“More cameras.”
“Ah.”
They took a quick look in Sokolov’s room. Sokolov lying in bed, in a blue hospital gown, slightly propped up so he could watch television, if he was conscious and his eyes were open, which he apparently wasn’t, and they weren’t. The two bodyguard agents were on their feet, looking at Lucas and Sherwood, and Lucas showed them empty hands.
“We recognized you,” one of them said.
“I was afraid St. Vincent told you to shoot me,” Lucas said.
“He did, but we were told to let you make the first move,” the agent said; he smiled as he said it, but the other one didn’t.
Sherwood went to Sokolov’s bed and asked, “You awake, Leonid?”
Sokolov twitched, seemed to struggle to get his eyes open, but failed. He might have tried to mutter something, but it was unintelligible.
Sherwood said, “I’m sorry about all of this, I truly am. It shouldn’t have happened. We’ll get you back to the Farm and figure out a new move.”
No response. Sherwood patted Sokolov on the leg and said to Lucas, “Let’s go look around.”
One of the agents whispered, “He’s been very quiet. He’s only had light painkillers, but he hasn’t been coming up.”
Sherwood shook his head and whispered back, “Not good.”
Before they left, Lucas asked for the lead agent’s cell phone number, and poked it into his own phone. Ten minutes later, standing in a stairwell, he called the agent and asked, “Where am I?”
“Stairwell C4, between the third and fourth floors.”
“Outstanding.”
• • •
“What do youthink?” Sherwood asked on the way out.
“The FBI has big bureaucracy problems, but their gun guys are usually okay,” Lucas said. “I don’t see the Russians getting on top of them. Not unless they go in with their automatic weapons and risk a massacre. Even if they did that, I don’t see them getting back out. It seems to me that they’re trying to stay as safe as they can and not doany more damage than they have to. Haven’t killed anyone except Masha, and that looks like a mistake.”
“You think Sokolov is safe?”
“In the hospital. I wouldn’t guarantee he’d be safe on a ride to the airport. They’ve got those automatic weapons. Might be a good idea to check the plane for a bomb…”
“If he’s safe for now, let’s go see your Mr. Capslock.”
17
Del Capslock lived in the Highland Park area of Saint Paul, not far from Lucas but in a smaller, early twentieth-century house that had two notable characteristics: it had been built on what amounted to a spring, so after wet weather, there was a constant flow of water from under the overhead-door of his tuck-under garage; and a serious lack of insulation in his roof that would take a major renovation to fix.
The insulation problem meant that his roof was warm when it shouldn’t be, and snow melted as quickly as it fell. The eaves, however, were not warm, because they hung out over the house. That meant the melted snow water trickling over the eaves tended to refreeze, creating weighty icicles that threatened to crack the roof supports.
When Lucas and Sherwood arrived at his house, Capslock was in his yard, wrapped in a parka and ski mask, trying to knock thetwenty-pound icicles off the eaves with a shovel. When he saw them pull into the driveway, he leaned the shovel against the house and walked down his lawn to meet them.
Lucas: “How in the hell did you get icicles like that, when we haven’t had any snow?”
“We had enough, and I let it go,” Capslock said.
“You need a flame thrower,” Sherwood said.
“I need to sell the house to some other chump when the ice melts.”
“That, too,” Lucas said. He added, “This is John Sherwood, he’s a spy who works for the CIA. If you’ve got a Russian, he’ll come with us to chat with them.”
