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ribs.” Touminen pulled his suspenders back to his shoulders. “If Teddy Falk wrote to anybody, it woulda been that Kraut, Eban Vogel.”
    â€œI don’t think he did,” McIntire said. “But it was a big group that went over, maybe thousands. They’d have left a lot of relatives and friends here. Wouldn’t you think there’d have to be people around that have been in contact with some of them? Maybe not since the war, but before then. Somebody must know where they ended up.”
    â€œI ain’t so sure about that. I heard of a few that came back, but they never said nothing about it. You could try Pelto. At the high school. His old man was a big wheel in the Party. Orville. He traveled around getting people all stirred up to leave, handled the arrangements.” Touminen craned his neck to look out the window. “There’s smoke coming from the school. Pelto spends the night when the weather looks bad. He mighta got stuck there.”
    The weather wasn’t looking all that good right now. The afternoon’s sunshine had given way to low-hanging clouds spitting out snow in sporadic whirling gusts. It was an innocuous flurry so far, but with a determined look about it.
    McIntire looked at his watch. Plenty of time for one more stop before dark.

Chapter Seven
    WASHINGTON—The house un-American activities committee…views with horror the actions of American citizens who have aided the Soviet Union and are free to masquerade as respected Americans.
    St. Adele High School’s science, mathematics, and boys’ phy ed teacher had put on still another of his hats, and McIntire stood well away while he aimed a gas-fueled blowtorch at an ice-filled keyhole. He stuck in a key, gave it a twist, and grinned as he opened the door to lead McIntire down the hall to the science room.
    The school hadn’t changed a whole lot since McIntire had served his time there. This classroom had the same gray walls and cracked window blinds, dreary as it had been thirty-five years before. Erik Pelto’s foldaway cot and carton of Tenderleaf tea bags did nothing to add a homey, or an academic, touch. It was not exactly an atmosphere conducive to preparing youngsters to take on the world, unless giving them resilience was the aim.
    Pelto threw his yellow work gloves on a desk but didn’t remove his cap or jacket. He pulled a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket and spent the next half minute blowing his nose, giving McIntire time to look around. He recognized two new additions. A skeleton hung from a metal stand in the corner, and a glass-fronted cabinet contained an impressive collection of what might have been fairly valuable antique scientific instruments. Next to a brass sextant was a cache of home-away-from-home essentials: shaving mug and razor, an array of vitamins and medications to ease the common cold, and a carton of Fig Newtons.
    â€œCome to offer your services?” Pelto asked.
    â€œAt chipping ice?”
    â€œWe could use a foreign language class.”
    McIntire parked himself on a wooden stool. “Any particular language you had in mind?”
    â€œNot really. Spanish, French, maybe even German. How about it?” Pelto poured water into a beaker and turned the tap on a Bunsen burner, beaming in triumph again when it responded to his lit match.
    â€œI’ll think it over.” He might, for about half a second. McIntire had spent too many years incarcerated in these rooms, bruising his knees on the underside of the skimpy desks, to consider voluntary servitude. And his last stint at language teaching was something he refused to be reminded of.
    â€œSeriously, being able to offer a foreign language would….” Pelto gave a shake of his head and opened the cabinet to take out a bottle half-filled with an evil-colored liquid. “But what was it you did come for?”
    â€œI was hoping you could tell me how to get in touch with your