“No! How did you manage that?” Abramova asked.
“When he was stable, we informed the hospital that his wife wanted him moved to a private clinic for recovery and physical therapy,” Kuznetsov said, sounding pleased with himself. “We had him picked up by a private ambulance service and taken to a smaller Milwaukee airport and flown from there to Toronto on a Canadian passport. Two hours ago, he was in the air for Leningrad.”
“This is very gratifying,” Abramova said, and behind her, Titov called, “Wonderful!”
“We expect to have the new cars for you tomorrow. I remind you, and I am serious, the man is watching this operation. He asks for updates in the morning, and noon, and night.”
“We will not let him down,” Abramova said.
“We will tell him of your pledge.”
• • •
“This scares me,”Nikitin said, when the call had ended. “The man is asking about us morning, noon, and night. I didn’t need to know that.”
“We could defect,” Titov said. He tried to sound like he was joking. “The Americans would protect us.”
“We would have to eat at McDonalds,” Abramova said, with a put-on grimace. “Or this Burger King. Death would be preferable.”
“You might get your death, from one side or the other, if we fuck this up,” Titov said.
“We won’t fuck it up, but whatever we’re about to do, it will be complicated,” Abramova said. “Now let’s see this ‘Nosing for News’ that we’re on.”
“Jonesing,” Nikitin said. “I don’t know what that means.”
“American drug slang,” Titov said. “If you ‘jones’ for something, you want it badly.”
Nikitin: “Ah. I have the video.”
• • •
They watched themselveson the computer screen, scrambling out of the oversized Jeep and into the Subaru, and then fleeing the motel. They watched it again, and again. The photos of two marshals came, up and Abramova said, “So this is the fucker who shot us.”
After the third time through the video, Titov asked, “What do you think?”
Abramova: “You don’t see our faces, but we are…a group of types. If you see the video, and then you see the three of us together,you might recognize us. One at a time, we are not distinct. We are not distinct in this motel, but if somebody walked in this room in one minute, with all three of us here…”
“Give me the TV clicker,” Titov said. He said “clicker” in English, and Abramova and Nikitin looked at each other, and he added, “remote” in Russian. Nikitin found the remote in a couch cushion and tossed it to him.
The room television was not a particularly smart TV, but it was smart enough to bring up the TV channels from the largest nearby stations, which were the Twin Cities. It took some clicking around, but eventually they foundJonesing for Newsand again watched the replay from earlier in the afternoon.
“Even Iowa people can see us,” Nikitin said, when Titov clicked off.
“Not easy to find that show. Who would watch it, anyway, if you live here?” Abramova asked.
“Almost nobody,” Titov said. “But all it takes is one.”
“When each of us has a car, we can check into separate motels, and then we’ll be invisible again,” Nikitin said.
“Tomorrow,” Abramova said. “Tomorrow, in the Twin Cities. Maybe I will deliver flowers to a hospital patient in a room near Sokolov’s.”
“A thousand policemen there, FBI, marshals,” Titov said.
“But we should have a look, somehow,” Abramova said. “I wouldn’t try to get close.”
“We’ll need some information about the hospital,” Nikitin said.
“With their source, Kuznetsov should be able to help us with something as simple as that.”
