Page 42 of Cold Target

489 = IVY.

She hit send.

Then she waited.

Joe had been driving for three hours.

The Upper Peninsula was dark and empty. The snow had stopped an hour ago but the roads were still bad. Ice underneath, powder on top. The truck handled it fine but Joe kept his speed down. No point getting there fast if he ended up in a ditch.

He'd seen maybe five other vehicles since leaving the hotel. Two semis. A sheriff's cruiser. A pickup truck with a plow blade. One sedan with out-of-state plates, driving too fast, fishtailing slightly.

No gas stations. No rest stops. Nothing but trees and darkness and the occasional road sign promising a town that never seemed to arrive.

His pager went off.

The vibration was sharp against his hip. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen.

489.

Ivy.

She wouldn't page him at midnight unless it was important. And she wouldn't use their code unless it was something she couldn't say over a regular line.

He needed a phone.

He drove for another twenty minutes before he saw lights. A gas station, finally. Small. Old. The kind that still had mechanical pumps and a handwritten sign advertising night crawlers and live bait.

Joe pulled in. The lot was empty except for one other vehicle—a rusted Bronco with a camper shell.

He parked and got out. The cold hit him immediately. It was the kind of chill that made your lungs hurt.

The payphone was mounted on the outside wall, under a flickering light. Joe fed in coins and dialed Ivy's number from memory.

She picked up on the first ring.

"Joe."

"Got your page," he said. "What's wrong?"

"I found something but there’s a lot of guesswork on my part."

Joe waited.

"I definitely think it’s a name," Ivy said. "Not a weapon or a location. A person."

"Who?"

"A Russian physicist. Dmitri Volkov. He disappeared sometime around 1987. Nobody’s seen him since."

Joe processed that. "Okay. What does that have to do with what I’m working on?"

"A guy like Volkov probably didn’t work at some random facility, Joe.”

The line was silent for a moment. Just static and the sound of their breathing.

Then Ivy spoke again, and her words landed like a hammer.

"He probably worked in their nuclear weapons program."