In his own bumbling way, George W. Bush’s secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld got it exactly right when he said, “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
If knowledge is power and ignorance is bliss, I was one dumb happy fella.
You have been riding right along with me every step of the way. I’ve kept you completely informed; what I knew and when I knew it. But to badly paraphrase Rumsfeld, I had no way of knowing what I didn’t know. The White House had done a good job scaring people into silence. However, as I was about to find out, there was one vital piece of information that I was not aware the White House knew that would change my plans.
The government had found out about the evidence I had in my possession. Months later I pieced together what had happened. But I think it is only fair to reveal it to you now. It will help you understand what happened next.
It turned out I had been right about Hack Wilson. As I suspected, he was a contract employee for government intelligence agencies. A high-level hacker. To confirm Brain McLane’s theory, Hack had reached out to several people he worked with regularly and trusted, asking if my interpretation made sense as well as requesting additional samples of code to use in his own analysis. Two of the coders he approached worked at the NSA. This possibility had never occurred to me. What are the odds, right?
To test McLane’s concept that individual coders left footprints that could be identified and used to trace back to the source, NSA senior engineer Paul Steingruby converted several segments of code he had written several years earlier into this “language.” He graphed the code. His initial reaction, when that sample turned out to be a close match for Hack’s submission, was that he had disproved the concept. The fact that old code he’d pulled out of his desk drawer was a close match to Hack’s sample indicated that the results produced by this method were not sufficiently unique to have any real probative value.
It was later that night, when he was home watching an old episode of NCIS that turned on an amazing coincidence, that he started getting very nervous. It seemed like too much of a coincidence that Hack would give him two pieces of code he had written without being aware of it.
While I was greeting the sunrise in McDonald’s parking lot, Steingruby was at his desk, running additional comparisons. His panic grew with each failure. This method made sense, it worked. Within hours his fear had become reality: Someone had matched a nonsense code he’d written as a favor for a high school hackers’ competition to the code he’d written for his old commanding officer, Artie Hunter. I can imagine the panic that ensued: Somebody had just connected him to the most recent Crime of the Century.
He called Hack. I know all this because Hack told me. He and Steingruby had known each other for years; they had worked together on a number of classified projects, had even dated sisters for a brief time. Without thinking about it, Hack told him that this guy he worked out with at the gym, guy named Rollie Stone, the Detroit whistleblower, had asked him to check it out. Nah, he didn’t know where the two segments had come from or what they represented. “I told him you were a good guy who had asked me to do him a favor.”
“It’s an interesting concept,” Steingruby told him in what Hack described to me as an offhanded manner. “But it isn’t an especially good way of making a valid comparison. There are just too many variables. It might work in very limited situations, but I don’t think any competent person would have much confidence in the results. Computer coding just doesn’t work that way. A talented hack is virtually untraceable.”
Hack thought that report was really interesting. That didn’t square with the work he had done. To test Brain’s theory, he’d run two segments of code he had previously written using the kid’s method and found repetitive characteristics in them that he hadn’t known existed. Peaks, valleys, and intervals. He had identified his own footprint and it was there in every segment of his own code that he tested.
Which is why alarm bells went off when Steingruby reported a different conclusion. He was much too casually dismissive of a technique that Hack had seen produce positive comparisons in his own lab. “Thanks a lot, Paul,” he said, then just to be cautious added, “That’s pretty much what I decided too.” To reinforce his little lie, he’d told Steingruby not to bother returning the samples: “Just go ahead and toss them.”
Which is why the next morning Hack told me he believed the method was valid; the two codes I gave him had been written by the same person or group.
But now you know what I didn’t: the government was aware of the danger.
What happened next is conjecture. There are a few pieces I know to be accurate; the chain might be a little bit different, but the end of it is the same. In some version, here’s what must have taken place. Steingruby couldn’t be certain his dismissal had ended Wilson’s investigation. He called his contact in Hunter’s office; who knows, maybe he called the vice president directly.
The vice president would have shared this information with people on his need-to-know list. NSA director Bobby Satin would have been on the list. Rip McCord probably would have been on it. Rocky Penceal at Homeland Security certainly was informed. The president? Who knows, plausible deniability plays an important role in American politics.
I’m guessing some of those people found the whole story farfetched; and perhaps a beard to cover the horrendous possibility that there was a traitor on the inside.
