Control frowned at the ledger book. It was hand-written, half in fading pencil, in four or five different hands, none of them neat. But nothing he found was even remotely close to what he was looking for.

"You don't look happy, sir," the short, round man behind the counter said. "Something I can help with?"

"Oh. Maybe." Control twisted his yellow bow tie. "I'm looking for a birth record, and I can't seem to find it."

The man eased the ledger book back across the counter. "You got a birth date?"

"August 15, 1960."

"Well, you got the right book there. What's the name?"

"Romanov. Lily Romanov."

The man scanned the page quickly. "Nope, I don't see it here."

"Me, either," Control said, trying to keep his exasperation out of his voice.

"Let's look before and after. Sometimes babies come in the middle of the night, they don't get recorded quite right."

Control had already scanned the days before and after the 15th, but he waited while the clerk did the same. "Nope. Don't see it." The man closed the book. "You got a city?"

"Black River."

The man moved down the counter to a shelf full of badly mixed books and files. "Black River, 1960 …oh, well, that might be your problem then. The twister."

"The twister."

"Uh-huh. Fall of 1960. I remember it because I was in the National Guard then and they called us up to help the clean up. Big tornado came through, wiped out half the town. Four people dead."

"That's terrible."

"Could have been a lot worse. Homecoming dance was that night, and the damn twister just cut right around the high school. Course, then it went and slammed into the hospital."

Control frowned. "What's that got to do with the birth records?"

"Well, see, the records are kept at the hospital. Even the home birth ones, they report to the hospital – a'course they don't do much of that any more, except in emergencies." He waved his hand, indicated the ledger books. "Then every so often the hospitals sends their records up here for recording. Nowadays they have forms, send 'em up every week, but back then they only came up when they had more than a dozen. Place like Black River, that could have been six months or more. And a'course, the tornado wiped out all those records."

"So … how would a person born then get a birth certificate?"

"Well … we aren't supposed to do it, but … if the doctor or the midwife called up here and asked, we'd just probably make one up for the person, send it out to the doctor for a signature. Like I said, there can't be more than a dozen or so. You're not gonna repeat that, though, are you? There's probably some big court procedure we're supposed to go through."

Control shook his head. "No, doesn't matter any to me. Thanks for your help."

"Doesn't seem like I was much help."

He got back in the car and drove, southwest from the country seat toward Black River. It was pretty country, he thought as he drove. Hilly and green, two-lane roads, lots of curves. The houses were spread out and every one had its own barn. There were pastures of sheep and cows and a scattering of horses. The heartland, he mused.

It all made him itch for his concrete city.

The road met up with a stream and ran beside it, crossing it with bridges now and then. Black River, the signs at the bridges proclaimed, though Control could barely credit this as a river. It was ten feet wide and shallow enough to wade across. There might be trout to be had there; Kostmayer would know. As he drove further, the stream widened and flattened, and tiny white rapids appeared. As he rounded a corner, Control found himself at the edge of a tiny town, which the green and white sign told him was White Rushin.

Control swerved the car off the road and parked on the shoulder at the foot of the sign.

White Rushin. Named after the river's rapids, no doubt. Not White Russian, the way he'd always heard it in his mind, but White Rushin. Lily Romanov, his White Russian. He'd always assumed that she'd had somewhat cruel but history-minded parents. But that wasn't her name at all, at least not the name she was born with. She'd given it to herself, he'd almost bet on that now. Her forays to the library; why had he assumed she'd only been reading fiction? White Rushin, indeed. He ought to be damn glad she hadn't named herself Anastasia.

He sat back and laughed. You know so much about other people, he thought, and you don't even know your lover's real name. It was funny, and also bitter.

The ghost of Becky Baker's warning came back to him. 'Don't chase the White Russian. It's darker than you know, and it will break your heart.' Control sobered, looking at the sign again. Becky was right. He could feel in his gut that he should turn the car around and go back to New York. He did not want to know what he was going to learn in Black River. But he'd come too far for that now. Knowing that she'd lied about her name, he had to know all of it.

Reluctantly, apprehensive, he pulled back onto the road.

Black River was the next town down the road. It was a little larger than White Rushin, with about ten blocks worth of downtown, a couple square miles of residential area, four stoplights. Control drove through the whole town, looking around. Somehow he'd expected it to be more like Oz. It was just a town. There was a funny little park at the north end of town, with a granite monument in the center of it, and a big, casual cemetery at the sound end.

Control found a likely looking diner and went in. He sat at the counter, ordered coffee and the breakfast special – served all day – and studied his clipboard, frowning and tsk'ing over it. As expected, the waitress couldn't resist. "You look like you got problems, friend."

