Hidden Prey

what’s going on. I can make a phone call tonight—I might be able to find something out.”
    “Call who?”
    “A man in Moscow. If he’s still alive. He should be, he’d only be, let’ssee . . .” He did some quick calculation, moving his lips. “ . . . about seventy. He might be able to tell us something.”
    “What if he can’t?”
    “The other possibility is that we simply sow confusion. We deliberately confuse everything, so that nobody knows what is coming from where. Except us. My Russian is still good; if we make the right phone calls, make the right threats, we could perhaps create a charade, an illusion, that this is all gang warfare.”
    “Boy.” Carl was impressed, both by the analysis, and the fact that Grandpa could call a man in Moscow. “When would you make the call?”
    Grandpa looked at his watch. “Right now. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon in Moscow.”
    “I’ve got to be at school in an hour.”
    “That’s enough time. If my friend’s number doesn’t work, I don’t know how I’d find him.”
     
    T HEY WENT OUT to a Wal-Mart, left Grandma in the car. Grandpa used a phone card from a public phone, looked at a piece of paper as he punched in a long phone number, then the card number. There was a wait, and then he blurted something in Russian, smiled at Carl, gave him a thumbs up, and then turned his back, hunched over the phone for privacy, and started talking. Carl knew no Russian; he stood with his hands in his pockets, waiting.
    Grandpa was on the phone for fifteen minutes, doing a little talking, but mostly listening. When he was done, he hung up, looked at the phone for a few seconds, then turned to Carl and said, “Let’s go.”
    On the way out, when they were clear of other customers, he said, “I love to hear the old language. You should learn to speak Russian. It’s much more musical than English. A beautiful language.”
    “Maybe when I go to college,” Carl said. “What’d the man say?”
    “Bad news, I’m afraid. He says the department would do anything to find Oleshev’s killer. Nobody cares about Oleshev exept Maksim Oleshev, but many people care about Maksim. There is a struggle going on in Moscow, a fight over the oil, and Maksim is a big man in the fight. Putin wants him; and Maksim wants the killer.”
    “That puts me in a tough spot,” Carl said, grinning and wrinkling his nose.
    “It’s not funny,” Grandpa said. “It puts all of us in a tough spot. My friend says that they would throw all of us overboard if it would make Maksim happy. Except . . . he says that they don’t know exactly who we are. That is why Nadya Kalin is here.”
    “And we can trust him? Your friend.”
    Grandpa smiled and tipped his head. “Not exactly . . . trust. But. He is with the party. He is like me, he is a believer. I think he was as happy to hear from me as I was to talk to him—for him to know that there are still people out here, working.”
    Carl looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get going, get you home and get to school.”
    “And I’ve got to think,” Grandpa said. “It’s like a chess problem, with so many pieces. But you should be ready, because one way or another, we have to act. Don’t doubt it.”
    “I’m ready,” Carl said. “Should I come over this afternoon?”
    “Yes . . . Maybe I’ll have figured out something. This Kalin, and her shadow . . . they are a problem.”
     
    O N THE WAY back to Grandpa’s, Grandpa said, “We need some way to communicate. Everything can be tapped, now. Cell phones, everything. We could work out a routine where you come over four or five times a day. Before school, at lunch, after school . . . but in an emergency . . .”
    “Walkie-talkies,” Carl said.
    “What?” Grandpa focused on him.
    “When I went hunting with the Wolfes last year, old man Wolfe gave us walkie-talkies,” Carl said. “Everybody had one—he uses them with his construction company. You couldn’t call me if I was down in Duluth . . . but around town here, you could. He said they’ve got a range of six or seven miles, lots of privacy channels, everything, so they’d cover the town. But they’re expensive.”
    “How much?”
    “Maybe six hundred dollars for two—I think that’s what Jimmy Wolfe said. You can get them at Radio Shack.”
    “Get two,” Grandpa said.
    “Where’m I gonna . . .”
    “I’ve got funds,” Grandpa said.
    “You got six hundred . . .”
    “More