Hidden Prey

explanation foreverything. We can take this to Maksim Oleshev and say this and this and this, one-two-three, is how your son came to die. This is all that is wanted.”
    “So we’re good,” Andreno said. To Lucas: “I can hang around if you want, but I don’t know what I’d do.”
    “Take off,” Lucas said. “You can probably get a flight out tomorrow morning.”
     
    L UCAS BORROWED AN empty office from Hopper and started by calling the boss, Rose Marie Roux. They were on the phone for fifteen minutes.
    At the end of the conversation, she said, “Okay. Let me talk to the governor, but I’d say that you’re done. Turn it over to the feds, and to the local people, and come on back.”
    When he got off the phone with Roux, he called Harmon, spent another fifteen minutes filling him in. Harmon said, when Lucas was finished, “All right. The house is sealed, I’m going straight to Washington to get a crew out here. They really can’t ignore it. Who knows what they’ll find in that place? Who knows who went through there?”
    “You should know that I’m not quite right with it,” Lucas said. “If you find Roger anywhere—if you find him in Russia—I’d like to see him. I’d like to talk with him. I’d like to run around the block with him.”
    “I don’t know what that means,” Harmon said. “Is that cop talk? I don’t know the jargon.”
    “What?” Lucas was puzzled.
    “ ‘Run around the block . . .’ ”
    “No, no. I mean, I’d really, actually like to run around a block with him. Or once around a track. That’s what I meant.”
     
    R OUX CALLED BACK : “Where are you? In Duluth or on the Range?”
    “Still in Hibbing.”
    “Good. The governor wants to see you, and it turns out he’s in Eveleth tonight at seven o’clock. Can you get there?”
    “No problem. Just up the way.”
    “He’s at a dance at some hall up there . . . one of the ones with all the initials and you never know what they mean . . . I’ll find it here somewhere . . .”
     
    N ADYA HAD MADE reservations: “I leave for Minneapolis and then Washington tomorrow at three o’clock. Micky goes at two o’clock and says he will ride me to the airport. What do you do?”
    “Probably go home tonight. I’ve got to hang around here for a while, though. The governor wants to talk to me about something. Want to meet a governor?”
    “Mmm. Well, yes.” A thin line appeared on her forehead. “Do you think he will take a picture with me? With my camera?”
    “Sure. He loves that kind of thing.”
     
    T HEY WATCHED THE tape again, and Lucas and Nadya made a statement for an assistant county attorney about their contacts with Burt Walther. At five o’clock, they caught the local evening news. The news was spectacular. Somebody had a good source with the Hibbing cops, and the on-the-scene reporter was standing outside of the yellow-taped Walther house. He ran down the whole story: the first killing at the harbor, the Russian agent at the bus depot, Reasons, Harbinson, and finally, the Walther murder-suicide.
    An interview with Jan Walther: “I don’t know what is happening. I don’t know what is going on. My ex-husband is gone, and I hear these rumors . . . All of this is crazy, and the police don’t tell me anything . . .”
    There was more from the neighbors in the street. One guy, whodidn’t seem to know much about the Walthers, tried to float the line about the Walthers being loners who stayed to themselves. He was immediately and thoroughly contradicted by all the Walthers’ neighbors and Burt Walthers’ fellow union members, who testified that he and Melodie were good people and that Burt was a stand-up guy. “All of this, the final echoes of the fall of the Soviet Union, and a spy ring, in our midst here in Minnesota, for almost seventy years,” the reporter finished portentously.
    Nadya said, “This is, how do you say . . .”
    “Bullshit,” Lucas said.
    “Mostly.”
     
    T HEY HAD TIME to kill. When the news was over, they checked out with Hopper and drove to Virginia, which was only a few miles from the dance the governor was attending. They rode north in comfortable quiet, chatting about this or that aspect of the case. Nadya said that if Walther were spotted anywhere within the Soviet sphere, she would personally see that Lucas was notified.
    “But I think he will not be. There is no sign that he speaks Russian, yes? I would think he would run to Canada. Maybe in the