“You got coffee?”
“You’re wasting time.”
“We’ve got plenty of time. More than five minutes, anyway. More than ten, even. You need to lace your shoes and put a jacket on. How long can that take?”
Sansom shrugged and stepped over to the breakfast bar and poured me a cup of coffee. He carried it back and gave it to me and said, “Now cut to the chase. I know who you are and why you’re here.”
“Did you know Susan Mark?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Never met her, never even heard of her before last night.”
I was watching his eyes, and I believed him. I asked, “Why would an HRC clerk be coerced into checking you out?”
“Is that what was happening?”
“Best guess.”
“Then I have no idea. HRC is the new PERSCOM, right? What did you ever get from PERSCOM? What did anyone? What have they got there? Dates and units, that’s all. And my life is public record anyway. I’ve been on CNN a hundred times. I joined the army, I went to OCS, I was commissioned, I was promoted three times, and I left. No secrets there.”
“Your Delta missions were secrets.”
The room went a little quieter. Sansom asked, “How do you know that?”
“You got four good medals. You don’t explain why.”
Sansom nodded.
“That damn book,” he said. “The medals are a matter of record, too. I couldn’t disown them. It wouldn’t have been respectful. Politics is a minefield. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Either way around, they can always get to you.”
I said nothing. He looked at me and asked, “How many people are going to make the connection? Besides you, I mean?”
“About three million,” I said. “Maybe more. Everyone in the army, and all the vets with enough eyesight left to read. They know how things work.”
He shook his head. “Not that many. Most people don’t have inquiring minds. And even if they do, most people respect secrecy in matters like that. I don’t think there’s a problem.”
“There’s a problem somewhere. Otherwise why was Susan Mark being asked questions?”
“Did she actually mention my name?”
I shook my head. “That was to get your attention. I heard your name from a bunch of guys I’m assuming were employed by the person asking the questions.”
“And what’s in this for you?”
“Nothing. But she looked like a nice person, caught between a rock and a hard place.”
“And you care?”
“You do too, if only a little bit. You’re not in politics just for what you can get out of it for yourself. At least I sincerely hope you’re not.”
“Are you actually my constituent?”
“Not until they elect you President.”
Sansom was quiet for a beat and then he said, “The FBI briefed me, too. I’m in a position where I can do favors for them, so they make a point of keeping me in the loop. They say the NYPD feels you’re reacting to this whole thing with a measure of guilt. Like you pushed too hard on the train. And guilt is never a sound basis for good decisions.”
I said, “That’s just one woman’s opinion.”
“Was she wrong?”
I said nothing.
Sansom said, “I’m not going to tell you a damn thing about the missions.”
I said, “I don’t expect you to.”
“But?”
“How much could come back and bite you in the ass?”
“Nothing in this life is entirely black and white. You know that. But no crimes were committed. And no one could get to the truth through an HRC clerk, anyway. This is a fishing expedition. This is half-baked amateur muck-raking journalism at its worst.”
“I don’t think it is,” I said. “Susan Mark was terrified and her son is missing.”
Sansom glanced at his wife. Back at me. He said, “We didn’t know that.”
“It hasn’t been reported. He’s a jock at USC. He left a bar with a girl five days ago. Hasn’t been seen since. He’s presumed AWOL, having the time of his life.”
“And you know this how?”
“Through Susan Mark’s brother. The boy’s uncle.”
“And you don’t buy the story?”
“Too coincidental.”
“Not necessarily. Boys leave bars with girls all the time.”
“You’re a parent,” I said. “What would make you shoot yourself, and what would make you not?”
The room went quieter still. Elspeth Sansom said, “Shit.” John Sansom got the kind of faraway look in his eyes that I had seen before from good field officers reacting to a tactical setback. Rethink, redeploy, reorganize, all in a fast second or two. I saw him scanning back through history and coming to a firm conclusion. He said, “I’m sorry about the Mark family’s situation. I really am. And I would help if I could, but I can’t. There’s nothing in my Delta career that could be accessed through HRC. Nothing at all. Either this is about something else entirely, or someone is looking in the wrong place.”
