The Bitter Past, page 13
“In 1960.”
Sana appears confused. “I don’t get it. Why is that important?”
I turn to her. “Because it confirms our theory. Pollack was on the list, and there was something about him that made our SVR agent suspect he wasn’t who he claimed to be. His name wasn’t first on the list. He was almost near the bottom. So, our killer is running names through a filter. He’s able to check these people out. How would he do that?”
“What list?” Arshal asks.
“Voter rolls.”
Sana takes a chair that Pete offers. “Has your computer server been hacked?”
Beats me. I look at Tuffy. “Have IT do a complete analysis. Borrow the guy from Vegas who works on Metro’s stuff if you have to. Let’s find out.” I folded my arms tightly. “Christ, this is one time I’d be inclined to help the Russians if I knew who they were looking for.”
“Hell yeah,” Tuffy says. “What do we care about some Russian spy who’s been here for sixty years?”
Sana sits straight up. “Don’t even joke about that.”
“Relax,” I say, turning to Pete and Arshal. “How are we coming on Atterbury’s files?”
Pete points to his desk. “Still going through them. He had a big head start on us.”
I pull the list from the county clerk out of my coat pocket, handing it to Pete. “This is what our Russian has. Start with this. Run them all. But keep working the files. We have to find who he’s looking for before anyone else gets killed. I’ll bring my dad out in the morning to see if he can help.”
“Beck?” Mary Elizabeth Bauer, my office manager and second-grade teacher, calls from the office entryway. I turn to see Amon Jessup and Clem Edwards. “Keep at it,” I tell the crew. “I’ll be in my office.” I lower my voice and say to Tuffy, “We found blood on Michaela Edwards’s bike.”
“Damn.”
“In your spare time, have the Jolly Greens pick up every registered sex offender in the county and bring them in. You do the interviews. Do what you do, Tuffy.”
“It’s going to pull me off Atterbury’s files,” she says.
I look back at Clem in the foyer. “Yeah.”
After asking Amon to wait, I bring Clem into my office and sit him down in a chair opposite my desk and then take the chair next to him. “We found some blood on her bicycle, a piece of cloth that might be from her dress.” I let the words hang in the air, watching Clem’s face closely.
Slowly, the big farmer’s eyes get wet, and a single tear escapes. He bites his trembling lip. “Someone hurt her then?”
In that instant, I know that someone isn’t Clem Edwards. “We can’t be sure until we test it against her DNA. To do that, we need something like her toothbrush or a disposable razor that might have some of her skin cells on it. Can you get me something like that?”
As he wipes his eyes, I look down at the floor and Clem’s boots. He’s wearing black Ropers with a smooth outsole, not even close to the print we found in the desert near Pony Springs. His feet are inordinately big for a man of his height, probably at least size twelve. I don’t bother to ask. This is not a crime he has perpetrated. We can dicker all day about how the man lives his life, but he didn’t make one of his wives go missing.
I lean forward in my chair. “Clem, listen to me. At this point, we are operating under the assumption that Michaela is alive. We have her picture out to every local law enforcement agency in the state, as well as NHP and the state of Utah. We’re going to find her.”
Clem Edwards looks down into his lap where his tears drip onto his folded hands. “When you do, Sheriff, you bring the man who done this to me.” He looks up into my eyes. “Will you do that?”
It is well into the night when Sana walks into my office and closes the door. I’m into a pile of paperwork, and she drops a slice of room-temperature pizza on top of it. “Eat,” she commands. “I’ve spent more than two full days with you now, and you’ve only had two meals.”
“Any luck?” I ask, taking a bite.
She takes a seat on the corner of my desk. “I know why our Russian is looking in Lincoln County.”
I drop the pizza. “Tell me.”
“My boss reached out to one of the agents who handled the illegal when he was still communicating with us, the agent before Atterbury. Much better than potentially tipping off the person who’s been leaking to the Russians.”
“And you trust your boss?”
“Have to,” she answers with a nod. “He’s the one who sent me here.”
I rock back in my chair, its ancient wooden parts creaking and tired, like me right now. “That was good thinking.”