I have been told, and I’m sorry but I can’t share this source, that Homeland Secretary Penceal did some checking and found that two of his agents already were tracking me. Agents Corbin and Russell reported that while on their way to pick me up they both had sustained minor injuries when their car was hit from behind at a traffic signal. They were informed that locating and apprehending me was no longer their primary assignment, it was their only assignment. Penceal told them, and this too comes from a trusted source, “I don’t want to hear you stopped to take a piss until this guy is in your custody.”
Somehow, I don’t think Dickie was really looking forward to taking that piss anyway.
Although I was not aware of it at that time, within several hours I had become the most wanted man in America. After allowing sufficient time to pass, agents Corbin and Russell had informed headquarters that I was on the run. (I’m positive the usual jokes were made at Homeland Security headquarters: Actually, he’s on the wheels! Ho-ho. He can’t run, but he can’t hide either! Ha-ha.) As a result, a BOLO, a be on the lookout for, was forwarded to all law enforcement agencies, which now officially included enrolled militia.
I knew how all this worked. I’d been on the inside of a coordinated search several times for stories. This notice would include my credit card numbers, known phone numbers, type of vehicle and license plate number, maybe even the manufacturer of the stripped-down Mighty Chair. My driver’s license photograph and all pertinent information would be sent as a BEAT to the 700,000 police officers on the LET NET, the restricted access Law Enforcement Twitter Network. The U.S. Marshals Service definitely would be brought into the search. The popular TV show The New America’s Most Wanted quickly prepared and began broadcasting a two-minute segment. I know for certain that Dickie and Frannie visited Howie in detention and offered inducements peppered with subtle threats in an unsuccessful effort to convince him to help them find me. Knowing Howie, he’d tucked his thumb under his palm, surrounded it with his fingers, and suggested, “Talk to the hand.”
While all this was shifting into full gear, Laura and I were two hours into a thus-far-uneventful drive. “Don’t we even have a secret handshake?” I’d asked as she settled into the passenger seat, a line I considered a nifty icebreaker considering our circumstances. But then I added quickly, “I’m Rollie. Thank you for doing this.”
“I remember,” she said pleasantly. “I’m just going to take you the first leg. Somebody else’ll take you from there.” She glanced over her shoulder at the makeshift bedroom. “Nice.” She flashed a smile. “Love the cat!”
“There’s a refrigerator if you’d like something to drink. Energy drinks and water.”
“Maybe later.” She removed a tablet from her backpack and propped it up on the dashboard. It opened to an illustration of Julie Andrews singing happily as she led the von Trapp family to safety through a field of sunflowers. Quite a whimsical choice, I thought. She clicked to Google Maps and typed in an address. “We’ll get whatever notifications we need from here.” She put out her hand. As I started to respond, she said, “Give me your credit cards and your phone, please.”
I started to object, but then saw the wisdom in her demand. There was no way I could use my own credit cards. I handed her my wallet. “I’ve already gotten rid of any phones that could be connected to me.”
She went about her business efficiently. After removing all my credit and debit cards, she put one in: “That’s your debit card,” she explained. “The code is all sevens.” It had been issued to Randy Yellin, and there was $250 on it. “Use it when you need to, but whatever’s left when you get to Canada, we need back.” She pulled off my E-ZPass and replaced it with a new one from her backpack, dropping the old one into a foil pocket. Then she leaned back and told me, “Okay, let’s get this show on the road.”
Google guided us out of Washington. As we headed north, I glanced one last time in my rearview mirror. Storm clouds the color of a dense ocean fog were rolling in, dull and lifeless, swallowing the remainder of the blue sky. The Washington Monument stood against it like a sharpened pencil poised to write on a slate ceiling. I took one deep breath, filled my cheeks, and exhaled slowly, then studied the road in front of me. But for just an instant my memory flashed a glimpse of Reagan’s “shining city on a hill,” when America was still a beacon.
I didn’t see the address she’d keyed in, but wherever we were going, it would take us three hours and twelve minutes to get there. That’s if we were lucky. I assumed Google hadn’t factored in military roadblocks, which would make the trip longer. Like, possibly, the rest of my life.
I had a vague idea of the route we were going to take. Years earlier I’d shipped out from the Air Reserve Station at Niagara Falls for a mission that officially never happened. I’d driven up there from Bragg. I’d taken the little bit longer route, making it a pleasant drive through a lot of bucolic countryside. It got me away from the noise of the cities, serving as a sort of refresher course in real America.