“Where else would they look?”
“You know where. And you know they wouldn’t even get close. And someone who knew enough to want Delta records would know where to look for them, and where not to, surely. So this is not about Special Forces. Can’t be.”
“So what else could it be about?”
“Nothing. I’m spotless.”
“Really?”
“Completely. One hundred percent. I’m not an idiot. I wouldn’t have gotten into politics if I had the tiniest thing to hide. Not the way things are now. I never even had a parking ticket.”
“OK,” I said.
“I’m sorry about the woman on the subway.”
“OK,” I said again.
“But now we really have to go. We have some serious begging to do.”
I asked, “You ever heard the name Lila Hoth?”
“Lila Hoth?” Sansom said. “No, I never heard that name.”
I was watching his eyes, and I felt he was telling the absolute truth. And lying through his teeth. Both at the same time.
Chapter 26
I passed Springfield on my return trip through the hotel lobby. I was heading for the street door, he was coming out of a dining room. Beyond him I saw round tables with snowy white tablecloths and large floral decorations in their centers. Springfield looked at me with no surprise in his face. It was as if he was judging my performance, and finding it satisfactory. As if I had gotten to his principals in about the span of time he had expected. Not fast, not slow, but right there in the middle of the window he had allowed. He gave me a look of professional appraisal and moved on without a word.
I went back to New York the same way I had left it, but in reverse. Cab to the Greensboro depot, bus to D.C., and then the train. The trip took all day and some of the evening. The bus schedule and the train schedule were not well integrated, and the first two trains from D.C. were sold out. I spent the travel time thinking, firstly about what Sansom had said, and what he hadn’t. Nothing in this life is entirely black and white. But no crimes were committed. And no one could get to the truth through an HRC clerk, anyway. No denial of questionable activity. Almost the opposite. Practically a confession. But he felt he hadn’t strayed outside the envelope. No crimes. And he had absolute confidence that the details were locked away forever. Altogether a common position, among sharp-end ex-military. Questionable was a big word for all of us. Twelve letters, and a textbook’s worth of implications. Certainly my own career would not withstand extended scrutiny. I don’t lose sleep over it. But in general I’m happy that the details stay locked away. And so was Sansom, clearly. I know my details. But what were his? Something damaging to him, obviously. Either personally, or to his election bid. Or both, inevitably. The feds had made that perfectly clear. Sansom can’t afford to tell you anything. But damaging in a wider context too, or why else would the feds be involved in the first place?
And who the hell was Lila
Hoth?
I asked myself these questions all the way through the jolting bus ride, and all the way through the long layover at Union Station, and then I gave them up when the train I made rolled north through Baltimore. I had gotten nowhere with them, and by then I was thinking about something else, anyway. I was thinking about where exactly in New York City Susan Mark had been headed. She had driven in from the south and had planned to ditch her car and arrive at her destination by subway. Tactically smart, and no other choice, probably. She wouldn’t have worn her winter coat in the car. Too hot. She probably had it on the back seat, or more likely in the trunk, with the bag and the gun, where the gun would be safe from prying eyes. Therefore she chose to park, and get out, and get herself battle-ready at a distance and in relative privacy.
But not at too much of a distance. Not too far from her ultimate destination. Because she had been delayed. She was seriously late. Therefore if she was headed way uptown, she would have parked in midtown. But she had parked downtown. In SoHo. Probably joined the train at Spring Street, one stop before I had. She was still sitting tight past 33rd Street. Then things had unraveled. If they hadn’t, I figured she would have stayed on the train through Grand Central and gotten out at 51st Street. Maybe 59th. But no farther, surely. Sixty-eighth was a stop too far. Well into the Upper East Side. A whole new neighborhood. If she was headed all the way up there, she would have used the Lincoln Tunnel, not the Holland, and she would have driven farther north before she parked. Because time was tight for her. So the 59th Street station was her upper limit. But having gotten wherever she was going, I felt she would have aimed to double back, even if just a little. Amateur psychology. Approach from the south, overshoot, come back from the north. And hope her opponents were facing the wrong way.
