“I could look for a conductor. If I found one, and he agreed to let me in, then I could go check on Cairo. What’s wrong with that?”
She lowered her voice. “She isn’t supposed to even be here, Steel, you know that. I fibbed to get them to allow her to come along. I don’t want to push it.”
“You think the conductor cares about any of that?” Steel asked. “I’ll bet they love having a dog on board. Rules don’t always make sense, Mom. Everybody knows that, even the people who make them.” He tried to work this logic on her whenever possible, since most of the rules he had to live by were hers and his father’s. He could tangle her up pretty well when he really put his mind to it. She wasn’t a bad debater, but her heart often got in her way.
“Well, it wasn’t me who made this rule,” she said. “It was the conductor, and we’re going to obey it. You can look for a conductor once the train is a half hour or so out of the city. The conductors have things to do, don’t forget, other than helping little boys go pet their dogs.”
“I’m not a little boy.” Steel gazed out the window at the steady stream of passengers arriving on the platform. His mind wandered to Cairo and what she must be going through. A cross between a German shepherd and a saluki hound, she was a decent-size dog with a dark blond coat and “feathering” on the backs of her legs. Her travel crate was big, but she was the type of dog that liked to run around and play. She had to be going crazy. He looked down and studied the page of his talk, taking a mental picture of it. Immediately it was committed to memory. He felt tempted to show off and recite it for his mom, but he thought he might wait and use it as a negotiating tool.
Her cell phone rang and she answered it. This was good: when she got into a good, solid phone call she mentally left the room.
He considered making a break for the baggage car. She wouldn’t follow, wouldn’t stop him. Probably wouldn’t even notice. And if she did notice, she wouldn’t make a scene. But he’d pay later, and it was going to be a long trip. He wasn’t crazy about the idea of spending nearly two days with his mother mad at him. Better not push it.
“Hold on, just a minute,” she said, cupping the cell phone. “Steel, I’m going to take this by the rest-room. It’s private.”
“Is it Dad?”
“No. Just private.”
She headed down the aisle and began talking again. Something weird was up: she didn’t usually keep secrets from Steel.
He looked down the central aisle at all the people settling in. He knew which head belonged in what seat. Had it memorized. It was just the way his mind worked; some people remembered songs or dialogue from films, Steel remembered anything and everything he saw: the plays of a football game, a math equation three lines long, or the backs of heads of seventy-six people in a train car.
So when the pretty woman with the dark hair and sunglasses left her seat and headed off the train and out onto the platform, Steel quickly jumped up, following her window to window, paralleling her movement away from the direction of his mother.
Mid car he looked up into the overhead rack and saw what he could picture so well: the briefcase. He’d seen her carry it on board, and now she’d left without it. He reached up. He found himself out on the platform, pursuing her. He struggled against the tide of late arrivals, the woman’s briefcase in hand.
“Hey! Lady!” he called out in his croaking, cracking voice. It was an embarrassment to even talk. Why couldn’t he be a year older right now? He hoisted the briefcase over his head—the thing was light as a feather.
She had to be ignoring him, for she certainly could hear him: everyone was looking in his direction.
“Excuse me! Lady!” he shouted even louder, still hoisting the briefcase.
He caught up to her at last.
“Lady! Lady! Your bag!”
She stopped and turned slowly, as if she didn’t want to turn around, as if she were one of those monsters in a horror movie that had the face of the devil. But it wasn’t true: she had a nice face. Spanish, maybe. Her eyes widened when she saw what he carried. “What are you doing?” She couldn’t take her eyes off the briefcase. “What the”—she caught herself—“heck are you doing with that?”
Winded, Steel blurted out at her, which was pretty much the way he talked, winded or not. Talking with anyone other than his mom and dad, his mouth became a bottleneck, an impediment to the speed at which his mind worked. The faster he spoke, the fewer words piled up waiting to get out, so he spoke very fast.
“You left this—and I saw you—and I started to follow—and I tried to catch up because I thought you’d forgotten it—and the train’s going to leave any minute now—and that would leave you off the train and the briefcase on the train—and so here I am.” He pushed the case toward her. She didn’t accept it, raising her arms.
“Not mine.”
“Yeah. Yours. You carried it on the train not five minutes ago. I saw you. I’m six rows behind you.” He squinted. “You were seven rows from the front, aisle seat, left side. You have a red squishy thing holding your hair in a ponytail. When you came in, you put the briefcase in the overhead rack and sat down.” Again he encouraged the briefcase toward her.
Her face remained impassive. “I’m sure you are mistaken.”
Steel knew himself to be many things—precocious, overconfident, intelligent, geeky—but not mistaken. Not now. Not ever. “No, actually. I’m never wrong.” He stated it for her just like that. He got a rise out of her, too. She took a step back. He said, “You boarded with this briefcase. You put it up in the overhead rack, and you left the train without it. You don’t strike me as a terrorist, and it isn’t heavy enough to contain a bomb.…”
She looked him up and down. “You have me confused with someone else, young man. And that means at the moment you’ve stolen someone’s briefcase, and I do not imagine this person will be happy about that.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “You’re lying to me. Why are you lying?”
