Wild Fire (32 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I
got back in the car and handed Kate her coffee and the stack of local travel guides and pamphlets. “We need a place to stay, and not in Potsdam.”

“Maybe we should go to Canada and ask for asylum.”

“I’m glad you’re maintaining your sense of humor.”

“That wasn’t a joke.”

I sipped my coffee as I drove through downtown Potsdam, and Kate flipped through the printed material. I told her about my call to The Point. “Very soon, Griffith will ask the state and local police to begin a missing-persons search for us, if he hasn’t already. But I think we can keep ahead of him.”

Kate seemed not to hear me and studied the local literature. “This might be a good place to buy a house. Median house value is $66,400.”

“I’m just looking for a place to rent for the night, darling.”

“Median household income is only $30,782 a year. How much is your three-quarter tax-free disability?”

“Sweetheart, find a place to stay.”

“Okay . . .” She flipped through some brochures and said, “Here’s a nice-looking B and B—”

“No B and Bs.”

“It looks cute. And it looks isolated, if that’s what we’re after.”

“We are.”

“It’s on twenty-two acres of what used to be the St. Lawrence University riding stables.” She read, “‘It offers the privacy of a classic country estate.’”

“How much is this classic country estate?”

“Sixty-five dollars a night. But you can get a cottage for seventy-five.”

“That’s what we were paying at The Point for an hour.”

“Still paying.”

“Right. Which way?”

She glanced at the brochure and said, “We need to take U.S. Route 11.”

I was beginning my second circuit of downtown Potsdam and knew the place well by now. I drove to an intersection with lots of road markers, and soon we were on Route 11, heading out of town.

I said, “I knew guys on the Fugitive Squad who said that fugitives always seem to be having fun evading capture. It’s like, a real high, using your wits, being on the road—”

“I am
not
having fun. Are you?”

“Well . . . yeah. It’s a game. Games are fun.”

She didn’t comment on that and said, “This B and B is about ten miles from here, outside of Canton.”

“Canton is in Ohio.”

“Maybe they moved it, or maybe, John, there’s a Canton in New York.”

“We’ll see.” So we continued southwest on Route 11.

Kate was back to the chamber of commerce pamphlet. “There are a lot of colleges in the area, so the percentage of college-educated people is higher than the national average.”

“You’d freeze your college-educated butt off up here.”

“The average temperature in January is twenty-seven degrees. That’s not too bad.”

“Tell me that in January.”

“We could stay with your parents in Florida for the winter.”

“I’d rather freeze to death.” I looked at the dashboard clock, which said 11:47. I needed to call Dick Kearns as soon after noon as possible.

The road was well traveled and cut through open country, farms, and hamlets. We were definitely out of the Adirondack Mountain region and into the Great Lakes plains. Back there in God’s country, where the bears outnumbered the people and road traffic was light, Kate and I would attract attention and be remembered. Here, we blended in with the general population. As long as I kept my smart mouth shut.

The little Hyundai handled well, but I’d wanted a four-wheel drive in case we needed to crash the fence at Custer Hill at some point in time. Like tonight.

I asked Kate, “How much ammo do you have?”

She didn’t reply.

“Kate?”

“Two extra magazines in my briefcase.”

I had one magazine in my inside jacket pocket. I never carry enough ammo. Maybe if I had a briefcase or a purse, I’d carry an extra magazine. “Is there a sporting-goods store in Canton?”

Without answering, she flipped through a local guide, then said, “Here’s an ad for a sporting-goods store in Canton.”

“Good.”

We drove in silence, and within ten minutes, she said, “Turn here onto Route 68. Look for Wilma’s B and B.”

“Maybe we can open a B and B. You’ll cook and clean. I’ll shoot at the arriving guests.”

No reply.

I saw the sign for Wilma’s and pulled into a gravel drive that ran through a rolling field dotted with evergreens. Up ahead was a Cape Cod–style house with a covered porch.

I stopped the car, and we got out and stepped up to the porch. I looked back toward the highway, which was barely visible.

Kate asked me, “Okay?”

“Perfect. Looks like someplace where Bonnie and Clyde would stay.”

She rang the doorbell, and a minute later, a middle-aged gent opened the door and asked, “Can I help you?”

Kate said, “We’d like a room for the night.”

