Craig Johnson - A Serpent's Tooth - A Walt Longmire Mystery

The Bear carefully returned the photo to the wall. “He was the only white man that ever outran me.”

“Fort Bragg?”

Henry nodded. “Twice our age, and he could run all of us into the ground.” The Bear glanced back at the photo, the man’s features looking like they’d been carved from soapstone. “There were rumors that he was a Nazi.”

Donna laughed. “He was from Finland.” Johnson settled back into her chair and stared at her lap. “Lauri Torni. He fought against the Soviets when they invaded Finland; then when the Germans invaded Russia, the Finns went after what they’d lost to the Russians.” She looked up at us. “The friend of a friend is a friend, the friend of an enemy . . .” She didn’t have to finish the proverb. “Anyway, after the war, ‘Wild Bill’ Donavan, who knew what Torni was worth, got him and shipped him off to North Carolina as a citizen and second lieutenant with a new name, Larry Thorne.” She smiled at the Cheyenne Nation. “And that’s probably where you met him.”

Henry grinned at the thought of the man and then stiffened. “He was the first Study and Observations Group personnel to be listed as MIA.”

It was the first time I’d heard the Bear use the proper name of his old outfit, SOG; evidently he was feeling comfortable with the reclusive ranch woman.

“Hey, Donna?”

She turned to look at me.

“I’ve never asked you what it was you did with the government, and to be honest, I really don’t want to know—but it’s getting late, I don’t want to keep you till tomorrow, and I’ve got a situation on my hands that I need some help with.”

She adjusted her glasses, looking for the entire world like some Harvard don. “Does this concern the My Friend Flicka boy and that man?”

“As a matter of fact, it does.”

She nodded, and I could see her weighing the options. “How can I help?”

I explained the situation, indicating that my only interest was in finding out what was going on in my county concerning the boy, a missing woman, and a bad feeling I had about the whole Apostolic Church of the Lamb of God.

She glanced at a fancy computer monitor and the stacks of papers she’d casually covered up, and all I could think was that these might not be the first things Donna Johnson had been responsible for covering up. “Why don’t you show me what you’ve got?”

I reached in my jacket and pulled out the folded papers that Saizarbitoria had given me—the Basquo had pleaded with us to take him, but I’d told him that if Donna had to kill us after giving us the information we’d requested, it might be better if he went home to his wife and child.

Johnson took them, stared at the photo first, and then flipped through the pages. “Who collated this information?”

“My deputy, Saizarbitoria.”

Donna studied the papers, her eyes sliding over them like fingers sweeping keys on a piano. “He’s very capable, this young man.”

I nodded and compressed my lips. “Does that mean you have to kill us?”

Donna smiled. “Not yet.” She looked at me. “If I do this for you, you mustn’t let anyone know that I’ve done it—anyone at all. I’m very serious.”

I kept my eyes locked on hers, just to demonstrate the severity of the promise. “Agreed.”

She glanced at the Bear, who crossed his heart. “Honest Injun.”

She smiled and gave a definitive nod of her head. “Well, it will take a little time, so why don’t you gentlemen adjourn to the kitchen for a few moments—have you eaten?”

• • •

“Antelope ravioli; I made it myself.”

Sitting around the counter in the kitchen of the Lazy D-W, I had to admit that the impromptu meal was one of the finest I’d ever eaten. “Wally, thanks. You really didn’t have to feed us.”

“Oh, I don’t mind; it gives me something to do. Gardening is over, and things get a little boring this far out from town.”

I studied him, enjoying the camaraderie of being in his kitchen. Donna’s family had had the ranch for as long as there had been a county, and as near as I could remember, they had both known my late wife. A lot of men would’ve had a problem being Donna’s husband on a lot of counts, but Wally seemed to wear the mantle easily. “Nonetheless, it’s kind of you to take us in on such short notice.”

Henry scraped the remains of the ravioli from his plate and licked his fork clean. “This was delicious. I could not have done better myself—antelope is tricky.”

I sipped the fancy beer that Wally had poured out of a growler and smiled at him. “That was a supreme compliment.”

He sipped his wine and studied the Bear and then me. “I assume that all this has to do with that young man Cord?”

I was surprised he remembered his name, but then they probably didn’t get that many horse thieves around these parts. “Tucked in and sleeping at the jail.”

“Is he still fixated on My Friend Flicka ?”

“He and his friend were watching it again when we left.”

He nodded. “The crazy one that thinks he’s Orrin Porter Rockwell?”

“Yep.”

“It’s an interesting life you lead, Walt.”

“I meet a lot of people.” I set my stylish Royal Pint glass down. “So is your wife . . .” I glanced around, just to impress on him and the Cheyenne Nation that I could be covert, too. “Is she really writing a book?”

“God help us.” He rested an elbow on the cherry counter. “For the last ten years.”

The Bear interrupted. “Tell her not to feel bad. I cannot type either.”

He laughed. “It’s the Company censors; the last time she turned in six hundred and five pages, they returned two hundred and two.”

“Ouch.”

“But she’s decided to attack the problem from a different angle.”

“How so?”

“She’s writing it as a spy thriller.”

“Fiction?”

“Yes. She’s just changing all the names to protect the not-so-innocent. Most of the fact-checkers at Quantico are so young they won’t have any idea what Donna’s writing about, but it should send a shiver through the intelligence community.”

A voice sounded from behind us. “Are you telling all my secrets, hon?”

He tipped the bottle of Domaine de la Solitude and poured her a glass. “Just the ones I know, dear.”

Donna sat on the stool beside him—the file on Dale “Airdale” Tisdale that she put on the counter had grown. “I have no secrets from you.”

“Of course not, dear.” He turned to look at me. “The benefits of marrying a spy are that you always know that they’re not telling the truth.”

Donna made pointed eye contact with Henry and me. “I was not a spy, I was an administrator, a facilitator who made phone calls and got things done.”

I sipped my fancy beer. “Donna, as long as you don’t break the speed limit too much or write bad checks here in the county, I don’t care what you did—and I hope your book is a best seller.” I pointed at the stack of papers. “Is that the international man of mystery?”

She placed a steady hand on the pile and looked at me. “Are you sure you really want to see this?”

I waited a second before replying. “Why do you say that?”

She looked pained. “Walt, there are things that are better not known—I mean, isn’t it enough that you know who he is and that he’s just a crazy old guy now?”

I glanced around as if the answer was obvious. “No.”

She nodded. “Whenever a field agent is involved with an operation, he’s given a new name, history, everything. These cover stories are called Legends, and the problem is that after an extended period of activity and a bunch of Legends, some individuals exhibit marked psychological aberrations—they become the Legend so well that they forget who they are, like an actor who becomes the role forever. Robert Littell wrote a really good book about one of them—fiction, of course.” She smiled.