“Anyone up for spaghetti?” Francis said.
Jesse and Amanda climbed out and walked up the beach to the tree line.
“You going back to town to find a Pizza Hut?” Jesse asked.
“I was thinking more like Heinz,” Francis said. “But you’ll have to give me a hand with the boat first.”
They pulled it out of the water and dragged it up the beach. Francis reached into a storage compartment in the bow, took out an old green tarpaulin and covered it.
“Follow me,” Francis said.
Five minutes later they reached the cabin. It was about ten yards wide and made of dark gray stone, covered in patches of thick moss. There was a small window to either side of the wooden door. The roof was covered in grass and the wall on the right extended up into a narrow chimney.
“Welcome to Canada,” Francis said.
“This is your place?” Jesse said.
“Built it myself.”
“I don’t suppose you built a toilet around here while you were at it, did you?” Amanda said.
Francis pointed at the trees. “Toilet’s out there somewhere. The ground if you need a pee and a shovel if you need to move your bowels.”
“
Move
my bowels?” Amanda said.
“Take a shit,” Jesse said.
“Yeah, I know what it means, Jesse,” she said. “I just don’t like the idea of doing it with the woodchucks watching.”
The cabin was a single room about fifteen by twenty-five feet. In the wall to the right of the door there was a quaint little fireplace. Against the opposite wall there was a crudely built single bed made of rough boards. In the center of the room, a table and a single chair completed the cabin’s inventory of furniture.
“Kill me now,” Amanda said, looking around. But her tone suggested she was more intrigued than disappointed.
“Come on. It could be worse,” Jesse said.
“Yeah,” Amanda said, smiling, “it could have been a tipi.”
Francis picked up three dry logs and stacked them inside the fireplace. There was a rusty tin of lighter fluid and a box of long wooden matches on the narrow stone mantelpiece. He sprayed the logs, struck a match and threw it in. There was a whooshing sound as the fluid ignited and the logs began to burn.
“That’s not how they showed us to do it in the Scouts,” Jesse said.
“Some of that wood’s ten years old,” Francis said. “It would probably ignite if you rubbed your hands together and touched it.”
They stood there for a moment in front of the fireplace, silently preoccupied with that most ancient of human pastimes.
“So,” Amanda finally said. “Where’s the kitchen? Now that we’re back in the Stone Age, I’m guessing that’s where you’ll want me. Or maybe you have some pelts that need scraping.”
“Is she always this charming?” Francis asked Jesse.
“No. This is her on a good day,” he said, smiling at her.
“I’m just tired and hungry,” Amanda said, leaning on Jesse. She yawned and stretched her arms. “Tired, hungry and still in denial.”
Francis pulled the table to one side and pushed the chair out of the way. “I can help you with the first two,” he said kneeling down. “The third should come in time. I’m feeling a little weirded-out myself, if it’s any comfort.”
Francis knelt and brushed aside some of the dust on the floor, exposing the rough wooden boards beneath, then went outside and came back a minute later carrying a crowbar. The nails screeched as he pried one of the boards free, making all of them cringe. He pulled up four more and stacked them to one side.
“Holy shit!” Jesse said and motioned for Amanda to come over.
“My god, I think he really is a walrus,” she said.
Francis looked up, puzzled.
“She means seal,” Jesse said. “As in Navy SEAL.”
For a moment Francis looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“You are, aren’t you?” Jesse said.
“I’m what?” Francis said.
“A SEAL, or Force Recon, or one of those Special Forces outfits.”
“You’ve been playing too many video games, kid,” Francis said.
“Yeah, I’ve played a few. I still think that’s what you are, though. Why else would you have a damn arsenal under the floorboards?”
“They’re for hunting.”
“Really? Because I have a hunting rifle and it doesn’t look anything like those. That one there? I know that’s an M16 of some kind. What do you hunt with an M16?”
“Look, kid,” Francis said. “Don’t try growing up too fast. Let’s just say I’m a guy who likes guns and leave it at that.”
“Gun worship
is
the second biggest religion in the United States,” Amanda said. “After fast food.”
