• • •
Lucas’s wife, WeatherKarkinnen, was a plastic surgeon. She had operations on most days, often two or three of them, starting early. She always tried to be asleep by ten o’clock at the latest, was in bed but awake when Lucas got home.
He gave her a summary of what Juarez had told them, and Weather said, “That all sounds right to me, but depending on what hit this Russian guy, the bullet might not have gotten to the bowel.”
“She said she thought she could feel it, through his belly skin, but wasn’t sure about that,” Lucas said. “She was knowledgeable about gunshot wounds. She wasn’t a medical debutante. You think she was wrong about any of it?”
“No, but given the conditions she was working under, you can’t tell. If the bowel was punctured, everything she told you sounds right. I don’t really know what I’m talking about. But it sounds right.”
“Good,” Lucas said. “Are you still planning to get up at six?”
“No, I’ve set my clock for seven, I’ve already made a call that I’ll be late for my first op. I wanted to hear what happened.”
“Wake me up when you get up—I’ve got calls to make,” Lucas said. He bent forward and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m going to make myself a cup of hot chocolate, I’ll sleep in after I make the calls. Tomorrow’s gonna be a bureaucratic hassle.”
8
Titov dropped Orlov at Aurora St. Luke’s at four-thirty in the morning. Even with his iPhone navigation app calling the turns, he got lost twice, and as a Chicago resident, he naturally despised Milwaukee and everything it stood for, especially the Packers.
But he got there, and Orlov was snoring in the back seat. He had the feeling that the snoring wasn’t good: he’d heard it before, a deep, rumbling snore, and the man he’d heard it from had died.
The emergency room had a wide, well-lit entrance with traffic, so he drove past the entrance down Oklahoma Avenue and dropped Orlov, wrapped in a heavy blanket, on a sidewalk just out of sight of the emergency entrance.
Orlov’s eyes cracked as he laid him on the sidewalk, and Titov crouched and said, “I have to go. They will come get you in one minute. You will be okay, Matvey. This is a good hospital.”
Orlov closed his eyes, snorted once, and went away again.
Titov hustled back around the Jeep, drove on down the block, stopped, and called the hospital’s main number. He told the woman who answered the phone what he’d done; she didn’t seem particularly surprised.
Titov was two hundred yards away when a couple of orderlies and what might have been a doctor hustled around the building with what looked like a stretcher and carefully placed Orlov on it, and a minute later carried him back to the emergency room.
Abramova, sounding alert, answered the phone when Titov called: “It’s done,” he said. “He’s inside.”
“What kind of condition are you in?” Abramova asked.
“Not sleepy, but fucked up. The drugs keep me awake, but I’m very tired. I have sand in my eyes. I’m up twenty-four hours now.”
“Then find a motel. If you drive back, you will be thirty hours, and you’ll be good for nothing.”
• • •
Titov drove eastfrom the hospital, got on I-94 and then I-41 toward Chicago, drove until he was within the orbit of the larger city, in case anyone ever looked at his regular iPhone. He located a chain motel and checked in.
He felt like he couldn’t sleep. He was too wired up. He lay on his bed with his eyes closed and thought about his situation. He didn’t want to go back to the Twin Cities, but if he didn’t, the team was probably doomed; but before doom arrived, they’d undoubtedly tell Moscow that they’d been abandoned.
He actually liked the U.S., he liked Chicago. He liked his personal possibilities, if he could ever get free from the Russian intelligence services. He’d come to view his work for Russia as ridiculous: spiessneaking around the U.S. doing what, exactly? From those he’d talked to, it seemed like they were doing little that couldn’t be done by asking your favorite AI.
At some point, he thought he might have gotten some sleep that night. He wasn’t sure about that, it was one of those nights when it seemed that images and ideas were constantly flashing through his mind, without pause, without rest.
His iPhone alarm went off: he groped for the phone, turned off the alarm, stumbled into the bathroom, feeling like a malfunctioning robot. He took a hot shower and hit the truckers again. When they hit, he began feeling almost human, and definitely wide awake. He got in the car and headed back to Minneapolis. The first song up on his satellite feed was “Take It Easy” by the Eagles. Almost made him laugh.
• • •
When she’d finishedtalking with Titov, telling him to find a motel, Abramova checked Nikitin, who was sleeping soundly, on the floor, flat on his back, his system full of painkillers. She had gotten five hours of sleep, as Titov drove to Milwaukee, felt tired but functional. She got her laptop, went online, and looked for local news shows.
She found two but learned nothing about what must be an extensive manhunt: there was not even a report on the Sokolov shooting, possibly, she thought, because the marshals and the FBI were covering it up. That would not last: they’d abandoned a shot-up, blood-soaked vehicle at a motel, and any number of people had seen them do it. They’d kidnapped a doctor and ransacked an emergency room…
She went back and looked at Nikitin, considered the possibilities, then gently shook him awake.
