‘Hi, my name is Donald Hopfield,’ Sean said in his best Texas accent, ‘I’m from the Evening Post. I’m calling about an article I’m putting together on the well-being of elderly residents in retirement homes, and I’m told your home is one of the best. I’d like to arrange an interview with some of your patrons if I may.’
It was cold out in the Russian wilderness; evening seemed to be coming in early. Sean shivered as he waited, satellite phone pressed to his ear. The response came, finally, with a hint of attitude. ‘We operate on a strict friends and family only basis, no reporters. We’ve had issues before with the press—you understand, I’m sure.’
‘Can I at least get some basic info, a few facts, a quote maybe?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Okay, thank you.’
‘Goodbye.’
Sean hung up and redialled.
‘Hello, I’m looking for some information on a Ruth Shaw, currently residing in the Indian Hills Home for the Aged, Nevada. Do you have anything on record?
‘One moment, please, sir.’
Hold music blared from the speaker, crackling and screeching. A minute passed, and then another, and Sean’s heart sank more with each one.
‘I’m sorry sir, it looks like that record has been made private by the account holder.’
Shit.
‘Thanks for your help.’
Sean made a few more phone calls, all with the same result.
‘No good?’ Aleks asked.
‘Nope. No one’s telling me anything.’
‘So what do we do now?’
‘There’s only one thing left: I have to bite the bullet and fly out to Nevada.’
Grigory laughed. ‘You won’t get anywhere near airport security, not with your record.’
‘I know. That’s why I’ve got to call in a favour…’
Again the phone rang, but this time Sean knew exactly who he’d be speaking to.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Sean here.’
‘Sean, how are you? How’s the time off going? We’ve got the empty ISS story coming along nicely this end — we’re looking to run it in the Sunday edition.’
‘Great. Look, I’ve managed to get some intel that verifies everything.’
‘Everything? What are you talking about?’
‘UV One.’
The phone hissed a faint static for several long seconds.
‘Sean, I thought I told you to drop that story.’
‘I know, but—’
‘Let me tell you something, Sean. I believe you. I have from the beginning. But we’re poking around some seriously high-level shit that we should not be getting involved with. I need you off this story immediately. I mean it, Sean.’
First, confusion filled Sean, then disappointment, but as he thought through what he had just heard, that disappointment turned into a feeling of betrayal, which became a hardened anger. ‘Oh, I see how this works,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘What did they do? Pay off your mortgage? Get you that holiday home you always wanted? Buy you a new car? Come on — what?’ Sean was yelling by the time he’d finished his sentence, and his voice echoed around the trees.
‘Sean, it’s not like that. Look — they threatened to close the paper. They said that if I didn’t cooperate, they’d… they’d ruin my career, everything I’ve worked for. I can’t let that happen.’
‘So you sold out?’
‘No, I didn’t sell—’
‘You sold your impartiality and your dignity to protect yourself. That’s what you did.’
A pause.
‘Okay, I did, but so did all the others. We’re fighting powers beyond our reckoning here; you would’ve done the same thing.’
Another pause. Sean couldn’t think of anything constructive or pleasant to say, so he said nothing.
‘Look, Sean, just because we aren’t running the story, doesn’t mean we can’t still work on it. We can build up a case and leak it, just like we did with the Ramirez story. Clean slate, job done.’
It was a compromise. Sean’s anger reduced from a bubbling apoplexy to a gentle simmer. ‘Okay. But I need you on my side.’
‘Of course. What can I get you? Name it and it’s yours.’
‘A plane out of here. No passports.’
‘Where to?’
‘Nevada.’
‘Jesus Christ, Sean, you don’t want much.’
‘You said anything.’
‘Okay, okay. I’ll arrange that for you. Call me early tomorrow for the details.’
‘I will. Thank you.’
‘And keep this under your hat.’
‘I always do.’
Back at Grigory’s house, Sean checked the computer in the vain hope that the search had dug something else up, but it hadn’t. On the plus side, the group of three had become four, and they sat together enjoying the thick-cut roast venison sandwiches that Grigory had made.
‘These are really good,’ Novitskiy said, tucking into his with ravenous appetite. ‘I’ve been eating hospital food for the last few days, and space food for forever before that, so this is a real treat.’
Grigory nodded his thanks for the compliment.
‘So you’re sure there’s nothing else you can do?’ Aleks asked, licking his fingers.
‘I’m running out of time,’ Sean said. ‘I have to go to Nevada. I’ll go it alone to avoid rousing suspicion. It’s hard not to draw attention to yourself when you’ve got three Russians following you around — particularly when one is as big as a house.’
The others laughed, except for Grigory who didn’t seem to follow that Sean was talking about him.
‘I’ll be leaving tomorrow,’ Sean continued. ‘It’ll be a hard slog, but hopefully I won’t be gone for long.’
‘We’ll stay here and keep searching online for anything more,’ Aleks said.
‘Good. Hopefully we can find out who this Ruth Shaw is and work out what the hell’s going on. Lets just pray she’s not dead.’
The next day before sunrise, after a call confirming the details, Sean made his way down to a small airfield east of Troitsk, boarded the plane that awaited him and set off towards the land of the free: America. He hadn’t expected a private jet, but this was ridiculous. The plane was small, really small, and it bounced along through the air in a way that seemed to defy the laws of physics.
‘We’re going to be crossing the Pacific, in this?’ Sean had said when he first saw the plane.
‘Oh no,’ the pilot, an old boy called Thomas McBride had said. ‘No, no, no. We’ll be crossing the Atlantic.’
Crossing the Pacific meant spending a few hundred miles over the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska, but crossing the Atlantic was a journey of about two thousand miles over freezing-cold ocean. It was a more dangerous choice, but it was quicker. According to Thomas, the small plane was fitted with large fuel tanks, which would make the crossing with ease. A happy side-effect, he’d said, was that as the fuel started burning off, the plane would become more stable. His confidence wasn’t rubbing off onto Sean, but there was no other option so they flew on in silence, the engine and wind noise — ‘She’s fast, but she’s noisy’ — too loud to talk over. They were going to stop off at a small airfield in Chantada, Spain, to brim the tanks before the trans-Atlantic trip, but even that was a good ten hours away.
From up in the sky, the sunrise was the most beautiful thing Sean had ever seen, a strip of azure blue growing from a ball of burning red. And McBride was right: as the fuel burned off and they climbed to thinner air, the plane stopped buffeting and sailed along without so much as a shimmy. Sean’s nerves settled and he began to enjoy the changing scenery below, watching dark greens grow light and then turn to dust as they ventured closer to the equator. It was a long ten hours, but the lack of conversation gave him a chance to think and reflect, so it wasn’t as bad as he’d thought. In fact he rather enjoyed it, feeling a small twinge of sadness as McBride pitched the nose down to land in Chantada. The coastline had just been visible through the haze, a strip of pale blue fringing the sky.