Quinn connected out of Dublin to Shannon, waited several hours, and caught the Air Canada flight to Toronto.
As promised, he read the book in the departure lounge in Shannon and again on the flight across the Atlantic. He read the chapter on Petrosian six times. Before he touched down at Toronto he realized why so many rueful opponents had dubbed the wily Armenian grandmaster the Great Deceiver.
At Toronto his passport was no more queried than it had been at Birmingham or Dublin or Shannon. He took his luggage off the carrousel in the customs hall and passed through with a cursory check. There was no reason why he should notice the quiet man who observed him emerge from the customs hall, followed him to the main railway station, and joined him on the train northeast to Montreal.
At a used-car lot in Quebec’s first city, Quinn bought a used Jeep Renegade with heavy-duty winter tires and, from a camping store nearby, the boots, trousers, and down parka needed for the time of year in that climate. When the Jeep was tanked up he drove southeast, through St. Jean to Bedford, then due south for the American border.
At the border post on the shores of Lake Champlain, where State Highway 89 passes from Canada into Vermont, Quinn crossed into the United States.
There is a land in the northern fringes of the state of Vermont known to locals simply as the Northeast Kingdom. It takes in most of Essex County, with pieces of Orleans and Caledonia, a wild, mountainous place of lakes and rivers, hills and gorges, with here and there a bumpy track and a small village. In winter a cold descends on the Northeast Kingdom so terrible it is as if the land had been subjected to a state of freeze-frame-literally. The lakes become ice, the trees rigid with frost; the ground crackles beneath the feet. In winter nothing lives up there, save in hibernation, apart from the occasional lonely elk moving through the creaking forest. Wits from the South say there are only two seasons in the Kingdom-August and winter. Those who know the place say this is nonsense; it is August 15thand winter.
Quinn drove his Jeep south past Swanton and St. Albans to the town of Burlington, then turned away from Lake Champlain to follow Route 89 to the state capital, Montpelier. Here he quit the main highway to take Route 2 up through East Montpelier, following the valley of the Winooski past Plainfield and Marshfield to West Danville.
Winter had come early to the Northeast Kingdom and the hills closed in, huddled against the cold; the occasional vehicle coming the other way was another anonymous bubble of warmth, with heater full on, containing a human being surviving with technology a cold that would kill the unprotected body in minutes.
The road narrowed again after West Danville, banked high with snow on both sides. After passing through the shuttered community of Danville itself, Quinn put the Jeep in four-wheel drive for the final stage to St. Johnsbury.
The little town on the Passumpsic River was like an oasis in the freezing mountains, with shops and bars and lights and warmth. Quinn found a real estate agent on Main Street and put his request. It was not the man’s busiest time of year. He considered the request with puzzlement.
“A cabin? Well, sure, we rent out cabins in the summer. Mostly the owners want to spend a month, maybe six weeks in their cabins, then rent out for the rest of the season. But now?”
“Now,” said Quinn.
“Anywhere special?” asked the man.
“In the Kingdom.”
“You really want to get lost, mister.”
But the man checked his list and scratched his head.
“There might be a place,” he said. “Belongs to a dentist from Barre, down in the warm country.”
The warm country was at that time of year only fifteen below zero, as opposed to twenty. The realtor rang the dentist, who agreed to a one-month rental. He peered out at the Jeep.
“You got snow chains on that Renegade, mister?”
“Not yet.”
“You’ll need ’em.”
Quinn bought and attached the chains, and they set off together. It was fifteen miles but the drive took more than an hour.
“It’s on Lost Ridge,” said the agent. “The owner only uses it in high summer for fishing and walking. You trying to avoid the wife’s lawyers or something?”
“I need the peace and quiet to write a book,” said Quinn.
“Oh, a writer,” said the agent, satisfied. People make allowances for writers, as for all other lunatics.
They headed back toward Danville, then branched north up an even smaller road. At North Danville the agent guided Quinn west into the wilderness. Ahead the Kittredge Hills reared up to the sky, impenetrable. The track led to the right of the range, toward Bear Mountain. On the slopes of the mountain the agent gestured to a snow-choked track. Quinn needed all the power of the engine, the four-wheel drive, and the chains to get there.
The cabin was of logs, great tree trunks laid horizontally under a low roof with a yard of snow on it. But it was well built, with an inner skin and triple glazing. The agent pointed out the attached garage-a car left unheated in that climate would be a solid lump of metal and frozen gasoline by morning-and the log-burning stove that would heat the water and the radiators.
“I’ll take it,” said Quinn.
“You’ll need oil for the lamps, butane bottles for cooking, an axe to split down the logs for the stove,” said the agent. “And food. And spare gasoline. No use running out of anything up here. And the right clothing. What you’re wearing’s a bit thin. Be sure and cover your face or you’ll get frostbite. No telephone. You sure you want it?”
“I’ll take it,” said Quinn again.
They drove back to St. Johnsbury. Quinn gave his name and nationality, and paid in advance.
The agent was either too courteous or too incurious to ask why a Quebecer should want to find sanctuary in Vermont when Quebec had so many tranquil places of her own.
Quinn located several public phone booths that he could use day or night, and spent the night in a local hotel. In the morning he stocked his Jeep with all he would need and set off back into the mountains.
Once, pausing on the road out of North Danville to check his bearings, he thought he heard the snarl of an engine down the mountain behind him, but deduced it must be a sound from the village or even his own echo.
He lit the stove and slowly the cabin thawed out. The stove was efficient, roaring behind its steel doors, and when he opened them it was like facing a blast furnace. The water tank defrosted and heated up, warming the radiators in the cabin’s four rooms and the secondary tank for washing and bathing. By midday he was down to his shirt sleeves and feeling the heat. After lunch he took his axe and cut a week’s supply of split timber from the cords of pine stacked in the back.
He had bought a transistor radio, but there was no television and no phone. When he was equipped with a week’s supplies, he sat down with his new portable typewriter and began to type. The next day he drove to Montpelier and flew to Boston and on to Washington.
His destination was Union Station, on Massachusetts Avenue at Second Street, one of the most elegant railway stations in America, still gleaming from its recent refurbishment. Some of the layout had been changed from what he remembered from years ago. But the tracks were still there, running out of the basement departure concourse below the main hall.
He found what he wanted opposite the Amtrak boarding gates H and J. Between the door of the Amtrak Police office and the ladies’ room was a row of eight public phone booths. All their numbers began with the 789 prefix; he noted all eight, mailed his letter, and left.
As his cab took him back across the Potomac to Washington National Airport it turned down 14thStreet, and to his right he caught a glimpse of the White House. He wondered how fared the man who lived in the Mansion, the man who had said, “Get him back for us,” and whom he had failed.