five
Friday, March 7, 7 a.m., Razdory, Russia
“I’m not an invalid,” Victor Tankov said.
Although, at eighty-one and unable to walk, he knew that was precisely what he was. In fact, unbeknownst to his daughter, Marfa—sitting bedside with her own three-year-old daughter, who played with her dolls on the floor—he knew he was dying soon. He’d gotten worse since she arrived. Maybe it was the excitement of having the grandchildren in the house. Maybe it was his desire to rejoin his late wife, Dunya, who’d passed long ago. Maybe it was the stress of Marfa desiring to step into his shoes. Whatever it was, although the doctor had told him he had upwards of a year, he knew it was far less.
Esophageal cancer. Stage IV.
“What are you thinking about?” Marfa asked.
His eyes blinked, as if he were coming back from some faraway place. “Your mother. What would she think of her granddaughter?”
“Don’t talk like that, Father. It makes me too sad. She was so strong, so inspirational.”
“She was stubborn,” he said. “I’m glad you’re not like her.”
“That’s an insult.”
“I worry about my grandchildren. Take care of me, grant my final wish, then leave the country, Marfa. You’re a mother.”
“And a businesswoman, Father. You misjudge me—always have.”
“I did not mean to upset you.”
“I have an education in business, Father.”
“Yes, I know. Take it. Go to America or Italy or Canada. Use it. Be safe, and be well.”
Outside, the snow had stopped falling. Sunlight shone brightly in the window and reflected off the crusty white landscape surrounding the estate. Nicolay, up early, stood on the frozen pond. Rodia skated around him, laughing as the giant feigned to grab him.
“You sound like Pyotr, Father. He thought I would be content as his housewife, so I left him.”
“I know. I should have spoken to you before it came to that.”
“What would you have said?”
“Think of your mother. She was fulfilled.”
“As a housewife, Father? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“Mother always felt that you held her back.”
She saw his face redden. “Don’t speak like that. You know nothing of our relationship. I only want you to be happy. Pyotr was a good husband.”
“He was a chauvinist.”
“I only want you to be happy and safe.”
“I’m alone,” she said, “and I’m happy now.”
“I wanted more for you.”
“But I want to follow in your footsteps.”
He raised his hand and pounded the bedsheets, a sound no louder than someone fluffing a pillow. But it took all his strength. “No,” he said. “I don’t want that.”
Three-year-old Anna started to cry.
“It’s okay, darling,” Marfa said. She took her daughter in her arms.
Victor leaned back, still looking at her. “Don’t you see? Look at yourself.” He pointed to the wall mirror across the room.
Marfa’s reluctant eyes betrayed her and sought out the mirror. She saw herself instinctively rocking Anna as she had when the girl had been an infant and awoke at night.
“You’re a mother, first and foremost,” Victor said. “That is not a weakness. It just is. Leave. Promise me you will leave.”
“The only one who has left is Pyotr.”
“I hope you see him again soon. Maybe he’ll take you back. Why are you smiling?”
She didn’t answer, only thought of the irony of his statement. If he only knew. “Remember when you asked Mother if I was gay?”
“I was worried.”
“No, just confused,” she said. “You’re still confused. You don’t understand independence among women. I was independent, even at sixteen. I didn’t need a boyfriend, Father. And now I don’t need a husband. I’m a strong woman. You’ll see just how strong I am.”
“When you get me what I’ve asked for?”
“Sure,” she lied. “That’s it.” Marfa turned and walked out of the room.
8:10 a.m., Garrett Station
Peyton entered the office and handed Miguel Jimenez a Tim Hortons coffee.
“Thanks. What’s this for?”
“No reason,” she said.
He pushed back from his desk, the wheels of his chair squealing. “I thought you liked espresso in the morning.”
“I do,” she said, “but I thought I’d bring you a pick-me-up instead.”
Much to Tommy’s chagrin, there had been no snow day, so they’d stopped at Tim Hortons for a hot chocolate on the way to school.
Jimenez set the coffee on the desk and folded his arms across his chest. “This is because Mike yelled at me yesterday, isn’t it?”
“No, I was just thinking of you. The way I do a pain-in-the-ass brother.”
“You don’t have a brother.”
“But if I did, and if he were a pain in the ass, he’d remind me of you, I’m sure.”
He smiled at her and reached for his coffee. “Tim Hortons,” he said. “This might be the one thing I miss when I transfer back to Texas.”
