We kept Trifonov cuffed and put him in the back of the MP
Humvee. Summer drove. Cape Fear was on the Atlantic coast,
south and east, maybe a hundred miles. It was a tedious ride, in
a Humvee. It would have been different in a Corvette. Although
I couldn’t remember ever being in a Corvette. I had never
known anyone who owned one.
And I had never been to Cape Fear. It was one of the many
places in America I had never visited. I had seen the movie,
though. Couldn’t remember where, exactly. In a tent, somewhere
hot, maybe. Black and white, with Gregory Peck having
some kind of a major problem with Robert Mitchum. It was
good enough entertainment, as I recalled, but fundamentally
annoying. There was a lot of jeering from the audience. Robert
Mitchum should have gone down early in the first reel. Watching
civilians dither around just to spin out a story for ninety
minutes had no real appeal for soldiers.
It was full dark before we got anywhere near where we were
going. We passed a sign near the outer part of Wilmington that
billed the town as an historic and picturesque old port city but
we ignored it because Trifonov called through from the rear
and told us to make a left through some kind of a swamp. We
drove out through the darkness into the middle of nowhere and
made another left towards a place called Southport.
‘Cape Fear is off of Southport,’ Summer said. ‘It’s an island in
the ocean. I think there’s a bridge.’
But we stopped well short of the coast. We didn’t even get to
Southport itself. Trifonov called through again as we passed a
trailer park on our right. It was a large flat rectangular area of
reclaimed land. It looked like someone had dredged part of the
swamp to make a lake and then spread the fill over an area the
size of a couple of football fields. The land was bordered by
drainage ditches. There were power lines coming in on poles
and maybe a hundred trailers studded all over the rectangle.
231
Our headlights showed that some of them were fancy double
wide affairs with add-ons and planted gardens and picket
fences. Some of them were plain and battered. A couple had
fallen off their blocks and were abandoned. We were maybe ten
miles inland, but the ocean storms had a long reach.
‘Here,’ Trifonov said. ‘Make a right.’
There was a wide centre track with narrower tracks branching
left and right. Trifonov directed us through the maze and
we stopped outside a sagging lime-green trailer that had seen
better days. Its paint was peeling and the tar paper roof was
curling. It had a smoking chimney and the blue light of a
television behind its windows.
‘Her name is Elena,’ Trifonov said.
We left him locked in the Humvee. Knocked on Elena’s door.
The woman who opened it could have stepped straight into the
encyclopedia under B for Battered Woman. She was a mess. She
had old yellow bruises all around her eyes and along her jaw
and her nose was broken. She was holding herself in a way that
suggested old aches and pains and maybe even newly broken
ribs. She was wearing a thin house dress and men’s shoes. But
she was clean and bathed and her hair was tied back neatly.
There was a spark of something in her eyes. Some kind of
pride, maybe, or satisfaction at having survived. She peered out
at us nervously, from behind the triple oppressions of poverty
and suffering and foreign status.
‘Yes?’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’ Her accent was like
Trifonov’s, but much higher pitched. It was quite appealing.
‘We need to talk to you,’ Summer said, gently.
‘What about?’
‘About what Slavi Trifonov did for you,’ I said.
‘He didn’t do anything,’ she said.
‘But you know the name.’
She paused.
‘Please come in,’ she said.
I guessed I was expecting some kind of mayhem inside.
Maybe empty bottles strewn about, full ashtrays, dirt and confusion.
But the trailer was neat and clean. There was nothing
out of place. It was cold, but it was OK. And there was nobody