Nadya was still unsure about American jurisprudence, and Lucas and Andreno took a couple of minutes to explain some of the pragmatic aspects of it.

"Every serious criminal charge here winds up in front of a jury, if the defendant wants one," Lucas told her. "Even if we don't believe what Burt Walther said on the tape, even if he had some paid assassin from somewhere else, we have nothing from the shootings that would prove it. And the defense has the tape in which Walther not only takes responsibility, but also gives a credible explanation of who did the shooting. By committing suicide, he not only removes himself from the possibility of interrogation and cross-examination, he seems to… mmm… demonstrate the sincerity of his statement."

"Which is the big deal," Andreno said. "Here, a guy is absolutely assumed to be innocent until he's proven to be guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. What Walther did was drop a huge reasonable doubt on almost anything we could take to court."

Lucas concluded: "So unless something really radical shows up… there's no point in continuing the investigation. We'd never get anybody else into court."

Nadya understood perfectly: "For me, anything that would upset this tape would be unwelcome. We have now an explanation for everything. We can take this to Maksim Oleshev and say this and this and this, one-two-three, is how your son came to die. This is all that is wanted."

"So we're good," Andreno said. To Lucas: "I can hang around if you want, but I don't know what I'd do."

"Take off," Lucas said. "You can probably get a flight out tomorrow morning."

Lucas borrowed an empty office from Hopper and started by calling the boss, Rose Marie Roux. They were on the phone for fifteen minutes.

At the end of the conversation, she said, "Okay. Let me talk to the governor, but I'd say that you're done. Turn it over to the feds, and to the local people, and come on back."

When he got off the phone with Roux, he called Harmon, spent another fifteen minutes filling him in. Harmon said, when Lucas was finished, "All right. The house is sealed, I'm going straight to Washington to get a crew out here. They really can't ignore it. Who knows what they'll find in that place? Who knows who went through there?"

"You should know that I'm not quite right with it," Lucas said. "If you find Roger anywhere-if you find him in Russia-I'd like to see him. I'd like to talk with him. I'd like to run around the block with him."

"I don't know what that means," Harmon said. "Is that cop talk? I don't know the jargon."

"What?" Lucas was puzzled.

" 'Run around the block…' "

"No, no. I mean, I'd really, actually like to run around a block with him. Or once around a track. That's what I meant."

Roux called back: "Where are you? In Duluth or on the Range?"

"Still in Hibbing."

"Good. The governor wants to see you, and it turns out he's in Eveleth tonight at seven o'clock. Can you get there?"

"No problem. Just up the way."

"He's at a dance at some hall up there… one of the ones with all the initials and you never know what they mean… I'll find it here somewhere…"

Nadya had made reservations: "I leave for Minneapolis and then Washington tomorrow at three o'clock. Micky goes at two o'clock and says he will ride me to the airport. What do you do?"

"Probably go home tonight. I've got to hang around here for a while, though. The governor wants to talk to me about something. Want to meet a governor?"

"Mmm. Well, yes." A thin line appeared on her forehead. "Do you think he will take a picture with me? With my camera?"

"Sure. He loves that kind of thing."

They watched the tape again, and Lucas and Nadya made a statement for an assistant county attorney about their contacts with Burt Walther. At five o'clock, they caught the local evening news. The news was spectacular. Somebody had a good source with the Hibbing cops, and the on-the-scene reporter was standing outside of the yellow-taped Walther house. He ran down the whole story: the first killing at the harbor, the Russian agent at the bus depot, Reasons, Harbinson, and finally, the Walther murder-suicide.

An interview with Jan Walther: "I don't know what is happening. I don't know what is going on. My ex-husband is gone, and I hear these rumors… All of this is crazy, and the police don't tell me anything…"

There was more from the neighbors in the street. One guy, who didn't seem to know much about the Walthers, tried to float the line about the Walthers being loners who stayed to themselves. He was immediately and thoroughly contradicted by all the Walthers' neighbors and Burt Walthers' fellow union members, who testified that he and Melodie were good people and that Burt was a stand-up guy. "All of this, the final echoes of the fall of the Soviet Union, and a spy ring, in our midst here in Minnesota, for almost seventy years," the reporter finished portentously.

Nadya said, "This is, how do you say…"

"Bullshit," Lucas said.

"Mostly."

They had time to kill. When the news was over, they checked out with Hopper and drove to Virginia, which was only a few miles from the dance the governor was attending. They rode north in comfortable quiet, chatting about this or that aspect of the case. Nadya said that if Walther were spotted anywhere within the Soviet sphere, she would personally see that Lucas was notified.

"But I think he will not be. There is no sign that he speaks Russian, yes? I would think he would run to Canada. Maybe in the west, in the mountains, where there is not so much TV Perhaps Alaska. With a prepared identity, he would be hard to find."

"But what's he gonna do, be a drunk?" Lucas asked. "He's got no real skills that we know of. He was a car salesman for about six months…"

"There are no car stores in Alaska?" Nadya asked.

Andreno leaned in from the backseat. "Wal-Mart, man. Home Depot. There are all these places that hire and fire hundreds of people every day. They don't know who the fuck they are. Half of Mexico used to work for Wal-Mart."

"All right, he can get a job."

Nobody was hungry, but they stopped in Virginia for coffee, and helped Nadya buy two pounds of magazines for her flight to Washington. At seven o'clock, they drove to Eveleth, got lost, drove around aimlessly for a while, and eventually found the place by a process of elimination.

The dance was an AFL-CIO affair with a polka band and an acre of sheet cake and Jell-O molds, a cash bar, and balloons on the ceilings. The polka band was hot, and the governor not only liked to dance, he was good at it.

Elmer Henderson was a willowy man, narrow shouldered, with short blond hair going gray at the temples, a man who wore handmade suits and shoes and a different Hermes tie each day. His clan was one of Minnesota's richest, and Elmer was a typical product of money: conservative, mild, polite.

But he could dance a polka about as well as anybody Lucas had seen, and when he got going, the other dancers fell back into a circle and clapped with the band, and Lucas and Nadya laughed out loud.

He was dancing with a very fat lady-also a good dancer-when he spotted Lucas and waved. Lucas waved back and a man who'd come up behind him said, "Don't interrupt him. I've got six photographers shooting their ass off for the next campaign."

Lucas turned and found Neil Mitford, the governor's chief political operator. "Heck of a dancer," Lucas said.

"Hard to believe, huh? Look at the motherfucker go…"

A while later, the governor got loose and said, "Let's find a spot." They found a spot and Lucas introduced Nadya and Andreno, and the governor nodded and said, "Rose Marie briefed me, and I see it's leaked onto TV Is there anything in it? For us?"

Lucas shook his head. "You should stay clear on this one. If that tape gets out-and it may, there's a whole question of probate, because he made it his last will-you can't help feeling sorry for the old guy. I'd say, take the credit for doing the feds' job for them, but then say it's up to them to carry the ball the rest of the way."