Chapter 35
Sherwood hadn’t quite become intolerable, though he was getting close. Pacing, muttering to himself, speculating that Titov had made fools of them, was probably on his way to Moscow…
Lucas tried to reassure him: “Shut the fuck up.”
Sherwood had managed to frighten three sheriffs and two police chiefs to the point that they would have done anything he asked.
What he’d asked was that the sheriffs and police chiefs take credit for spotting and tracking the Russians out of Menomonie to Hayward, where they’d isolated, and with help from the Marshals Service, killed Abramova.
The northern Wisconsin law enforcement community was happy to fall on that sword.
The Sawyer County sheriff gave an ill-attended and somewhat confusing press conference to that effect, and Abramova’s death was a one-day, one-night sensation, falling off by the second day.
That said, they hadn’t heard from Titov, and the FBI had gotten on Sherwood’s case about shooting Abramova.
Not that they objected, but they were unhappy that they hadn’t been notified, in triplicate.
Mallard had spoken directly to the director of the CIA, and told Lucas, “I think that asshole was yawning while was I talking.”
“That’s possible, Louis, since you people have been walking around with sticks up your butts,” Lucas said.
He was sitting at the kitchen table with Weather and Sherwood, and with the phone on speaker.
“The CIA is trying to do something important, while the FBI tries to take credit for something they didn’t do. Get over it.”
Mallard said, “Let me give the phone to Jane for a minute.”
Chase came on and said, “Fuck you, Lucas,” and hung up.
Made Lucas, Weather, and Sherwood laugh, and Lucas told Sherwood, “I don’t think you need to worry. If Titov comes through, you’ll hand the connection off to the FBI anyway, the counter-intel group. When it all comes out in the end, they’ll be there to get the credit.”
“Everyone who counts will know what happened. I don’t need to have it in the newspapers,” Sherwood said. “But where in the hell is Titov? Did he ditch us?”
“I don’t think so,” Lucas said. “He wants the American dollars, and that house out west. He’ll show.”
“I swear to God, if he doesn’t come through, I’ll find him and go to his front door and shoot him myself.”
“You don’t do that, remember?” Lucas said. “You’ve been pissing and moaning for two days now. Stop. Relax. If it doesn’t work out…”
“If it doesn’t work out, what?” Sherwood asked.
“I’m just a humble marshal, so, I’ll be okay,” Lucas said. “You, on the other hand, after the promises you’ve made, will probably be screwed. Looking at an assignment in…Canada. Or maybe Iceland.”
“I didn’t make any promises…”
“Some were certainly implied,” Lucas said, sticking the fork in.
“For Christ’s sake, where is he?”
· · ·
Titov had driven most of the way back to the Twin Cities and then had pulled in to a motel, and spent a day talking with Kuznetsov, searching the Internet, and watching TV for reports on Abramova, trying to figure out exactly how secure he might be.
By the second day, he decided he was good.
Oddly, the near collapse of the American mainstream media was a help. No newspaper or television reporters had gone to Hayward to question the cops and poke holes in the stories, because there weren’t enough reporters to go around.
Sherwood stopped whining the next morning when Titov called Lucas and arranged to meet that afternoon at a Cinnabon store at Mall of America.
Asked why the mall, he said it was one of the few places in the Twin Cities that he knew about, and besides, he liked cinnamon rolls.
“If the CIA decides to kill me, I’d like to go with a cinnamon roll in my mouth. ”
Lucas called Sherwood, told him about the appointment with Titov, and asked whether Mallard or St. Vincent should be notified.
Sherwood had to think about it, then said, “I guess. When we told them what happened in Hayward, they turned a couple of those counter-intel people around and brought them back from Washington. They’ve been sitting on their asses not believing me. ”
Lucas called St. Vincent and told him about Titov. “You’ll want to send your counter-intel people along with us.”
“I haven’t heard anything about this from Louis,” St. Vincent said.
“That’s because I haven’t told him. I thought I’d leave it to you,” Lucas said.
Pregnant pause, then: “Thank you, Lucas. I’ll tell him.”
It was a step, anyway.
· · ·
The afternoon meeting was an anticlimax: at three o’clock Lucas, Sherwood, and two counter-intel agents were sitting on benches across from the Cinnabon store when Titov ambled up, lifted a hand to them, and got a regular Cinnabon and a soft drink.