“And my jokes,” she said.
“Not so much.”
She was still standing, about to head to the locker room to change from jeans into field greens. “Still talking about leaving us?” she said. “Want to go back south, huh?”
Jiminez was a lifer, that much she knew. He’d gotten a tattoo featuring the Border Patrol emblem as soon as he’d graduated from the Academy. But she always knew he wasn’t long for the northern border. And she knew why.
“It’s home, Peyton. You get that.”
She nodded. “Of course. That’s why I’m here.”
“I knew I’d need experience along the northern border if I ever want a shot at being a PAIC. Now I have that experience.”
“You want to be a Patrol Agent in Charge?” she asked. “After seeing what Mike goes through? Fighting for funding, meetings all day.”
“Yeah. Why not?”
Her backpack was slung over one shoulder. She set it on her desk and shook her head. “Not me. I like being in the field.”
“You can still do some of that.”
“Not enough.” She pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her fleece and slid it into her backpack with the items she had for hiking: Clif Bars, VitaminWater, extra wool socks, spare gloves, and a rescue flare.
Jimenez set his coffee on the desk and scrolled through a map on his iPad. “What are you up to this morning?”
“I’ll snowshoe the area along the Canadian border where Aleksei Vann entered the US.”
“The Ukrainian boy?” he asked.
She nodded, left her cup and phone next to the backpack on her desk, and started for the locker room to change.
“Peyton,” Jimenez called, “your phone is vibrating.”
She came back, saw the name—as did Miguel—and answered it.
“Haven’t heard from you in a while,” Stone said.
“I know.” There were only two female agents at Garrett Station, so she knew she could find privacy in the female locker room.
“How’s Tommy?”
“A work in progress.”
“Aren’t we all?” he said. “Hey, this is a business call. Have you had a chance to review the video footage from your cameras?”
She sat on the chair in front of her locker and looked around the empty room. Ten lockers lined the east wall across from a shower and two toilet stalls. “The video from my tree cameras?”
“Yeah. You’ve forgotten about them, haven’t you?”
“Of course not,” she lied.
“Could you take a look at the video this morning? See if we can determine who’s growing pot behind McCluskey’s?”
“I was planning to snowshoe behind that shack this morning.”
“What if I offer to buy you dinner tonight?”
“You’re bribing me?”
“And I’ll give you a shoulder rub.”
“We both know what that usually leads to,” she said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. It was an innocent, friendly gesture.”
“Right,” she said. “Give me the morning. The cameras have been out there for a while now. It’ll take me some time to go through the video.”
“Call if you see anything interesting, please.”
“You’ve brought the Maine DEA in on this, haven’t you?”
“Affirmative.”
“Keddy’s,” she said, “at six thirty.”
“How about my place?”
“I’ve had your cooking,” she said.
“I was thinking more about the shoulder rub,” he said.
“I’ve had that too.”
He laughed. “Ouch. Actually, I was thinking Tommy might come with you.”
“That would put a damper on the shoulder rub.”
“But it would give me a chance to spend some time with him.”
“You know,” she said, “you’re actually a very good guy.”
“That’s why I offered the shoulder rub.”
“We both know why you offered the shoulder rub.”
“And it was purely altruistic,” he said, laughing and getting in the final word before hanging up.
Jimenez was gone, had left for the field, when she returned to her desk with her iPad in a thick rubber OtterBox case.
The field scan option on each camera had been preset for one-minute intervals, and she hadn’t reviewed what had been recorded the previous day. Scanning the images sent to her iPad would be time consuming. So Peyton settled into her chair and began the task.
A large doe was caught in one frame. She paused the slide show, looking for human footprints. The snow was crusty and frozen in this image. So she knew it was more than a day old.
An hour later, she reached an image of falling snow. It had come from last night, when six inches had fallen. Looking closely, she saw something near the shack that resembled a boot print. A trip to the site might confirm it as animal or human, or she might find the snow completely covering the track.
The cabin, however, wasn’t her main priority. She was hoping the video would reveal people or, more likely, one man—someone who looked like he knew how to enter and leave the US without detection. Someone who could’ve led Aleksei Vann from Ukraine to the US.
She’d worked through frame-by-frame images, hating desk work more than ever. Her mind wandered. Jimenez had been caught playing fantasy basketball. At his age, before her marriage and Tommy, she’d have used her off-duty hours to scour these video images. Back then, in her early twenties, when fewer than 10 percent of agents were female, professional success and proving herself to be as good or better than male agents had driven her.