She stepped forward and held out her hands. “We need some spaghetti in this Western. Give me the Heinz and I’ll see what I can rustle up. No beans, mind. This place is
way
too small for beans.”
Francis looked up at Jesse and saw the topic was not going to be dropped that easily. He reached down and pulled a plastic sheet back to reveal a sizable selection of canned goods. He passed six cans of Heinz spaghetti to Amanda, then reached down and picked up a gallon-size milk jug full of water and held it out to Jesse. “Can you give me a hand with this?”
“Sure. Whatever,” Jesse said.
Francis produced a Swiss army knife from his pocket, opened the cans and passed them to Amanda who lined them up next to the fire. Jesse was sitting on the bed and devoting his attention to a hole in the knee of his jeans. Amanda walked over to him and held out her hands. “What do you say, Bill? You want to join Calamity Jane and the gunslinger for a bite to eat?”
They sat and ate in a semicircle around the fireplace with Amanda in the middle. When she was done she turned and grinned at Francis. “Maurice the Seal! I like it, it’s cute.”
Jesse couldn’t help laughing. Francis looked over at him, stone-faced for a moment, then caught the bug and joined in, which set Amanda off too.
They sat that way for a long time, caught in the grip of infectious laughter. And for a little while they weren’t running for their lives but just three people enjoying the company of others. Outside, the thunderclouds were rolling in, painting the still surface of the lake a deep, ominous black.
New York, New York
Tuesday 18 July 2006
1500 EDT
Jack took the hotdog and handed the street vendor a five-dollar bill. “Keep the change.”
“Thanks, pal.”
He crossed Central Park West at 108th Street and found an empty bench along one of the footpaths leading into the park. He was acutely aware that stress was beginning to chip away at some fundamental part of the machinery between his ears. Thinking, something he had been managing perfectly well a few days ago, was beginning to get harder. He found himself having trouble remembering half the things he had told Marius. And he had a headache. Not the dull throb behind the forehead or temples that a couple of Excedrin would take care of, but a steady, piercing drumbeat behind his eyes, as if something with sharp teeth were chewing on his optic nerves.
On a good day he might have spotted them. But Jack hardly noticed the two men that approached the bench from opposite sides. Nor did he look up when a black Chevy van pulled to a stop not twenty yards away.
“Jack Fielding?”
Jack looked up. The man standing in front of him looked like he’d just walked off a construction site. He had a hard hat under one arm and a tool belt slung over his right shoulder. The man who stopped on the path several yards away was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase.
“Who wants to know?” Jack said, looking around for the best direction to run.
“There’s someone who’d like to meet you,” the construction worker said, pointing at the van. “Right over there.”
“Who?” Jack asked.
The man didn’t answer.
“If it’s all the same to you,” Jack said, “I’m quite happy where I am.”
“It’s not,” the man said. “And don’t bother running.”
Jack looked back toward Central Park West and saw two more men casually admiring the traffic.
Suit-man looked over at the van and nodded. The side door slid open.
“What do you say, buddy?” construction man said, “you going to give us a minute or do we have to take it?”
Jack stood up. “I guess I can spare a minute.”
“Wise choice.”
When Jack got in, suit-man closed the door and tapped on it twice. There were no windows inside, only a small light in the roof. Jack tried the door, more out of reflex than any hope that it might be unlocked. He braced himself as the van began to move, accelerating and braking with the busy afternoon traffic.
It felt like they’d been driving for at least half an hour but it had probably been less. At this time of day that would still put them downtown somewhere, he figured. Jack squinted instinctively when the door opened, only to find it was just as dark outside. The man standing in the door was Asian. Japanese or maybe Korean, Jack thought.
“This way,” the man said.
They were in an abandoned factory of some kind. Several rusting machines that looked like metal presses had been pushed against the wall at the back of the large room. Jack followed the man past these and up a flight of stairs that led to a small, elevated office overlooking the shop floor.
“Wait here,” the man said.
Jack waited.