Her impassive face broke, and she looked clearly uncomfortable. She glanced around the busy platform.
He repeated, “I saw you. I am not making a mistake. I don’t make this kind of mistake.”
“Well, you have made one now. You will miss the train,” she said. “Thank you for trying to help me, but honestly, it is not mine.” She delivered this with such overbearing, angry determination that he didn’t challenge her. Never mind that she was flat-out lying.
“Whatever,” he said.
“Good luck at the challenge,” she said. She answered his puzzled expression by pointing to his sweatshirt. It bore the logo for the National Science Challenge, Washington, D.C., and the dates June 6–8.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. She’d made her point: he wasn’t the only attentive one.
“Good-bye.” She said this in a definitive, final way. No room for discussion. She turned and hurried away.
Steel reentered the train car lost in thought. He absolutely knew what he’d seen. Wasn’t going to hear otherwise. So why had she lied?
He was about to return the briefcase to the overhead rack when he spotted his mother standing by their seats, nearly shaking from anger.
He walked down the aisle, past passengers readying for the trip, and joined her.
“Explain yourself, young man.”
When she was mad at him—really mad, like this—she scared him. He knew at these times he held no power over her, and that scared him even more.
He explained himself. What had started out as a good deed had ended in a confused muddle. His mother knew to trust his visual memory. She didn’t question for a moment if he was sure what he’d seen. She’d lived with him for fourteen years.
“Well,” she said, “I can hardly be mad at you for attempting to do a good deed, now can I?” She glanced up the aisle.
“I think we should mention it to a conductor. Unattended bags…it’s no different from an airport.”
“It’s not like she’s a terrorist or something.”
“Just the same, he’ll know what to do. We’ll mention it to the conductor,” she said.
And that was that.
2.
Natalie Shufman reached Union Station’s great hall and looked around for her handler. She bristled at the idea of being babysat, but that was how these people did things. They took extreme care to isolate one thing from another, one person from another. She could pretty much guess who the briefcase was intended for, but she would never be told. If any one of them were arrested or taken into custody, he or she would have so little of the big picture as to be useless to authorities.
Sounds of track announcements echoed off the high ceiling. People milled about. Spotting him at last—recognizing the intense though common enough face beneath short-cropped hair—she headed over to him. At twenty-eight, he was slightly older than she was, and she feared him, for he was no one to mess with. None of these people were. Had they not rescued her from her stupidity—the possibility of a drug charge they still held over her—she wouldn’t have been a part of any of this. But here she was, and there was no undoing it.
“So?” he said.
“I should have just given it straight to our guy.”
“It’s not how it works. No one is to see his face. It went okay?”
“Why is he doing this, anyway?” she asked, inferring she already knew who was the intended recipient. “Why would a guy as high up as he is play the part of a lowly courier? It doesn’t make sense.”
“We don’t question something like that.” It was a stern warning, but she didn’t take it to heart.
“It has to be something hugely important or hugely valuable. What do you suppose it is?”
“I asked you if it went okay,” he said pointedly.
She considered not telling him, but he might have been watching—this could be some sort of test.
“There was a boy.”
He glanced at her, and she felt his intensity.
She said, “He saw me leave the briefcase and he came after me with it. Out onto the platform.”
He seethed next to her, blood coloring his face in anger. “Go on.”
She spoke quickly, hoping the explanation might satisfy him. “I told him he was mistaken. That it wasn’t mine and he should put it back where he’d found it. I’m sure he did.”
“Did you get his name?”
“His name? No, of course not. I told him to put it back, and that was the end of it.”
“Describe him to me.”
“Why?”
He stared silently at her, and she felt he might hurt her if she didn’t do as he said.
“Thirteen, fourteen. Thin. Kind of nerdy. He’s wearing a sweatshirt for the National Science Challenge. That’s why he’s going to Washington—this challenge. He’s not going to be a problem. It wasn’t anything. Really. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“No, you did right. Go on. Get outta here. Head back as planned,” he said. “You can go.”
As she walked away from him, her stomach turned. Why had she mentioned the boy? What had she started?
She thought of the train ticket in her pocket. She checked the huge board listing all the trains and tracks, the departures and arrivals.
The train to Washington was still in the station.
What if they now planned to hurt the boy? Wouldn’t that make whatever happened to him her fault?
She eyed the gate to track seven, then stole a glance back at the man she’d just spoken to. He was talking on his cell phone, his back turned to the gate.
If she hurried, she might have a chance.
3.
“Wait a second! Back it up,” Roland Larson instructed. He and Trill Hampton, both United States marshals assigned to the Fugitive Apprehension Task Force, occupied uncomfortable chairs in a cigarette-soured windowless room with TERMINAL SECURITY written on its door. Between them sat a security guard who controlled the video.
