"Yes." Click.

The phone rang a minute later, once, twice, and then stopped. A minute after that, his mother knocked on his door. "That was Grandpa. It's late, but he says the car's got a flat and he wants to go out early tomorrow…"

"I can get it," Carl said. He'd already put on the camouflage shirt. He opened the door. "I left a book over there, too, I can get that."

"Jeanne McGovern," Jan said.

"Mom…" But he smiled at her.

He thought about Jeanne McGovern on the way to Grandpa's. McGovern wasn't great-looking, but she had all the necessary equipment, and Carl was attracted to the freckles scattered across her face; the freckles made her seem approachable, somehow. He thought of himself playing football, basketball, baseball, hockey, all the things he didn't play, with McGovern looking on, watching him score-would a smart girl be impressed? Did a smart girl give blow jobs?

He was still working on the question when he pulled through the alley to Grandpa's, and parked. They wouldn't be taking the Chevy.

Grandpa was wearing a dark turtleneck shirt and jeans, which looked strange on him: the turtleneck over Grandpa's withered neck, the jeans flapping around his elderly ass and matchstick legs.

"Plenty of time," he said. "He won't be there for half an hour."

"Unless he's scouting it out ahead of time."

"I think he would have already done that," Grandpa said.

They went back out to the garage, got in the Taurus, and headed north across town, out past the park, the night growing deeper and darker as they got away from the main city lights.

"You actually talked to the head of intelligence at the embassy?" Carl asked.

"Yes. They were quite… interested."

"What did you tell them?"

"I told them the truth-that I was working with Oleshev, that we had to coordinate, that we were running an operation approved by Moscow and what the hell were they doing in going after Spivak-that they'd given him away to the Americans."

"The truth?"

Grandpa grinned: "Maybe I fictionalized it a little bit."

"Oh, yeah. A little bit."

The road was narrow and bumpy, and went nowhere-there was a tourist site that overlooked one of the mine pits, but that was long closed. Nothing else was out there: they saw no cars or house lights.

"If people saw us out here, they'd wonder."

"Won't be here for long," Grandpa said. He looked at his great-grandson. "When your grandfather was still alive, he used to come up here and neck with his girlfriends."

"I think Dad and Mom did, too. I probably will, if I ever get a girlfriend; Mom's been bugging me again."

"You're a man now. You should learn about women."

"Yeah, yeah." Not a conversation he wanted to have. "I know all about the birds and the bees, Grandpa, so don't lean on me, okay?"

Grandpa laughed, and then coughed. "Where's the gun?"

"Right in the back of my pants. In the belt."

"Remember what I told you about it hanging up."

"That's why I'm wearing the shirt. I was practicing with it before Mom came home."

"There are schools for these things," Grandpa said, looking sideways out the passenger window, into the dark, remembering. "I'm trying to teach you the best I can, but I'm not as sharp as I used to be."

"Grandma used to say that I'm the Imperfect Weapon," Carl said. "Remember? You said you'd make me the perfect weapon."

"You'll get better. But you have to think about it. Then you have to go practice. But thinking… thinking is the thing. You have to imagine all the things that can happen and prepare contingencies."

"I haven't thought of everything, but I'm trying," Carl said.

"You've been doing very well. One thing I've learned in all these years is that nothing ever goes exactly as planned. You plan, and then you adapt. You've done that." After a while: "You know what Lenin said. 'One man with a gun can control one hundred without one.' What you are learning, this is critical for your life in the underground."

A bit later, he said: "I talked to Lenin once. My father took me to…"

"The workers' hall near the Kremlin, and it was snowing out…" The story was a familiar one.

"He said, 'You'll grow up, and you'll be a soldier like your father.' And he slapped my father on the shoulder."

"Your father had medals on his coat…"

"He was buried with them. He was there at the beginning…"

"And that was one of the great days of your life."

"Yes, it was," Grandpa said, and a tear trickled down his cheek. He wiped it away and said, "You'll be a soldier, too. Maybe someday, you'll tell your grandson about driving out here with me."

A minute later: "I like the walkie-talkies. That was a stroke of genius."

Carl smiled in the dark.

Then they were there. Carl swung the car into the parking lot, the red-white-and-blue faзade of the Greyhound Bus Origin Museum lit in his headlights.

"Down to the end," Grandpa grunted.

"If the cops come, they'll look at us for sure."

"Football game. It should be getting out about now. Every cop in town will be down there."

"Hope," Carl said.

They sat in silence for a minute or two, in the dark, and then Grandpa said, "Do it as soon as you can be safe. Even if I seem to be agreeing with this man. I will seem to be agreeing. Lenin said, 'It would be the greatest mistake to think that concessions mean peace. Concessions are nothing but a new form of warfare.' The same here. I agree, I agree, I agree, I talk, talk, talk, and then you act, when he begins to go to sleep."

"Yes."

"I want you to treat me like I'm a little senile. Help me out of the car, talk me around a little bit. Sit here, Grandpa, like that." A set of headlights flickered through the trees to the south. "He's coming. Remember, do it as soon as you can be safe. Control your fire, control the gun. And remember what he did with Anton. He'll have a gun of his own."

"Should we have some sort of signal, in case you want to call it off?" Grandpa nodded. "Yes. Good thought. I'll say, 'Carl, not tonight.' If I don't say that, kill him."

The oncoming car slowed, turned into the museum parking lot, hesitated, then turned toward them. The car stopped, the headlights on them for a moment, then it came on, swung out, pulled into a space about twenty feet away stopped. The lights went out, and Carl got out of the car.

The driver's-side door on the other car opened, and a man got out. He was dressed in a black raincoat and he said, "You are…"

"Here to meet you," Carl said. "Anyway my grandpa is."

"Come around the car with your hands up where I can see them." The Russian looked like a Mafia guy from television; but then, so had Oleshev.

Carl lifted his hands over his head and the other man moved closer, darkly visible in the thin security light from the museum. Carl saw that one hand hung down, long; he had the gun out. As he cleared the car, hands up, Carl said, "I'm not the one, I've got to get, uh, help Grandpa…"

The passenger door popped then, and Grandpa pushed it open. He croaked, "Carl? Is this the man?"

The man had moved closer and now his hand was up, at his side, the gun pointed at Grandpa's door. The car's interior light had come on when Grandpa pushed the door open, and the old man swiveled, and put his feet on the ground, his hands on his knees.

"Carl? Could you help me get up?"

"Yeah… Uh, he's got a gun, I think…"

"Of course he has a gun," Grandpa said. "Could you help me, please?"

The man was closer now, watchful, and Carl edged up the side of the car, both of his hands overhead, and he said, "I don't have any kind of a gun or anything…"

Grandpa tried to heave himself out of the car and stumbled, went down on the blacktop. "Ahhh…"

"Ah, Jesus, Grandpa."

Carl stooped to lift him; actually had to lift him, and was amazed as his great-grandfather's feathery weight. The old man might not weigh even a hundred pounds, he thought. Grandpa had him by the sleeve, steadying himself, and the other man was now only eight feet away.