A deer appeared in one image. She watched it cross the screen, frame by frame, like a silent movie reel. It sniffed the ground and moved off.
Had she been a better agent back then? Or just unproven and hungry? She knew now she tried to be a better mom than agent. Felt like she failed at that. A lot. Stone said she was too hard on herself, but Tommy deserved the best she had.
She stopped thinking, squinted, and paused the iPad. Scrolled back and let the frame play again.
“Gotcha,” she said aloud, took out her iPhone, and called Stone.
11:15 a.m., near the Canadian border
“What’s this?” Peyton said, when Stone climbed into her truck and handed her a paper bag.
“It’s the least I could do.”
She opened the bag and saw a burger wrapped in wax paper atop a container of french fries. “Is this from the Blue Moose?”
“You told me the Blue Moose has the best fries in Aroostook County,” he said.
“You drove halfway to Houlton to get me fries?”
“I was checking on Sara.”
She recognized the name of the victim in his child-abuse case.
He nodded and picked up the grainy black-and-white photo on the seat between them. “I had to get more testimony.”
“That must be brutal,” she said.
He didn’t have to answer. He was looking at the photo. The radio was silent. They’d met between Route 1A and the Canadian border, several miles behind the McCluskey’s Processing plant. She was to hike the trail, snowshoeing when needed, and the burger and fries wouldn’t help her. But she didn’t want to insult Stone. And she did love fries from the Blue Moose.
“I can’t eat the burger,” she said, “but I’ll eat the fries.”
“We can’t let the burger go to waste.” He reached into the bag.
She smiled. “That’s big of you.”
“I have to cancel dinner,” he said. “I’m staking this place out tonight. Very sorry.”
“I understand.”
“I knew you would,” he said. “You know what it’s like.”
“To have to drop everything for work? Oh, yeah. Stay warm.”
He nodded. “I have a tent and a sleeping bag good for minus forty.”
“Are you alone?”
He nodded. Then, in what she knew was an effort to deliberately change the subject because he didn’t want her to worry, he said, “I brought a good book.” Along with the one printout, she’d emailed photos from her surveillance cameras. He had his phone out and was looking at a photo she’d emailed him.
“I wish the photo was closer and not so grainy,” she said, pointing to his phone.
“It looks like a man,” he said.
“But the hood and sunglasses make it difficult to determine. And the scarf doesn’t help.”
“I think it’s definitely a man. And he knows what he’s doing—the hiking gear, the winter-wear. He’s prepared for the climate and the conditions.”
“You make him sound like a pro.”
Stone thought about that. “Not sure. We’re only talking about six marijuana plants. But he’s growing them pretty damn well in subzero temperatures. Think there’s a connection to your Ukrainian boy?”
“Aleksei didn’t mention the structure. But he hasn’t said much to me. I’m still working on that.”
“Trying to gain his trust?”
“Yeah, if we can find this guy”—she pointed to the photo of the man wearing the blue winter jacket with a yellow emblem on the collar—“you can have your drug bust, and I’ll question him about what he saw out there.”
“I wanted to spend time with Tommy tonight,” Stone said.
“He didn’t even know we were going over for dinner,” she said, “so he won’t be disappointed.”
“But I am,” he said. He dropped the hamburger bun back in the bag, folded the wax paper around the patty, put it inside his backpack, and opened the truck door. “Rain check?”
“Of course,” she said. “Be careful.”
“You too.” He stepped out and closed the pickup door, then waved and started into the woods.
11:45 a.m., Garrett Middle School
Aleksei Vann was sitting at the end of a table at the back of the library in Garrett Middle School. The novel We Were Here lay open before him, but he wasn’t reading; he was thinking.
About how it felt to be alone. To be unwanted.
About how things had been different back home.
About how this had been his father’s idea. A better life, his father told him.
Was it? Would it be?
He was wearing new clothes—an Abercrombie & Fitch sweatshirt and Levi’s, for starters, thanks to Aunt Bohana. He was doing very well in the high-school Algebra II class, the only eighth-grader in it. But the students laughed when he spoke, repeated his phrases, and took pleasure in correcting him.
The boy at the other end of the table was a sixth-grader. Other eighth-graders were at the round tables, seated in twos and threes, at the front of the library. Aleksei looked at them, watching them talk, secretly text each other with phones under the table, and laugh quietly. The laughter was what he noticed, what he missed. Laughter meant you were part of the crowd. It meant that you had friends. He’d yet to share a laugh with his cousin Michael at the Donovan home, and he certainly hadn’t laughed with anyone at school.
