Ellison hesitated, wondering if he was being asked to incriminate himself. Then he said, "Yes."
Trusov wrapped a new patch around the tip of the cleaning rod and reinserted the rod into the barrel. "In the United States?"
"Yes, in California and Washington State."
"The prisons here are… " Trusov paused, apparently searching for the word. "Are fun."
Ellison was affronted. "Fun?"
"Not like in Russia."
"It was hardly fun," Ellison said petulantly. "And for what? I was just trying to make a living. I'm never going back to prison." He decided the huge stranger probably didn't want to hear any more whining, so he asked, "What were you in for?"
No answer, so Ellison tried, "Why were you sent to prison?"
"I wounded a Red Army officer."
"Accidentally?"
Trusov's mouth cranked up into what might have been a grin. "No." Then he returned his gaze to the window or perhaps he was staring at the blank wall above the window. After a moment he said, "I was in the army's First Military District Prison. It was called" — he glanced at Ellison as if for help with the language, then he tried —"Boulderhouse?"
"Probably stonehouse. That's more poetic."
"Stonehouse, because its walls are made of a stone and concrete mix. It's near Podolsk, forty kilometers south of Moscow. The comforts of American prisons are not at the Stonehouse."
"Sounds like you did hard time."
"Twenty percent of Stonehouse inmates die each year. Some freeze. Some starve. Some kill themselves. Some just show up missing on the prison's papers."
"The prison's records," Ellison helped.
Trusov nodded. "Every day we would march out chained together for road work. Sometimes the snow on the sides of the road was over our heads. Sometimes ice would form on our faces and beards as we worked. If a prisoner fell, he was left on the road until night, when a truck would pick him up, pick the body up."
Ellison nodded, taking more tea. The Russian's hands were busy with his weapon, but he continued to stare at the wall.
"The cell… the alone cell."
"Solitary confinement."
"It was ten meters below ground, a three-meter-by-three-meter hole. No light. No toilet. No clothes."
"They took your clothes away in solitary?"
"First they beat you, then they take your clothes away." Trusov turned away from the wall to pull back his right cheek with a finger. His upper molars were missing. "A rifle butt."
"Is that also how you got that crease on your head?"
Trusov turned back to the window. "I was in the Stonehouse eight years, and I spent over five hundred days in that cell, two hundred of those days for my walk to Riga."
"You escaped?"
Trusov nodded. "I ran from the work line, ran across a field, the guards shooting, but they were poor shots, like most soldiers everywhere. I walked eight hundred kilometers west, with no papers or money, and only my prison clothes."
"But you were recaptured?
"The Riga KGB. I don't know how they found me, but they took me back. When my time was over, I was given a new suit of clothes and two hundred rubles, and I walked out the Stone-house's gate. I weighed seventy kilograms."
Ellison's eyes widened. Like all folks in his business he was good at metric conversions. "You weighed a hundred and fifty-five pounds?" The Russian appeared to now weigh close to two-twenty, all muscle and bone. He had indeed served hard time.
"You hungry?" Ellison asked.
"I was always hungry."
"I mean now. I've got dinner on the stove. There's enough for two." He pushed aside strings of beads and disappeared into the kitchen. He returned with two soup bowls, spoons, and a loaf of bread.
Trusov carefully placed the rifle across the table to accept the bowl. He dug into it with a spoon, turning the steaming contents over. Finally he asked, "Where's the meat?"
With proud defiance Ellison replied, "I don't eat meat."
"What is this?"
"Rice and beans and corn in a tomato base. Some oregano and garlic."
Trusov ate several spoonfuls, then pronounced, "You are a hippie."
Ellison beamed. "Yes, yes I am. How do you know about hippies?"
"I read about them in Red Army school at Rostok, a political class, a class about America. But I thought all hippies were gone many years ago."
"Not many of us are still around," Ellison conceded. "Only the strong of heart and the pure of purpose."
The Russian tore off a hunk of the bread and used it to ladle the soup into his mouth.
Ellison asked tentatively, "Why are the U.S. Immigration authorities looking for you?"
"After my release from the Stonehouse, I was not supposed to leave the First Military District. A condition of my release. But I did. I came here. Now the Red Army has asked the U.S. police to look for me."
That made sense to Ellison, except for one thing. "Why did you come to the U.S.?"
The Russian chewed. "I need to stay here tonight. I will go in the morning."
"Sure," Ellison said quickly. He wasn't going to press this man for answers. But he was emboldened by the man's statement that he was journeying on after a night's sleep. His hands were calming. After several more spoonfuls of soup Ellison ventured, "Can I ask, where are you going?"
"To your state of Idaho. I'm meeting someone in Idaho."
"Three minutes," the pilot called over his shoulder. Bruce Taylor had flown for the U. S. Army for eight years until joining the FBI. He wore a holster strapped to the leg of his blue flight suit. He scanned his gauges, then ordered loudly, "Check your safety harnesses."
"You ever done this before?" shouted the FBI agent next to Coates.
"All the time."
"You don't look too comfortable in that flak jacket."
Coates yelled above the scream of the General Electric free-turbine engines, "Don't worry about me, sonny. I'll do fine. That son of a bitch'll regret the day he came here."
The agent grinned. "The Russian's got your goat, sounds like."
"Something like that." Coates pulled his service pistol from under the jacket. He checked the load.
"Why don't you trade in that nosepicker for some pop." The agent's name was Ray Rafferty. He held up his assault rifle. "With this you just point and spray."
Coates shook his head. It was hard to think in the belly of the Sikorsky Black Hawk. The engines roared and the blades pounded and the wind whipped by. The helicopter rose and fell with sickening abruptness as the pilot followed the terrain. Coates and three FBI agents sat in the waist. The agents wore bush coats over their Kevlar vests, and "FBI" was inked on the back of the coats, hardly noticeable amid the green and brown camouflage colors. Their faces were blackened. Coates had been so awkward applying the grease paint Rafferty had finished the job for him. Between the agents' knees rested their M16s. At the rear of the compartment were two litters. They were approaching the farmhouse at 150 miles an hour.
Across from Coates was an agent named Buddy Riggs who had earlier told the detective he had earned a business degree and had become a certified public accountant, but after two years found the profession was "not meeting my needs for personal growth," so he had joined the Navy and had become a SEAL, then had gone on to the FBI. Riggs was missing an eyebrow, and it looked as if it had been burned off. Coates hadn't asked him about it. Next to Riggs was John Ward, a blunt-nosed special agent Rafferty had said could do six hundred push-ups.
Rafferty and Riggs and Ward were members of an FBI organization called Inter-Agency SWAT. These men were often called to assist sheriffs' departments and police forces who abruptly found themselves over their heads.
This helicopter was one prong of a three-way deployment. The Black Hawk was going to land a mile north of the farmhouse in a clearing that was close enough to the farm to walk in but far enough away so the Russian would not hear the approach. Another copter was landing two miles south of the farmhouse in a field. Yet more agents and police were hiking in from the highway and the dirt road. They would have the Russian surrounded.