She made another rotation of her pen, looked up. “Still friends?”
“Forever, Annie. Forever.”
Her phone started ringing, and a young man with a pained expression on his face rapped at the side of the door. “Annie, Mister Geers is really getting impatient.”
“I’ll be right there.”
I got up and the young man stepped out, and I leaned over the desk and gave her a kiss. She smiled when I pulled back, but she hadn’t really kissed me in return. “There are some things of yours, back at Tyler Beach,” I said. “I’ll box them up and send them here, if you don’t mind.”
A quick nod as she gathered up her papers and briefing books. She still ignored her ringing phone. “That’d be fine, Lewis, but as you can see, I’m already late.”
“No problem.”
I started out of the office, recalled something and turned. “Annie, what were you going to say?”
Her head was still bent down. “What? What do you mean?”
“When I got here, you said you had something to say to me. What was it?”
“Oh.” She raised up her head, briefing books and binders clasped to her chest. “Yes, sorry. I was going to ask if you’d do me a favor. But… it’s not that important anymore.”
“Go ahead, Annie, say it.”
“Well… ”
“Please, tell me what you were going to say.”
Again, she bit her lower lip. “The thing you’re doing for Diane. The man who hurt her. Your hunt for Curt Chesak. Please stop it, will you?”
It felt like my heart had slowed right down, my blood now the consistency of cold molasses.
“What did you just say?”
“You heard me. This obsession on finding Curt Chesak. Please stop it. You’re making waves, Lewis, waves that can get the wrong people pissed off enough to hurt you, me, and the Senator. So stop it. Please. For me.”
I looked behind me and up and down the adjacent wide hallway, suddenly wondering if hard-eyed men with dark suits and earpieces were coming my way.
But so far, the coast was clear.
“Annie?”
“Yes?”
“You know what I said right back then, about being friends forever?”
“I do.”
I walked out her door. “Forever just ended.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The bus drive back to Massachusetts took about the same amount of time as before — twelve hours — but as I brooded and thought and brooded some more, it seemed to take twice as long. I napped and drank water or fruit juice, my stomach too tightly wrapped to accept any food. We stopped twice for refueling and rest stops, and I had to force myself to get off the bus and walk around to stretch my legs. The trip to D.C. and Arlington had been fruitful, even though the fruit had been bitter indeed. Probably a cliché; so sue me.
Our last stop was outside Hartford, and after I returned to my seat, I noticed a young man and his pregnant wife come up the aisle. He was in BDUs and his black hair was cut high and tight. He was in his twenties and his wife looked to be in her teens, and she had a shy smile as she followed her soldier husband onto the bus. The driver was still inside the station, completing some paperwork.
There were two empty seats, one behind the other, right next to me. Their companion seats had been occupied by two young men, bearded, wearing cargo pants and black fleece jackets. Bottles of designer water and bags of snacks were next to them on the empty seats. At the previous stop, the two of them had come in together, laughing and joking. The soldier stopped and looked at them, murmured something, but he was ignored by both young men. Each of them had iPod earphones in, they were reading Maxim and Rolling Stone, and their heads were slowly bobbing up and down in time with their secret tunes.
Feeling generous, I gave the two seated men about fifteen seconds, and then I stood up. The soldier looked me over and I gave him my best older guy smile. “Just a sec, just you wait.”
I leaned down, tapped the near guy on the shoulder. He glanced up at me, frowned, went back to his music and magazine. I gave him a harder tap, and he looked up.
“The fuck you want?” he said, taking one of his earbuds out.
“Nice to meet you too,” I replied. I motioned to the soldier and his wife standing in the aisleway. “How about being a sport, move up one seat, let the corporal and his pregnant wife sit together.”
“How about minding your own fucking business?”
He moved to replace his earbud, but I was quicker. With my right hand, I grabbed his beard, tugged him forward. He yelped. With my left hand, I took the wire to his iPod and quickly wrapped it around his neck, started twisting it as I also twisted his beard. He gurgled and started waving his arms.
“Tell you what,” I said. “When I let you go, you can move one seat forward and sit next to your pal.”
I tightened the beard and the iPod wires a bit more. His face colored. “Or you and I can see if that emergency exit behind you really does work, as I toss your ass out on the pavement. Can I get an amen?”
He nodded once, twice, thrice.
I let him go, stood up.
“Fair enough.” I stepped back and the guy, his face red and his nose dripping, bustled out of the seat, grabbing his belongings as he did so. The soldier and his wife backed down a few feet, and when the way was clear, they sat down together. The soldier gave me a knowing glance, and his wife ignored me and just kept her adoring gaze on her husband.
I took my seat, let out a breath. Wondered what Annie Wynn was doing at this very moment, and decided not to think about that anymore.
At North Station in Boston, I sat for a few minutes on one of the long wooden benches, just catching my breath. People in a hurry moved around, to and fro, and I tried to organize my thoughts, which were dark and disorganized indeed.
Curt Chesak.
Hell, I wasn’t even sure that was his name.
But I knew who he was, and what he did.
He was a hired gun, hired to raise hell, to be an agent provocateur. Soon after my last view of him at the Falconer nuclear power plant, beating the proverbial crap out of Diane Woods, my chase of him had resulted in a gunfight outside Boston University, the disappearance of a BU professor, said professor’s house burning down, and a fair number of well-armed and sharp-eyed men keeping an eye on Aunt Teresa’s house in the North End and my own house at Tyler Beach. Not to mention the story of the BU gunfight being spun into a story for the Boston Globe about a student filmmaking project gone awry.
So who were they? Contractors working for a federal agency? Contractors working for a foreign government — take your pick of any unstable oil-exporting country out there — or a foreign intelligence agency? Or maybe for some transnational corporation?
Too much to think about.
I rubbed at my hands, thought longingly of a meal that hadn’t been wrapped in plastic and a wide comfortable bathroom that didn’t bump and sway in the traffic.
Still too much to think about.
So stop thinking.
I smiled slightly.
So stop thinking already.
I flashed back to my first weeks working at the DoD as a research analyst, when one of my now long-deceased instructors had forcefully told us young ’uns, as she had said, not to think above your pay grade. Meaning, as she pointed out, if your job was to research and prepare a report on the latest variant of the Soviet SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missile and its guidance system, then do the goddamn report. Don’t think about any impact on arms control treaties, about the future threat of war, or the current nuclear offensive capability of the United States or the USSR.
Just do your goddamn report.
So there you go.
I didn’t care who was paying Chesak or why they were doing it.