Chapter 30
Abramova and Bernie Sokolov were ready to go at seven o’clock, but Titov was dragging his feet. He would be ready to leave at nine, he told them. Before then, he was doing research and trying to track down his Canadian contact who would get them across the ice.
“I talked to his wife, and he’s driving back to Thunder Bay from up north, a place called Nipigon.
He’s been on the road for a while. She says the drive normally takes an hour and a half, but they had a dump of snow a couple days ago,” Titov said.
“The roads are passable, but a little slow. She says he’ll be home before eight.
I need to talk to him while we’re both looking at the same maps, and I can’t do that when I’m driving. ”
“How much will that slow us down?” Abramova asked.
“Not at all,” Titov said. “We’re about six hours from the place we usually cross, and we can’t cross until it’s dark.
Better we stay here for a little while, than get up to an uninhabited place in Canada and stand around trying not to look suspicious.
Especially with Bernard’s face out there everywhere. ”
“You know this? His face?”
“Go online. Put Bernard Sokolov in Google,” Titov said. “He’s on every television station in the Twin Cities. When we go north, you have to drive, Kat. Be good if you could get Bernard to lie down in the back and maybe find something to cover him with.”
“Cover him? With what?”
“Let me think about that. I’ll call you when Edouard gets back to me.”
· · ·
Edouard Gagnon called right at eight. He could move them that night, across the Pigeon River. “Five thousand,” he said.
“We’ll need a car…”
“Will I get it back?”
“Yes. We need to drive it to Toronto…”
“You could do that, but it’s at least a sixteen-hour drive if we don’t get any more snow.
And I’d want another ten grand, you know, for the inconvenience and risk of losing the car.
I could put you in an air taxi, with a guy who won’t talk, for five thousand.
In-country flight from a general aviation airport to another general aviation airport outside Toronto, no IDs required. ”
“Let’s do that,” Titov said. “I’ll hand you the cash at the river.”
“Six o’clock. Be there or be square,” Gagnon said.
“I’ll call you,” Titov said.
· · ·
Titov was lying on the motel bed as he spoke to Gagnon, watching a news program from the Twin Cities with the sound muted.
A feature story came up, a rosy-cheeked woman wearing a ski hat and wearing a bright red ski jacket, and a caption at the bottom of the screen said, “The Birkebeiner, Hayward, Wisconsin.”
He thought, “What?” and as soon as he signed off with Gagnon, he picked up the remote and unmuted the TV. He caught the tail-end of the young woman’s cheery report and went to his laptop.
It took only a moment to confirm it: there was a huge cross-country ski race in Hayward that morning that would continue for most of the rest of the day.
He thought for a moment, then went out to the ’net again, and checked for a local Walmart.
He found one just across the interstate, and called up the website.
The Walmart did sell cross-country skis.
He called Abramova, who said, without preamble, “Are we ready?”
“Almost. I talked to my contact, we have a crossing point.” He explained about the airplane, and Abramova was good with that.
“One more thing: there’s a cross-country ski race in a town called Hayward, almost straight north of us, on the way to the border.
There’ll be thousands of people there, I’m worried somebody will spot Bernard. ”
“People will see him, but they won’t see him,” she said. “Come as soon as you can.”
“There is a Walmart just across the interstate. I need to stop there for a minute. I will see you in twenty minutes,” Titov said.
At nine o’clock, back from Walmart, having spent fifteen hundred dollars on the cheapest cross-country skis sets he could find, a decent-looking parka in Sokolov’s size, along with a sack full of junk food, Titov drove to now-deceased Nikitin’s room, where Abramova was waiting with Sokolov.
Sokolov had been lying on the bed when Abramova let him in, and Titov gawked at the other man. “My God,” he said to Abramova, “What have you done?”
“Nobody will see him,” Abramova said.
“That’s…brilliant,” Titov said. And, “You’re right. I think I just wasted a lot of money.”
Abramova had shaved Sokolov’s head, and Sokolov had shaved his previously furry face. “I look like a peeled potato,” Sokolov said.
“It’ll grow back,” Titov said, marveling at the change. Sokolov had looked like a blond bush the night before, with the shoulder-length hair and scuzzy blond beard. His head now looked like a pale fleshy egg, with all of Sokolov’s features seemingly melted into the bottom of his face.
“Then we go,” Abramova said. “Why did you go to this Walmart?”
“I bought four sets of skis and poles and some boots. All junk, but it looks okay, if you don’t know about brands.
I thought we could push the second and third row of seats down, in the van.
There’d still be enough space for Sokolov to lay on the floor between the front seats and second row.
We’d throw all the skis on top of him, if you get stopped… you’re going up to the ski race.”
Sokolov: “You thought I’d lay on the floor for six hours?”
“No. Just lounge around in the back of the van. If a cop pulled you over, you’d roll into that space behind the front seat and pull a bunch of the skis over you. You’d be good. But now…I don’t think it’ll be necessary. Not with that face.”
“That would work, though, if we needed to do it,” Abramova said. “It is clever, and no harm to have the skis.”
“I bought a parka for Bernard and some junk food so we won’t have to stop to eat. I’ve worked out a route going up that makes it very unlikely that we’ll even see a police car, much less get stopped by one.”
“What if we are?” Sokolov asked.
Titov shrugged: “Listen, with that bald head…I wouldn’t have recognized you five minutes ago if you walked past me on the street. Kat has all the ID she needs. It’s good ID. She gets a ticket, you go on…”
“What if he does recognize me? Or Katerina? Or is suspicious, and calls for help?”