Hampton, an African American with a kind face and a football player’s neck, smacked loudly as he chewed french fries laden with ketchup, withdrawn one by one from an oily paper bag. Larson battled impatience. He had a rugged face, sharp blue eyes, and dirty-blond hair. He was too big for the chair.
Chicago’s Union Station had trains coming and going at all hours. As part of the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Apprehension Task Force, Larson’s present assignment was to track down and capture a suspected gang leader, a man believed to have ties to a terrorism cell in Chicago. A joint FBI and Secret Service investigation had uncovered the gang’s connection to a series of minor bank robberies. It was now believed that stolen money had reached the terrorist cell. The disappearance of a small plane over Lake Michigan had given rise to the discovery that a much bigger plan to raise money for the terrorists was currently underway. Larson had never seen the man he was after. There were no existing photographs of him. All Larson had was a vague description provided by an undercover agent: broad-shouldered, five feet eleven inches, intense eyes, and a possible name that could easily be an alias: Aaron Grym. It wasn’t much to go on.
They were reviewing train station surveillance video. The known gang member was approached by a woman, possibly in her mid-twenties. Her face had not been caught by the overhead camera. The two spoke with an undeniable intensity. Then the gang member used his cell phone, and shortly thereafter left the station.
“The only train boarding at that time is the overnight to Washington.” The station’s security man pointed to the television monitor. The smell in the room was mostly his. “There is one that leaves for St. Louis ten minutes later. Another for Minneapolis on the half hour. But at that time, it is Washington, D.C.”
“Can you give us any platform cameras you might have?”
It took the security guard a few minutes to organize himself. Hampton finished the french fries. Finally the video started, and Larson went back to watching the small screen. The camera looked out from the terminal down track seven’s long platform. The train to Washington, D.C., was to the right of the platform.
“There! Stop the tape!” Larson shouted, a little too loudly for the small room. Of the two dozen passengers frozen in black-and-white, all but one had their backs to the camera as they headed toward the train. The only one facing them was a woman—a woman wearing jeans and looking like the same woman who’d been seen with the gang member out in the terminal. The woman was walking away from the train.
Hampton sat up in his chair. “She’s leaving.”
“Yeah,” said Larson. “I noticed.”
“She saw someone off?” Hampton inquired.
The security guy said, “Only ticketed passengers are allowed on the platform. If she’s on the platform, then she bought a ticket.”
Larson said, “She decided not to take the trip.”
“It happens,” the guy said. “Plans change. Schedules change. People get sick.”
“Madrid,” Hampton muttered.
A few years earlier, terrorists had blown up a commuter train in Madrid, Spain, killing hundreds of innocent passengers.
“London,” Larson said. Two summers earlier, bombs had exploded in the London Underground.
“I want to see her when and if she entered the train,” Larson advised the security man. “Back it up.”
Hampton reached for the desk phone because cell reception was poor in this basement office. He asked someone on the other end to arrange transportation to Toledo—the Washington train’s next stop. He knew in advance that this was what Larson would want. They worked well as a team.
“Freeze it!” Larson shouted, again too loudly. He pointed out the same woman, now walking toward the train on a video shot well before the other one. “That’s her!”
“No it’s not,” Hampton said, cupping the phone. “Same clothes, but that woman’s carrying a briefcase. The woman we saw wasn’t—” but he caught himself.
“—carrying a briefcase,” Larson finished for him. “Because she left it on the train.”
&nbs
p; “I know what you guys are thinking,” the security man said. “But if there had been a bomb in that briefcase, we’d have caught it. Forget about it.”
“What about money?” Hampton asked. “What about a pile of money being delivered to the wrong people?”
“We want to follow that bag,” Larson said. “It could lead us to our man.”
Hampton still had the person on the line. He said, “We’re going to need a private jet, and you gotta get a VCR on board.” He checked his watch. “Have it standing by in forty minutes.” He hung up.
Larson told the security man, “We’re going to need every surveillance tape from every camera in the station from two hours before that train departed. Find a box. We’re taking them all with us.”
“When does the train arrive in Toledo?” Hampton asked the bewildered security man.
The man typed some information into a laptop, ran his finger along the screen, and said behind a defeated face, “Government jet or not…it’ll take a miracle to catch that train.”
“Not a problem,” Larson said, coming to his feet.
Hampton pointed first to Larson and then to himself. “Miracles-R-Us.”
4.
Aaron Grym fought the temptation to speak to the boy and his mother, and reclaim the briefcase. He wasn’t sure how it might play out, and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself, to give them a face to remember. Yet he needed that bag.
At some point the kid was certain to put the briefcase back where he’d found it. At the very least, the mother and son would eventually fall asleep. It was a long way to Washington, D.C. Opportunity would present itself. He would wait it out.
In the meantime, he would change his looks. The backpack in the overhead rack was filled with clothing and various elements to help with his disguise: several wigs, makeup, contact lenses. Nothing that took too long to apply. He’d learned the art of disguise from a community center in his neighborhood that had offered acting classes. He’d spent two summers at the center, his last playing Tony in West Side Story. Now he would become Tony. Life imitating art.
The Challenge Page 2