Trusov explained. "In Afghanistan our airplane was hit by anti-aircraft. The pilot landed the plane in a field. I walked three hundred kilometers across that country to safety. Nobody caught me. Nobody even saw me."
"What happened to the pilot?"
"I left him at the plane."
"What happened to him?" Ellison asked.
"Sometimes it is better to travel alone. Sometimes it is not." The Russian put a second plate on top of the first and bound the two plates together with duct tape. Inside the plates were the explosive, detonator, and nails. He held the thing up to show Ellison, turning it slowly. "A mine." He picked up yet another plate and ladled handfuls of nails onto it, beginning the second mine.
"Where did you learn English?"
"In prison. From a book." Trusov's smile was turned down at the corners. His grin never touched his eyes. "Now I ask you a question."
"Shoot." Ellison peeled back the wrapper on a granola bar, feeling safer now that the stranger was taking an interest.
"Why do you grow marijuana? Why not get a work?"
Ellison was offended. "The word is 'job,' and that is my job."
"Why not get a job where you don't go to prison?"
"Growing weed is all I know how to do. And it's a matter of principle."
Trusov fiddled with the detonator.
Ellison went on: "I'm holding on to my past as a matter of principle. My girlfriend of fifteen years left me and got a license to sell real estate. My dog wandered off because I wouldn't feed him meat or meat by-products. But I'm sticking with it. Rubbertire sandals, peace medallions, the works."
"You might not be as smart as I first thought," Trusov said, still working on the detonator.
Ellison hoped the big maul-faced man was joking. He ventured, "I've tried to stop time, stop the clock, just like the Amish in Pennsylvania and Ohio have. They stopped the clock in the last century, and I stopped it in 1968."
Trusov appeared uninterested, working on his second mine.
Ellison forged ahead. "Do you ever wish you could stop time?"
The Russian slowly lowered the plate. "I'm happy where I am. And with what I'm doing."
"Isn't there a time you wish you could return to?"
Trusov's eyes were blank. "There is one day I would want to have back, yes." Then he was silent and unblinking.
A full minute passed.
Andy Ellison generated cheer in his voice. "But this'll soon be over. We'll shake them. They'll never find us."
"Yes, we will soon be released."
"The word is 'free.'"
The Russian looked at him. "Yes. Free."
The monitor glowed with vibrant colors, blue and green and red and orange and yellow, all in wavy lines unreadable to Owen Gray.
Coates pointed at the blue. "That's him. Heat shows as blue. He's in an upstairs bedroom."
"What's this?" Gray raised a finger at a dot of blue on the first floor.
An FBI technician answered, "He left a light on in the kitchen, probably the same light the Robinsons left on when they went on vacation."
The three men were in a delivery truck that read "Big Sky Plumbing" on the side. They were parked fifty yards from the Robinson house. The infrared's sensor was located in the passenger-side rearview mirror, and the apparatus was pointed at the Robinsons' house. The technician played with a dial. A row of blue shades appeared at the bottom of the screen, from ice-blue to dark purple, each in a small box.
The technician instructed, "A person asleep has a different blue signature than one awake." He pressed a finger onto the screen below a light blue, then pointed at the wavy blue figure in the middle of the monitor. "See? Same color. So he's asleep."
"You sure it's Trusov?" Gray asked. He was squatting on one side of the technician, Coates on the other. He held his rifle by the stock, butt plate on the floor. Gray's leg ached where the axe had sliced into it. The tech sat on a low milking stool, facing the monitor and keyboard.
"A mailman on his way home from a softball game spotted Trusov entering the house about nine tonight."
Every post office in the western U.S. had a photograph of Trusov. Same with every Federal Express and UPS office and 7-Eleven and gas station. Every newspaper had run photographs of the Russian. In Montana alone three quarters of a million people knew his face.
Coates carried a flashlight in his hand. "And the Silver Bow County sheriff's department has been watching the house since about ten. No one has come or gone since then. It's the Russian, we're pretty certain."
"What about that dope grower Trusov forced the Black Hawk pilot to pick up?" Gray asked. "That could be him asleep in there."
"We don't know where he is. He's not in the house, because the heat detector sees only this one body, and Trusov was seen going into the house."
An hour ago Gray arrived in Butte, flown from Hobart by Bruce Taylor in the Black Hawk. After the disaster in Jefferson County, Coates had realized he was in over his head. Coates had said that had Gray been there, Gray might have sniffed out Trusov's presence in the field behind the helicopter. Gray had doubted it, but Coates had insisted Gray be present when next they cornered the Russian. Gray had the best chance of detecting a trap.
The technician asked, "Why don't you just plug the Russian right now from here. Hell, we've got rifles powerful enough that they'll send a bullet through that house's wall, through Trusov, out the far wall, and into the Pacific time zone."
Coates rubbed his chin. "There's a chance it's that hippie lying sleeping in there, not Trusov. There was an hour gap between when Trusov was seen entering the house and when the sheriff's department started the surveillance."
The tech was wearing a Pendleton shirt and climbing boots. He had a porky face, and it creased into a grin. He reached for a manila envelope. "But look at this." He pulled out an X-ray radiograph, switched on the cab's overhead light, and held the sheet up.
"You X-rayed the house?" Coates asked. "X rays will go through wood?"
"You bet, if you crank them up. They're called hard X rays. But it won't go through metal. And that person on the bed is never going to have children, but we don't care about that, do we?" He started a laugh but swallowed it when Coates and Gray would not join in. The technician pointed at the plate. "This dark figure on the X ray is the barrel, bolt, and scope of a rifle."
Coates stared at it for a moment. "No hippie carries a rifle around. That's Trusov all right."
The tech suggested again, "Let's plug him from here. Save the taxpayers some money."
Coates ordered, "You tell me over the radio if Trusov gets up from that bed. You got that?"
The tech dipped his chin, returning the X-ray photo to its envelope. Coates pulled an earplug from his shirt pocket and pushed it into his ear. The plug was in fact the entire radio, manufactured by Motorola, with receiver, antenna, battery, and speaker all in a package no larger than the tip of a finger. Coates led Gray out the van door. The night was still, the Montana night sky vast and painted. The Robinson house was a smudge in the distance, black on black. Six other law enforcement personnel waited at the back of the vehicle. The detective pulled his revolver from under his coat. "We're going in."
"Terrific." Gray's voice was flat.
Gray flipped the M-40 A1's safety off. He followed the detective along the road toward the house. An FBI agent followed, carrying a set of picks on a steel ring. He clasped the picks together so they would not jingle. A quarter mile down the road was a sedan with three FBI agents standing near it, barely visible in the starlight. Other agents and sheriff's deputies were a hundred yards behind the house.