“Well, you came to the right place.”

That must be the local line. They probably said the same thing when you showed up at the hospital for an emergency appendectomy.

We went inside to a small office space in the foyer, where the proprietor, Ned, said, “You got your choice. Two rooms upstairs, or two cottages.”

I said, “We’ll take a cottage.”

He showed us two photos. “That’s Pond House—it’s on a pond. And this here’s the Field House.”

The Field House looked suspiciously like a house trailer. Kate said, “I think the Pond House. John?”

“Right.” I asked Ned, “Do you have outside phone lines in these cottages?”

He chuckled. “Sure do. Got electricity, too.”

I wanted to tell him we’d just come from a luxury resort without television or phone service, but he wouldn’t believe that.

He said, “Pond House has cable TV and VCR, and you got Internet hookup.”

“No kidding? Hey, do you have a laptop I could borrow or rent?”

“Got one you can use for free, if you get it back to me by six-thirty. That’s when the wife goes on eBay to check her auction. That woman buys junk, then she sells it back on eBay. She says she’s making money, but I don’t think so.”

If I wasn’t trying to keep a low profile, I’d tell him that she was probably fucking the UPS guy. But I just smiled.

Anyway, I paid cash for the room, which Ned appreciated, and he didn’t seem to need any ID or security deposit. He handed me his laptop, worth about a thousand bucks. I thought about asking him for a six-pack of beer while I was at it, but I didn’t want to impose on his hospitality.

Ned gave us a key to the cottage, some basic house rules, and directions to Pond House. “Just follow your nose.”

That would have put me in his kitchen, but I think he meant get in the car first.

Kate and I went to the car, and she said to me, “Do you see how nice and trusting people are here?”

“I seem to be missing my wallet.”

She ignored that and continued, “This is like where I was raised in Minnesota.”

“Well, they did a good job there. Let’s discuss relocation later.”

I followed my nose for a hundred yards, and we came to a little shingled cottage on a pond.

Kate took her briefcase, and we entered. It was a decent enough place, with a combination sitting room, bedroom, and kitchen decorated in what looked like eclectic eBay. Out back was an enclosed porch that overlooked the pond. Hopefully, there was an indoor bathroom somewhere.

Kate was inspecting the kitchen, and I asked her, “What’s in the fridge?”

She opened the door. “A lightbulb.”

“Call room service.”

She again ignored me and found the bathroom.

I picked up the phone on the writing desk and called Dick Kearns, collect.

He accepted the charges and asked me, “Why am I paying for this call?”

“I’m in jail, and I already used my free phone call to call my bookie.”

“Where are you? Who’s Wilma on my caller ID?”

“Ned’s wife. How’d you make out?”

“With what? Oh, Pushkin. Russian writer. Dead. No further information.”

Dick apparently felt the need to jerk me around in lieu of billing me. I said, “Come on, Dick. This is important.”

“First, I’m required to ask you, What is your clearance?”

“Five feet, eleven inches.”

“Unfortunately, Detective Corey, most of this stuff is not available to people under six feet, but I’ll just write here that you’ve applied for a six-foot clearance.”

The old joke out of the way, Dick said, “Okay. Ready to copy?”

“Hold on.” Kate had come out of the bathroom and pulled up a kitchen chair near the desk. I said to Dick, “I’m putting us on speaker.” I hit the Speaker button, hung up, and said, “Say hello to Kate.”

“Hi, Kate.”

“Hi, Dick.”

“I’m glad you’re there to keep this guy out of trouble.”

“I’m trying.”

“Did I ever tell you about the time—?”

“Dick,” I interrupted, “we’re on a tight schedule.”

“Yeah, me, too. Okay, ready?”

Kate got her notebook, and I took the pad and pencil from the desk and said, “Shoot.”

“All right. Putyov, Mikhail. Born in Kursk, Russia, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 18 May 1941. Father deceased 1943, Red Army captain, killed in action. Mother deceased, no further info. Subject attended . . . I can’t pronounce these fucking Russian words—”

“Spell them.”

“Right.” He filled us in on Mikhail Putyov’s education, and my eyes were glazing over until he said, “He graduated from Leningrad Polytechnic Institute with an advanced degree in nuclear physics. And later, he was associated with the . . . what the hell . . . ? Kurchatov? Yeah, Kurchatov Institute in Moscow . . . This says it’s a major Soviet nuclear facility, and this guy did research there.”