But not everyone from Garrett, Maine, laughed. There were other outsiders, even among the locals. He’d seen that, seen how kids treated some others. That didn’t change in America. Same as it had been back home. An “in” crowd and an “out” crowd.
In the Fiction row, a girl—Ally, that was her name—with clumps of greasy, shoulder-length blond hair moved her index finger down the spines of books, looking for something particular. She wore blue jeans. Not the tight-fitting jeans most of the other girls wore. Her jeans were baggy, faded, and were usually torn near her knee. Clearly hand-me-downs. He’d never seen her in a winter coat, just a gray Patriots sweatshirt. Her hands were usually stuffed in the pocket. No gloves or mittens.
Aleksei was watching her when she turned and scanned the library, her eyes stopping on him. Then she approached. Had she seen him looking at her? They’d never spoken.
“You reading that?” She pointed to the copy of We Were Here.
He shook his head. Outside of class, he spoke as little as he could. It was easier to fit in if no one heard his accent.
Her eyes were on the book, hands hanging stiffly at her sides. “You sign it out?”
He looked at her index finger—raw and cracked. Saw the dried blood.
Her hand went quickly into her sweatshirt pocket. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Tell me where you’re from, again.”
He told her.
“I hear you’re in Algebra II,” she said. “I’m in the other section. You and I are the only eighth-graders who walk next door to the high school to take it.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. You like it here?”
She bent like she might take the seat beside him, but then stopped, looking over her shoulder. Two girls—one in a cable-knit turtleneck sweater, the other in a basketball jacket with Scotty stitched into the sleeve—were watching from a nearby table.
“It’s not home,” he said. She had been the first one in his new school to seek him out. “Want sit down?”
She shook her head. “You beat up Scotty Champaign?”
He shrugged.
“I hear that’s a good book.” She pointed.
He slid it to her. “Take.”
“Take it? Really? You don’t want to read it first?”
He shook his head.
She snatched it off the table and took a step toward the librarian’s desk, then turned back.
“Scotty’s a jerk. So are a lot of kids here. He’s been teasing new kids or nerds for a long time. A bunch of us were glad you broke his nose.”
He didn’t say anything.
“You’re pretty quiet, huh?”
He just looked at her.
“Joining the math team?”
“Is there math team?”
“Were you on a math team where you were before?”
He nodded. “And skeet.”
“Shooting?”
“Yes.”
“We don’t have that here. I’m on the math team. You should join.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah, you’ll join?”
He nodded.
“It’s in room six. Right after school. See you there.”
She took We Were Here to the circulation desk. As the librarian checked the book out, he was thinking about the math team, about being part of something.
The girl turned and looked at him over her shoulder. When they made eye contact, he smiled at her.
She looked away.
2:15 p.m., 7 Drummond Lane
Michael Donovan ascended the stairs to the one-time attic, now the third-floor apartment. As a precaution, he carried the sudoku book Uncle Ted left downstairs. He could say he was just returning it, if Uncle Ted appeared and asked why Michael had let himself in.
Of course, he’d have to explain knowing where the spare key was. And there was certainly no precautions for the rest of the visit. Never was. Maybe that was partially why Michael loved doing this—the risk.
The first time he’d come here alone and looked at it inside the box and wrapped in plastic, he doubted its legitimacy. After all, it had been missing over two decades. Hidden in Aroostook County, Maine? Eight hours from where it had been taken? But there was something about it—he’d unwrapped and rewrapped it six times now—that spoke to him. The precision, the mastery. Then, of course, when research told him of the telltale marks, he knew.
There were a million reasons to take it. But he didn’t. Simply couldn’t do that. It wasn’t Uncle Ted’s future that bothered him. But what if his parents were involved? Could they be? Could they not be? It was, after all, their house. But he’d never seen either of them enter the apartment. They gave Uncle Ted privacy. Yet they’d lived in the house since before Michael was even born.
Besides, if he didn’t wait to see what Uncle Ted and (maybe) his parents had planned for it, what were his other options? Return it to its rightful owner?
And just who, exactly, was that? The last person you could call the “owner” was long dead. And what would become of his parents, of his family, if he did that?
So, as he’d done several other times over the years, he simply looked. Admired. Twenty minutes was long enough.