“The guy is living in a retirement community in Arizona now but still has all his faculties. He and Atterbury had stayed in touch, and he said Atterbury told him the NSA logged a call to the Russian embassy in Washington five years ago from inside the U.S., about the same period Atterbury came out here.” Sana begins to read from her notes. “The caller was male and only got to the switchboard in the embassy. He spoke in Russian but had trouble with a few words. He purported—”
I interrupt. “Like he hadn’t spoken it in a very long time.”
Sana nods. “Exactly. Anyway, he purported to have been an agent in place in America at one time and wanted to let Moscow know—his words—‘I am sorry for what occurred in 1957. I was young, and I was a patriot, but you were asking me to do something horrible.’”
“Stop,” I say. “What does that mean?”
“What?”
“Do something horrible?”
Sana shrugs. “Since nothing horrible happened at the test site in 1957, we’re assuming he meant spying on our atomic testing program. Anyway, NSA tracked the call to a pay phone outside a gas station in Omaha, Nebraska, but the caller was long gone when we got there. There were no cameras, so there was no video of the caller.”
I hold up a hand. “Wait. There is a Lincoln County in Nebraska. Are you saying the Russians are looking in the wrong state?” I ask this, of course, because I am something of a geography savant. Idiot savant, Brinley would say. She sometimes calls me Rain Man.
“We wondered that, too. But the cashier inside the store recalled that the man using the phone was older, probably in his seventies or early eighties, and was wearing a hat that said Meteor Mine. He remembered it because it had a picture of a meteor on it, and he thought that was pretty cool.”
My body tenses. “The Meteor Mine is in this Lincoln County.”
“It is. And he said he thought the guy’s truck had Nevada plates. So, it proves the guy was here.”
I rotate my tired shoulders and crack my neck. “At one time. That mine hasn’t been in operation since the early ’70s. It’s one of our ghost towns now.”
“Ever seen that baseball cap?” she asks. She’s got me there. They’re sold at any number of souvenir shops around here. Sana raises her foot and rests it in my lap. “Come on, Beck. Fifty-five years after 1957, the guy was wearing a Meteor Mine hat and driving around with Nevada plates. Just five years ago. If he was still here then, why wouldn’t he be here now? That’s why the Russians think he’s here. That information must have been in the leaked files.”
I cogitate on this latest information for a moment. “What does your boss want you to do?”
“Well, after pulling your Army jacket, he said it’s convenient that you happen to be the sheriff here because you’re probably one of the most qualified people to hunt down an SVR assassin. He was confident we could get the job done without raising any alarms in D.C.”
I don’t respond.
“Someday you’re going to have to tell me about your time in Russia.”
“Someday,” I say.
THE PAST
It was September 1956 and a few weeks had passed since Georgiy’s meeting with William. He spent it all at the test site, working overtime and extra days to find out as much as he could about Project 57 and determine a way to get a warhead into the hands of his people. At the same time, however, he was also actively avoiding another meeting with William. The thought of creating an “accident” with nuclear consequences occupied most of Georgiy’s waking life, preventing him from getting more than a few hours’ sleep every night. Reluctantly, he finally returned to Las Vegas, bypassing the gas station in Indian Springs, where he knew William would be waiting.
He killed the last hour before Kitty’s shift ended in the casino, mindlessly dumping nickels into the slots, the sound of coins dropping into their metal trays drowning out the noise of uncertainty in his brain. The place was dark inside, the cigarette smoke thick and heavy under the dim lights and much like the fog in Georgiy’s head. His training and dedication to duty were sewn into the fabric of his being, as permanent and essential as his organs. To abandon them now was not only traitorous, it was cowardice. From the day he had been plucked from university and sent to Coca-Cola City he had known his country might one day require him to kill the enemy, uniformed or not. Now, when called upon to do just that, Georgiy felt the shame of fear and weakness.
