The train was underground for some time, and then spent a few minutes speeding over the suburbs in elevated mode, and then slowed down to connect with the twentieth-century rails that served Amtrak through most of the northeastern corridor. Slowed down regularly for nineteenth-century curves.
After the Baltimore stop, I checked back in the coach and the black guy was gone; both those seats were empty. Clipped my ticket to the back of the seat in front of me and cranked back the seat; the train wouldn’t reach Boston for another seven hours.
A conductor woke me up when the train was approaching Boston, about ten at night. I got off and South Station was a huge quiet cavern full of places to eat, all closed.
A sleepwalking rent-a-cop directed me to a twenty-four-hour place a couple of blocks away, the South Side Diner, which was full of interesting people. I probably was not the only one carrying a gun, but nevertheless felt somewhat out of place, neither intoxicated nor obviously unwashed. Though I wanted a shower so much I might have used the gun to force my way into one.
I’m sure there were fine restaurants still open in some other part of town, but I only had an hour. I nibbled on a fried-egg sandwich, which seemed safe in all respects other than cardiac, and went back to the station to wait for the late train north.
I felt like a time traveler marooned in the twentieth century, or the nineteenth.
The small crowd waiting for the train was mostly old black or Hispanic people. The few who were white or prosperous-looking were absorbed in their readers or papers. How many of them had sought out this slow venue because they were also carrying guns? How many were not? We were a fairly desperate-looking crowd, myself definitely included.
The gun was chafing my side, so I went into a men’s-room stall and returned it to the Amtrak bag. I doubted there would be a quick-draw situation on the Portland train.
A good thing, too. I was exhausted from travel, and once I got to Portland it would still be at least four hours to Bangor on the bus.
When I got to Bangor, what then? Daniel Craig and Sean Connery would always appear all fresh in their tuxedos, with plenty of weaponry and ammo tucked away somehow. I couldn’t visualize either with dark shadows under his eyes and his gun in an Amtrak bag.
At least I wouldn’t look dangerous. And I could put it back in the holster before I confidently kicked down the door.
13.
It was not quite six in the morning when the squeal of the bus brakes woke me up at the bus station in Bangor. There wasn’t an actual station; it was just a Greyhound sign outside a coffee shop. It said 24 HOUR SERVICE, but didn’t look open; to be on the safe side I went to the back of the bus and used the noisome toilet there.
Good thing. The diner was locked, but when a church bell started tolling at six, a cab pulled up. He had a card on his dash that said BAR HARBOR AIRPORT $25. The window went down as another man and I approached.
It didn’t look like an actual cab. It didn’t have a meter that I could see.
“How much to Bass Harbor?” I said. That was where the ferry left for Swan’s Island. The other man said he had to be at the Bar Harbor airport right now and would pay fifty bucks.
The cabdriver, who looked like a sleepy high-school boy with a fake beard, said to the other guy, “Get in.” He checked a laminated card and said if I went along, he could drive me from the airport to the Bass Harbor ferry for $100.
I decided not to tell him that I’d have to pay with a dodgy credit card. We could work that out later. He read the other man’s credit card with an iPod attachment.
The ride alternated between quaint New England hamlets and beautiful dense pine forest, with some neatly planted potato fields and a few random acres of inexplicable desolation. Like a war had happened, but only went for a block or two.
I tried to ignore how my left hand felt. It was throbbing, baking under the foil cover—closer to braising, I suppose, than actual baking. Cooking with moisture. But I was too close to Kit and her captors to take it off and broadcast my presence.
The last record they would have of my little beeper would be when I had checked into the Washington Marriott. Of course, by now they might assume I was on the run and could be anywhere.
We got to the airport, a low brick building with a pretty tall hotel, in about twenty minutes. I got out and stretched while the other passenger collected his bags and ran for the plane.
“Mind if I sit up front?” I asked. “I’m about to die back there.” The backseat was broken and came forward at a little more than a right angle. That gave me an excuse.
“Come on up,” he said, and took my card as I got in.
The iPod read it and beeped. He frowned and tried it again, and it beeped again. “Mister…”
“Be calm,” I said, the .38 pointed at his midsection. “This is serious business. Government business.”
“I won’t… look… don’t…”
“I won’t pull the trigger unless you make me do it. I’ll give you a thousand dollars to take me to Bass Harbor, and across to Swan’s Island. A thousand dollars in cash, but I can’t pay you until tomorrow.”
“What… government business?”
“Homeland Security,” I improvised.
“Do you have… let me see an ID?”
“Not undercover.”
He looked at me, and then out the windshield, and then back and forth again. “This is crazy.”
“Just drive,” I said. “I’ll tell you the whole story. But you have to promise not to tell anyone.”
“Okay,” he said slowly, and pulled away from the airport loading zone.
By the time we were back in the potato fields I had told him all about what I’d done to the Polish embassy and about the international espionage ring that had sent a hit man after me when they couldn’t get to me “through channels” in Washington and Krakow. I said I’d give him the whole story once it all came down, in maybe a week. The poop was going to hit the pulverizer, I told him, using authentic spy euphemisms.
It was forty-six miles from the airport to the ferry boat. I wrote him an IOU for a thousand dollars and signed it, and used a felt-tip marker to put a thumbprint next to the signature. I gave him my Iowa phone number and e-mail address.
I actually did plan to pay him. And even tell him the real story, eventually. But when he pleaded, “Do y’have to keep pointin’ that gun at me?” I said that in fact I did. Just accept it as a condition of employment.
We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere when we saw a sign that said five miles to the ferry. Just beyond the sign was a dirt road to the right; I told him to turn down it.
It was a forest fire road, arrow-straight most of the way. No sign of habitation; a state or federal forest reserve, perhaps. We went a couple of miles and then the road just stopped. Ran out of funds or hit a county line or something. “Back up and turn around,” I said.
He wasn’t an experienced driver. It took him six or seven sloppy tries. “Okay, stop. Give me the keys. And your cell phone.”
He looked at me on the verge of tears, mouth trembling. I gave him my water bottle. “Don’t drink this all at once. It will take you a while to get back to the road. I’ll leave the car at the ferry station with the keys and the cell under the floor mat.”
“What?”
“Even if you don’t get a ride, you should reach the ferry before dark. That thousand bucks is yours, plus another thousand, if you don’t say anything to anybody. Did you ever make two thousand dollars in a day before?”
“I don’t, but I don’t get it.”