Detroit, 1947

It was cold and rainy that day. I remember it well, sitting in my office in the garage, leaning back in my chair.. Reading a booklet titled- "Enjoy Detroit! How to have fun, Where to relax, What to do, and When to go!" Quite frankly, I couldn't care less about the booklet. I had been in this town for two years, and I couldn't remember the last time I had fun. It didn't look like I was getting out any time soon, either. I turned the radio on the desk off, and wandered up to my second-story apartment. Prhaps it wasn't a good idea to have your private residence above the office of your detective agency, but, it was cheap. Besides, I kept my old pump-shotgun hidden in the hall closet. I hadn't had to use it, and I didn't plan to. Well, not on people. On the second Saturday of every month, Seargent Jacobs of the Detroit Metropolitan Police Department and I would drive out into the country and hunt ducks or shoot skeet on his father's farm.
I paused in the bedroom to open my foot-locker and dig through it. Nothing new, some pictures of the guys from the unit, a picture of me with Private Mikhail Cherkesov, who I met during the liberation of Berlin. Unlike most of the Russian soldiers, Mikhail was warm and accepting.. We had spent two days trapped in a German bomb shelter, drinking vodka and whiskey, and swapping stories. Mikhail, though humble, was apparently an excellent shot, and had done much for the liberation of Stalingrad and his country. I put the picture back and rummaged through a little more. Nothing of intrest, so I looked up to the gun rack which was hidden behind my suits and other clothes. My M1 Garand, a German 98k- taken and shipped home as a "spoil of war", a british Lee-Enfield- bought at a back-room gun shop in London on the trip home, and Mikhail's scoped Mosin-Nagant, which he sent with me on the trip home, along with a note saying he was going back to marry his childhood sweetheart, Svetlana, then they were coming here, to America. I suggested he look me up when he got here, and I told him I would hold onto his beloved rifle. I was a rifle nut, and I knew it, but there was something different about Mikhail and his rifle. Almost, an unspoken communication. I only watched him shoot once, but it was almost as though the rifle already knew what to do, and he was just there to hold it. It was unreal.
I shook my head to get my mind back to the present, and I pulled out the letter I had recieved just that morning from Mikhail.

"Dear James,
It is your old friend Mikhail. I hope you remember me. Svetlana is writing this, by the way, as her English is beter than mine. I will be studiing on the train, though. We just got through customs at New York, and will be in Detriot on Monday at 5:30 P.M. If it is not too much trouble, I would like to take