He undressed, taking care to leave his clothes where he could easily find them in the dark, then read in bed while he waited for Gerry, Mike, Ham, and Taylor to come up as well. It wasn’t long before they did, and the five men made small talk until, one by one, their bedside lights went out, and the loft became dark and silent.
Henry lay quietly in bed, pretending to sleep but instead closely listening to everything around him. Sharing quarters with the other guys had always been a little hard—Mike and Ham snored, and Gerry was a restless sleeper—but just this once he was thankful for their habits; when the snoring began and Gerry finally stopped tossing and turning, he knew that they were fast asleep. And he’d never had to worry about Taylor; he was dead to the world as soon as he closed his eyes. From downstairs, he heard the faint sounds of Sabatini and Arnold moving around for a little while. He was afraid that they might leave their bedroom door open, and breathed a quiet sigh of relief when he heard it swing shut. And then the lodge became quiet.
Henry lay in the darkened loft for another hour and seven minutes—he knew how long because he was still wearing his watch with its luminous dial—and kept himself awake by listening to a barred owl hooting somewhere along the lakeshore—who cooks for you, who cooks for yoooou?—and trying to figure out how far away it was. At exactly midnight, he pushed aside the covers, sat up, and reached for his clothes. He was prepared to tell anyone who woke up that he was just going down to the kitchen for a glass of milk, but none of the other guys woke up as he passed their beds on the way out of the loft.
The hardest part was making his way downstairs. The steps tended to creak, so he had to go down slowly and carefully, putting as much weight as he could on the banister. But the rubber soles of his outdoor boots muffled his footsteps as he crept past the downstairs bedroom to the porch, and he managed to open the inside screen door without waking the FBI bodyguards.
Henry had left his jacket and hat on a porch chair. He put them on, then opened the outside screen door and, one cautious step at a time, walked down the back steps. He lingered for another moment outside the lodge, watching the windows to see if any lights came on. When they didn’t, he headed for the beach.
The lodge was furnished with a rowboat and a couple of wooden canoes. They lay overturned on the beach just a few feet from the water’s edge. The men had used them a few times until it became too cold to go out on the lake; yesterday, when he was sure no one was watching, Henry had taken a paddle from the basement and hidden it beneath the smaller of the two canoes. Still working as quietly as he could, he turned it right-side up, placed the paddle in the stern where he could get to it, and slid the canoe most of the way into the water.
Henry was about to climb in when he thought he saw something from the corner of his eye: a tiny spark of light, like a firefly that hadn’t yet noticed that summer was over. It seemed to come not from the lodge, though, but a little farther down the lakeshore, where the Goddards’ cabin was located.
He froze, peering into the darkness for any other movement. But the night remained dark and quiet, and after a while he decided his eyes were playing tricks on him. He climbed into the canoe, careful not to rock it enough to make any noise, and once he’d settled into the wicker seat in the stern, he picked up the paddle and used it to shove off.
It was a cold night but not windy; the air lay still upon Lake Monomonac, and he gradually warmed up once he started paddling. The half-moon shrouded by high clouds cast little light upon the waters, but nonetheless Henry stayed in the shadows of the lakeside trees until he was out of sight from the lodge. He paused for another moment or two, making sure that no lights had come on behind him; when he saw nothing and heard only his friend the owl, he decided once and for all that he’d made a clean getaway.
As the crow flies, Lake Monomonac’s western end was only a mile and half from the lodge, just around a bend on the northern side. The lake straddled the Massachusetts and New Hampshire borders; Route 202 crossed the state line at the tip of the lake, and it was there that a small tackle shop and marina were located. Henry had noticed the shop during one of his infrequent trips into town, and this was the place he picked for the rendezvous.
The arrangements had been tricky. He couldn’t send Doris a letter, and calling her from the lodge had been impossible. His break had come a couple of weeks ago, when he joined Esther and Agent Coolidge on a Saturday shopping trip. They usually bought groceries at the little general store in Rindge, but this time they needed to restock the pantry with more than what the Rindge store offered, so instead they drove to Jaffrey, the next-nearest town, where a large grocery store was located. As luck would have it, there was a telephone booth just outside. While Coolidge helped Esther pick fresh vegetables, Henry excused himself to find a restroom and instead made a quick trip to the phone booth.
A handful of dimes and five minutes was all he needed. Doris’s number was something he’d memorized a long time ago.
He thought that he’d have to wait for her, but when he finally reached the marina and tied up the canoe on the floating dock, a figure stepped out of the shadows behind the tackle shop. For a second, he thought that it might be a caretaker or even a town cop, but then he heard a soft voice call his name, and he realized that it was her.
The very fact that she’d even showed up meant that Doris still cared for him. Or at least so he hoped.
A quick hug and a kiss, then they went to her car, a six-year-old Ford coupe that she’d parked beneath the lonely streetlight in front of the tackle shop. “You’d better be grateful,” Doris said as she slid in behind the wheel. “This trip is going to use up the rest of my gas ration for the month.” She tapped a finger against the windshield sticker. “I’m probably going to have to take the trolley till after Thanksgiving because…”
“Thank you,” Henry said, then kissed her again.
She had many questions, of course, but Henry asked her to hold off until they found someplace where they could have a comfortable conversation. She reluctantly agreed, so they made small talk as she continued up Route 202, heading farther north into New Hampshire. There was almost no traffic on the highway that time of night; a pair of headlights appeared behind them as they drove through Rindge, but they paid no more attention to them than they did to the cars and trucks that periodically went by the other way.
There was nothing open in Jaffrey, so they went on to Peterborough, where they found a railcar diner in the center of town. The restaurant was an all-nighter catering to long-haul truck drivers; it was almost empty except for a couple of men hunched over the lunch counter and a middle-aged waitress who cheerfully greeted Henry and Doris as they came in and asked if they wanted coffee. They took a booth at the far end of the diner and waited until the waitress brought them two mugs of black coffee, but as soon as she was gone, Doris put down the paper menu she’d been pretending to study and stared across the table at Henry.
“Okay, out with it,” she said. “Where have you been the last seven weeks?”
Henry had tried to prepare himself for this very question. He’d rehearsed his answer countless times in his mind, seeking an answer that would be honest yet elusive. Now that the moment was here, though, he found himself tongue-tied. It was impossible to lie to those sharp green eyes.