Richard ordered another, looked at the clock, and swigged it down in one gulp. Good, it was the 9:30 train to Washington. Kuznetsky followed him out, across the concourse and onto the platform. As expected, Richard headed straight for the club car. He ordered another whiskey, took a seat, and picked up a used copy of The Washington Post. It was the previous day’s copy, the one with the short report of Duncarry’s demise. “Detectives investigating the case would neither confirm nor deny foul play.” How conscientious of them, Kuznetsky thought, as he watched Lee turn the pages.
Lee found the piece about Duncarry just as the train eased its way out of the station. His hands gripped the newspaper, crumpling the edges; his eyes were wide with the shock. Well cut off my legs and call me Shorty, Kuznetsky thought.
Richard quickly ordered another drink, and once he returned to his seat seemed to stare blankly out of the window, perhaps at his own reflection. Judging from what the woman had said, Kuznetsky could guess what was going through the man’s mind. The detectives were “looking into the dead investigator’s recent cases.” That must have given him a jolt.
The train emerged from the tunnel under the Hudson into the New Jersey night and gathered speed. Richard still sat motionless, the half-empty glass in his hand, the newspaper spread across his knees. The train rushed through Newark, its whistle shrieking, on to Philadelphia, and then out into flat open country.
Midway between Philadelphia and Baltimore, Kuznetsky went to the bar himself, less for a drink than for a look at Richard’s face. The man’s eyes were closed, but he wasn’t sleeping, for one hand was beating an invisible tattoo on the arm rest. Kuznetsky wondered what Amy had seen in him. He was good-looking enough, but the mouth was weak, and there was something vain about the neatly trimmed mustache. He looked younger than his age, but not in a good way.
The clink of Kuznetsky’s glass on the bar seemed to rouse Richard from his trance. He gulped down the rest of his drink, rose from his seat, and walked down the car toward the toilet. Kuznetsky followed, stood outside the door listening to the sounds coming out and watching the doors for other passengers. He heard the toilet flush, saw the latch begin to move, and threw his full weight against the door, the Walther in his hand.
There was no need for it. The impact had thrown Richard back, hitting his head against something, probably the washbasin. He was out cold.
Kuznetsky examined the window. It was large enough but he couldn’t get it open. It would have to be the door outside. He eased the toilet door open, found the vestibule empty, and dragged Richard out and into an upright position. Just in time. Someone passed by on his way to the club car, taking only a cursory glance at the two men standing in apparent conversation by the door.
Kuznetsky let Richard slide to the floor and jerked open the outside door. The force of the train’s passage blew it back, but he managed to push the folding steps out and down, jamming it open, and then, with both arms and a leg, to scoop Richard out. For a few moments Richard’s feet were trapped in the steps, his head bouncing on the rushing tracks, but then the body was gone, sucked into darkness. Kuznetsky pulled back the stairs, let the wind close the door, and stood there, his pulse racing, his mind a jumble of deaths.
Eight
The church emptied its flock as Joe and Amy drove into Scottsboro, the men in their best string ties, the women in their pastel frocks. If the coattails and the hem lines had been longer it could have been a scene from Gone With the Wind. There were even a few horse-drawn buggies mingling with the farm pickups and rusty Cadillacs.
Joe pulled the car up outside the realtor’s house, climbed out, and walked up to the door. An elderly black woman ushered him inside. Amy examined her face in the rearview mirror; she looked as tired as she felt. This time the drive had seemed longer and felt different; this time she was leaving Washington, her family, the few friends she had forever. Soon she would be leaving America, her adopted home for more than twenty years. She would miss her uncle. James too, if he survived.
She wondered if Kuznetsky — she must remember to call him Smith — if he had such feelings. She couldn’t make him out. He seemed a reflection of the world rather than one of its inhabitants, like a force of nature — no, like a force of the opposite, of human order…
She had once read a novel, an awful novel called Orphans of the Storm, and, being a fourteen-year-old orphan at the time, had romantically identified herself with its title. But Kuznetsky really did seem to fit the words, he seemed to carry the storm within him, to live in it, to deal it out in controlled bursts. And that was why, she realized, she felt no fear of him. There was nothing irrational in his actions, nothing at all. He would succeed in this operation or die trying, would kill or die without hesitation.
She could see Joe through the window talking to the realtor. Why was he taking so long? He’d hardly spoken during the long journey and seemed to have lost his cockiness. She guessed that he’d suddenly realized that it wasn’t a game, that the master plan might go wrong, that the Feds he so despised might strap him into an electric chair. But he would come through, she was sure. His pride wouldn’t let him back out. It was a pity that such determination should be wasted on such a twisted morality.
And you? she asked the mirror. Where are you going? What would the Soviet Union be like? Once she had longed to see Moscow, Leningrad, the other side, her side, but now she felt almost indifferent. The thought of a new life seemed unreal, anticlimatic, not so much a beginning as an end.
Joe came out of the house, keys in hand, and climbed back behind the wheel.
“What took you so long?” she asked.
“He wouldn’t stop talking. Nothing important.”
An hour later they reached the lodge, and while he unloaded the supplies they’d brought from Washington, she lit the wood stove and made coffee. But by the time it was ready she found him fast asleep on one of the bunks. She drank her own cup, smoked a cigarette, and stared at the three shiny tommy guns leaning against a wall. She felt more tired than sleepy, and after concealing the guns under a bunk, went outside.
It wasn’t so hot under the trees, and she found herself walking farther and farther along the side of the ridge, taking a sensual pleasure in the play of colors, the panoramic views, and the feel of the forest floor. After half a mile or so she spotted a clear green pool in a hollow below and walked down to it through the pines. Looking at the water made her feel twice as sticky. “Why not?” she murmured to herself, looking around to make sure that the silent pines were the only witnesses. She stripped off her clothes, piled them on a rock, and waded into the water. It was only a few feet deep at the pool’s center, and for several minutes she floated on her back, wallowing in the delicious coolness.
Lying on the rock to dry herself, she felt a sexual tremble run through her body. She touched herself, at first tentatively, then with a pleasure she had not known for years. His face was clear in her mind, the ivory light shining in through the porthole, the feeling of not knowing where the one ended and the other began.
She opened her eyes. Physically satisfied, she had never felt so alone. The trees towered over her, both graceful and threatening. She sat up, feeling suddenly cold, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.