"He only said he was keeping his head down and trying to do his job."
Knox slumped back on the bed. "Look, what do you say we all plan to do something together when he gets back? Go away somewhere. Maybe the Mediterranean. Just the three of us. Wind down and take a breather. My dime."
"That sounds great. But the Med is expensive and I probably make more money than you. How about I chip in too? Mark's the poor one. Serving his country doesn't even get him minimum wage."
"Nope, my dime. And you need to save your dollars."
"Why?"
"To take care of me in my old age. I won't be doing this crap forever."
There was a change in his tone when he said this and his daughter was quick to pick up on it.
"Dad, is everything okay?"
"Fine, sweetie. And a piece of advice, you don't waste premium theater tickets on old farts like me. You get a nice young man to join you in seeing Wicked. I want grandchildren, okay? I'm not getting any younger here."
"Okay, sure."
"I'll talk to you soon, honey."
"Good-bye, Dad. And… take care of yourself."
"Always."
"Dad?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you sure you're okay?"
Knox didn't want to hesitate, but for some reason he did. "Everything will be fine, Mel."
Knox clicked off and dropped the phone on the bed. Now he felt worse than he did before he'd called. He knew he'd frightened his daughter and there was nothing he could do about it now. Maybe he wanted to scare her. Or at least prepare her for when he didn't come back home, or even for when she might have to come and ID his body.
He looked around the dismal interior of his room. How many crappy hole-in-the-walls, how many effed-up towns, how many shitty countries had he spent the majority of his life in? The answer was clear: way too many.
He lay back on the bed feeling lonelier than he ever had.
Wicked? Yeah, I can tell you all about wicked, honey. But then I'm afraid you'd hate your old man, and I'd rather eat a machine-gun round.
His cell phone buzzed.
It was Hayes. He knew without even looking. He didn't want to answer it but he had to. Official protocol, meaning he didn't want to be transferred to undercover duty in, say, Tehran or Pyongyang.
"Joe Knox."
Hayes snapped, "Where are you?"
"On the hunt."
"On the hunt precisely where?"
" Southwest Virginia."
"That's not precise enough."
"To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure where I am and the reception up here is lousy, sir, I can barely hear you."
Hayes raised his voice a few notches. "Have you sighted him yet?"
"If I had I would've already called you. I'm just trying to run some leads down and get a more pinpoint location."
"Why didn't you have the chopper take you all the way in?"
Because then you'd know exactly where I was. "A bird dropping a fed in the middle of this place would've aroused a little bit of suspicion. If Carr was around he wouldn't have been much longer. I'm going to poke around and then get back to you."
"I'm not exactly on board with how you're handling this, Knox."
"Flying by the seat of my pants, sir. Doing the best I can, what with all the prohibitions on what I can look at or the roads I can go down."
"The minute you know anything, Knox. The very minute!" He clicked off.
Knox looked up in time to see the Fonz deliver his trademark line on TV.
"Sit on it, asshole," Knox said in his best Arthur Fonzarelli voice.
CHAPTER 42
ANNABELLE AND CALEB marched into Union Station and went straight up to the clerk that Knox had talked to. Annabelle flashed her fake FBI badge.
"Agents Hunter and Kelso. Was there a man in here earlier asking questions and showing you a photo? He would've identified himself as Joe Knox? Said he was with Homeland Security?"
"Yes, that's right," the woman said nervously.
Annabelle let out an audible sigh. "Then we have a big problem."
The woman looked anxiously at her. "What was the problem? We helped Agent Knox as best we could."
Caleb spoke up. "The problem is his name isn't Knox and he isn't with Homeland Security."
The woman blanched. "Omigod."
Annabelle said, "Omigod is right. I need to speak to everybody he talked to, right now!"
A few minutes later Annabelle and Caleb were seated in the supervisor's office. The train attendant was there too, having stayed behind at the station to catch up on some paperwork and been summoned when Annabelle had made her demand of the manager.
"We thought he was a fed."
"I'm sure. He probably told you not to say anything to anyone about what he'd told you, right?" said Annabelle.
"That's right, he did."
"Standard operating bullshit, I'm afraid."
"But his credentials looked authentic," the Amtrak supervisor said.
Caleb held out his creds so they could look at them closely. They were still a bit warm from Annabelle having just created them in the van on the way over. "I'm with Homeland Security. Did you note that in the upper-right-hand corner of the picture there's a small 'e' done in reverse like there is in mine?"
The train men looked at each other and shook their heads. The supervisor said, "I didn't know to look for that."
"That's because it's a secret," Annabelle chimed in. "To prevent people from successfully duplicating our creds. It's a double-edged sword, I know. It's a secret so the public isn't supposed to know. But I thought a notice had gone out to certain levels of the federal government about it. You're a federal agency, right?"
"Quasi-governmental," the supervisor replied. He added, "And let me tell you, nobody from the federal government tells us shit about anything. Hell, a lot of them question why the country needs trains at all. What with the highways suffocated and the skies filled to overflowing and every civilized country in the world building trains and rails at record paces, you'd think they could figure it out for themselves."
"We'll put in a good word for Amtrak at the next budget meeting," Caleb said sarcastically. "But right now we need to find this jerk-off, fast."
"Wait a minute, aren't you guys supposed to wear jackets with your acronym on the back?" the train conductor said.
"Yeah," Annabelle said impatiently. "When we're knocking down somebody's freaking door to make an arrest! Not when we're undercover trying to nail a spy."
Caleb gave her a sharp and totally choreographed glance along with a quick shake of the head.
"He's a spy?" exclaimed the supervisor.
"Yeah, he is," she admitted. "Now, I need to know exactly what you told him."
The two men filled her in while Caleb took notes. When they were done, she said, "I don't blame you for what happened. And hopefully we'll be able to run him down with the intel you just gave us."
"Wish us luck," Caleb said sourly. "We're going to need it because he's got quite a head start."
The pair quickly left and returned to the van.
"Nice job in there, Caleb," Annabelle said admiringly.
"I was in the thespian club in college. I had dreams, you know. Not Hollywood, God forbid. The stage."
"So you wanted to be on Broadway but ended up a librarian? How come?"
"I loved acting but there was a downside I could never get over."
"What was that?"
"Stage fright. I was sick for hours before every performance. I lost so much weight and went through so many costumes I finally had to give it up."
"Well, today you were a star."
CHAPTER 43
THE INTERVIEW with Charlie Trimble was going better than Stone had expected. His questions were polite but prepared. And then it began to change. The reporter sat in his old swivel chair, a piercing expression in his gaze, one that was making Stone extremely uncomfortable.
"You seem familiar to me, Ben. Have we met before?"