14

Locked Up

JR awoke the following morning with a terrible feeling. The kind of feeling he always woke up with the morning after he’d done something Very Bad.

He sat up in bed and looked around, trying to remember. Sunlight was pouring through the window onto the living room floor, and George was still fast asleep on the couch, where he’d been when JR had wiggled back through the window after a long night in which he’d—

Lost Pie.

Pie was gone.

And it was all his fault.

If only, if only he hadn’t agreed to take the embassy dogs with him in the first place. And if only, if only he’d just said no when they wanted to come a second time.

JR sank back onto his flannel bed, then immediately felt guilty about that, too. Wherever Pie had slept that night, it was definitely not in a comfy flannel bed.

His only consolation was that he’d put his paw down when those new dogs had tried to come, too. Who knew how many of them they might have lost?

He moaned, and George stirred and looked over.

“Morning, boy,” he muttered, then turned and went back to sleep.

JR had half a mind to give him a rude awakening—maybe with a sharp bark or a wet nose in his ear. But what good would it do? George couldn’t bring Pie home or erase all the stupid mistakes JR had made.

He tried to go back to sleep, but all he could think about was poor Pie, peering out the window of a rocket ship as he was blasted into outer space.

It was Saturday, so George slept in. When he finally peeled himself up off the couch, it was mid-morning.

“Wow, I just conked out there, didn’t I, boy? Must’ve been tired from all that cooking.” He looked over at the pile of last night’s dinner dishes next to the kitchen sink. “I’ll do those later,” he yawned. “How about we go exploring, boy? Maybe find a café and sit in the sun?”

Normally, the suggestion would have sent JR scrambling for his leash. But today, he could barely drag himself out of bed. The guilt about Pie weighed on him like the wool coat in Helsinki. How he had despised that coat.

“Hey, you sick, boy?” George knelt down to scratch his ears. “Or just lazy? Maybe Katerina’s right, and you do need more walkies. Well, don’t worry. We’ll make this one extra long.”

JR groaned. For the first time in his life, he was not up for walkies.

They found a little café not far from home and sat at an outdoor table to watch the world go by. George pretended to read a Russian newspaper while feeding JR bites of his scone. JR spat them out under the table, unable to eat anything.

Two terriers and a towering Great Dane passed by, but as hard as he searched, JR could spot no Australian shepherd with a pleasantly blank expression and a tendency to flatten himself on the pavement.

Then, on the way home, he saw a familiar grey and white shape in the park near their apartment, and for a moment, his heart leaped. But it was only Robert, out walking with a young woman.

JR tugged on the leash.

“Oh, you want to visit the park?” asked George. “Okay. Hey, isn’t that one of the Aussie dogs? Where’s John, though? Hey, wait!”

But JR had already yanked the leash out of George’s hand and was making a beeline for the shepherd.

Robert barely looked up when he approached. His eyes were dull and his head hung low, and he admitted that he hadn’t slept a wink or eaten a bite since Pie had disappeared.

“John’s a wreck,” Robert said. “That’s why Marie’s walking me today. She’s his assistant,” he added, nodding to the young woman at the end of his leash, who was talking to George. “John’s running around posting ‘Missing Dog’ signs all over the Arbat. Offering a $5,000 reward for anyone who finds Pie.”

JR’s stomach sank. Not only had he caused terrible trouble for Pie, but he’d made Robert and John miserable, too. What had he been thinking?

“Wow,” George remarked on their way home. “This is bad, boy. That Australian shepherd … what was his name? Cake? Strudel? Anyway, it looks like he’s been dognapped! John thinks it’s because he’s such a valuable purebred.”

Valuable purebred! JR shook his head. If only George knew that all the other missing dogs had been anything but!

“John found an open window in their apartment. He thinks the thief just crawled right in and nabbed poor Cake.” George shook his head as he opened the door to the apartment. “So he’s warning everyone to make sure their windows are shut tight. And you know what? I noticed this morning that there’s an open window right next to your bed.”

Before JR could even process what was happening, George had marched across the apartment, pulled the window closed, and locked it.

JR sat back on his haunches, stunned. For a while, he just stared at the locked window as the meaning of it all slowly became clear. The locked window didn’t just mean an end to his adventures. Adventures didn’t even matter any more. What mattered was Pie, who was missing because of him. It was up to JR to find him.

And now, his only way out was locked tight.

That night, he barely slept, worrying about Pie and Boris and the missing dogs—and all the others that could disappear any day. Including Ania.

When he finally did manage to fall asleep, George came home from his date with Katerina, switched on all the lights, and searched the entire apartment for dognappers. Finally convinced that no one had sneaked in while he was out, George switched off the lights and went to bed. But JR lay awake for several hours more, wondering if every pair of feet that passed the window could belong to the human who was stealing dogs for coats or space travel … or worse.

It was one of the longest nights of his life.

On Sunday morning, he and George were sitting on the couch—George sending emails from his laptop while JR fretted and chewed his tail—when someone buzzed their apartment.

George rose to answer it, then came back a few minutes later with Katerina on his heels.

