They discovered that the hideout was on one of four circles, which they hadn’t known, with a narrow, frozen creek winding through the common area between the circles. They stumbled across whitetail deer beds tucked under balsams and racoon and coyote tracks along the iced-over creek.
There were three houses on each of the four circles. All of the houses were showing furnace exhaust, and two had older cars in the driveways, which White thought must belong to housekeepers. Nobody with common sense would park outside in this cold, if they had a heated garage.
“If the guy’s a bowhunter, he could put up some venison,” White said, checking out a line of deer tracks. She scuffed at one of the bigger prints and said, “Nice buck.”
They were puffing out clouds of steam, and tiny icicles were forming on the tips of White’s hair.
“Given his reputation, I’m pretty sure he ain’t a vegetarian,” Lucas said.
• • •
They’d just gottenback to the house when two SUVs pulled into the driveway, both Ford Explorers, both with the tired look ofrental cars. A bulky marshal, head like a half-gallon milk jug, climbed out of the first vehicle, saw them: “Davenport and White?”
“Davenport and White,” Lucas answered. “Are you Derrick?”
“Yeah. You look like your pictures. You guys check out the site?”
“We did,” White said. “There are four cul-de-sacs back-to-back, three houses on each circle, a common area in between them. Looks like all the lots are about the same size, three or four acres each, all fenced. Nothing but animal tracks in the snow.”
“Excellent.” Derrick Beard turned back toward the SUVs and waved. Seven more doors popped open, and seven more people got out. Three were marshals, all in tactical winter wear, all from Washington, as was Beard.
Another of the arrivals, an American, but not a marshal, was thinner, taller, quicker, wearing a wool knee-length camel coat with matching wool-and-leather gloves. He sported black rectangular sunglasses and a brown Borsalino hat. The clothes were well cut and subtly aristocratic. Looking at them, Lucas, the fashion plate, was stroked by the feather of jealousy. He liked browns, admired them, but given his coloring, couldn’t wear them.
• • •
The final threeto get out of the trucks were a short sixty-year-old gray-haired man with broad shoulders, a stub nose, and ruddy face, in a blue L.L.Bean parka. He was followed by a scowling fortysomething woman with tight-cut blond hair, small gold earrings, and narrow shoulders; she was several inches taller than the man Lucas presumed was her husband. She was also wearing a blue Bean parka.
The third was a tall youngish man, midtwenties, whose face resembled the woman’s. His dishwater-blond hair fell to his shouldersand his face was covered with dishwater blond fuzz, like a holy card Jesus. Despite the cold, the son was wearing tight fashion jeans and a hip-length black leather jacket worn open.
“Hope to God somebody has a key,” Lucas said.
“We’re good,” Beard said. “Let’s get inside. I’m already numb.”
The older man said to the woman, “Look at the birches, Martha, like home. I told you.” His face looked carved, rather than grown, with snarl lines starting beside his nose and extending to the corners of his mouth. The quarried look of his face was matched by that of his wife.
“Not home, Leonard,” the woman grumbled. After a moment, “It’s less than I hoped for. Less than they told us.”
“Better than home,” the son said. “I’m not fighting any fuckin’ Ukrainian assholes in the middle of a fuckin’ Ukrainian asshole winter.”
As they walked up to the house, Beard introduced the three as Leonard Summers; his wife, Martha; and son, Bernard.
All three sounded American: in a briefing the day before, Lucas and White had been told that all three had spoken some English before they fled Russia. They’d spent the past year and a half holed up in a CIA facility near Washington. English lessons had been a daily event, including work on their accents and slang. If they added oodala-oodala-oodala vowel sounds, they might even pass as Minnesotan.
Beard opened the front door’s heavy lock with a key, then handed a key ring with several keys to the older Russian. As they trooped inside, Lucas noticed that the door was three inches thick and appeared to have a quarter-inch steel plate laminated inside. Not a door you could kick, or shoot through, for that matter. Beard disarmed analarm, and Martha said, “Small living room, Leonard.” She touched the back of a beige couch in the living room. The walls were bare, awaiting a personal touch. “Where are the bedrooms?”
“I think it is comfortable,” Leonard said, with a defensive note. “We should bring in the suitcases.”
“Our guys will get those,” Beard said. “Leonard, you and Martha should pick a bedroom—the master is here on the first floor, with one more at the back. We thought that second one would be a nice office for you, Leonard. Martha, there’s a family room in back. It’s three times the size of the living room and has an eighty-inch TV hanging on the wall, just like you ordered. That’s where you party.”
“What about the billiards table?” Leonard Summers asked.
“Yeah, there’s a full-sized billiards table,” Beard said. “There are two bedrooms upstairs, and a sitting room. Bernie can pick one, and Jack can take the other. All the bedrooms have attached bathrooms. Even the office.”
“How long will Jack be here?” Lucas asked. Jack was a marshal with the Witness Protection Program.
“A couple weeks. We want to have one of our regular guys checking around, to make sure everything looks copacetic,” Beard said. “Jack has done this fifteen times, so if there’s a problem, he’ll spot it. You two are the cavalry, if he screams for help.”
“Where are the cars?” Bernard asked.