So I drew a box in my head, 42nd Street to 59th, and Fifth Avenue to Third. Sixty-eight square blocks. Containing what?
About eight million different things.
I stopped counting them well before we hit Philadelphia. By then I was distracted by the girl across the aisle. She was in her middle twenties, and completely spectacular. Maybe a model, maybe an actress, maybe just a great-looking lawyer or lobbyist. A total babe, as a USC jock might say. Which got me thinking about Peter Molina again, and the apparent contradiction in someone expert enough to use him for leverage against a source that was worthless.
Our principal brought a whole crew. New York City has six main public transportation gateways: the Newark, LaGuardia, and JFK airports, plus Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal, plus the Port Authority bus depot. Newark has three terminals, LaGuardia has three plus the shuttle terminal, JFK has eight, Penn Station is big, Grand Central is huge, and the Port Authority is a warren. Total manpower required to make a sensible attempt at surveillance would run close to forty people. Eighty or more, to allow for round-the-clock coverage. And eighty people was an army, not a crew. So I got off the train with no more than normal caution. Which, fortunately, was enough.
Chapter 27
I saw the watcher immediately. He was leaning on a pillar in the center of the Penn Station concourse, inert, with the kind of complete physical immobility that comes from being settled in for a long period of duty. He was stock-still, and the world was moving busily past him, like a river flows around a rock. He had a clamshell phone in his hand, open, held low down against his thigh. He was a tall guy, but reedy. Young, maybe thirty. At first sight, not impressive. He had pale skin with a shaved head and a dusting of ginger stubble. Not a great look. Scarier than an autograph hunter, maybe, but not by much. He was dressed in a shirt with a floral pattern and over it was a short tight leather jacket that was probably brown, but which looked lurid orange under the lights. He was staring at the oncoming crowd with eyes that had long ago grown tired, and then bored.
The concourse was full of people. I moved with the flow, slowly, hemmed in. I was carried along on the current. The watcher was about thirty feet away, ahead and on my left. His eyes were not moving. He was letting people walk through a fixed field of vision. I was about ten feet away from it. It was going to be like stepping through a metal detector hoop at the airport.
I slowed a little, and someone bumped into my back. I turned briefly, to check that they weren’t tag-teaming me. They weren’t. The person behind me was a woman with a stroller the size of an SUV, with two babies in it, maybe twins. There are a lot of twins in New York City. Plenty of older mothers, therefore plenty of laboratory fertilization. The twins in the stroller behind me were both crying, maybe because it was late and they were tired, or maybe they were just confused and bewildered by the forest of legs all around them. Their noise blended with the general hubbub. The concourse was tiled and full of echoes.
I drifted left, aiming to move six lateral feet in the next ten forward. I got near the edge of the stream and passed through the watcher’s point of focus. His eyes were bright blue, but filmed with fatigue. He didn’t react. Not at first. Then after a long second’s delay his eyes opened wider and he raised his phone and flicked the lid to light the screen. He glanced at it. Glanced back at me. His mouth opened in surprise. By that point I was about four feet away from him.
Then he fainted. I lunged forward and caught him and lowered him gently to the ground. A Good Samaritan, helping out with a sudden medical emergency. That was what people saw, anyway. But only because people see what they want to see. If they had replayed the brief sequence in their heads and scrutinized it very carefully they might have noticed that I had lunged slightly before the guy had started to fall. They might have noticed that whereas my right hand was certainly moving to catch him by the collar, it was only moving a split second after my left hand had already stabbed him in the solar plexus, very hard, but close in to our bodies, hidden and surreptitious.
