"Business actually, but I don't think we'd turn down pastry and coffee." He turned to Peggy and Holliday. "Would we?" He introduced them, one after the other, and Pyx stood aside and ushered them into his kitchen. It was relentlessly low-tech with the exception of a bright red Gaggia espresso maker that was hissing and steaming on a simple plank countertop that looked as old as the house. The floor was dark flagstone, the ceiling plaster with exposed oak beams, the walls whitewashed stone. There was an ancient refrigerator, a freestanding pantry, a separate oven and a large, professional-looking set of gas burners.
Herbs hung from nails, copper-bottom pots and cast-iron frying pans hung from the beams and early morning sunlight poured in through a single, multipaned window with rippled old glass set into the wall beside the grill. Outside Peggy could hear birds chirping. At any other time it would have been an idyllic moment in the country; right now it was edged with fear, worry and terror. Pyx sat them down at a yellow pine kitchen table in the middle of the room, brought out a plate of warm and aromatic chocolate croissants from the pantry and busied himself at the exotic-looking coffee maker for a moment, making them each a large, foaming cup of cappuccino, which he then brought to the table. He sat down himself, dunked one end of a croissant into his coffee and took a bite of the soggy pastry. Peggy did the same. There was so much butter in the flaky crust that it really did seem to melt in her mouth. Philpot took two.
"So," said Pyx. "You don't look like the kind of people Paddy here usually brings to me, but I've learned that appearances can be deceiving."
"Passports," said Philpot, his mouth full. "And all the other paraphernalia."
"Talk to me," said Pyx, turning to Peggy.
"What do you mean?"
"Say something-Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers."
"I don't understand."
"I'm trying to see if you have an accent."
"I don't."
"Depends on your point of view. In Castleknock I wouldn't have an accent but here I do. Speak."
Peggy did as she was told.
"Westchester, New York, but you've recently spent a lot of time in Israel." Pyx nodded.
Peggy stared. "How did you know that?"
"Vast experience," he said, grinning. "It's what I do." He turned to Holliday. "Now you," he said. "Same thing." Holliday grudgingly repeated the line of doggerel.
"Born in West Virginia but raised in upstate New York, right?"
"Close enough." The man was dead-on, of course. He'd spent his first four years in Norfolk after his father came out of the navy and before he joined the railway.
"Neither of you have an accent that anyone's going to be able to pick up unless they're an expert, which most U.S. passport control officers aren't. We'll make you Canadians. Either of you done much traveling there?"
"I've been to Toronto a few times, and Montreal," said Peggy.
Pyx turned to Holliday. "You?"
"Same." He frowned. "Why not make us Americans?"
"They've got access to U.S. databases. I'm presuming you're persona non grata there at the moment or you'd be using your own names."
"It's a long story."
"Aren't they all?" said the Irishman. "Ontario, then. Easy. They've got simple birth certificates and driver's licenses. You'll have to have a health card, as well."
"Health card?"
"It's free. Ontario government. Very efficient about having the cards, and for some sort of privacy-act reason they're not allowed to cross-index the databases between the bureaucracies. Good photo ID. I can do the health card, the driver's license and the birth certificate right here."
Peggy didn't understand a word of what the man was saying.
"The passports," Philpot prodded.
"Even simpler." Pyx smiled. "But first the photographs." He stood up and led the way to the rear of the house. They turned into an L-shaped hallway lined with bookcases leading to the bedroom, but instead of moving on Pyx stopped at the turn of the L and pulled out a volume from the bookcase. There was a faint clicking sound and the case swung open on a completely invisible hinge.
"Open sesame," said Pyx, and stood aside to let them enter. He followed and shut the bookcase doorway behind them. Peggy looked around the secret room. It was large, fifteen feet on a side, and windowless. Work-height counters ran around three walls with built-in shelves above. There were dozens of neatly labeled binders on the shelves, color coded, and in one corner there was an array of half a dozen large, flat-screen monitors. Beneath the monitors on steel racks there was a row of featureless black computer servers, each one with a blinking green light on its front surface. The counters were loaded with an array of peripherals from large flatbed scanners to photo light tables and several very professional-looking color printers and photo printers. Along the far wall was a complex three-screen LightWorks computer editing console for motion pictures.
"You're awfully free with your secrets," said Holliday. "We could have been cops."
"You're not," said Pyx. "Paddy would have killed you by now if you had been. He also let me know you were coming, and if he hadn't I would have known about it from the moment you turned off the main road." He smiled, clearly taking no offense at Holliday's comment. "And I wouldn't have greeted you with coffee and chocky croissants, believe me." He shrugged and nodded toward the LightWorks console. "Besides, I have a perfectly valid film-editing enterprise going on. There's nothing here that's particularly incriminating except on the drives, and I can dump data faster than any copper could ever get into this room."
Holliday frowned. "I didn't see him call you."
"He text messaged me from Pilsen. I gather you had a little trouble in the land of bad Czechs."
"Some," said Holliday.
Peggy's attention was suddenly drawn to a large camera mounted on a professional tripod against the wall, facing the bookcase doorway. "That's a Cambo Wide DS with a Schneider 35 XL Digitar lens, and a Phase One P25 medium-format back." Her eyes widened. "That's, what, thirty grand?"
"More like thirty-five," said Pyx. "Just about the most expensive point-and-shoot you can buy."
"I'd hardly call it point-and-shoot," said Peggy.
To Holliday it looked like a fat lens attached to a big, flat, square piece of metal. It didn't really look like a camera at all.
"It's in line with the digitizing equipment governments use," said Pyx. "Which is how they make passports now, at least in the United States and Canada. It's supposed to be foolproof. Instead of photographs being glued and laminated, they're digitized, then thermal printed right onto the page."
"Must make your job harder," Holliday said.
"Much easier, as a matter of fact." He gestured toward the back of the bookcase door. It was painted a neutral off-white and a pair of low-level lights placed high on either side of the doorway effectively washed out any shadow. "Stand there, would you?" he asked. Holliday positioned himself against the doorway. "Head up, no smile, mouth closed," he instructed. There was a snapping sound and a bright flash, and Peggy realized the lights on either side of the door were photographic strobes. "Now step away and let Ms. Blackstock take your place." Holliday moved and Peggy stood against the door. Pyx adjusted the tripod down to compensate for the difference in their heights and the strobes flared again. "Great." Pyx nodded. He took the flash card out of the camera, slipped it into a special drive unit beside one of the flat screens, then typed a set of instructions into the computer. "Any name preferences?"
"No," said Holliday.
"Me neither," agreed Peggy.
"Okay, you'll be, uh… Norman Peterson, and Ms. Blackstock will be Allison Masters."
Pyx went back to the keyboard and started typing again. "Place of birth, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Date… 1981 or so. Mother's maiden name… Father… Documents provided. Guarantor." He typed on, humming under his breath, and finished the online form a few moments later. "Next thing is the routing, so it doesn't come back to me here," he explained. "First I grab an appropriate Canadian consulate-Albania, say-and put in their address as a point of origin." He read it off the screen, "Rruga, Dervish Hima, Kulla, Number Two, Apartment Twenty-two, Tirana, Albania, and finally the packet-switching code." He finished typing with a flourish.