We stopped briefly in the secluded parking lot behind a Kohl’s in Middle River, Maryland, where she swapped my D.C. plates for a New York set and pasted small stick-on decals reading Dr. Watson’s Medical Devices on both sides of Van. That was pretty impressive; someone had been doing some preparation. “I’ll be right back,” she said and disappeared around a corner. I guessed she was using the restroom. She returned in a few minutes. “Let’s go,” she said, slamming the door. “C’mon.”
I was curious. “What’d you do?”
She held up a $10 bill. “I sold your E-ZPass to a trucker. C’mon, let’s go.”
Now that was pretty impressive. “You really think all this is necessary?”
“Who knows?” She shrugged. “We’re just making it up as we go along.” She looked at me and smiled for the first time. “Welcome to New America.”
As we skirted Baltimore I finally began to relax. “Can I ask you a question?”
“That is a question,” she pointed out. She had a really confident attitude, but I noticed that her nails were either cut or bitten short.
“How many runs like this have you made?”
“Counting this one?” She pursed her lips. “Two.” The “railroad,” she explained, had been organized by former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who had turned down the opportunity to flee to Canada and supposedly was moving around the country in disguise, setting up safe houses and way stations. “He’s become an almost mythical figure,” she said. “You know, like Sasquatch.” I noticed she had a very pleasant voice, feminine with a backbone. “There are all these stories of him popping up all over the country. People claim they’ve seen him driving an Uber, pretending to be a power company lineman, even walking around wearing dark sunglasses being led by a guide dog.”
The farther we got away from Washington, the more relaxed she became. She was an actress, she said, which allowed her to move easily and often without attracting government attention. That’s why she had been recruited.
Suddenly it all clicked. That’s why she had looked so familiar. “You’re the cell phone girl!” I said with the delight of recognition. I repeated her line from the ubiquitous commercials, imitating the pseudo-sultry voice she used in those spots. “Everybody else is just talk. We’re the whole deal.” We laughed together, and for a brief moment the tension was lifted.
Laura, it turned out, was her real name. “Actually not my real real name,” she clarified, “but my real stage name. Somebody else was registered with SAG under my name, even though that wasn’t really their name.” She considered that, dismissing it with a chuckle. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?”
“Ah, show business.”
She had spent the prior eight months working at the National Theatre. She had done a variety of roles, her favorite of which had been a witch in The Crucible. She hadn’t been picked specifically to be my escort, she had just had the day off from work, but it was fortuitous that we’d already met. She explained the procedure to me, cautioning that everybody was new to this, so we might have to make some adjustments on the run.
“Literally,” I said.
She would go with me to the first station, which was just on the fringes of Pittsburgh. If we were stopped, we would claim we were in a new relationship and sneaking away for a brief vacation. “That’s when I blush and steal a glance at you,” she said, stealing a glance at me.
Assuming Pittsburgh hadn’t been compromised, she would hand me off there. She didn’t know who would take me from there, but they would have their own cover story. “When you reach the border, you’ll be instructed when and where to cross safely. Canada’s being great about all this, they haven’t announced it publicly, but they will offer political asylum to anyone who puts one foot down…” She looked at Mighty Chair and paused, probably wondering if she had said something offensive. “Well, you know what I mean.”
I didn’t interrupt her, occasionally tossing in a “Really?” or “Wow.” Apparently the resistance was a mildly warm bed of rumors. The latest rumor was that Homeland Security was compiling scores on everyone. “Like the Resistance Olympics,” she said. According to this story, watchers were reading and rating social media posts, 1 point meaning it had no interest to the government, 10 meaning it was highly critical of the government. An average over 7.5 got people moved to a more active watch list. “Finally,” she said with some pride, “I’m a ten!”
I smiled as noncommittally as possible.
We stopped for gas south of Pittsburgh. Laura paid in cash. When we were back on the road, she sent a coded text message to the stationmaster confirming the delivery was going to be on time. She was mildly perturbed when she didn’t receive a confirmation. “It happens,” she said, staring at her phone. She shrugged. “We’re all so new to this stuff.”
I nodded. No big deal. Growing pains. Working out the kinks in the system. Screwups were part of the process. But just in case, I began checking my mirrors more often.