He was wearing a Chicago Bears sweatshirt, jeans, and running shoes, took a moment to chat with one of the server women.
The counter-intel agents shook hands with him, identified themselves as being with the FBI, and suggested that they find a quiet place to talk.
“I need to be back in Chicago this evening,” Titov said.
“I told my contact that I want to pick up my Jeep and return the van to whoever gave it to us. I have my Jeep here at the mall, and I can identify the van if you want to put a watch on it, see who picks it up. It’s over in the airport parking ramp. But I gotta be in Chicago tonight.”
“We won’t need you for long,” the agent told him. “We need to pound out the deal. We want you back in Chicago as much as you do.”
“Can I eat my bun?”
The agent looked around at the mall shoppers walking by, and asked, “Can you eat while you’re walking? We’d like to get you out of sight. There are too many cameras in here.”
That was about it with Titov: he shook hands with Sherwood and Lucas, said nothing at all about the killing of Abramova.
“I would have thought he’d show a little regret, a little worry, a little something, you know, about Abramova,” Lucas said, after the agents and Titov had gone, and he and Sherwood were walking out to the Porsche.
“Ah, he’s probably a sociopath,” Sherwood said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
· · ·
The next day, Sherwood flew back to Washington, where a few days later, he went for a walk with Letty Davenport, and they came to a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Lucas later found out that there were several walks, and they seemed likely to continue.
“He tells me things that I might find interesting, and I do,” Letty said.
“He’s not wasting my time. I tell him things and try not to waste his time. We get along.”
· · ·
Six days after the shooting in Hayward, Bernard Sokolov flew commercial out of Toronto to Paris, on an Irish passport, and on from Paris to Budapest, and from there to Moscow.
Neither Lucas nor Sherwood expected to hear any more about him, but weeks later, Sherwood called and said, “I got a back-channel note from the FBI. Titov has gotten a commendation for getting Sokolov out of the country. He’s quite pleased with himself. ”
“Are you quite pleased with him?”
“I’m on to other stuff, but I understand the FBI is pleased: quite pleased.”
· · ·
Nobody knew exactly what to do with the cremation ashes of Leonid and Masha Sokolov—the Russian embassy denied knowing who they were, when asked—and the FBI eventually took charge of the ashes. What happened from there, Lucas never found out.
· · ·
Abramova was buried in a small cemetery in Hayward, with only the barest of plaques on the grave.
The Russians said they’d never heard of her, but a few months after the funeral, a mystery man, with a gravelly voice and a heavy Eastern European accent, paid for a modest marble stone that read “Katerina Abramova—A Faithful Warrior.”
· · ·
Haskins, the agent severely wounded in the street fight with the Russians, retired from the FBI with a disability pension.
The other wounded agent recovered and continued in his career.
The agent who shot Nikitin was cleared of any wrongdoing, and eventually got a commendation for preventing Nikitin from recovering a machine pistol and continuing to shoot at the other agents at the scene.
· · ·
A Hayward skier was hit in the lower leg by a bullet fired by Abramova, but recovered without a problem. A Hayward lawyer urged her to sue somebody, but she declined.
· · ·
Lucas’s damaged Porsche, after some nimble paperwork by Edie Lamb, was paid for by the Marshals Service, somewhat to everybody’s surprise.
· · ·
A final note on the story that began with the murder of Masha Sokolov came almost six months later, when Lucas took an early-morning call from Sherwood, who asked, “Did I wake you?”
“Yeah, you did. What’s up?”
“I thought you might like to know how things are working out. I’m in London, and I don’t want to put too many names or other stuff on the airwaves, so be careful about what you say.”
“Isn’t that a little paranoid?”
“No.”
“Okay…”
“I heard from my boss that some amazing information has come out of what we did. I don’t want to brag, but we are unacknowledged heroes.
Actually, I’m an acknowledged hero with the right people in, mmm, my business, but you remain obscure.
At least, you’re obscure unless you’ve been bragging around the office about what really happened. ”
“Shelly and I skated around the precise circumstances. Edie knows, of course, she helped fix the written reports. She can keep her mouth shut. And I’ve always aspired to be an unacknowledged hero,” Lucas said.
“I thought you aspired to be an odd duck.”
“I’ll take both,” Lucas said. “Listen, when…”
His phone produced a whining sound, and Sherwood was gone.