Hidden Prey

is probably senile. But for a man who is senile, he did an excellent debriefing.”
    Lucas looked at the house, where the old man had taken up his post in the picture window, staring out at the lawn. “No.”
    “I think no also. But . . .” She shrugged. “I see a chess magazine in his bookcase.”
    “A chess magazine.”
    “This is about the contest between the world champion of chess and the IBM computer. This contest was in the summer, so the magazine is new.”
    “Huh. You think he bitch-slapped me?”
    “What?”
    “Never mind. I’ll leave Andreno,” Lucas said. “Couple hours can’t hurt.”
    “So now . . .”
    “Back to the genealogies. We’ve got the rest of the afternoon. Pick out a new target . . .”
    “One more thing—this boat that his parents came on. I have heard of such things,” Nadya said. “Societies that gathered people together, and they rented a boat to come to a certain, em, colony in the United States that was purchased in advance. Many of these were swindles and the land would be poor or too cold and the boat would be destroyed and the people would go somewhere else.”
    Lucas nodded. “The point being that this might not be a cover story for illegal entry. It could be real.”
    “Doesn’t feel real; it’s too unlikely. But . . . there is a ten percent chance that this hospital problem is innocent.”
    “You believe in coincidence.”
    “As long as there are not too many.”
    “There are getting to be too many,” Lucas said.
    “I think so, but I am not certain,” Nadya said. “Let’s find a new target. What about this Roger person, the old man’s grandson?”
    “My exact thought.”

     22 
    G RANDPA WATCHED THEM GO , and without turning to his wife said, “They know all of us. I’ll have to do the rescue.”
    She said nothing; stared sightlessly at the TV screen. He turned, stepped over to her, put his hand on her head: “We had a really good run, and we can still save the others. I’m going to start it.”
    She seemed to nod under his hand, and he bent, kissed her forehead, glanced at his watch, went to the kitchen, opened a drawer, and took out the walkie-talkie. A van was parked up the street, one that he hadn’t seen before, but not unlike one that had been parked across the street the day before—they both had dark windows, and he could feel the surveillance.
    Was the house bugged as well? He thought not, because for the last three days he’d been putting telltales on the doors before he went out, a hair stuck on with a little spit, and they’d been undisturbed.
    Still, there was no point in taking chances. He carried thewalkie-talkie to the front hall closet, climbed inside, sat down, pulled the closet door shut, and beeped Carl. Carl, he thought, should be finishing lunch.
    Two minutes later, he got a patch of static, and then, “Yeah. I’m bringing the two-by-fours.”
    “The inspectors came by,” Grandpa said. “We passed, but they’ll be back. I need to fix the door. You’ll have to pick me up.”
    “What time?”
    “Eight o’clock.”
    “Eight? Can it wait that long?”
    “It’ll have to. I’m waiting for a guy to get off work.”
    “Okay. I’ll see you then.”
    “I’ve got a watch; call me ahead of time, though.”
    “Okay.”
    “I’m out.”
    “Out.”
    Simple voice code, a crude effort to sound like a construction site. The key was the time: Carl would add three hours to the specified time, and would come by at eleven o’clock.
     
    A LONG WAIT . Melodie was fine in her wheelchair. Grandpa went to the kitchen, pulled out a silverware drawer, nearly dropped it, put it on the kitchen table, and felt back under the sink until he found the pistol.
    The gun was old, in a way—it had been made in the 1930s—but guns hadn’t changed much. He pulled the magazine, looked at the shiny new shells stacked inside, put the magazine aside and dry-fired the pistol a hundred times, aiming at a can of soup on the kitchen counter.
    There was no need for great accuracy: he’d be shooting from four feet. Carl had cleaned the gun after the last use, and the cleaning oil was pungent and not at all unpleasant. The gun felt just fine; nose heavy, because of the suppressor, but he was used to the weight.
    After a hundred practice snaps, he reseated the clip and put the gun back. His hand touched the second pistol, the one they’d taken from the Russian in the parking lot outside the bus museum. That was a piece of