After winning ten dollars, he scooped his jackpot into a large paper cup and headed to the cashier, wondering if breaking one innocent girl’s heart might somehow be worse than everything else he was about to do. He didn’t see the man walking just as fast and approaching to his left. The collision sent Georgiy and his two hundred nickels sprawling to the hideous multicolored casino carpeting.
“Oh, crap, I’m so sorry, buddy,” the man under the dark fedora said, reaching down to help Georgiy up. “Wasn’t looking where I was going.”
As he rolled to his back, Georgiy couldn’t immediately see the man’s face under the black hat. “No problem, Mack. I wasn’t looking either.” He grabbed the extended hand and started to rise to his feet.
That’s when the man pushed him back down on the ground and knelt close to his ear. “You’ve been a bad boy, Freddie,” the man said softly. “I suggest you check your mail and respond to the interested party right away.” He tilted his hat up, so Georgiy could see his face.
Georgiy recoiled, pulling his hand away from William’s, and then William was gone, like a cat in the night. He got to his knees, his face flushed as the other gamblers watched him pick his coins up off the floor.
* * *
From the top of the Groom mountain range, Georgiy could see all of Area 51 below him and to the south, the morning sun bathing the dry lake bed in a warm, yellow blanket against an azure sky. He tapped Dr. Ellison on the shoulder and motioned for the scientist to stay silent. The two men squatted low and Georgiy pointed south.
“That’s Delta,” he whispered. “Look, you can see the airstrip just across the dry lake bed.”
Ellison eased the butt of his rifle to the ground and peered through his binoculars. “That’s where you work.”
“Yep.”
Kitty’s father seemed surprised. “It seems so close, and yet this area isn’t restricted. You could be a Soviet spy sitting up here taking notes all day long about what you saw coming and going down there.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Georgiy said with a laugh. “Come on, let’s keep going.”
After William had delivered his very stern warning to provide regular updates on his intelligence-gathering activities regarding Project 57, Georgiy had spent as much of the last few weeks as his work schedule permitted with Kitty. Kitty was the gateway to her father, and Georgiy urgently needed to discover the details of the simulated nuclear “accident.” One night after dinner, over pipe smoking and brandy, when Georgiy was letting the physicist pin his king in a game of chess, Dr. Ellison mentioned that he needed to learn how to hunt deer, as his boss was coming in from Washington in a few weeks and had heard the hunting was good in the Nevada mountains.
“I don’t know the first thing about hunting deer,” he confided to Georgiy.
The words were music to Georgiy’s trained ears. “I can teach you how to hunt deer. I mean, if you like.”
“You hunt?” Kitty asked from her chair in the corner of the study where she was reading the latest Sky and Telescope edition. “Is there anything you don’t do?”
“Sure, I hunt.” Georgiy said. “All my life. Grew up hunting deer.” It was a true statement. He had learned to shoot the sika and roe deer in his native Ukraine for the same reason he had learned to shoot men—out of necessity.
Ellison was ecstatic. “Freddie, that would be fantastic. When can we go? What do I need?”
Georgiy took the following Friday off and spent the morning packing his trunk with supplies. The FSI office in town loaned out camping gear to its employees, so he picked up a tent and sleeping bags and loaded up with groceries, and then headed to Woolworth’s on Fifth and Fremont where he purchased two rifles, a Marlin Model 336 lever action, and a Winchester Model 70. He added a scope for the Winchester. After the ammunition, he had spent almost $200 of the KGB’s money, and Georgiy knew his bosses would be expecting a significant return on that investment.
He picked Kitty and Dr. Ellison up just after 2:00 P.M. Ellison was decked out in the strangest hunting garb Georgiy had ever seen. His red and black flannel suit and cap made him look like a walking checkerboard. Around his neck hung binoculars so large Georgiy was certain they could be used to view storms on the sun. “Don’t laugh at him, Freddie,” Kitty whispered as she climbed in the seat next to him. “He went shopping.”
Georgiy stifled a laugh. “The deer will appreciate the heads-up.”
They camped that night in Groom Range, at a spot Georgiy had been told by a few guys in his dormitory was the perfect place to use as a base. Always good with his hands, he had the four-man tent up in no time. Then he taught Dr. Ellison how to hold the Winchester securely to his shoulder and how to load and fire it. That night in the chilly autumn air, with Kitty’s telescope they observed Saturn’s rings.