On the highway, it was difficult to feel any change. The countryside was still beautiful, the farmlands still green, the red and silver silos framed against the Mediterranean blue sky. The only noticeable change were the military and militia vehicles that passed us regularly, most of them flying two or more American flags. Twenty miles closer she tried Pittsburgh again. Then she sat staring at her phone for a response that didn’t come. There was a hesitancy in her voice as she admitted, “I’m not sure what to do.” She told me the protocol: If she did not receive an acknowledgment, she was to assume the station had been compromised. “Mistakes happen,” she said hopefully. “That’s probably all this is. There’s a dozen reasons they didn’t get back to me.”
Paranoia, I adore ya! I wasn’t interested in the benefit of the doubt. “Do you know any of these people?”
“No.” I caught her biting her thumbnail, her shoulders hunched protectively over her phone, willing it to ring. “Let’s drive by there and see if anything’s going on.”
I pushed myself up, but I couldn’t get comfortable. WWBD? I was already working out a new agenda as we reached the city. Armed soldiers were standing guard in front of banks, churches, and public spaces, but not nearly as many as I’d seen in Washington. From what I could see, people seemed to be ignoring them. “Make this next right,” Laura said, pointing. “It looks like it’s a few blocks up. I’ll tell you when but don’t slow down.”
We approached an intersection. An MP was directing traffic with exaggerated verve. I was enjoying his performance until I saw that the traffic signal directly over his head seemed to be working fine. There was no reason for him to be there. My Special Ops spidey sense was sending me an alert. There wasn’t much I could do about it without drawing attention to Van. It was too late to turn off. As we drove past him, I made a point of casually looking away, as if I was checking traffic coming from the side street. The light was red, but the soldier whistled insistently and waved me through. Laura leaned forward. “Next block,” she said. As we drove past a pizza shop, she glanced casually inside. Then she pushed back into her seat and looked straight ahead. “Keep going!” she snapped, that pleasant voice gone. “Keep going.”
In an instant I was back in the Stan, driving a Humvee down a rubble-strewn street. Hyperalert. No panic. I tightened my grip on the wheel; I maintained my speed. Pay no attention to me, just out for a drive. I watched the doorways and the windows. Glanced at the rooftops. Checked the cars in front and behind Van, vehicles coming toward us. At any instant I was ready to slam down on the accelerator and hasta la vista, amigo. “What happened?”
She was already putting new data into the iPad. “Make the next turn. Right or left, just get off the street.”
I made the next right, then the next left onto a parallel street. No one was trailing us. “What’d you see?”
She twisted to face me, leaning back against the door. Her voice now riddled with uncertainty, she said, “There was supposed to be a sign in the window, three slices for two, if it was good to go. It wasn’t there.”
I ran my tongue across my suddenly dry lips. “Now what?”
She wiped her palm across her brow and bit down on the nail of her pinkie, probably trying to clear away the confusion. “I don’t know.” She tried to calm herself with a deep breath; then she slammed the heel of her hand against the dash. “This fucking iPad won’t take this address. God, I hate these fucking things.” She slammed it a second time, then pushed back in her seat and folded her arms in frustration, looking like a petulant child.
I looked at her and smiled.
“What?”
I held up my hand defensively. “Nothing. Honest. In the movies this is where I say, ‘Now I’m stuck with you for a few more hours,’ and you stick out your tongue at me.”
“This isn’t a joke, Rollie. This is…”
“No kidding. Wow. And here I thought we were having such a good time together.” A blue-and-white police car, sirens screeching and emergency lights in full “watch out, here I come” mode raced by going in the opposite direction, followed by an old-fashioned army jeep failing to keep up. “Why don’t you grab us both some water, please.”
She ducked her head and climbed into the back, returning seconds later with two bottles of sparkling water and her composure. “Sorry.”
I nodded my acceptance. “It happens.” Then, after a beat, “Look, all of this, nobody believed it was possible. Soldiers patrolling the streets, people getting arrested for criticizing the government? That’s not supposed to happen here, not in America. That’s…” There were too many examples to choose one. “But it is happening here and so now we’ve got to deal with it. Being pissed off is what we should have been five years ago, when fucking Trump was selling out our values. It’s too late to waste time on what we should have done. Right now we’ve got to focus on what we can do.” I turned my head and looked right at her. “And that means getting me to Canada.”
That probably didn’t come out exactly the way I intended. “Really? What exactly do you think I’m doing here?”
