Legends

“Not asking you to talk about it,” Stella shot back, laughter in her voice. “Expecting you to listen to me talk about it. Expecting you to mumble uh-huh once in a while in quiet encouragement.”

Martin glanced at her and said, “Uh-huh.”

The Packard sped past the billboard advertising the one-eight-hundred number of the Virgin Mary. Half a mile beyond 305 they reached the junction with the signpost reading “White Creek Road” and “Friendship.” Martin turned onto White Creek and slowed down. When the highway dipped, he lost sight of the creek off to the right, only to spot it again when they topped a rise. In places the rippling water of White Creek reminded him of the Lesnia, which ran parallel to the spur that connected Prigorodnaia to the Moscow-Petersburg highway. The farmhouses along White Creek were set on the edge of the road to make it easier to get firewood and fodder in during the winter months when the ground was knee-deep in snow. The houses, spaced a quarter or a half mile apart, some of them with carpentry or broadloom workshops behind them and samples of what was being produced set out on raised platforms or porches, all had the electric meters and fuse boxes dangling off the clapboard walls. Amish going-to-market buggies could be seen in the garages, with cart mares grazing in adjoining fields. Occasionally children, dressed like little adults in their black suits or ankle-length dresses and bonnets and lace-up high shoes, would scamper out to the side of the road to stare shyly at the passing automobile.

The McGuffin Ridge turnoff loomed ahead and Martin swung off White Creek. McGuffin was a mirror image of White Creek—the road crossed rolling farm country, with farm houses built close to the road, all of them with electric meters and lengths of black cable hanging off the walls. Three and a half miles into McGuffin Ridge, Stella tightened her grip on Martin’s thigh.

“I see them,” he told her.

The Packard, moving even more slowly, came abreast of the two identical clapboard farm houses built very close to each other. Across the road, a weathered barn stood atop a small rise. A crude American eagle crafted out of metal jutted from the ornate weather vane atop the mansard roof. Two Amish men in bibbed dungarees were sawing planks behind the first of the two houses. An Amish woman sat on a rocker on the porch crocheting a patch quilt that spilled off near her feet. As the Packard passed the second house, Stella looked back and caught her breath.

“The electric meter is still attached to the house,” she said.

“It’s a perfect setup for somebody who wants to melt into the landscape,” Martin said. “He can get the Amish women next door to cook for him. If anybody comes nosing around when he’s out, the Amish men will tell him. You didn’t notice an automobile anywhere around the house?”

“No. Maybe he goes to town by buggy, like the Amish.”

“Not likely. No car, no Samat.”

“What do we do now?” Stella asked as Martin drove on down the road.

“We wait until Samat comes back. Then we’ll dust off your father’s antique Tula-Tokarev and go calling on him.”

Martin pulled the Packard off the road beyond the next rise and he and Stella walked back to a stand of maple on a butt of land. On the far side of the stand, it was possible to see the two houses and the barn across the road from them. Sitting on the ground facing each other with their backs against trees, they settled down to wait. Martin pulled Dante’s lucky white silk scarf from a pocket and knotted it around his neck.

“Where’d you get that?” Stella asked.

“Girl gave it to someone I know in Beirut. She said it would save his life if he wore it.”

“Did it?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to the girl?”

“She lost her life.”

Stella let that sink in. After awhile she said out of the blue, “Kastner was murdered, wasn’t he?”

Martin avoided her eye. “What makes you think that?”

“The FBI man, Felix Kiick, told me.”

“In so many words? He said your father didn’t die of a heart attack?”

“This Felix Kiick was a straight guy. Kastner trusted him. Me, too, I trusted him.”

“So did I,” Martin agreed.

“I thought about it a thousand times. I came at it from every possible direction.”

“Came at what?”

“His letter. The actual autopsy doesn’t mention the minuscule break in the skin near the shoulder blade. Mr. Kiick’s letter does.”

“He said it was compatible with an insect bite.”