Unless, of course, the man was one of the Wolves.
“Perhaps he uses a different name,” said Nuri, exhausting the phrases he had memorized with MY-PID’s help.
The woman shrugged. The man appeared behind her. He was only a little taller than she was, thin—not an overjuiced type like the men at the Wolf farm.
“I’m looking for the doctor’s relatives,” said Nuri, moving to English as the idea occurred to him. “Because we have news—we believe he is dead.”
“Who?” said the young man. He understood the English, but it quickly became clear that the doctor’s name meant nothing to either him or the girl. Nuri showed them the photo on the MY-PID without getting a reaction.
“I’m sorry for bothering you,” he told them.
The second house was so close to the road that Nuri couldn’t even park in front of it, fearing that his vehicle would be sideswiped. He found a wide shoulder about thirty meters farther down. Parking there, he walked back along the road’s edge. As he approached, he could see an old woman working in the kitchen, washing dishes. She had the wrinkled face of a woman who had seen much trouble in her life, but her movements were graceful, the sort of effortless gestures a ballerina might make.
Nuri stopped. What would she have looked like twenty years before, when the athletic training facility was still operating?
In her thirties, still attractive, but on the precipice of decline.
Nuri prompted MY-PID for a new set of phrases, rehearsing them as he walked to the house.
“The doctor sent me,” he said when he knocked on the door. “I was to collect the things.”
“What?” she answered harshly in Moldovan.
“I don’t know. He said that you would know.”
“Are you crazy?”
Remembering what the woman at the café had said, Nuri switched to Russian.
“The doctor sent me,” he told her.
“What language is that? Speak in Moldovan.”
He repeated the words the computer had told him.
“Moldovan,” insisted the woman.
“You don’t understand?” said Nuri, still in Russian.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” insisted the woman.
“You were a dancer,” said Nuri, guessing but knowing at the same time. “And still beautiful.”
Her frown deepened. Nuri held out his hands. “I am just a messenger.”
She frowned. Her lower lipped curled downward. Then she told him to come in.
There was nothing in the house to indicate that the doctor had ever been there, or had the slightest connection with the woman. There was very little in the house at all—the front sitting room where she led Nuri had only two places to sit, one a wooden chair, the other a very old sofa, badly frayed. The television at the side looked to be from the Soviet era.
The woman left Nuri sitting there and went back to washing her dishes. He was sure he was right about the connection, but he began to worry that she had somehow tipped off a helper. Finally, he heard the whistle of a teakettle. She stopped doing the dishes; after a few minutes she came out with a tray of cookies and tea. It was an old-world gesture, a show of culture and dignity at a moment of personal despair.
“I knew a day would come when he would end all things,” she said softly, speaking in Russian.
Nuri didn’t understand all the words, but the meaning of what she was saying was clear as she picked up the teacup, her hand trembling slightly. She sipped slowly. The heat from the liquid formed a light cloud of vapor, softening her face. Nuri thought he could see into the past, see what she would have looked like when the Russian first met her, already well past her prime as a dancer.
They drank in silence. Nuri wanted to tell her something to comfort her, but there was nothing he could say. Telling her the doctor was dead would surely not comfort her, and any mention of any sort of money or being taken care of would probably be an even worse insult. He was a voyeur to her pain, powerless to alleviate it.
She drank about half her cup, then abruptly but gracefully put it down and rose. He noticed for the first time that she walked with a slight limp, the product undoubtedly of injuries as a youth.
Was that how they had met? Had the doctor tried to cure her, and failed?
And knowing what he had done to the others—or what he seemed to have done—could he have cured her? If so, had he considered the trade-offs too much of a price for her to pay?
But it was worse than that, or more complicated, at least. She returned with a manila envelope.
“This is what you want,” she told him.
Nuri took it. As he was leaving, she stopped him.
“We met in hospital,” she told him. “A bad omen.”
She continued speaking. Nuri didn’t understand the words but nodded as she talked. MY-PID supplied a translation after he reached the car:“I was desperate to extend my career. He promised me everything. I didn’t even get six more months.Vanity has the greatest price.”
The envelope contained a small key that looked like it went to a safety deposit box. But there were no markings on it. Finding what bank it had come from, let alone what the box number there was, would be a long process.
As he drove back toward the guest house, he asked MY-PID for an update on the farm as well as its efforts to turn up more information on the Wolves and the slain doctor. The computer gave him a long list of seemingly trivial connections. Realizing he was starting to tune out, he asked it to tell him what was going on at the farm.
“No material change,” reported the computer.
“Are the Predators still on station?”
“Affirmative.”
“Detail one over to the facility Danny Freah checked out the other day. Have it look for buried bodies.”
“More specific information required.”
Nuri gave it what he could. Then he told the computer to look on the farm property as well. Maybe there had been some accidents there.
“No grave sites at property identified as farm,” answered the computer.
“You checked already?”
“Affirmative.”
The property had been gone over thoroughly by the radar scans; MY-PID had only to take the electronic equivalent of a glance to check.
“Wow,” said Nuri. “Nothing of use?”
“Question not understood.”
“Was there nothing buried on the property?” asked Nuri. “Besides the mines and the tunnel, I mean. And the sensors.”
“Foreign objects buried on the property,” said the computer, beginning a list of items that started with a collection of broken bottles.
Nuri stopped the computer when it mentioned a fireproof strong box.
“Describe the box and where it is located,” said Nuri. “Then direct me to it.”
55
Kiev, Ukraine
What amazed Hera about McEwen was not her knowledge of the city, or even the ease with which she struck up conversations. The impressive thing was that she seemed to know everyone, or almost everyone, from the attendant at the parking lot at the airport to the after-hours security man patrolling the hangar area at the Kiev airport.
The attendant at the parking lot told her that the charter aircraft company whose owner she wanted to talk to had gone out of business six months before. She checked the office anyway—vacant—then took Hera to the terminal bar where the former owner generally hung out and occasionally slept. He wasn’t there, and neither of the two bartenders seemed to know who she was talking about when she asked.