Legends

Martin started reading the covering letter the FBI had sent with the autopsy report. No trace of forced entry … even if there had been, Mr. Kastner had a charged Tula-Tokarev within arm’s reach … no evidence of a struggle … unfortunately not unusual for people confined, like Mr. Kastner was, to a wheelchair to experience blood clots originating in a leg that work their way up to the coronary arteries… minuscule break in the skin near a shoulder blade compatible with an insect bite … Feel free to call me on my unlisted number if you have any questions. Martin looked up. “Did you father go out often?”

“Kastner never left the house. He didn’t even go into the garden behind the house. He spent his time cleaning and oiling his collection of guns.”

“If he didn’t go out, how did he get bitten by an insect?”

“You aren’t convinced by the autopsy report?”

Martin glanced at the signature at the bottom of the letter, then stiffened.

Stella asked, “What’s not right?”

“I used to know a Felix Kiick who worked for the FBI.”

“There was another agent in charge of the Witness Protection Program when Kastner and I and Elena came over in 1988. We met him several times when we were living at the CIA safehouse in Tyson’s Corner outside of Washington. The agent retired in 1995—he came to President Street to introduce the person who was taking his place. That’s how we met Mr. Kiick.”

“Short? Stumpy? With a low center of gravity that makes him look like an NFL linesman? Nice, open face?”

“That’s the one. Do you know him?”

“Our paths crossed several times when I worked for the CIA. I knew him as a counterterrorism specialist, but they probably booted him upstairs at the end of his career. The Witness Protection people are usually running in place, waiting for retirement to catch up with them.” Martin thought of something. “When I met your father, he mentioned that he’d gotten my name from someone in Washington. Was that someone Felix Kiick?”

Stella could see that the question was bothering Martin. She considered carefully before answering. “Kastner called the unlisted number in Washington we’d been given in case we needed anything. Now that you mention it, it was Mr. Kiick who said there was a good detective living not far from us. He recommended you, but he told Kastner not to tell you where he’d gotten your name.”

Martin seemed to be focusing on horizons that Stella couldn’t see. “So it was no accident that I wound up walking back the cat on Samat Ugor-Zhilov.”

Stella said, “I brought the souvenir with the pearl handle.” She opened the satchel and tilted it so Martin could see her father’s Tula-Tokarev. “It’s an antique, but it still shoots. It was Kastner’s favorite handgun. From time to time he went down to the basement and fired it into a carton filled with roof insulation, then he’d recover the bullet and examine it under a low-powered microscope. I brought bullets for it, too.”

Stella touched her lips to the coffee but found it had grown cold. Martin signaled for refills. The waiter, a teenage boy with long sideburns and a silver stud in the side of a nostril, brought two steaming mugs of coffee and took away the old ones. Stella said, “What about Samat?”

“I think I know how to locate him.”

“Quit.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Quit. Forget Samat. Concentrate on locating me.”

“What about your father?”

“What’s Kastner have to do with your deciding to quit?”

“He hired me. He’s dead, which means he can’t unhire me.” Martin reached again for her wrist but she snatched it back. “I haven’t come all this way to quit now,” he insisted.

“You’re crazy.” She noticed the expression on his face. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. You’re not crazy crazy. You are imperfectly sane. Admit it, your behavior is sometimes borderline. In your shoes anyone else would shrug and get on with his life.”

“You mean his lives.”

Martin reached again for her wrist. This time she didn’t pull away. He fingered her watch and began absently winding the stem. “Samat’s in America,” he said.

“How do you know that?”