"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

‹l› ‹l› ‹l›

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.

Chief Roy Hopper was standing on the edge of the road, bullshitting with a couple of guys in tan Carhartt jackets, all three of them with their hands in the jacket pockets. Lucas pulled into the weeds off the tarmac and climbed out.

"There you are," Hopper called cheerfully. He turned to the other two and he said, "Top guy from the BCA, and this is his Russian friend. Nadya? Got that right?"

"Is it Piotr?" Nadya asked.

"We don't know," he said. "You got a picture?"

"Yes, I do, on my laptop, I have my laptop…"

"Haven't got him up yet, he's over the edge…"

Lucas looked around. They were in a road cut, with trees and brush all around. "Down in what?"

"Down in the pit," the chief said. When Lucas didn't react, he said, "The Rust-Hull mine pit. Biggest pit in the country."

"Grand Canyon of the north, is what they call it around here," one of the Carhartts said.

"Where is it?" Lucas asked, looking around again.

"About thirty yards that way," the other Carhartt said, tipping his head toward the north side of the road.

"Whoever it is got throwed over the side, but he hung up on a ledge maybe a hundred feet down," Hopper said. "Come on, I'll show you."

"How'd you find him?" Nadya asked as they scrambled up the road cut. She'd gotten her boots properly tied, and Lucas thought they looked cute: retro-styled brown combat boots with giant cleated soles, but only about ten inches long.

Hopper didn't answer until they got over the top, then said, "Well, I knew you were going to ask… I told everybody to keep a lookout, and this morning, there were these crows flying around…"

"Crows."

"Sort of the all-purpose cleanup crew around here," Hopper said. "They'll eat anything."

Nadya stopped, blood draining from her face and she said, "Oh my shit."

"That's exactly right," Hopper said.

They pushed another twenty yards through light brush, and then suddenly the mine pit opened out in front of them. It wasn't the Grand Canyon, but it was big. The lowest part of it was filled with water, a good-sized lake. A pickup truck on the dry pit floor beneath them looked like a Tonka toy. "Jesus," Lucas said.

"Never seen it before?" Hopper asked.

"Never." The dirt and rock were a deep purple, or maybe magenta-he got those confused. The colored stuff must be the iron ore, Lucas supposed. They slid carefully down a slope to a rock ledge perhaps ten yards wide, where two men in firemen's uniforms were working with a winch. Lucas and Nadya stepped carefully to the edge and looked over the side.