“No, wait, you’re right. That’s not what I meant, least not that way.” I stared straight ahead, the road unfolding into the distance, the clouds moving north with us. “I’m sorry, Laura. Look, it isn’t easy for me to ask for help. It never has been. Even before I was Rolling Stone.” I took a thoughtful breath. She deserved to know the truth. “This isn’t about me. There are other things going on, things that I can’t tell you about. But I have some information, some papers that have to get to Canada. That’s really what you’re doing here. Believe me, it’s not because I’m some kind of big shot.”
She looked at me skeptically. “Is that from some movie?”
“No. It’s true.”
“And if you told me what it is…”
We finished together, “I’d have to kill you.” I pointed at her iPad. “Go ahead, try it again.”
We drove north on I-79. Laura sent a message to “Mom,” informing her that she had decided not to stop at her aunt’s house in Pittsburgh. Minutes later “Mom” acknowledged it without an explanation beyond a warning to be cautious. “Weird,” was all Laura said, shaking her head.
We had been on the road for almost four hours. The drive from Washington to Buffalo could easily be made in seven hours, considerably less if you were pushing it, but I was careful to stay at the speed limit. I picked a random car and locked in a comfortable four car lengths behind it, reminding myself to go easy on the accelerator. We stayed off main roads when possible, driving through the farms and fields and small towns of the American countryside. I’d driven across the country several times through college, on road trips and new assignments; I’d traveled through the mountains in the East, across the endless prairies of the Midwest, and through the desert and stunning beauty of the West, and always with excitement and anticipation. As corny as it sounds, I’d always felt connected to it in some deep and inexplicable way, enjoying a profound sense of pride that this was my country. All of it. From the traffic jams of Manhattan to the bait shops of Louisiana, a special bond held us all together. No matter where in the country I traveled, whoever I’d met along the way, it was all home. And I was the product of it all.
“What are you thinking?” Laura asked.
I sighed. “Nothing really. You know.”
“You gonna miss it?”
A gust of sadness hit me. “I’ve been missing it for a long time.”
I glanced at the clock. It was after five o’clock. We were in decent shape, I figured. I still had no reason to believe that anyone other than two seriously angry Homeland Security agents was searching for me, and nothing I had seen from those two indicated they would be able to find me. The last time I’d seen them they were doing the pain dance on the bathroom floor, so I was fairly confident they would be taking the next few days off. Even if Homeland Security was interested, they didn’t have the slightest idea where I was heading.
Canada was the logical destination, but if they had profiled me, they would not expect me to act logically. And even if they knew for certain I was heading for the northern border, there were literally hundreds of roads that would get me there. Laura had done a smart thing dumping my GPS on a trucker; if they were tracking that, they by now were heading in a completely different direction. The Marshals Service might well be monitoring my credit cards, computer and ATM usage, and phones, but I had stayed completely off the grid.
What else? There always was something else that could be done. I was running through my checklist for the umpteenth time when Laura asked, “What do you think this is all about?”
Here we go, I thought, road trip talk. We’d skipped right over favorite movies, places we’d lived, worst vacations, dates from hell, bad jokes (Me: What do major-league ballplayers and dieters have in common? You: I don’t know. Me: Plate discipline. You: Huh?), even questions about my disability; heck, we hadn’t even harmonized on a single Beach Boys song. We’d just gone from zero to infinity, smack-dab from “Does that come with fries?” to the meaning of life. “What particular this?” I asked warily.
She turned in her seat to face me, but this time did not push back. In body language that meant her defenses were down. “Wrightman. I just don’t get it. Why’s he doing all this?” She shrugged her left shoulder. “I mean, he’s destroying everything this country stands for. Why?”
She couldn’t have asked something easy, like what would it be like to visit a black hole? “I wish I knew,” I told her. I flipped a hand into the air, stumbling for an answer that made sense. “Maybe he really believes this is necessary to reunite the country, save it from being ripped apart between right and left. Maybe he really thinks this is what he has to do to protect the country from terrorists.” I looked at her. “Or, I guess, he simply could be a megalomaniac…”
“Or a narcissist?”
“Or a narcissist,” I agreed. “Or he has an inferiority complex. Or it’s better than working on an assembly line in Dayton. Or some department secretary has pictures of him in flagrante delicto with a moose and is bribing him. Maybe he’s insane, who knows. It could be any of those things, or all of them.”
“But do you think he understands the damage he’s doing?”
