Legends

In the gathering gloom, they made their way on foot down the white stripe in the middle of the road toward the two houses. Somewhere behind them a dog barked and a quarter of a mile farther along McGuffin Ridge other dogs began to howl. Through the porch windows of the second house, Martin could see the Amish family sitting down to supper at a long table lit by candles; everyone bowed their head as the bearded man at the head of the table recited a prayer. Martin checked the Tula-Tokarev to be sure the safety was off, then climbed silently onto the porch ahead of Stella and flattened himself against the clapboard to one side of the front door. He motioned for Stella to come up and knock.

Speaking English with a thick Russian accent, the man who lived in the house could be heard calling, “Is that you, Zaccheus? I told you to bring the meal over at eight. It is not civilized to sit down to supper at the hour you Americans eat.” The door opened and a gaunt man, his face masked by a thick beard with only his seaweed-green eyes visible, regarded Stella through the screen. The porch light was above and behind her and her face was lost in shadows.

“Who are you?” he asked. “What is it you’re doing out here this time of day?”

Stella breathed, “Priviet, Samat.”

Samat gasped. “Tyi,” he whispered. “Shto tyi zdes delaish?”

Stella gazed directly into Samat’s eyes. “It’s him,” she said.

Martin stepped into view, the antique Tula-Tokarev aimed at Samat’s solar plexus. Stella opened the screen door and Martin stepped across the sill. Samat, white spittle forming at one corner of his thin lips, backed into the room. He held his hands wide, palms up, almost in greeting. “Jozef, thanks to God, you are still among the living.” He started to pose questions in Russian. Martin realized that Jozef, like Stella and Samat, was a Russian speaker. He, Martin, could grasp words and phrases, sometimes the gist of a sentence, but an entire conversation in Russian was more than he could handle. He cut Samat off in mid sentence. “V Amerike, po-angliiski govoriat—in America, English is spoken.”

“What are you doing with her?” Samat looked from one to the other. “How is it possible you know each other?”

Stella seemed as dazed as Samat. “Don’t tell me you two know each other.”

“Our paths have crossed,” Martin told her.

Samat sank onto a couch. “How did you find me, Estelle?”

Martin pulled over a wooden chair and, setting it back to front, straddled it facing Samat, the handgun resting on the top slat in the high back and pointed at his chest. Settling onto a bar stool, Stella flipped the picture postcard at Samat’s feet. Retrieving it from the floor, he took in the photograph, then turned it over to look at the post office cancellation stamp. “Zaccheus was supposed to mail this from Rochester,” he whined. “The son of a bitch never went farther than Belfast. No wonder you found the two houses on McGuffin Ridge.” He looked intently at Martin, then at the postcard. “Jozef, you went back to Prigorodnaia. You saw my mother.”

“Why is he calling you Jozef?” demanded Stella, utterly mystified.

Martin kept his eyes locked on Samat’s. “I missed you by a day or two. The priest said you’d flown off in your helicopter after delivering the tiny cross carved from the wood of the True Cross.”

“Must you point that weapon at me?”

Stella answered for him. “He definitely must, if only to make me feel better.”

Mopping his brow with the back of a sleeve, Samat asked, “Jozef, how much do you remember?”

“All of it.” In his mind’s eye Martin could visualize the first black-and-white photograph the Russian interrogator in Moscow had shown him; an emaciated figure of a man, whom the Russian identified as Kafkor, Joseph, could be seen, stark naked with a crown of thorns on his head, wading toward shore from the row boat, the two guards in striped shirts following behind him. “I remember every detail. I remember being tortured for so long I lost count of time.”

Stella leaned forward. She was beginning to grasp why Martin considered himself to be imperfectly sane. “Who tortured you?” she asked in a whisper.

“The men in striped shirts,” Martin said. “The ex-paratroopers who guarded the dacha in Prigorodnaia, who brought me across the river …” He eyed Samat. “I remember the cigarettes being stubbed out on my body. I remember the large safety pin attached to a fragment of cardboard bearing the words The spy Kafkor being passed through the flesh between my shoulder blades. I remember being brought across the Lesnia with all the road workers gaping at me. I remember the guards prodding me up the incline to the crater that had been gouged into the spur of road.”

Samat started hyperventilating. When he could speak again, he said, “I beg you to believe me, Jozef, I would have saved you if it had been within the realm of possibility.”

“Instead you gave Kafkor the spy a last cigarette.”