He glanced up at her and smiled. She was a plumpish woman, tall, maybe his age. "Oh. Oh, no, not really. I just, I'm having trouble finding the records I need."

This answer confused her. "There's a record store up in Shallow Creek," she said uncertainly.

Control looked confused back, then laughed. "No, no, not that kind of record. I'm, oh, I'm with American Life Insurance Company. We had a policy holder who is unfortunately deceased now, and I'm trying to locate his beneficiary, but I'm just not having any luck."

"Oh." The waitress looked interested. "Is it a lot of money?"

"It's ten thousand dollars," Control answered. Her expression told him that was the right amount; more would have been too unlikely, less too uninteresting. "Not a huge amount to some, I suppose, but I'm sure Miss, er, Miss Romanov would like to have it."

"Romanov?"

"Yes. Is there anyone by that name here? Maybe I could locate a relative?"

"Noooo, not that I know of. Romanov, huh? Sounds Russian."

"Yes." Control suppressed a sudden urge to bang his head on the counter. "Yes, I think it is."

"We got a lot of Polish families here. Not many Russian. I don't think I can help."

He shook his head. "Well, thank you anyhow. Maybe I can check the hospital for records."

"There's no hospital here, honey. Nearest one's up the road fifteen miles, in River Bend."

Who the hell names these towns, Control thought gruffly. "Oh." He peered at his clipboard again. "Oh, it says here she was born in Black River."

"There used to be a hospital. The twister blew it down years and years ago."

"Oh."

The kitchen bell rang, and the waitress moved away, then came back with a plate laden with eggs, sausage, bacon, and hashbrowns. "I'll get your toast," she said, and did.

Control ate while the waitress fussed with the other customers. She came back to warm up his coffee. "Is there maybe a Shepherd family?" he asked, consulting the blurred birth certificate. "That's the mother's maiden name."

"Shepherd? Sure, there was Shepherds here. Couple of 'em. They been gone for years, though. Last ones died in the fire."

He cocked his head. "The fire? You had a tornado and a fire?"

"Oh, the fire was later. Way later. You come into town from the north? See that park there, with the monument in the middle? That's where the fire was. There used to be a gas station. Burned to the ground. The tanks went up, you could see the fireball all the way to White Rushin, they say. Melted the paint off the fire truck, it was so hot. Cracked the concrete in the road."

"And the Shepherds were killed."

"Not just them. Seven men, altogether, and the little girl. Damn shame about the girl."

"Were they firemen?"

"Huh? No, no. Just guys. They were gambling there at the station."

Control looked at her quizzically. "Gambling?"

"Oh, honey, don't get me started, I'll chew your ear off."

He shrugged. "I'm not going anywhere. Good hash browns."

"They are, aren't they? Well, if you want the whole story – that Shepherd boy, what was his name? Donny, Donny Shepherd. He wasn't ever good for anything – I know, I shouldn't speak ill of the dead. So we'll just say he wasn't any better than he should have been, right? He hitched up with a little girl named Maggie Krezinski. One of them big Polish families, she came from. Anyhow, she's fifteen, comes up pregnant, so Donny marries her. He's not much older, not much smarter, either. Maggie's uncle – that Maggie, you'd think it was short for Margaret, but it wasn't either, it was short for Magnolia, I don't know what got into her mother that day, too much ether, I'd say – anyhow, Maggie's uncle owns the gas station, and he sets them up there. Donny runs it, and they live in a little place out back. Not much of a place, just two rooms, had to use the bathroom at the station. I wouldn't let my dogs live there. But then he never thought they were gonna stay there, you know? Thought Donny'd get himself together and get them a real home. But he never did."

Control nodded thoughtfully, chewing a strip of bacon.

"Then Donny gets this bright idea. Probably the only idea he ever had in his life. The gas station had these bays, you know, for working on cars? Only Donny didn't know nothin' about cars, and anyhow, everyone in these parts does their own repairs. So Donny closes the bays off and puts a still in there."

"A still?"

"Moonshine. Now it's kinda illegal, unless it's just for personal consumption – and let me tell you, between Donny and Maggie, it pretty much was. But you could pull on up to the pump, get a fill-up and get a fill-up, if you know what I mean. Should've made them a ton of money, except they drank so much of the profits."

"What about the child?"

"Maggie had a little girl. Now what was her name? Some kind of flower name, too."

"Lily?" Control supplied hopefully.

"No, that wasn't it. It was … oh, now, what was it? Betty! Betty Ann! Come out here a second."

A younger woman came out of the kitchen. She had a strong resemblance to the waitress. "This is my niece, Betty Ann. She went to school with her. Betty, what was that girl's name? The Shepherd girl?"

The younger woman was surprised, and a little hurt. "What're you talking about her for?"

"I was telling him about the fire. But I can't remember her name for the life of me."