But people see what they want to see. They always have, and they always will. I crouched over the guy like the responsible member of the public I was pretending to be, and the woman with the stroller trundled on behind me. After that, a small crowd gathered, full of concern. New York’s hostile reputation is undeserved. People are generally very helpful. A woman crouched down next to me. Other people stood close and looked down. I could see their legs and their shoes. The guy in the leather jacket was flat on the floor, twitching with chest spasms and gasping desperately for air. A hard blow to the solar plexus will do that to a person. But so will a heart attack and any number of other medical conditions.
The woman next to me asked, “What happened?”
I said, “I don’t know. He just keeled over. His eyes rolled up.”
“We should call the ambulance.”
I said, “I dropped my phone.”
The woman started to fumble in her purse. I said, “Wait. He might have had an episode. We need to check if he’s carrying a card.”
“An episode?”
“An attack. Like a seizure. Like epilepsy, or something.”
“What kind of a card?”
“People carry them. With instructions. We might have to stop him biting his tongue. And maybe he has medication with him. Check his pockets.”
The woman reached out and patted the guy’s jacket pockets, on the outside. She had small hands, long fingers, lots of rings. The guy’s outside pockets were empty. Nothing there. The woman folded the jacket back and checked inside. I watched, carefully. The shirt was unlike anything I had ever seen. Acrylic, floral, a riot of pastel colors. The jacket was cheap and stiff. Lined with nylon. There was an inside label, quite ornate, with Cyrillic writing on it.
The guy’s inside pockets were empty, too.
“Try his pants,” I said. “Quick.”
The woman said, “I can’t do that.”
So some take-charge executive dropped down next to us and stuck his fingers in the guy’s front pants pockets. Nothing there. He used the pocket flaps to roll the guy first one way and then the other, to check the back pockets. Nothing there, either.
Nothing anywhere. No wallet, no ID, n
o nothing at all.
“OK, we better call the ambulance,” I said. “Do you see my phone?”
The woman looked around and then burrowed under the guy’s arm and came back with the clamshell cell. The lid got moved on the way and the screen lit up. My picture was right there on it, big and obvious. Better quality than I thought it would be. Better than the Radio Shack guy’s attempt. The woman glanced at it. I knew people kept pictures on their phones. I’ve seen them. Their partners, their dogs, their cats, their kids. Like a home page, or wallpaper. Maybe the woman thought I was a big-time egotist who used a picture of himself. But she handed me the phone anyway. By that time the take-charge executive was already dialing the emergency call. So I backed away and said, “I’ll go find a cop.”
I forced my way into the tide of people again and let it carry me onward, out the door, to the sidewalk, into the dark, and away.
Chapter 28
Now I wasn’t that guy anymore. No longer the only man in the world without a cell phone. I stopped in the hot darkness three blocks away on Seventh Avenue and looked over my prize. It was made by Motorola. Gray plastic, somehow treated and polished to make it look like metal. I fiddled my way through the menus and found no pictures other than my own. It had come out quite well. The cross street west of Eighth, the bright morning sun, me frozen in the act of turning around in response to my shouted name. There was plenty of detail, from head to toe. Clearly huge numbers of megapixels had been involved. I could make out my features fairly well. And I thought I looked pretty good, considering I had hardly slept. There were cars and a dozen bystanders nearby, to give a sense of scale, like the ruler painted on the wall behind a police mug shot. My posture looked exactly like what I see in the mirror. Very characteristic.
I had been nailed but good, photographically.
That was for damn sure.
I went back to the call register menu and checked for calls dialed. There were none recorded. I checked calls received, and found only three, all within the last three hours, all from the same number. I guessed the watcher was supposed to delete information on a regular basis, maybe even after every call, but had gotten lazy about three hours ago, which was certainly consistent with his demeanor and his reaction time. I guessed the number the calls had come in from represented some kind of an organizer or dispatcher. Maybe even the big boss himself. If it had been a cell phone number, it would have been no good to me. No good at all. Cell phones can be anywhere. That’s the point of cell phones.
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