They went on for half an hour, and Sokolov called every ten minutes, and on the third call, got an answer. A baritone voice, rather than Abramova’s soprano, said, “Hello?”
Titov, quietly, urgently, “Hang up. Hang up.”
Sokolov hung up, and Titov told him to pull the SIM card. Sokolov did that, and the battery as well, and he threw the parts out the window, one at a time, hundreds of yards apart.
“Who do you think that was?” Sokolov asked.
“Sure as hell wasn’t Kat. Something happened to her,” Titov said.
• • •
Once through Duluth,they took Highway 61 north along Lake Superior, stopping at Two Harbors for gas.
“I thought we had enough,” Sokolov said.
“We probably do, but if it turns out we don’t, I’d be stuck in about ten thousand square miles of frozen wilderness,” Titov said. “I’d rather not do that. You want anything to eat or drink? Last chance.”
Inside the station, Titov called Sherwood.
“Where are you?” Sherwood asked.
“Gas station, way north, I don’t know this town,” Titov lied. “How is our plan?”
Sherwood was blunt: “The woman is dead. Our plan is working.”
“Ah, well. I hope she gave a good account of herself,” Titov said.
“She shot an innocent woman,” Sherwood said. “Other than that, she didn’t do much.”
“But our plan is working.”
“Yes, it is, from this end. How about your end?”
“My end is good. I will return to Minneapolis after I deliver Bernard, and I will call you.”
“I need to know…” Sherwood began, but Titov had hung up. When Sherwood called him back, Titov’s phone was dead.
In Two Harbors, Titov handed Sokolov a sack of jerky and two Cokes. “Try not to fart. It’s too cold to open a window.”
From Two Harbors, they went north along the lake until they turned off on Old Highway 61, which they took all the way to the border, and from there, they turned a quarter mile east on Joe’s Road. No traffic, and they were moving slowly. “It’s right around here somewhere,” Titov said, peering into the roadside ditches.
Sokolov: “Somewhere? I thought you knew where the fuck you were going…”
“I do. It’s right around here…There!” A light flashed in the ditch on the north side of the road. When they got there, they found a two-up snowmobile in the ditch. They stopped, Titov got out, and introduced Sokolov to Edouard Gagnon. Gagnon was a tall, bearded man, thin as a rope, wearing a snowmobile suit, boots, and a helmet. He handed another helmet to Sokolov and said, “You might get a little cool dressed like that. We’re half an hour from the car.”
“Cool, or frozen?” Sokolov asked.
“Nah, just cool,” Gagnon said. To Titov: “You said something about money?”
Titov nodded, went to the gear bag and came back with ten thousand dollars. “Try not to ditch Bernard and run off with the money.The Russians would find you and kill you and all your family and probably anybody who knows you.”
“I will be careful about that,” Gagnon said, with a smile. They’d done business twice before, and he’d now heard the warning for the third time.
Sokolov turned to Titov and said, “You will find out what happened to Kat?”
“Might be on her way to Mexico,” Titov said.
“Or she might be dead,” Sokolov said. “Let us know.”