“That’s why Kat has a gun. She takes the cop down, runs north, where I’ll be waiting, we abandon the van and go on in the Ford.”
“Complicated,” Abramova said.
“Not complicated,” Titov said. “Because we will not be stopped. I’ll lead you along the back roads, and we won’t even see many civilian cars. If I see a police car coming toward you, I’ll call, and you can adjust your speed. We shouldn’t drive fast, anyway. We have almost too much time.”
“We should go anyway,” Abramova said.
· · ·
The trip went just as Titov said it would: they followed back roads north, then east for a bit, and came into Hayward from the southeast, passing through tiny towns with no sign of a police presence, and rarely even residents.
The snow was thin until the last leg into Hayward, where the world began to get whiter, the snow deeper and fresher.
On the way north, Titov considered the possibilities: he’d talked to Davenport, arranged a meeting, but he didn’t have to go through with it.
If he simply led the van in a loop around Hayward, he could continue north, cross into Minnesota at Duluth, take more back roads to the border, watch Abramova and Sokolov walk across the Pigeon River, and drive back to Minneapolis.
He could pick up his Jeep and return to Chicago.
On the other hand, the authorities would have his DNA and probably even his fingerprints, from the cars and the original safe house. If he were ever arrested for anything, he’d be toast, as the Americans said. First-degree murder of two FBI agents; he would never be free again.
He could continue across the border with Abramova and Sokolov, and from there to Moscow, but he didn’t want to go to Moscow.
In Moscow he’d be, at best, a low- to middle-level bureaucrat, never quite trusted because of all his years in the U.S.
He’d be looking at thirty years—if he were lucky—of boredom, followed by more-or-less gentle poverty in retirement.
The case for cooperating with the Marshals Service and the CIA was stronger. During their reconnaissance of the Sokolovs’ original hideout, he’d been amazed by what the Sokolovs were getting. A dream house. If he could get the same sweet deal…
Yet, there was always the possibility that the Americans would betray him, put him on trial, throw his sad Russian ass in prison. He had that paper from the CIA and from the Marshals Service, but that could turn out to be faked.
He could continue to the meeting, listen to their promises, and if they weren’t solid enough, walk away. If they didn’t let him walk away, simply keep his mouth shut. Abramova and Sokolov would still have a reasonable shot at making it out of the country, even if he’d gone missing.
· · ·
Titov led the van by a mile, a little more than a minute, and coming into Hayward, encountered a detour sign with a volunteer waving traffic around a blocked road.
He punched up Abramova on his phone and said, “There’s a detour.
Don’t let Bernard wear a hat, we want the bald head to show.
I’ll go slow, so you’ll see me when you go through the detour. They’re not stopping anyone.”
At the detour, Titov stopped and asked the volunteer, “Where can I get the closest, you know, to the center of town? Where the skiers are coming in?”
“Things are pretty jammed up right now, but if you go three blocks that way…” The volunteer pointed. “…to the corner with the big house with the rock chimney, take a right, and that’ll get you about as close as you can get. You won’t be able to go through, though.”
“That’s great,” Titov said.
He continued down the detour, slowly, saw the van two cars behind him. He took the right, and two short blocks on, hit the traffic jam. Dozens of people in Wisconsin winter dress streamed by, happy, hurrying, jaywalking, sometimes simply walking down the middle of the street.
He got on the phone to Abramova, who’d followed behind. “Things are really blocked here. There are some spaces off the road, pull over and wait for me. I’m going to walk up and see how we can get out of here. Talk to a cop if I can find one.”
Abramova: “This is a nightmare. People are looking at us…”
“Yeah, but you look like everybody else. Not a problem, and like I said, we have time. We might have to go back a mile, find a road around the whole town. When I was bringing people up from Chicago, to make the crossing, this was the way I went, until we got to the detour. Goddamnit, it’s a pain in the ass.
I’ll come back and get you. I need to see what the situation is. ”
“Hurry, then. I don’t want to get stuck here.”
“If you want to get out and walk around, stretch your legs, you could,” Titov said.
“You really do look like everybody else. I’m seeing Swedish and Norwegian flags everywhere, I don’t think a woman with an accent would raise any eyebrows.
Especially since they were looking for a blonde in Minneapolis, and you aren’t one now… ”
“Maybe,” Abramova said. “But you must hurry. I will be on my phone.”
Titov got out of the car and headed into town.
The cold they’d had in Minneapolis had eased, even though they were a hundred miles farther north—he actually felt a little too warm in his parka.
He still had time to turn around, but even though there was no breeze at all, he felt like he was being pushed, by a wind, or by a hand, by something in the middle of his back.
He felt as though he were scurrying…as though his feet had finally made up his mind for him.
He’d been in the bar on other trips up from Chicago, stopped for the brats, stayed for the beer. When it popped up ahead of him, an aqua-colored sign that read “Musky Hunter’s Bar and Grill,” he hurried toward it, as if propelled by a force outside of himself.
In the van, Abramova scanned the crowd and, grinding her teeth in frustration, said, “This is nonsense.”
“Yes, but Titov is correct—nobody would pick us out of this crowd, especially if we wear our ski masks,” Sokolov said. “Half the people here have them on. Maybe walk around the block, stretch ourselves.”
Abramova said, “Around the block. No more. We come right back.”