“In front of the school is fine,” Alexei said. Still looking over at Dmitry, he suddenly recognized and, more important, appreciated that not only did he like Dmitry better than the others but just how much his presence had helped make the burden of their Essex Falls isolation easier to bear. It had been just the two of them who’d made the maddeningly long and boring trips to Albany to obtain allthe equipment for their makeshift molecular biological laboratory, whose creation mostly fell to Dmitry, as well as all the trips back and forth to Saratoga Springs or Glens Falls to access Bitcoin ATMs. And even more demanding, he and Dmitry had shouldered most of the burden of supervising the ridiculous Diehard Patriots.
With such concentrated time together, Alexei had been surprised to learn just how much he and Dmitry shared intellectually in the course of their development, particularly in their mid to late teens when they both became progressively fearful of foreign influences threatening the cultural and ethnic purity of Russia. Both had spent considerable online time in various far-right chat rooms, which had led both to becoming lifelong members of various far-right militia movements. Alexei had even been mildly surprised to learn that quite a few years ago, Dmitry had been arrested and imprisoned for a few months, charged with incitement of violence for his association with his far-right militia, which was planning an attack against some migrant workers.
“Is this good?” Dmitry questioned as he angled into an empty parking slot in front of the elementary school and pulled to a stop.
“Perfect,” Alexei said as he opened the truck’s door. “Thanks for the ride, even though I would have preferred to drive myself.”
“Yes, I know, but what can I say? We have a paranoid commander.”
“You’ve got that right.”
“Text me when you’re through playing, and I’ll pick you up right here.”
“Of course. I’ll even try to give you a little warning, so I won’t have to stand around waiting.”
“Good idea,” Dmitry said. “Enjoy yourself, but keep your ears open for any talk whatsoever about Novichok.”
“Agreed,” Alexei said. He slid out of the truck’s cab and slammed the door. After a half-salute half-wave to Dmitry, he set out following the walkway that bordered the western façade of the stone school. In bad weather the basketball group played in the school’s small indoor gym, but in good weather, which it had been recently, they used the outdoor court in Bennet Park.
The park behind the school was generously sized and included tennis facilities as well as the basketball court in addition to the usual swings and sandbox. The best part was that the back of the park bordered the Roaring Fork River. A close second was the well-tended flower beds and a generous number of shade trees. As usual at that time of the day, most of the park’s facilities were being enthusiastically used.
As soon as the basketball court came into view, Alexei could see that a half-court pickup game of three-on-three was already in progress at one end. At the opposite basket, JD was shooting warm-up shots by himself. Glancing at the ongoing game, Alexei immediately recognized six of the players: Dr. Bob; Peter Langley, an attorney; George Freeman, an insurance broker; Martin Gibson, an auto mechanic; John Elliott, a plumber; and Chris Nebolsine. Alexei had never learned what Chris did for a living as he was a reticent sort of person, like Alexei himself, and usually answered questions with single syllables. More important, Chris didn’t seem to care what was going on in the town, so Alexei had not pressed the issue, believing there wasn’t much of significance to learn from the man.
Pausing for a moment in the shade of the rather immense oak tree within a small copse of evergreens about its base, Alexei watched the seventh player, whom he assumed was the friend of Dr. Bob’s, the worrisome forensic pathologist. Within just a fewseconds, it was apparent the man was an accomplished team player with an outgoing personality who appeared to be in excellent physical condition. Alexei could hear him and Dr. Bob exchanging friendly taunts as they were playing on opposite teams and guarding each other. As for age, Alexei thought he was close to Dr. Bob’s, which he estimated to be a bit older than Viktor’s mid-forties, which from his late twenties viewpoint was reasonably old.
Leaving the shade of the oak tree, Alexei proceeded to join JD warming up by what Alexei had learned was called “shooting baskets.” During the nine times Alexei had played basketball with this group of men, he’d manage to learn by trial and error the expected behavior and manner of play, which differed significantly from that in Russia.
After a friendly hello, Alexei positioned himself under the basket to “feed” JD by rebounding the ball and passing it to him, so he could take a series of shots. If JD were to continue to make the basket, Alexei would continue to feed him the ball. But that didn’t happen. Although JD was clearly an accomplished player, he didn’t concentrate or even care, which was how he seemed to approach life in general, and he rather quickly missed a shot. At that point they changed places.
“I’m so sorry about your friend Ethan,” Alexei said, to broach the issue even though he rarely said much to anyone and almost never initiated conversation.
“Yeah, it was one of those things,” JD said in his normal, vague, disinterested fashion.
“Have you heard any more information?”
“Nope.”
“What about this doctor friend of Dr. Bob’s?”
“What about him?”
“Does his visit have anything to do with Ethan’s passing?” For the seconds that followed, Alexei held his breath.
Instead of answering immediately, JD appeared to be pondering the question or suffering a petit mal seizure while holding on to the ball. He’d grabbed it after it dropped down through the net. Alexei had been making shot after shot.
Finally, as if awakening, JD passed the ball back out to Alexei, who’d moved a few steps to the side, which was expected behavior as Alexei had learned. JD then shrugged and said: “Maybe it’s possible, but I wouldn’t know and couldn’t care less. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious,” Alexei said as vaguely as possible. He felt his general irritation magnify as he struggled to have even the simplest, informative conversation with this likeable simpleton. Like all the Diehard Patriots, JD seemed to Alexei to be devoid of motivation, and he was convinced that Western culture fostered this kind of physical and intellectual laziness. Over the course of the past five-plus weeks, Alexei had to spend more time than he would have liked with JD along with Ethan Jameson and another equally as uninspiring individual named Nate Morrison. The three of them were the Diehard Patriots founders.
What Alexei had come to learn from Ethan about JD made him even more disgusted with Western culture than he’d already been. Apparently, JD had been a star basketball player at the regional secondary school, which made him popular and had promised him a college education. Unfortunately, that promising scenario was eliminated by a knee injury, which took two years to heal. But instead of rising to the challenge and taking advantage of what was available to him but which required a bit of mental effort and commitment, JD fell in with the wrong crowd and ended up in prison,where he became radicalized. When he got out, all he did was work intermittently at his family hardware store for enough money to live on and participate in the Diehard Patriots as an escape valve for his grievances.
At that moment another frequent player named Pete Ross showed up and joined the warm-up. Pete was a young pharmacist working at the local drugstore. He was also the best basketball player in the town. At six foot eight he towered over most everyone else. Only Dr. Bob came close, but he was five inches shorter. In addition, Pete had played for Duke University, which even Alexei knew was a collegiate basketball powerhouse.
Since there were only nine players, it meant that full court five-on-five was out of the question. Instead, they would be sticking to three-on-three half-court games because four-on-four was too few for full court and too crowded for half court. So at any given time, three people would have to wait their turn. Since the winning team stayed on the court, both Alexei and JD were pleased to have been teamed up by chance with Pete since it promised that they would continue playing until the whole group generally called it quits around six thirty to get on with their evening plans.
Alexei was particularly contented with his teammates. Not only would he get the maximum playtime, there’d also be less opportunity for people to engage in conversation with him, which was always worrisome, mainly because he was hardly fluent in Dutch. Although Alexei had a reasonable backstory of his fictious life in Holland created for him by the Russian FSB and dutifully committed to memory, he was still always fearful of being forced into a real conversation with an American who happened to know Amsterdam well or, worse yet, happened to speak Dutch, supposedly Alexei’s mother language.
Confirming his expectations, once Pete, JD, and Alexei got into the game, they did not lose. They stayed on the court until about six thirty rolled around and play stopped completely.
