The Big Law by Chuck Logan

Author:Chuck Logan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: United States, Witnesses - Protection - United States, Informers - United States, Informers, Fiction, Witnesses, Suspense, Adventure Fiction, Thrillers, Legal stories
ISBN: 9780061096877
Published: 1998-01-01T13:00:00+00:00

38

The St. Andrews Orthodox Church was tidy red brick with a white slat belfry culminating in the sectioned Kremlinesque dome. Atop that dome, the three-barred cross threw its long unusual shadow across a snow white cemetery lawn. Mature red pines sheltered the church. Arborvitae stood sentinel along the approach road and among the dark gravestones.

The grounds were deserted.

Garrison turned in and stopped the car across from the graveyard. The Russian cross was repeated in stubby stonework on the apexes of somber tombstones hewn in gray and black granite.

"A little touch of the Byzantine among the Holsteins and snowmobile rabble," chuckled Garrison. He swung his door open. "C'mon, stretch your legs."

They walked among the granite slabs: Liwisky. Born 1869.

Died 1933. Brusak. Zema. At intervals, drab indestructible plastic flowers jutted from the snow.

Garrison threaded among the graves, stopped, stooped and swept snow away from a headstone--Lorene Angland--1923-1996. He glanced up. "We all have mothers, Broker. This here's Keith's."

"Keith's Russian?"

"Half." Garrison pointed at the two larger grave markers that loomed over the headstone. "Her parents."

Boris and Laura Kagin. "Not like he embraced it. Never spoke the language. The pastor told me the only time Keith ever walked into this church was the day they buried his mother.

She grew up here. Moved to St. Paul and met Keith's dad."

Garrison pushed on his knees with his palms and stood up. "Buried in July, two years ago." He reached inside his trench coat and pulled out a black and white photograph.

The graveyard in summer. Broker imagined heat. Shiny shoe leather among tall blades of grass. Ants. Keith Angland stood among a crowd of mourners. Men with hands like sledgehammers protruding from the too-short sleeves of their dark suit coats. Women in black babushkas. Farmers from around here. Working people. A Russian enclave he never knew existed.

The two men Keith was talking to weren't local clod kickers. One was short, balding, his ample middle wrapped in a double-breasted suit. He was introducing Keith to a gaunt very well-dressed man with short cropped hair. The photographer had caught them shaking hands.

"Did you take this picture?" Broker asked Garrison.

"Hell no. I've got too much time and grade to be low crawling through the woods over there with a camera. We have young guys--and, ah girls--for that. But because of this meeting in this graveyard Keith Angland's name was put on a list."

"What list?"

"They call it the Russia Squad. Not real original, but there it is." Garrison tapped the picture. "The short guy you've heard of, Paulie Kagin, a distant cousin to Keith's mother.

Came all the way from Chicago for the funeral. And what's more natural than to introduce another old friend of the Chicago branch of the family. This guy shaking hands."

"Who is?"

"Victor Konic. Worth a couple hundred Kagins. He's an entrepreneur, I guess you'd call him. He runs a couple of banks, in Moscow and Chicago. He used to be a colonel in the KGB. Worked out of embassies and trade delegations, here, in the U.S. He specialized in recruiting American agents.

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