“Wow, I … I didn’t know you were coming … I would have …” George glanced at himself in the mirror over the fireplace that wasn’t really a fireplace and did a double take. “Excuse me for a second.” He zipped into the bedroom, closed the door, and proceeded—JR could tell—to douse himself with old-fishing-boat cologne and style his hair until it looked like he hadn’t really styled it at all.

That left JR and Katerina in the living room, looking at each other.

Once again, she was staring at him. Studying him, as if he were a pair of gloves she was considering buying.

JR looked away first, unnerved, and Katerina pulled out her handbag and began to rummage through it. As usual, she looked smashing. She wore a yellow dress under a smart blue jacket, and she had a jaunty yellow scarf tied around her neck. George had dated some very pretty women before, but Katerina was by far the most beautiful. Then again, she was a model. Who knew what she looked like when she rolled out of bed in the morning, before she put on her makeup and stylish clothes?

This brought to mind the supermodel theory and the story of poor old Malchik. If he ever got out of this apartment, JR decided, he would go to the Mendeleyevskaya station and see Malchik’s statue. It would only be right to pay his respects.

Something flashed on the edge of his vision, and he looked back at Katerina.

And practically jumped out of his fur.

Katerina had a knife.

JR leaped off the couch and scrabbled across the floor to the bedroom. He shoved open the door with his head, then zipped in and dove under the bed.

“Hey!” George exclaimed from inside the sweater he was pulling over his head. “What’s going on? JR?” He marched out of the room, exchanged some muffled words with Katerina, then came back and knelt down on the floor.

“What’s the matter with you, boy? Katerina said you went crazy when you saw her pocket knife. Is that it? She was just cutting a loose thread off her jacket. Come out. It’s okay.”

Cutting off a thread. JR let out his breath. Just cutting off a thread. Nothing to be scared of.

But the image of Katerina in her yellow dress wielding a small but very sharp-looking knife flashed through his brain. He couldn’t move.

“Since when have you been afraid of pocket knives?” George asked. “You old scaredy-cat.”

Scaredy-cat! If JR could have spoken Human, he would have said something along the lines of “Since you moved us to a city with killer supermodels, stupid.” But as it was, he had no choice but to come out and try to act dignified. There was nothing worse than being called a scaredy-cat.

Still trembling, he inched toward George’s outstretched hand.

“There. That’s better.” George stroked his head with his warm, well-moisturized hand, then scooped him up under one arm. He carried him like a football back to the living room.

So much for dignity.

Once everything was back to normal, Katerina announced her purpose for coming: to make them a hearty Russian breakfast. She set to work whipping up some blini, which JR knew, thanks to Boris, meant pancakes. She chatted to George over her shoulder as she measured and stirred ingredients together, and JR had just begun to breathe normally again when she brought up her dachshund.

“I plan to go next weekend,” she told him. “Would you like to come? You can bring JR. I think he’d love it.”

JR sighed. Just when he was beginning to get used to her, she had to remind him about the dachshund. Hopefully George already had plans for next weekend.

“Next weekend? Sure!” said George. “That sounds like a great time to visit.”

Is there ever a good time to visit a dachshund? JR wondered. He couldn’t think of one.

“It’s about an hour out of the city,” Katerina said over the sizzle of blini in the frying pan. “And it needs some work.”

They all do, thought JR. For one thing, they need real legs.

“For one thing, it needs a new coat of paint,” said Katerina, sliding a paper-thin pancake out of the pan and onto a plate.

Paint?

“And the plumbing is a bit of a mess.”

The dachshund’s plumbing was a mess? Either this was one unfortunate dog, or Katerina was talking about something else completely.

“Summer houses must be pretty affordable around here, if so many Muscovites have them,” said George, accepting the stack of pancakes she placed before him.

Summer house?

“Yes.” Katerina pulled a container of sour cream out of the fridge and set it in front of George, gesturing for him to spread it on his blini. “And they’re also just an important part of the culture. We take great pride in our dachas. They are—how do you say—like little refuges away from the city.”

JR cocked his head to one side. Had she actually said dachshund? Or something else? He listened hard.

“Well”—George dumped a glob of sour cream on his pancake—“I’m excited to see this dacha.”

JR sighed with relief. They were saying dacha, not dachshund. Which apparently meant a summer house, not a weiner dog. What a relief.

Katerina dropped half a pancake in JR’s dish, and he dashed over to gobble it up.

Delicious.

Now the conversation made much more sense. It was even exciting—the next weekend, they’d pack up her little car and drive out to the country to her dacha. George would have to let him off-leash. And there would have to be squeaky things to chase—no summer house would be complete without them.

JR stretched out in a sunbeam under the table, allowing himself, just for a little while, to forget about the missing dogs of Moscow. But soon, the sun ducked behind a cloud and they barged right back into his brain, filling his belly once again with guilt and dread.

Then something miraculous happened. George got up to go to the washroom, and after a moment, Katerina stood up, too. She looked around, then darted to the window. And as JR watched, incredulous, she unlatched it and opened it—not wide, but just a crack.

Just enough. JR could do the rest.

He stared at her as she returned to the table and rearranged her napkin on her lap. Why on earth had she done it?

And then it occurred to him. Katerina didn’t care for the old-fishing-boat cologne any more than Inga did! She’d opened the window to air the place out.

For once, he was completely, utterly thankful for George’s awful taste in cologne.