Gradually, he made his way to the back of the store, to the inevitable section marked Classics. Here, he dawdled a bit longer. He’d always wanted to study literature and still loved it, even if he’d actually been educated all those years back as a chemist. He examined Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Dostoevski’s Crime and Punishment and the great Tolstoi’s War and Peace and Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Now, this was more like it! Then his fingers found the inevitable copy of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, exactly the volume that every bookstore in America would be certain to keep on its shelves. His fingers touched the fat thing, rubbing it softly. He began to feel excited, and sent a quick nervous look around the store. It was full of shoppers, of course, but as an experienced watcher himself, he could see no visible signs of observation.
The ritual was exact: He would pick it up, turn to page 300 and there discover a very small piece of paper with one single number on it: 2 it might say, or perhaps 3. That was all.
To anyone else it would be meaningless. Only Gregor knew that it indicated he must leave the store, turn to the right — always the right — and begin to walk through the mall counting exits, and at the second or the third, leave the building.
Except that this time there was no slip.
Gregor stared in stupefaction. He felt the bell tolling for himself in his own head. His heart began to break. The air was suddenly hot and gassy. Pork Chop was such a pedant! Pork Chop never made mistakes! Pork Chop was slow, calm, steady, patient!
Gregor felt the panic come over him. Was he being set up? Was this some kind of ruse? A test? He swallowed harshly, feeling the book grow heavy in his hands. The damned thing weighed a ton.
“That’s a wonderful book,” a woman said to him. “I’ve read it six times.”
“Yes, it’s wonderful,” said Gregor, staring absurdly at her. Was she an FBI agent? He swallowed, waiting for her to speak again. He wished he could breathe, or charge his wan and twisted smile with some spontaneity. She looked at him with searching eyes, an attractive but unremarkable American. It was as if she were about to speak.
But she merely smiled enigmatically as his heart pounded in his chest, and then walked away.
He looked down at the book; it was shaking in his trembling hands. He began to flip through the pages while looting his memory for clues. Had he made some stupid mistake? Was it another bookstore, another mall, another day? The possibilities raced by like the rushing seconds on a digital clock. He grew confused. His head ached.
Think, you idiot!
He knew he could not stand there holding the book until his beard grew and the world ended.
He rifled the pages as his mind imploded on him and … like the dart of a white bird, quick and furtive … a little piece of paper from somewhere in the five hundreds broke free from the volume and began to pirouette toward the earth. Gregor watched it flutter, dip, then land. He could read the message: it was a single integer—4.
Thank God, Pork Chop! You didn’t let me down!
His relief was radiant with bliss. His knees shuddered in pleasure. He took a deep suck of air, felt it flood into his lungs. He put the book back on the shelf, and turned very adroitly and walked out.
Light as a dancer, Gregor turned to the right, as the absolute rule of the code demanded. He continued to walk until he found the fourth exit on the right, and stepped out into the bright sunlight, which made him blink after the interior of the mall. The bitter chill attacked him also. He struggled with his sunglasses, then began to walk up the row of cars that was immediately in front of him as he clung to the right-hand margin of the sidewalk out of the mall.
He walked on through the crisp air, examining the cars in the row to his right. At last he noticed a plaid scarf crumpled in a rear window well.
In the summer it might have been a madras jacket or a picnic tablecloth or even, as it was once, a Scotch cooler: but always it was something plaid. And always the automobile was different, presumably something rented under a pseudonym. Pork Chop was very careful with details like this.
Gregor looked at the vessel of his deliverance. It was a Ford. The bright sun burned down and the clouds of his own raw breath floated majestically before him. He could feel the sweat inside his collar begin to freeze.
Yet he did not move forward; he could not. Something rapped in his chest. He could not deny that he was still extremely upset.
But he could not just stand there either; nothing attracts attention in America more than a man standing still in a parking lot. Parking lots are a thing one goes through on the way to the other destinations; no one’s destination in America is ever just a parking lot. So Gregor continued his walk until he was out of acres of cars and headed into the woods, another extremely bad idea.
He headed back.
Do it, he commanded. Time is flying.
He was shaking horribly. He forced himself to go to the car and peeked in. He could see the briefcase on the floor of the backseat on his side, its top unzipped.
Just open the door, fool, and do it.
Gregor went to the car. The rear door was unlocked, as usual. He put his hand on the handle, pressed the button, and—
But then he tried to remember back, two years ago, when his services to Pork Chop started and that moment of explanation. Specifically, he pawed through his memory to recall if it was part of his official instructions that the exit code be placed between pages 300 and 301, or if that was merely Pork Chop’s own personal signature, something the spy had begun doing on his own. As a long-time agent-runner, Gregor knew that agents all had signatures, little things that worked into the ritual of communication subconsciously so they were unique, a part of the subverbal language between themselves and their cutouts.
Gregor’s sense of unease grew palpable. It felt like a brass egg jammed in his windpipe. The professional part of him, the deep-cover operative in an enemy country, came bristlingly alive. But so did the coward. He wanted to weep. He felt his knees begin to knock. Pork Chop, why are you doing this to me? Have you grown sloppy, Pork Chop? Have you grown cunning, or greedy? It happened to agents all the time. Pork Chop, what is going on? He realized his vanity had betrayed him again; he’d allowed himself to love Pork Chop as the only steady constellation in his whirling cosmos. He was a hopeless neurotic, always falling for lovers who were fated to betray him! It was a pattern, and now Pork Chop was repeating it. Suddenly, he hated Pork Chop! Pork Chop was slime, offal, defecation! Pork Chop was …
In a blast of desperation, almost more to escape his problems than to master them, Gregor walked to the other side of the car, where the doors were locked. He looked around. There was no one coming, though far off he could see people walking to and from parked cars. He reached in his pocket, took out a Swiss army knife, and with a swift plunge jammed it through the rubber seal of window and leaned against it with all his strength. Nothing happened. He looked around, almost catatonic with fear. But though he could see others moving in the lot and cars patrolling for empty spaces, no one was near him and no car came his way. Once more he leaned heavily upon the handle of the knife, calling up all the strength that he had, pulling the strength from the well of his fear. Suddenly, he felt something give. He had managed somehow to jam the window down an inch. With a mighty shove he got it down another and another and … he realized now he could get his hand in.