It was a full two minutes more before Lucas ran up to the fence, and another minute before White showed up. They could see the red coat on the ground, unmoving, and they walked down the slope toward Sherwood and the body. Abramova was twisted on one side, a dimple in her coat where the last rifle shot went through, but no sign of blood.
White said, “Jesus.”
Lucas asked Sherwood, “You okay?”
“I am, but it was damn close,” Sherwood said. “She shot at me twice, I knocked her down, but when I came up, she pulled her gun again. I don’t know what she was thinking, I was right there.”
“You sure about that?” White asked.
“Absolutely,” Sherwood said.
Lucas looked from the body, to White, to Sherwood, then said to Sherwood, “Shelly’s saying you’re a lying sack of shit, you lying sack of shit.”
“Yeah, well.” Sherwood said. “Prove it.”
White shrugged: “I wouldn’t want to go that far. Just sayin’.”
“We can’t screw around here,” Sherwood said. “We’ve got to get a press release out, we gotta talk to the local law. We’re almost done, but we have to figure out a way to explain why you guys were here.We’ve got to erase you.”
34
White took a step back. “Erase us?”
Sherwood handed her the rifle and said, “Not literally, you dunce. Your presence here needs to be minimized. We should leave the body and walk down to that farmhouse and get all the local cops we can find up here. We need to talk to the sheriff and…what do you call it when you marshals work with other law enforcement agencies?”
“Task force,” Lucas said.
“Yes. We need to create an after-the-fact task force and give as much credit as we can to the locals,” Sherwood said. “I mean, how do we explain your being here, except that somebody gave her up? And who gave her up? Titov. The only possibility. Can’t have that.”
“Won’t work,” White said. “The locals will leak like crazy. I think we claim that the Menomonie cops caught the van’s plate on a licenseplate reader, called us, and we responded. A motel clerk saw them headed north out of town.”
Sherwood: “That could work. But: motel clerk heard them talking about Hayward.”
“She gave herself away when she, for some reason, shot somebody in Hayward.”
“The motel clerk’s name isn’t being released for her own safety,” Lucas said.
Sherwood: “That’s all good—we need to fuzz up the circumstances as much as we can. We should walk down to the farmhouse, find out what the address is, and call the sheriff, get a bunch of cops out here. The more the better.”
On the way down the hill, Lucas said, “I have a spy-like suggestion.”
“That would be?” Sherwood asked.
“The first couple Russians that Titov handles, you ignore. Let them go. No surveillance at all. You’re gonna have him for four or five years, so back off the first few Russians. As far as you know, they might set up surveillance on Titov, just to make sure he’s not turned on them.”
“We’ll talk about that. I mean, we the CIA. And the FBI. There’s gonna be some nasty deal-making.”
“Keep us out of it,” White said.
“I can promise you, we’ll do that,” Sherwood said.
• • •
Seventy-five miles farthernorth, Titov and Sokolov went through Duluth, Minnesota, three hours after they left Hayward.They’d stopped at a roadside rest, to wait for Abramova. They waited for an hour and a half. She never showed up.
“What happened to her?” Sokolov wondered.
“I don’t know, but it can’t be good,” Titov said grimly. “We need to go on. Keep trying to call her. There’s more burners in the gear bag, get another one, she’ll know it’s you.”
