'That's what we're looking at now. In the kitchen. We'd be happy to have your help.'
'We can look for a while,' Lucas said. 'Nothing in Russian?'
'No.'
They were still there, an hour later, when the deputy took a call, looked at Lucas, said, 'Yeah, he's still here.' He handed the phone to Lucas, said, 'Roy Hopper, down in Hibbing.'
Lucas took the phone and said, 'Hi.'
Hopper was breathing hard, and Lucas could hear sirens: 'Bill, uh, the guy we've got sitting outside of Walther's. He just heard two shots. He's going in.'
Chapter 27
Grandpa pushed the door shut on the cop, and waited. Would the cop come in after him? No. Instead, the cop seemed to laugh at him, turned, and walked back toward the other two, motioned, and they all went back out toward their car.
Let him laugh. But now there was no exit, now the endgame was critical. In a way, he felt a certain satisfaction because he'd seen it coming.
He pushed Grandma into the front room, facing the TV. She lifted her head when she saw it, and her face seemed to loosen, as though she were relaxing with the familiarity of home.
Grandpa rubbed the top of her head, something he used to do when she was still with them; he would do it before he went out, a kind of good-bye and good luck and I love you. And he leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead and said, 'I'll be back in a minute.'
He went into the kitchen, got the walkie-talkie from the drawer, buzzed it. A minute passed, and he buzzed it again. If Carl wasn't home, that could be a setback. Another minute, then 'Yeah?'
A growing knot in his stomach suddenly unwrapped. 'Instructions. Write this.'
'Let me get a pencil.' A few seconds. 'Okay.'
'Number one. Recover this walkie-talkie before police do.'
'What?' No code. Carl was confused.
'I'm going to take this walkie-talkie and put it under Mrs. Kriegler's garbage can, between the bricks they stand on, back in the alley. Get it there.'
'Why-?'
'No questions. Just write. Number two. You are a child. Act like one. You must remember! Act like a child.'
'I don't-'
'No questions! Remember. Will you remember?'
'Yes.'
'The instructions will be clear, soon enough. They were here this afternoon, and my endgame proceeds.'
'Should I come over?'
'No! Not until you must. Be a child. Act like a child. And when you must come over, you will know it's time.'
'Okay…'
'Now we need silence. Good-bye.'
'Good-bye.'
Grandpa sighed, got his jacket and a piece of newspaper, crumbled it into a ball, put it in his pocket with the walkie-talkie. They might be watching; maybe he couldn't get rid of the walkie-talkie. He would see.
He went out the back door, shuffled down the block, around the corner, back up the alley. Hadn't seen anyone. Came up to the Krieglers' garbage can, took the walkie-talkie and the ball of paper out of his pocket, stooped, slipped the walkie-talkie between the bricks that held the can off the ground, then stood, lifted the top off the can, and tossed the ball of paper inside. Hoped any watcher would think he'd picked up the paper and was dumping it into the can. Or, if they didn't believe that, that they would look at the trash.
Continued up the alley. Thought about Carl as he shuffled along. He hadn't had enough time with the boy. He needed two more years. He wasn't ready for what Grandpa was putting on him-but then, Grandpa hadn't been ready when he was pushed out into the world, either.
Maybe that's all it would take-to be pushed into the real world.
Back home. Preparing the endgame, such as it was, would take only a few minutes. Before he did it, Grandpa went to his favorite chair, turned it to look out over the front lawn, closed his eyes, and remembered.
His first memory, the earliest he'd had, came from the countryside near Moscow. In the fall, he thought, because the memory was of a gray-and-tan landscape. He was standing with his father, maybe looking out a window, and a man was walking through a field not far from them. The man had a cigarette dangling from his lip, and a gun over his shoulder. His father must have known the man, because the man smiled and held up a dead rabbit, dangling the furry body by its tail… There were other scattered childhood memories: watching four men trying to push a car out of a muddy ditch, groaning and swearing; sitting in a cold outhouse with an older man-an uncle?-as they talked and shared space in a three-holer. He remembered looking down the holes, into the mysterious pit below. And he remembered the smell of a country kitchen, and the big round cold purple beets sitting on the counter, ready for the soup…
He remembered the first time he'd seen Melodie, who was a typist at the Cheka training school, and the way she'd cocked her head when she laughed…
He turned away from his memories of the kulaks; those were not for this day, though he couldn't repress the memory of a peasant who tried to joke with him, tried to make him laugh as a way out of execution. The man's oval, careworn face but with the jolly mobile lips as he told his joke and did a little awkward dance to accompany it… Didn't work.
He remembered the English lessons, the violent old man who beat the grammar into them, the long lists of words. He remembered the first time he saw Canada, the trip across the bleak prairie, on the train, the walk through the frozen farm fields from Manitoba to North Dakota, Melodie freezing in an inadequate wool coat that turned out to be mostly cotton, and leather shoes that seemed to dissolve in the snow.
The memories after that all ran together: World War II, the arrival of the children, Korea, moving operators across the border and up the lake, the victory in Vietnam followed by the growing anxiety of the post-Vietnam years, the car accident that took his children away and left him Roger.
Regrets about Roger: he'd been too harsh with him, too demanding of a boy who just didn't have the fiber for a spy's life.
He remembered scouring the newsstands for word of Afghanistan…
Then the collapse, and the years of silence from the motherland.
Grandpa opened his eyes when he heard a car crunching off the road in front of the house. A police car, and his heart sank. He stood up, waiting for the cop to get out of the car. He could see the cop looking at him, but he never got out.
What was going on? Was he waiting for more to arrive?
Maybe there was still time, he only needed five minutes…
He hurried into the small bedroom they used as a library, found the video camera, the new tape and the cheap tripod that had come with the package. The battery he'd recharged over the last two days, and had already tested: it was fine.
The camera had been a Christmas gift ten or twelve years earlier, and he'd only used it a few times. That wasn't a problem, though, because it was a simple, inexpensive machine. He took it into the living room and set it up in front of the picture window, aimed toward Grandma. At the same time, he looked out at the cop: the cop was reading a newspaper.
Nothing but pressure? An attempt to embarrass him? Maybe he had time…
Grandma stirred, and he said, 'Just a minute, Melodie. It'll be just a minute.'
He started the camera, made sure it was running, and focused on Grandma, then walked around it, stood beside her, and said, 'This is Sergey Vasilevich Botenkov, also known as Burt Walther, checking the camera.'
