Jeffery Deaver - Ice Cold

There were fewer photos and newspaper clippings on the other half of the wall. Most of them were in Russian. A few headshots of a Soviet military officer. The photos looked like they’d been photocopied from library books.

“And this is…?” he asked.

“General Dmitri A. Kunayev, head of the PVO Strany district, where my dad was shot down in Soviet Armenia.”

“The PVO who?”

“It’s an acronym,” Richardson explained. “Stands for Protivo-vozdushnaya Oborona Strany , which translates into Anti-Air Defense of the Nation. It took me ten years to find out, but he was the son-of-a-bitch who ordered four MiG-17s to shoot down an unarmed surveillance craft.”

A gust of wind splattered rain against the room’s window. Henry felt colder. He turned to Richardson and said, “You got to be kidding me.”

The handcuffed man shook his head. “Vladimir Polowski. Vermont dairy farmer maybe. But he was really Kunayev. And he murdered my dad.”

“Uh huh. So poor old Vlad Polowski was actually a Soviet general living under an assumed name right here in Westbury, Massachusetts? Do I have that right?”

“Exactly.”

“You do all this… research… on your own?”

“Wasn’t easy,” Richardson said, a tinge of pride in his voice. “Took a hell of a lot of digging. I found a little news clip in the International Herald Tribune , back in 1971. Said a General Kunayev had been killed in a car accident in Tehran while on a military exchange mission. Body burned in the wreckage. I figured, well, at least the old bastard met a fiery death. Until last year, when I went to the Big E.”

“You’re talking about the Big E Agriculture Fair, in West Springfield? That Big E?”

“Yep. I was staffing the John Deere booth. Just doing my job… and then I saw him walk by. The son-of-a-bitch walked right by me… That big ole birthmark—Christ, I nearly jumped him right then and there and strangled him.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because I wanted to make absolutely sure of it, that’s why. I followed him around for a while, followed him right out to the parking lot. And then—then I wimped out. I didn’t have the guts to do it. Not yet, anyway.”

Henry glanced again at the photos. An ugly birthmark on the man’s face, a long dark blotch that looked sort of like a scythe or a scimitar. If you took that general and aged him and slapped a handlebar moustache on the face…

Vladimir Polowski. Yep, that was him, all right.

“So how’d you make sure?”

“Wrote down his license plate number. Made a bunch of calls and eventually turned up his name and address. Kept on digging. His records said he’d been a dairy farmer in Strafford, Vermont, before moving to Cape Cod. So I took some vacation time, and went to Vermont, and you know what I found out?”

“What’s that?”

“Absolutely nothing. Nobody in Strafford remembered him. Nobody remembered any Polish émigré who owned a dairy farm around there. No one.”

“Okay.” His handheld radio at his side crackled to life: “Chief? Chief?”

“So then I got it,” Richardson said. “That alleged car crash in Tehran was a cover story engineered by the U.S. government. Kunayev didn’t die. He defected. The CIA must have debriefed him and resettled him with what they call a ‘legend’—a fake biography and identity. It was a perfect cover. Except for one thing.”

“What?”

“One obsessed John Deere salesman.”

Henry stepped outside. The air had gotten colder. All the slushy crap on the ground would soon be freezing into deadly ice. He picked up his handheld.

“Jeff, go.”

Another burst of static, and he made out “… They’re here.”

“What’s that? Repeat, Jeff.”

“Chief, I said, the State Police are here. Along with the medical examiner.”

“How about the D.A.?”

“He’s about half-hour out still. They’re processing the scene now… but there’s a Detective Peyton from the State Police, wants to see you and the suspect. Are you at the station?”

“No,” Henry said. “I’m at the Westbury Motel. Send him over here, okay?”

“You got it.”

For the next ten minutes he stood quietly in the motel room, with an equally quiet Ray Richardson. His kept on glancing back at the wall, wondering what kind of demons would possess someone to go so far, to do so much. To risk so much. To go happily to prison for the sake of long-delayed vengeance.

Finally he turned to Ray and said, “Let’s say you’re right, and this old dairy farmer really was a Soviet defector living here under deep cover. Let’s just say for the sake of argument you’re right. Don’t you think the guy deserves at least an arrest and a trial?”

Ray shrugged. “You think they’d ever let this go to trial? No way, José. I even called the FBI. Told them about this guy. No one wanted to take my call. They all but hung up on me. Finally I got through to this assistant special agent in charge of something or other. Know what he told me?”

Henry shook his head.

“Guy said, ‘Just live your life.’ But I couldn’t. Thing had got its hooks in me. The idea that the guy who ordered my dad to be killed was just living the good life on Cape Cod. My wife left me six months ago. Thought I was unhinged.”

“Huh.”

“Then a couple weeks back I heard about all those poor people on the Korean airliner who got shot down over Japan? Like two hundred some? Know what I’m talking about?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“And that kinda flipped a switch in me. Those people—they were innocent. They just got caught in the crossfire. Just like my dad.”

“I see.”

“That’s why I waited for you. Now there has to be a trial.”

Outside, a car door slammed. Henry looked outside. A big black official-looking Chevy Suburban with tinted windows pulled in next to his cruiser.

A short, squat man knocked at the open door, and Henry let him in. The man was wearing a soaked tweed cap and a black cloth raincoat, gray slacks, and black shoes. He held out a leather wallet with his photo and badge from the Massachusetts State Police.

“Warren Peyton, State Police Troop D,” the man said. “You’re Chief Silva?”

“I am,” he said. “You made good time.”

“We’re the state. We get the Suburbans.” He gave a perfunctory smile. “So what do we got?”

Henry spent the next fifteen minutes describing the events of the evening so far, beginning with the phone call from the county dispatch, right up to Ray’s remark about “crossfire.” The state police detective nodded and grunted and took a lot of notes. He had a somber look about him and seemed older than the usual Statie who might have the bad luck of catching a call like this in the middle of the night. “Okay, tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t I drive this gentleman over to your station so you can get him booked and all the paperwork taken care of?”

“Makes no difference to me who takes him over.”

“Since he’s waived his rights, maybe he’ll tell me a story on the way over that makes a little more sense.”

“He’s all yours.” The Staties were going to bigfoot him anyway. They took over most homicide cases in Massachusetts. His job was done. And frankly, Henry was relieved to be just about rid of the man and the whole bizarre story.

“How about I go with the chief instead?” said Ray Richardson.

Peyton shook his head and smiled and took Richardson’s elbow gently. He guided him out to the dimly lit parking lot and into the black Suburban. It had a couple of whip antennas in the back.

Another big black Suburban pulled up the steep drive.

“C triple-S,” the detective said. He meant the state police Crime Scene Services Section.