"Rose," Betty Ann said, coolly and with certainty. "Her name was Rose."

"Rose, that's it. I knew it was a flower. And how old was she in the fire? Not very old, was she?"

The younger woman grew chillier still. "She was ten. Maybe eleven. We both were." She turned and stomped back into the kitchen.

The waitress shook her head. "It was a shock to the kids, you know. I don't think Betty ever quite got over it. Oh, I forgot your biscuits, why didn't you say something?"

She trotted off, returned with a plate of biscuits and a tureen of gravy. Control could almost hear his arteries hardening, but it smelled too good to resist. "So the gas station burned down," he prompted gently. "What happened to the mother?"

"Maggie? Oh, she was already dead by then. Driving drunk. She hit that old oak tree in the cemetery. We all joked how convenient it was. 'Course that wasn't very funny, but there it is. After that, Donny drank even more. And that poor little girl, she was all on her own. Maggie's family didn't have any use for her. And then the fire, and they were all dead. Her and her daddy and those six other men. Of course, they didn't find any bodies, that fire was so hot. Just a handful of little white pieces Doc said were bones. They could've buried them in a shoe box. Maybe they did, for all I know."

"So how did you know who was dead?"

The waitress shrugged. "We counted heads, figured out who was missing."

Another customer called, and the waitress moved away. Control ate another bite of the biscuits and gravy, but his appetite was gone now. He left a twenty on the counter and slipped out.

He'd decided to walk down to the park and take a look at the monument, but in the alley just next to the diner was a little bench, and on it the younger woman, Betty Ann, sat smoking a cigarette with angry emphasis. On a hunch, Control stopped and sat down beside her. "It must have been hard, losing your friend," he said without introduction.

"She wasn't my friend," Betty Ann snarled at him. "She didn't have any friends."

"Why not?"

The woman took a vicious drag on the cigarette. "Because she was poor and we were all better than she was." She shook her head. "We were mean little bitches, every one of us."

Control sat back, took a cigar out and lit it – with the lighter Lily had given to him – and waited. At length, the woman finished her smoke, lit another one, and continued. "All her clothes were second-hand, from the church charity. So I'd have a favorite sweater, and when I outgrew it, a week later she'd be wearing it. Like that. We all made fun of her. She never seemed to care. It was like we didn't matter. She just read her books and ignored us. The teachers all liked her 'cause she was quiet and smart and always had her stuff done, so of course we hated her even more for that."

She took a long, slow drag. "After her mom got killed, Rose started coming to school without any lunch. She'd just sit in the corner and read her book and ignore us while we ate. My mom found out and she started making me take an extra sandwich for her every day. My friends all teased me about it. And then Rose started coming to my house every weekend, Saturday afternoons. She'd help my mom clean up the kitchen, do the baking, whatever. I thought she was working off the sandwiches, like she was too proud just to take them. It made me mad. And then after the fire …" The woman crushed out the half-burned cigarette. "I said something to my mom, didn't she feel bad for making that poor girl work off those sandwiches every week. And my mom said, Rose hadn't been working to pay them off, she just didn't have anywhere else to go on Saturdays after the library closed, and she didn't want to go home 'cause of her dad. I felt awful."

"You still do," Control observed.

"Yeah, I guess I do." She looked at him sideways. "I don't know why I'm telling you this."

He shrugged. "Because I'm a good listener."

"I guess so." She sighed. "Thing was – she was smarter than me, smarter than any of us, and we all knew it. She probably could have made something of herself, you know?" She lit a third cigarette. "For whatever it's worth, last week there was this homeless guy outside the grocery store, just passing through, I guess, not a local. I bought him lunch and … and gave him a pair of my husband's socks. Because he didn't have any. But that don't make up for the way I treated Rose. The way we all did." Betty Ann shrugged. "The only good thing is, wherever she is, she's probably better off."

Control reached over and patted her hand. "I'm sure she is," he assured her.

He walked down to the monument and stared at it. Seven names and dates, all men in their twenties and thirties. The girl's name was at the bottom, separated from them, carved larger and more ornately. Donald Shepherd had been twenty-seven when he died. His daughter, Rose, had been ten. She'd been born on April 10, 1961. They'd all died on August 15, 1971.

Control stared at the date for a long, long time.

Lily's birthday, of course, was August 15.

She'd covered her tracks well. Very, very well. Extraordinarily well, for a child. But she'd clung to a few tiny details. A few scant ironies. It was bitter and tragic, and Control wished he'd never come to Black River.

He headed back for Nashville, but couldn't resist one last stop. In for a dollar, he reasoned, might as well rob the bank.