When he heard the sound of an approaching engine, he walked to the window and saw a white seven-series BMW pull up alongside the van. The man who got out looked well past retirement age. He had a thick beard and wore a brown suit with elbow patches.
When he entered the office a minute later the man sat down and nodded at the chair across the table. “Please, take a seat.”
Jack did.
“You’re a hard man to find, Mr. Fielding. Or should I say Albrecht? That
is
your given name, isn’t it? Markus Albrecht?”
Jack couldn’t quite hide his surprise, but didn’t answer.
Norton Weaver sat down and opened the file in his hand. He took a pair of reading glasses from his inner coat pocket and perched them on the end of his nose. “Markus Albrecht. Born six August 1963 in Prenzlau. Your mother crossed the border in ‘66 and settled in Bonn. Father unknown. Have I missed anything so far?”
When Jack still made no reply, Norton went on. “Recruited out of the State Investigation Bureau in ‘93 by GMM Propulsion in Frankfurt. You changed your name to Jack Fielding a year later. Now a resident alien and the head of corporate security for Skyline Defense. Sound about right?”
“What do you want?” Jack said.
“That’s not really the right question. If it were up to me you’d be sleeping with the fishes, as they say here in the Big Apple. My employer, however, sees things differently.”
“Your employer?”
Norton ignored the question. “You’ve caused me a lot of trouble, Jack. Do you mind if I call you Jack? My German pronunciation is awful.”
Jack said nothing.
“Your little stunt in Vermont is proving quite the headache. Did you know Rollins was Delta before he started robbing banks?”
Jack nodded. “I knew he was ex-army.”
“Indeed. Anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it now but grin, is there? I’m more curious to know what you were keeping at the Fed that was so important you’re willing to hire a man like Rollins to find it.”
“Why does it matter?” Jack said. “Whoever took it obviously thought it was yours or you wouldn’t be here.”
“You’re brighter than you look, Jack,” Norton said. “Luckily for you, the situation is one we might both be able to take advantage of.”
“How?” Jack said.
“Let’s just say we’re limited in what we can do ourselves.”
Jack relaxed a little and even managed a faint smile. “Because they have you by the balls, is that it? You go looking, they call CNN?”
“Something like that.”
“And what can
I
do?” Jack said.
“You want your property back. We want our balls back. The man we’re both looking for –”
“His name is Walter Scott,” Jack interrupted. “Gerald Ross was his line into the Fed.”
“I have no doubt Ross helped him, but I can assure you his name isn’t Walter Scott. Not that it matters. What matters is that he’s made a mistake. And he’s smart enough to
know
he’s made a mistake.”
“And you want me to go after him for you,” Jack said.
“You know, you really are a lot smarter than I thought you would be, Jack. Yes, we want you to find him. And kill him.”
“And you think he’ll keep his mouth shut because what, he’s a man of honor? You saw what he did in Vermont. He’s crazy.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Norton said. “You
did
kill Ross and his wife.”
“We didn’t kill Ross,” Jack said. “He killed himself.”
“And you had nothing to do with that, I’m sure. My point is, I don’t think he’ll go to the press because I don’t think he wants to. He knows he’s stolen something that belongs to you. He knows you want it back.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Jack said, “I’ve exhausted my resources.”
“Which brings us to the point of all this.”
Norton took a folded sheet of paper from the file and pushed it across the table. “That number is valid for another twenty-four hours. The money will be given to you when my men drop you off.”
“Who am I calling?” Jack said.
“The best in the business.”
“All right, and what happens when he’s found?”
“You get your property back, I get my pound of flesh, and we part friends.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. I’d tell you not to try and fuck me over, but I think you’d be insulted.”
Jack stood and pushed the chair back. “The lease at the Fed isn’t in my name.”
“I know,” Norton said.
“So how did you find me?”
“Your friend at the FBI.”
“Jessops?”
Norton nodded. “Relax, the FBI is the least of your problems. But if you want my advice, you should find yourself another informant. Maybe one who isn’t quite so stupid.”
FBI Field Office
New York, New York
Tuesday 18 July 2006