“Want to come inside?” he asked Mallery, anticipating that she would. It had been six hours since she’d had anything to eat or drink or used a restroom.
She looked up. “I’m good, thanks.” Then she was gone, back to her e-mail.
Going inside now meant leaving her out here, unaware and unprotected. He wasn’t sure how to explain the situation — in the time he scrawled a note, the van might pull up and zap them with millimeter wave energy. He also didn’t want to needlessly frighten her. Possibly he was just paranoid. He looked and spotted a New Haven PD cruiser. Empty — the cops no doubt inside the food court. But another option presented itself: an elephantine garbage truck was lumbering around the corner of the food court building.
Thornton wove through open spaces in the parking lot as if returning to the highway. The van shot after him, abandoning any pretense of stealth.
“Decided you wanted to live longer?” Mallery asked.
You got that right, Thornton thought. “Just save time,” he said.
Taking an only-in-a-BMW ninety-degree left turn around the food court building, he found the garbage truck backing up to an enormous dumpster, completely blocking the right lane.
Perfect, he thought.
He jumped into the left lane, joining the moderate drive-through line just ahead of the Saab and the station wagon, drawing an angry honk from the former.
By the time the white van caught up, it couldn’t get past the Saab, the station wagon, or the newly arrived Camry because of the garbage truck. Two more cars fell into place behind the van, preventing it from backing up.
Canning couldn’t decide whether to drink the vodka. Russo-Baltique was by far the finest in the world. It couldn’t be found in stores or bars. Its manufacturer wasn’t even a liquor company, but a railway-car manufacturer. The golden flask was a small-scale replica of the 1912 Russo-Baltique automobile’s signature radiator guard. This particular flask had been confiscated from Iranian smugglers on the Strait of Hormuz by a team from the U.S. Department of Commerce overseeing the embargo. The chief, aware of his old colleague’s predilection for vodka, buried the unusual container in the paperwork as one (1) bottle misc. and shipped it to Canning. Would have never happened if the guy’d had an inkling that the going rate for a bottle of Russo-Baltique was $1.3 million. That is, if you could get your hands on one.
Canning could probably flip the bottle for as much as $2 million, or about five times the value of his Reston two-bedroom condo, in which he now sat after a long stretch at the safe house — a bathtub full of water, chlorine bleach, and sodium hydroxide did a good job of eliminating a body; it just took a long time. He longed to drink the vodka. Funny, because once upon a time, he couldn’t tell the difference between Russo-Baltique and a four-buck bottle of Putinka. But over the course of his Russian tour, he developed quite the palate. And although he didn’t realize it until now, he had wanted to drink the bottle of Russo-Baltique the way other men coveted Porsches or supermodels.
And why not indulge? The blogger, the lone remaining threat to his plan, was about to be flushed. Canning expected to make enough money on the sale of the E-bomb that he would be able to keep Russo-Baltique on hand at all times.
He pried off the yellow and white gold cap, topped with a Russian imperial double eagle. Setting a highball glass on the coffee table, he dispensed the liquor in a glistening chute. He thought of Mark Twain’s adage, The poetry is all in the anticipation, for there is none in reality.
The wrong ringtone interrupted his thoughts. He fished the phone from his pocket, hit the green ANSWER button, and said, “Goodwyn.”
“Good afternoon, Norm,” said the South Atlantic Resources manager, Mickey Rapada, sounding so blithe that Canning surmised that something was very wrong.
“Is it really?”
“Well, we had no choice but to follow them onto a McDonald’s drive-through lane. The clearance was nine feet, and even though the van’s height is only one hundred and five inches, according to the specs, it set off the sensor.”
“ ‘Nothing is according to specs.’ ”
“Sir?”
“ ‘Nothing is according to specs,’ is the ninth of the General Laws of Augustus De Morgan, who’s better known by his nom de plume, Murphy. Murphy’s first law, of course, is ‘Anything that can go wrong will.’ His second is ‘Anything that cannot go wrong will anyway.’ He also wrote that ‘If only two things can happen and one might lead to catastrophe, it does.’ A buck says that’s the case here, right?”
Rapada laughed. “The good news is you win a buck.”
The onetime Green Beret was as tough as a badger, Canning thought, but his laughter failed to hide his unease at being the bearer of more bad news. “Tell me why, please.”
“The manager of the food court came outside and told us we had to back out of the drive-through chute. A couple of New Haven cops, who happened to be at the McDonald’s, helped direct traffic. Six vehicles in line behind the van had to be backed out.”
“Murphy also wrote, ‘The number of people watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your action,’ ” Canning said.
“I’m afraid Murphy’s right again, chief,” Rapada said. “By the time we got back onto the highway, the targets had a twenty-five-mile lead.”
“You know where they’re headed?”
“Yes, sir, I’ve been monitoring their feed the whole time. They’re going to meet O’Clair at the Abbey Pub on upper Broadway.”
“Double or nothing on the dollar that they made you, used the McDonald’s drive-through lane as an escape route, and are really headed to see the supposed dope fiend from No Such Agency. How about you scramble another unit to get the lovebirds, and I’ll take care of the dope fiend?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Canning liked Rapada. The kid believed “national security interests” justified any and all means, and he followed orders without question.
“Just remember this, junior,” Canning said. “ ‘In preparing for battle, plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.’ ”
“Murphy again?”
“Actually, Eisenhower.”
A few yessirs later, Rapada rang off.
The Russo-Baltique was exquisite, but it might as well have been Putinka. Canning couldn’t focus on anything except the blogger.
20
As planned, O’Clair texted Thornton: instead of abbey, why not come as my guests 2 casa italiana? The Columbia Italian academy’s lavish ristorante was accessible only by university staffers.
Thornton replied: love 2! grazie!
Twenty minutes later, while he was parallel parking across campus from the Casa Italiana, on the west side of Broadway between 119th and 120th, O’Clair texted again: u guys mind hanging for a few mins @ my office? — sorry, some work that won’t go 2 bed …
No problem, Thornton replied.
In theory, O’Clair’s office at Columbia was more easily accessible than the scientist’s regular office. To gain admittance to the National Security Agency downtown, visitors had to pass a full background check in advance of their visit. Upon arrival they faced a battery of additional security measures including a millimeter-wave scanner generations ahead of the imaging devices at airports. In contrast, Columbia University’s fourteen-story interdisciplinary science building, home to as many as twenty classified military and intelligence service research projects at a given time, required visitors to simply pass beneath a ceremonial gate at Broadway and 116th Street, then stroll along a picturesque cherry tree — lined brick path through the quad.