The Enemy

She shook her head.

“Where is he?”

She didn’t answer.

“My guess is he’s in the hospital,” Summer said. “Am I right?”

Elena just looked at her.

“Mr. Trifonov helped you,” I said. “Now you need to help him.”

She said nothing.

“If he wasn’t here doing something good, he was somewhere else doing something bad. That’s the situation. So I need to know which it was.”

She said nothing.

“This is very, very important,” I said.

“What if both things were bad?” she asked.

“The two things don’t compare,” I said. “Believe me. Not even close. So just tell me exactly what happened, OK?”

She didn’t answer right away. I moved a little deeper into the trailer. The television was tuned to PBS. The volume was low. I could smell cleaning products. Her husband had gone, and she had started a new phase in her life with a mop and a pail, and education on the tube.

“I don’t know exactly what happened,” she said. “Mr. Trifonov just came here and took my husband away.”

“When?”

“The night before last, at midnight. He said he had gotten a letter from my brother in Sofia.”

I nodded. At midnight. He left Bird at 2211, he was here an hour and forty-nine minutes later. One hundred miles, an average of dead-on fifty-five miles an hour, in a Corvette. I glanced at Summer. She nodded. Easy.

“How long was he here?”

“Just a few minutes. He was quite formal. He introduced himself, and he told me what he was doing, and why.”

“And that was it?”

She nodded.

“What was he wearing?”

“A leather jacket. Jeans.”

“What kind of car was he in?”

“I don’t know what it’s called. Red, and low. A sports car. It made a loud noise with its exhaust pipes.”

“OK,” I said. I nodded to Summer and we moved toward the door.

“Will my husband come back?” Elena said.

I pictured Trifonov as I had first seen him. Six-six, two-fifty, shaved head. The thick wrists, the big hands, the blazing eyes, and the five years with GRU.

“I seriously doubt it,” I said.

We climbed back into the Humvee. Summer started the engine. I turned around and spoke to Trifonov through the wire cage.

“Where did you leave the guy?” I asked him.

“On the road to Wilmington,” he said.

“When?”

“Three o’clock in the morning. I stopped at a pay phone and called 911. I didn’t give my name.”

“You spent three hours on him?”

He nodded, slowly. “I wanted to be sure he understood the message.”

Summer threaded her way out of the trailer park and turned west and then north toward Wilmington. We passed the tourist sign on the outskirts and went looking for the hospital. We found it a quarter-mile in. It looked like a reasonable place. It was mostly two-story and had an ambulance entrance with a broad canopy. Summer parked in a slot reserved for a doctor with an Indian name and we got out. I unlocked the rear door and let Trifonov out to join us. I took the cuffs off him. Put them in my pocket.

“What was the guy’s name?” I asked him.

“Pickles,” he said.

The three of us walked in together and I showed my special unit badge to the orderly behind the triage desk. Truth is, it confers no rights or privileges on me out in the civilian world, but the guy reacted like it gave me unlimited powers, which is what most civilians do when they see it.

“Early morning of January fifth,” I said. “Sometime after three o’clock, there was an admission here.”

The guy riffed through a stack of aluminum clipboards in a stand to his right. Pulled two of them partway out.

“Male or female?” he said.

“Male.”

He dropped one of the clipboards back in its slot. Pulled the other all the way out.

“John Doe,” he said. “Indigent male, no ID, no insurance, claims his name is Pickles. Cops found him on the road.”

“That’s our guy,” I said.

“Your guy?” he said, looking at my uniform.

“We might be able to take care of his bill,” I said.

He paid attention to that. Glanced at his stack of clipboards, like he was thinking, One down, two hundred to go.

“He’s in post-op,” he said. He pointed toward the elevator. “Second floor.”

He stayed behind his counter. We rode up, the three of us together. Got out and followed the signs to the post-op ward. A nurse at a station outside the door stopped us. I showed her my badge.

“Pickles,” I said.

She pointed us to a private room with a closed door, across the hallway.

“Five minutes only,” she said. “He’s very sick.”