was wrong about Nadya and Reasons. He talked to Weather about it that night and she said, 'Who cares? They're adults.'
Chapter 16
Like any good Minnesotan, Lucas rarely missed the TV weather before going to bed. But he missed it that night, caught up in watching The Hulk on a movie channel.
The phone call came early the next day, and, as he was running out of the hotel at seven in the morning, still half asleep, the weather smacked him in the face. Fall had arrived overnight, and he could see his breath in the air as he headed for the car.
Nadya called after him, 'Wait, wait, wait.' Lucas had suggested that maybe she could get a ride with Reasons, but she didn't want to ride with Reasons-the sarcasm was apparently lost on her-she wanted to go right now and with Lucas. She was wearing jeans and boots she'd bought when she was shopping with Weather, and the shoestrings were flapping and she couldn't get her shirt tucked in, and she had her new Patagonia jacket pinned under her chin as she tried to dress on the run and she called, 'Wait, please, wait, wait…'
Lucas put the light on the roof and they were out of there, up the hill, over the top, running as hard as they could for Hibbing. 'It's Piotr,' she said.
'I think so.'
'I hope it's not Piotr. It is Piotr, isn't it? I think it must be…'
Lucas was not good in the morning and had had neither a Coke nor a cup of coffee. On the outskirts of Duluth, he spotted a likely-looking gas station and roared into the lot, light still flashing, got two coffees to go, jumped the line at the cash register, ran back, hopped in the car, and took off again.
Nadya started with Piotr again, then went silent, and Lucas, grumpy, was blessing the silence when she said, 'So, you know that I am sleeping with Jerry. This offends you?'
'You're sleeping with Reasons?' He feigned astonishment.
'Please.' She said it exactly like a New Yorker.
'None of my business,' Lucas said. 'You're adults.'
'That's exactly what I thought,' she said. More silence, but Lucas knew she wasn't going to leave it alone. Two minutes went by with sipping of coffee, views out the passenger window-trees, then more trees-and then she said, 'Do you want to know why?'
'It's none of my business,' Lucas repeated, but he did want to know, so he tried to keep any harshness out of his voice.
'It's because, as Jerry would say, I am horny.'
'Okay,' Lucas said. 'Okay.'
'I am separated six years now, and here I am-I am out of town where my colleagues can't see me, I am in a nice hotel with a good bed, Jerry is somewhat attractive and certainly safe, and very enthusiastic.'
'That's uh… Jesus, it's gotta be Piotr, don't you think?'
She looked at him sideways and said, 'I am sorry if this affair offends you. But I have not had so much sex in my life, and I took the opportunity.'
'No. No. Like I said… Poor old Piotr…'
Two-thirds of the way to Hibbing, Lucas said, 'We should call Andy Harmon.' But they didn't.