He stood in the cemetery and gazed at the headstone. The men had a single stone, not very big, but for a lost child the town had gone all out. The headstone was large, white, with elaborate angels carved on each side of Rose Shepherd's name. Most of you ignored her while she was living, he thought bitterly, but you went top dollar once she was dead, even though there was no body to bury.

He closed his eyes, feeling the truth of Becky's words. The truth was darker than he knew, and it did indeed break his heart.

With relief, he climbed in the car and headed back for the airport, back to New York and a world that made sense to him.

McCall set his single bag of groceries down on the counter and pushed the button on his answering machine. Three messages, the light told him. The first one was a straight hang-up, no sound at all. The second had about ten seconds of hesitation before the caller hung up. Robert frowned at the machine as he finished putting things away. It could be nothing, a telemarketer, or it could be someone in trouble who was hesitant to talk to an anonymous tape.

The third call had a similar pause, but then came an exasperated sigh. "Oh, this is ridiculous," a woman's voice said. "Robert, it's Mira Kalinich. Becky gave me your number and I don't usually … oh, hell, who am I kidding, I do it all the time. The tall ships are coming into the harbor this week, you've probably seen them on TV, those restorations? The university's giving a private reception on Monday and I wondered if you'd like to go. If you wouldn't that's completely fine, you don't even have to call me back, but if you would, let me know."

The tape clicked off. McCall stood with his hands on the counter, staring at the machine in puzzled amusement. So Becky had given the woman his number, had she? A bit of matchmaking from his daughter-to-be? Robert normally resisted arranged dates strenuously. But he'd met Mira, and liked her – he thought. The state of her apartment still perplexed him, but her writing evidenced a much more orderly mind than her living quarters. He liked her history books. He liked her.

He liked the fact that the first word she'd ever said to him was 'balls'. It seemed to portend well.

The tall ships intrigued him, too.

Grinning self-consciously, Robert opened the drawer and retrieved Mira's card.

Lily called the office Sunday afternoon, from somewhere that sounded distinctly like a pub. "We got all seven locations," she reported swiftly. "They recovered three so far. I have extensive notes."

"Good," Control answered. "Where are you?"

"Uh … I'm not sure. Some bar. Hey, where are we, anyhow?"

"Bloomsbury," someone shouted back.

"Bloomsbury. I think I'm still in London."

"Are you drunk?"

"Nope. But Harley and me are totally kicking MI-5's ass at darts."

Control sighed. "Nice of you to think to call me."

She laughed. "Yeah. Something about the ass kicking reminded me. Anything else you need me to do here?"

"No. Come home."

"Flight leaves at midnight," she answered. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Control put down the phone gently and turned towards his window. Tomorrow she'd be home. She hadn't been gone that long; it only felt like forever. But tomorrow she'd be home.

He knew so much more about her now than he had when she'd left. He was going to have to be careful not to let it show. He understood now why he was allowed to buy her extravagances but not necessities – why she could accept a five-figure emerald but not a sofa. Why pity was the emotion she hated the most. Why she so valued the small kindnesses she took to the ops in the field. Most of all, he understood why she kept her pain so tightly gripped, why she didn't show it or share it to anyone – and how much it cost her to start to share it with him.

He understood his Lily now, which made the trip worthwhile. But she didn't need to know about it. She didn't ever need to know where he'd been or whom he'd talked to.

With a wry grin, he turned back to his computer and set about expunging his travel records.

Control strode back from his meeting, irritated that it had gone so long. But he had to admit, they'd gotten a lot accomplished. "Messages?" he barked as he approached his office.

Sue held up a stack. "Nothing urgent."

He snagged them without breaking stride, went into his office and sat down, flipping absently through the little pink sheets without interest. His secretary was, as always, right; there was nothing here that wouldn't wait, and half he wouldn't even bother to answer. Good. His eyes strayed to his in-box, which was inevitably more full than when he left. The very top item had a familiar set of initials scrawled on the cover sheet.

Frowning, he snatched up the report and went to the open doorway. "Romanov's here?"

"She dropped off her report," the secretary reported. "Said she'd be at home if you have any questions."

"When I say I want an agent to report to me," Control barked, "I mean I want them to report in person."

"You were in a meeting," she reminded him. To his darkening scowl, she quickly added, "I'll get her back in." She reached for the phone.

"Never mind!" Control snapped. "I'll call her if I need her."

He stalked back into the office and sat down with the report. For a moment he had to pretend to read it. Damn it, she must have known he'd want to see her, if only for a minute or two … and yes, he had been in a meeting, she might have been waiting around for hours …

He sighed, glanced at his watch. Three hours, at least, before he could get out of here without raising eyebrows. And certainly he couldn't leave here and go straight to her. Add another two hours …

He could have Sue call, have her come in – for what?

In great bad humor, he turned to reading the report.