I didn’t comment, but Kate and I exchanged glances.

Dick asked, “Is that what you’re looking for?”

“What else?”

“Well, then he worked in a borscht factory, dropping little potatoes in the soup.”

“Dick—”

“He worked on the Soviet nuclear weapons program someplace in Siberia . . .” He spelled the name of some town or installation. “This stuff seems to be classified, and from 1979 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there’s not much info.”

“Okay . . . how reliable is this information?”

“Some of it I got directly from the FBI. Putyov is on their watch list. Most of it I got from Putyov’s own C.V., which is posted on the website where he works.”

“Where is that?”

“Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He’s a full professor there.”

“What’s he teach?”

“Not Russian history.”

“Right—”

“I also got some stuff on him online from academic journals. He’s well respected.”

“For what?”

“Nuclear shit. I don’t know. You want me to read this stuff?”

“I’ll check it out later. What else?”

“Well, I lucked out with the FBI field office in Boston. I found a guy there who I knew and he was willing to talk off-the-record. He told me that Putyov was brought here in 1995 as part of our post-Soviet resettling program to neutralize some of this free-floating nuke talent before these guys sold out to the highest bidder. He was set up in this teaching job at MIT as part of the resettling program.”

“They should have just shot him.”

Dick chuckled and said, “That would have been cheaper. They bought him an apartment in Cambridge, and he still draws a couple of bucks from Uncle Sam. In fact, I did a quick credit check on him, and he comes up triple A. No money or credit problems, which, as we know, eliminates half the motives for half the illegal shit that goes on in the world.”

“Right.” It was the other half that worried me; the kind of motive for unlawful activities that an oil billionaire might find irresistible. Like power. Glory. Revenge.

Kate asked, “Why is he on the FBI watch list?”

“This guy in Boston told me it was standard procedure for a person like that. The Bureau doesn’t have any negatives on him. But they require him to notify them when he leaves the area because, as the guy I spoke to said, Putyov is a walking brain full of things that he shouldn’t be sharing with any country that’s got an illegal nuke program in the works.”

I inquired, “Did Putyov notify the Boston office that he was leaving town?”

“I don’t know, and I didn’t ask. I was lucky enough to get this guy to talk to me off-the-record. But my questions were confined to background stuff.”

Kate asked, “Wife? Kids?”

“Two grown sons, also brought here as part of the resettling package. Nothing on them. Wife, Svetlana, doesn’t speak much English.”

Kate asked, “You spoke to her?”

“Yeah. I called the apartment. But before that, I called his office at MIT. His secretary, a Ms. Crabtree, said he e-mailed her over the weekend—Saturday—and wrote that he wouldn’t be back until Tuesday—today. But he’s not there yet, and no one has heard from him.” He added, “I guess he’s up there where you are. Right?”

“We don’t know.” Odd, I thought, that he’d canceled his 12:45 flight to Boston sometime last night, but hadn’t yet contacted his office or the airline to rebook on the next flight to Boston, which I recalled would be 9:55 tomorrow morning, and he wasn’t driving back to Boston in his rental car because it had been returned.

Kate asked, “Did his secretary sound concerned?”

“I couldn’t tell. She was professional, and I had no reason to push her. So I call Svetlana, and she says to me, ‘He not home.’ So I ask, ‘When he be home?’ and she says, ‘Tooosday,’ and I say, ‘Today is Tooosday,’ and she says, ‘Cool beak,’ and hangs up.”

“Cool beak?”

“Yeah, that’s Russian for call back. So I called back about twenty minutes ago and said, ‘I need to reach Mikhail. He won a million dollars in the Reader’s Digest sweepstakes, and he needs to claim his prize money,’ and she said, ‘Moony? Vhat moony?’ Anyway, I don’t think he’s home, or she’d have put him on to claim his money. So, is this guy missing?”

“Maybe. Anything else?”

“No. That’s the basic free introductory offer.”

“Did you get a cell-phone number for this guy?”

“I asked Svetlana and his secretary. They weren’t giving it out, but I’ll bet they called it a few times.”

“Right. How about the phone company? Or the FBI office in Boston?”