“Thank you, Galileo!” she yelled.
“I’m the guy who bought you the telescope,” Ellison said, smoking his pipe. “Thank me.”
That made Georgiy laugh. “We’ll go there some day,” Kitty announced. “You’ll see.”
He loved her unbridled exuberance and love of science. Putting his arm around her, he wished upon the four stars that form the body of Pegasus that he could somehow leave behind the world in which he was an intelligence agent planning on poisoning an American city and live in a new one with Kitty.
Having no love for killing animals, Kitty stayed in camp the next morning when Georgiy and her father set out while it was still dark. After pointing out the facilities at Area 51 to him from a clearing in the trees, Georgiy led him up a moderately steep game trail.
As they trudged up through the thick forest, Ellison asked Georgiy how he liked his work at the test site. It was the perfect opening. “I like having the responsibility for protecting the things that are important to our future, but honestly I’m a little bored. And I would like to make more money. Don’t get me wrong, Dr. Ellison, the money is much better than I was making at the Dunes, but I would like to get married someday, so I need to have some real long-term plans.” He turned around to find Kitty’s dad smiling at him.
“And did you have someone in mind to share your life with, Freddie?”
Georgiy looked into the man’s eyes. “I think you know who I’m talking about, sir.”
Ellison took a seat on a nearby rock. He had little physical stamina and needed frequent breaks, the result of long hours behind a desk. “Does Kitty know your feelings?”
I don’t even know my feelings. He had been with women before but had never been emotionally close to one, never been … Georgiy couldn’t even say the word in his head. “I wanted to speak to you first. I know I haven’t finished college yet, but I will. I would love to work on the physics side of things at the site.”
Before Ellison could respond, Georgiy spotted a small buck with a basket rack through the trees about fifty yards ahead of them. It could not have come at a better time. He held a finger to his lips and motioned to Ellison to stay low and follow him. They circled to the left for a minute until Georgiy found a line of sight through the brush that gave them a broadside view of the grazing mule deer. He pulled Ellison up next to him and pointed with his finger.
Ellison started to raise his binoculars but Georgiy pushed them down. “Just look,” he whispered. “See him?”
Ellison nodded. “Now find him through your scope.” Ellison raised the rifle to his shoulder and tucked it in tight, just as Freddie had shown him. He peered through the scope. “I have him.”
“Now,” Georgiy whispered. “You’re aiming for that spot just behind his forelegs in the center of the body. Heart, lungs, liver, all there. Take a deep breath in and slowly let it out.” When he heard his breath release, Georgiy told him to slowly squeeze the trigger.
He saw the animal lifted from the ground as the round caught it high on its back, shattering its spine.
Ellison was exuberant. “I got him!”
Georgiy clamped a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Yes, you did. Great shot for a first-timer.”
They pushed through the brush and found the young male on the ground, still alive and shaking. “Good Lord,” Ellison said, “he’s still alive.”
Georgiy released the safety on his Marlin and shot the deer in the heart, ending its life instantly. He stood over the animal, silently apologizing for using it in a war that, with each passing day, seemed to make less and less sense. “Great shot, sir,” he said, uttering the lie with as much conviction as he could muster.
Laughing like a child, Ellison started walking down the mountain. “Kitty is not going to believe this.”
Georgiy couldn’t believe the man was leaving. “Where are you going?”
Ellison turned. “Isn’t this the way to our camp?”
Georgiy nodded. “It is, but we need to field dress the deer first.”
Ellison’s face said it all. It was blank. “Why?”
Georgiy looked into the man’s eyes and saw clearly his utter detachment from the life he had just taken and for the death and disease he and his government were spreading in the wind every day. “Because you killed him. You’re a hunter. You owe it to the animal to feed on it. You don’t kill something for no reason.” He pulled a long knife from the scabbard on his belt and held it out for Ellison to take. “I’ll walk you through it, Doctor.”
