11
DURING THE NEXT WEEK, Ollie fired a bartender he didn’t like, hired a new one so he’d have a fresh face to bitch about. August only showed up twice, watched part of a basketball game, didn’t have much to say to me. I felt he was trying to summon the courage to broach a topic but didn’t know how to start.
Then there was the lovely Mila. She came in for four more nights, discussed world politics with Ollie and asked me about my parkour runs and nothing else. But I felt her watching me as I worked, as though taking my measure. Ollie’s mother in New Jersey got sick and he had me manage the bar for two days; one night I lifted prints off the safe’s keypad, found prints on only four keys. Same four numbers as the bar’s street address. I tested the code; the safe opened. Inside was a cash bag, a Glock with three rounds of ammo, and Ollie’s passport, used once three years ago to visit Ireland. I left everything where it was, cleaned off the keypad, and felt relief I could get to a gun when I needed one. Because I thought the time had come to move. Howell’s followers had been a bit lazy, not coming up on me when the bicyclist hit me. They were slacking or Howell was loosening the leash on me. They’d convinced themselves that I was willing to sit still. That was the key to escape.
Now I knew where I could steal a gun. But I had no passport. And I needed to get back to Europe. Lucy’s trail started there.
But I didn’t know where I could obtain fake documentation in New York. Passports now have digital watermarks and subtle chips, and they can’t be forged as easily as they used to be. You need someone who can acquire the special paper used in the passports—usually by bribing someone who might send documents in a diplomatic pouch or works in government printing. It didn’t have to be an American passport; in fact, it would be easier for me to have one from Belgium or the UK or Canada. Belgian papers particularly are known for being easy to forge.
So I had to find a way to find a contact who could get me a passport that could pass muster. I knew the street value of a false passport was around eight thousand dollars. I would have to either save or steal the money, and I’d have to lose my tails to find a seller. I bought a cellular phone, prepaid, close to the local Brooklyn Flea Market, using the crowds to lose Howell’s shadows for a few minutes to make the buy. I made some discreet ventures, calling my non-CIA contacts in Prague and Paris and London, looking for someone who could help me get back to Europe.
No one I called knew I was part of the Company. I used an old identity from the Prague sting, a former Canadian soldier named Samson—close enough to Sam so I wouldn’t ever tongue-stumble using it—who operated as a smuggler and hired gun.
I got stonewalled for three days until a friend in London mentioned a broker in New Jersey named Kitter who could set me up with Belgian papers. I called Kitter to arrange a meet in Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan the next day.
I dodged my shadows by going into Ollie’s—the tails did not sit in the bar, they watched from outside—and then heading out the back of the building, down a side alley through a deli. If a shadow there saw me, and I had to assume they would, it made sense to dodge into a department store and exit out the back, hurrying into a hotel across the street. I watched for familiar faces—it’s easy to dump out of a suit into casual wear, you can’t rely on clothes as identifiers, you can only rely on the face. I felt clean and I grabbed a taxi to Manhattan an hour early. Got off at Grand Central, felt I was still walking clean. I kept scanning the patterns of people’s movements for any followers as I walked through building lobbies and hotel lobbies, in and out, cutting through, doubling back, not spotting Howell or any of his regulars following me.
The man fitting Kitter’s description sat on the edge of a bench, iPod earphones in place, wires trailing inside his jacket. He was reading the Wall Street Journal. Thin blue jeans, flannel shirt. I sat on the other edge of the bench.
He pulled out his earphones but he didn’t look at me.
“Our mutual friend sent me,” I said. “I need documentation.” A tickle surged at the back of my throat; I felt the need to rush. Stupid. But I’d been waiting days, weeks, months, for a chance to track Lucy. I was like a dog, straining at the leash, ready to run. How could I wait anymore? I dreamed of my family every night.
“You have the photos and the money.”
“Four thousand and the photos.” Half up front, half when I got the finished passport.
He took the envelope from me and told me to wait. “Meet me at the Starbucks on the north side of Grand Central in three hours.”
Kitter stood and walked off. I sat for a moment, thinking, Good. Then I stood and started to walk and my stomach wrenched. Forty feet away stood Howell, hands tucked inside his overcoat. I turned around; Kitter and my money were gone.
I sat back down. I stayed on the bench and Howell walked up to me. He didn’t sit.
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “My wife, my child, I’d be doing whatever I could to get to them.”
“Can I have my money back?”
“No. Let it be a lesson learned.”
“You’re the one who needs a lesson,” I said. “I could draw out Lucy’s kidnappers if I could get back to London. I know I could.”
“We can’t trust you. Look how you’ve disobeyed instructions.”
“But you said you don’t blame me.”
“You have not been fired, Sam, and your job classification has been reassigned so that you cannot resign without the permission of the Director. You do not have that permission. You’re ours. Do what you’re told and be glad you’re not locked in a cell for the rest of your life. We have been generous to you. Go back to that charming neighborhood bar, smile at people, be glad you’re not sucking cold soup out of a wooden bowl and being beaten every night.”
I shook my head. “I dream about my son,” I said. “Did you have that in your file, Howell? I dream about my wife and my child because I know she’s innocent and I know she and my kid are out there and… you are in my way.” I heard the iron growl in my tone, for the first time in a long time.
He was unimpressed. “You’re in your own way. Go home, Sam. Play nice. I won’t be so forgiving next time. There was a debate in the office about whether to shoot you on sight for attempting to acquire forged documents. Your actions could be those of a desperate man or a guilty man. I argued for desperate and thank God for you I won. But desperation fades. Do this twice, then you’re guilty.”
“You don’t have the balls to arrest me because you need me out here as bait,” I said. “I call your bluff. Stick me back in the cell. I’m not sitting still, Howell.”
“Go home, and we’ll pretend it didn’t happen.”
“That really is your favorite phrase, isn’t it? It didn’t happen. But sticking my head in the sand doesn’t work for me.”
Howell turned and walked away from me, lighting a cigarette as he walked, blowing out an annoyed plume of smoke.
He was wrong. Desperation doesn’t fade. It just gets stronger. I watched him walk away and then I got up and walked in the opposite direction.
I took the bus back to Brooklyn. I didn’t bother to try to shake any shadows. It made the trip much faster. I went to work, listening to Ollie tell me the same stories he’d told me yesterday, drawing lunchtime half-pints of Harp and Budweiser, jetting sodas into glasses, listening to regulars prattle on about their problems with difficult clients or troublesome bosses or wives who just didn’t understand, and when Ollie bitched about not getting full shipments of Glenfiddich—he was a crate short—I thought of an escape from this second prison.