The pit was deep enough that Lucas had no idea of exactly how deep. Hundreds of feet, anyway, and it appeared to be miles long, maybe a couple of miles across. As Hopper had said, the body was a hundred or so feet below them, arms thrown to the side, legs spread, wrapped in a black coat, faceup. Two more firemen were maneuvering a lift basket.

"You know how to rappel?" Hopper asked Lucas.

"Fuck no," Lucas asked.

"A man after my own heart," Hopper said.

Lucas had been on recoveries before, and they always seemed to take two hours longer than they should; but they'd arrived more than an hour into this one, so they only had to wait a half hour before the basket was winched over the lip of the cut and pulled onto the ledge.

Nadya had gone back to the truck for her laptop, and as the body came up, she opened the laptop and brought up a picture of Nikitin. The body was wrapped in a blanket.

"Want to look?" Hopper asked Nadya. "I can look for you."

"I must look," Nadya said.

Hopper nodded, and carefully unwrapped the blanket that covered the face. When he pulled back the last flap, Nadya said, "Ohhhh…" and turned away, put the laptop down, walked back to the fat part of the hill and tried to vomit. The crows had gotten the eyes and the other soft parts-the lips and the nose-before they'd been chased away.

Hopper said quietly, "Put some eyes on him…"

"It's him," Lucas said. "Could you get your guys to print him? We can send the prints back to the Russian embassy, just to make sure."

"You'll have them in a half hour."

"Thanks, Chief." Lucas went back and took Nadya by the arm. "Let's go."

"I had nothing in my stomach except some coffee," she said, dabbing at her mouth with the back of her hand. "Now my mouth tastes like acid. It's… Piotr, correct?"

"Yup. They're gonna print him for you. Let's get out of here."

They spent some time driving around; Lucas got her a bottle of Scope at a convenience store, and wound up on the main drag. Lucas asked a passerby about Svoboda's Bakery, got pointed, and they walked down together.

"Is this smart?" Nadya asked.

"We're pushing," Lucas said.

Lucas had been in dozens of bakeries like Svoboda's all over Minnesota and Wisconsin, small-town affairs with all the baking done on the premises, the varieties of cakes a fading tale of ethnic preferences from the early-nineteenth-century settlements. Lucas wandered down between the display cases, Nadya trailing behind. He chose two poppy-seed kolaches, and Nadya got a glazed doughnut, with two cups of coffee, and they carried them to one of two round metal tables at the front of the store and looked out at the street as they ate.

The woman behind the case busied herself with another customer, and then asked cheerfully, "You folks tourists?"

"Cops," Lucas said. He sipped his coffee, and said, "They had a Russian fellow killed up here a couple days ago. Found his body down in the Rust-Hull mine this morning. Crows got to him."

"Oh my… God," the woman behind the case said. Her hand went to her throat.

Lucas slipped into semi-hayseed mode. "Yup. Gonna be a big deal, all right. FBI flying around like a bunch of bats. They're talking spy rings, they're talking multiple murder. Haven't seen so much screaming and yelling since I went to a goat-fuck out in South Dakota." He sipped at his coffee and squinted NYPD-like at the street.

"Well… did they catch anybody?" the woman asked.

"Not yet. But they will," Lucas said. He dragged his index finger across his neck. "Murder one. Federal rap."

Nadya jumped in, her accent suddenly thicker. "They will be lucky peoples if they get to court. If my people catch them…" She smiled at the woman behind the counter. "… I am Russian-then they wish for your murder one."

"She's a spy," Lucas said to the woman, tipping a thumb toward Nadya. "But she's on our side for this one." He looked at his watch. "Oops. We better get going. Don't want to keep Chief Hopper waiting. Hey: great kolaches, huh?"

When they were back on the street, Lucas looked down at Nadya and grinned. "I hope to hell that was one of the Svobodas. I don't want to have wasted that act."

"You have some abilities," Nadya conceded. Then, sadly, "Now we get these fingerprints, eh? I did not know this man, but I feel sorry for his child. Not natural to lose both your parents this way. This should not happen to anybody."

Nikitin's body had been taken to the medical examiner's office. Nadya had given Hopper some of her fingerprint forms, and the prints were ready when they got there. They spent ten minutes going through his personal effects-comb, two expensive pens, a wallet, a couple of credit cards, two photos, one of a small girl and one of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

"Not much," Lucas said.

"He was very professional," said Nadya. "There shouldn't be much."

"Which doesn't help."

"Now what?" she asked.

"Nothing to do but push. Push Spivak, push the Svobodas, once we decide to talk to them… and I guess I better call Harmon now."

Nadya picked up the picture of the girl: "And I should call the embassy, send the fingerprints. Then they will have to talk to the child."

"Find out where he was staying," Lucas suggested. "Maybe he left something in his room."

She nodded: "I will do that also."

Chapter 17

Grandpa was burning with anxiety when Carl arrived after school, said, "Where have you been?"

"School… we had choir practice," Carl said. Grandpa's house smelled of years of spaghetti and red spaghetti sauce and mushrooms; and old cigarette smoke, cooked into the walls for decades, ending, Carl was told, just after he was born. "I heard they found the body."

Grandma, slumped in her wheelchair, mumbled something about a good day-did you have a good day?-and Carl patted her on the shoulder.

Grandpa said, "Yes, but we knew they would-this is just sooner than we hoped. But we've got more trouble." He took a quick turn around the living room, stopped and stooped and looked out over the couch, between the yellowed cotton curtains, to the street. "Karen Svoboda got out and made a call. The cops who were in the Duluth paper, this Davenport and the Russian Kalin, came into the bakery today and got some pastry, and then they sat in front and told Karen about finding the body, and about spy rings and murder charges, and the FBI coming in. This was no accident, that they came to the bakery."

Carl was freaked: "Man. I hope they weren't watching Karen when she called."

"She was smart," Grandpa said. "She went down to Webster's Beauty; she's got a friend who works there. She talked to the friend and then borrowed her cell phone to make the call. I don't see how they could trace that. They couldn't see her friend, couldn't see the phone, couldn't see her calling…"

"But they went another step," Carl said. "Is Spivak talking? Maybe this house is bugged…" Carl looked up at the light fixture as if a bug might be dangling there.

"I don't think it's Anton. We would have had a warning. But Marsha Spivak's a Svoboda, so maybe it was just more pressure. They can't talk to Anton because of the lawyers, but they talk to the Svobodas, figuring it will get back to the Spivaks…"

"We hope," Carl said. "So what do we do? Hide out?"

"No, no. We confuse, delay, run around." He took another quick lap of the living room, twisting his gnarled fists together. Not frightened, Carl thought: excited. "I'm thinking that we should send you out again."

Carl glanced at Grandma, but she seemed to be asleep. "Who?"

"Kalin. The Russian," Grandpa said. "If we get her, there'll be a question: Where does this come from? Is this more retribution for Oleshev? Make it seem even more as though there are two Russian groups fighting it out."