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father.”
    â€œMy father? Did you know him?”
    â€œNo. I’m just looking for some information. I understand he was once active in politics.”
    Pelto hesitated with the bag suspended over McIntire’s cup as though he might consider reclaiming it. Then he shrugged, dropped it in, and added a stream from the bubbling water.
    â€œThat was a long time ago.”
    â€œThe information I need is from a long time ago.”
    Pelto didn’t respond, only regarded McIntire expectantly. His eyes were a translucent blue that made them seem lit from the inside.
    â€œI’m trying to find out about a couple that supposedly left St. Adele back in the Karelia Fever days. No one’s heard from them.”
    â€œThat’s hardly unusual.”
    It was the usual response, though, and one McIntire didn’t quite understand. Several thousand people seem to disappear, and the people left behind just shrug it off. Didn’t anyone try to find out what happened? The organization that was responsible for their emigration, for instance.
    â€œIt’s not unusual
if
they went to Karelia,” he replied, “but we’re not sure that they did. Sulo Touminen tells me your father was a recruiter of sorts, and that he helped arrange passage. He might remember if the Falks were on the boat as planned.”
    â€œFalks?”
    â€œTeddy and his wife. Her name was Rose. You remember them?”
    â€œNooo.” He let the word drag out, slowly stirring his tea, pressing the bag against the side of the cup. “It doesn’t ring a bell. Well, that was a while ago. I was just a kid when all that happened.”
    Erik Pelto didn’t look so terribly young, and the exodus had gone on for quite a while. He plopped the soggy teabag into an ashtray and looked up, his contemplative aspect abandoned. “Did you say that the…these people didn’t go to Russia?”
    â€œIt looks like they might not have. In which case we’d like to find out where they did go.”
    Pelto opened his mouth, but must have thought better of what he was about to say. Once again he waited for McIntire to continue.
    â€œCan you tell me how to reach your father?”
    â€œNo.”
    The terse reply caught McIntire unprepared. “He
is
still living?”
    â€œHe is,” Pelto replied, “but he’s not all that well. I’m not going to pester him with that stuff after all this time.”
    McIntire could see that the elder Pelto’s communist connections might be a touchy subject, but all he wanted was a small piece of simple information.
    â€œI’m only—”
    â€œMy father was, as you put it, a recruiter. He convinced a whole lot of people to give up their homes here, sell everything they owned, leave their families behind, and go off to what he promised them would be a workers’ Utopia. It’s probable that things didn’t go well for those people. He doesn’t need to have it brought up now, and…” he turned expressionless eyes to McIntire, “neither do I.”
    McIntire wasn’t ready to get this close and give up. “I’m sympathetic,” he said, “but we can’t just let this go. We need to find out what happened to Mr. and Mrs. Falk.”
    â€œWhat makes you think anything happened to them? Who is it says that they didn’t go to Russia as they planned?”
    â€œNobody
says
so. It’s just that some of their belongings have turned up. Things they would have taken with them. That’s why I want to talk to your father. If he arranged for the trip, he should be able to tell me if they backed out.” McIntire tried not to squirm under Pelto’s expectant stare, a tactic no doubt calculated to elicit confession from the most recalcitrant fifteen-year-old, probably practiced by the hour in front of a mirror. McIntire barely managed to out-wait him.
    The teacher wiped his nose on his sleeve and turned