This was shaping up to be just another one of those lighthearted discussions about good and evil, original sin and the essence of man. Another question hit me: Could Dr. Freud have driven while explaining the psyche? “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Questions like that are why psychiatrists can afford swimming pools.
“Whatever his reasons, I’m pretty certain he doesn’t see it as damage. I’ll tell you what surprises me. Wrightman is a pretty bright guy. He was a decent senator. Middle of the road, go along to get along. Nothing like Trump, for example.” I glanced at her—no reaction. I continued. “Trump was easy to figure out. His megalomania left him unburdened by self-doubt, his insecurity made him a bully, his lack of common knowledge made it easy for him to destroy tradition without the slightest guilt, and his ignorance made him the champion of poorly educated and easily manipulated people. For him, being president was as easy as dating was for Neanderthals. But Wrightman…” I shook my head.
“So what do you think he’s gaining from this? I mean, he’s already the most powerful person in the world.”
I knitted my lips into a straight line and shook my head. “Honestly, I don’t have the slightest idea. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either. With some of these guys it’s obvious, like Kim Jong Un or Saddam—they had to hold on to absolute power for their own survival. But that’s not what’s going on here, is it? There’s endless possibilities—lifestyle, riches, vengeance, self-defense, you know, if we don’t conquer them they’ll destroy us. Sometimes it’s a necessity. Before World War II the Japanese needed access to cheap oil to expand. Then there are your religious zealots spreading their message of peace through murder.
“Money? He’s already a very wealthy guy. What’s that quote…” I dug into my Bible file, which in fact was pretty thin, and pulled up a go-to quote: ‘For what shall it profit a man, if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’”
She buried a laugh in the back of her throat. “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”
We shared another flash-smile. Then continued speculating without reaching any conclusion for several more miles, finally acknowledging that the why of it made no difference.
We were breezing along into the late afternoon, not quite feeling groovy, but I still had slim hopes for a Beach Boys medley. And then that old spoilsport Cher had to interrupt. Laura and Cher had been getting along quite well; Laura had even asked Cher for help in avoiding traffic on our new route. About an hour earlier I had told Cher to scan police reports to see if my name came up. “Rollie,” she said suddenly, “I have found your name in a report.”
Shitfuck. “Cher, what?”
Several years earlier Y had hacked Cher into several law enforcement communications systems, including the LET NET, just as in earlier days reporters would monitor police scanners. Maybe it wasn’t entirely legal, but it was a good tool when I was working on a story. Cher reported, “A high-priority BEAT has been issued on the Law Enforcement Network. This includes all pertinent information. It also mentions a white van with handicapped license plate number WP4106. Two photographs are attached. Suspect is believed to be north of Pittsburgh. If spotted, officers are to contact Homeland Security immediately.”
“Cher, thank you.” I assumed she was done.
She was not. “Rollie, I have not concluded my report,” she corrected. “Officers are informed the suspect has in his possession sensitive documents. Suspect is to be searched and all documents are to be confiscated but not read.”
“Cher, thank you.” I very quickly analyzed that information, considered all the possibilities, and came to a valid conclusion: I’m fucked! I ran through my options; throwing myself on the floor and kicking my feet in the air while I whined was definitely out. That left pretty much everything else.
“Rollie?” For the first time there was fear in Laura’s voice.
“Not good,” I said. “Very not good.” I made my first decision. “Listen, they don’t know you’re with me. Soon as we get to the next town, I’m letting you off. You’ll have to figure out how to get back…”
“Oh, don’t be silly.” She dismissed that thought as if I were suggesting buying the twenty-roll package of toilet paper at Costco rather than trying to prevent her from going to prison for aiding and abetting a federal fugitive. Things clicked into place in her mind pretty quickly. “You’re right, they don’t know I’m with you. So they’re not going to be looking for a couple. We’ve got good IDs. They don’t have the right plate number. We got the Dr. Watson’s signs on the van.” In those few seconds she had convinced herself. There was real confidence in her voice as she said firmly, “We can still do this, Rollie. We just have to be smart and careful.”
Apparently my best Bogie wasn’t sufficiently convincing. Laura was not getting on that plane with Victor Laszlo. “Ho-kay,” I agreed, breaking it into two syllables to hide both my relief and gratitude.
With Cher’s alert, the plans we’d made were abandoned. We had to assume that the main highways and border crossing points were being heavily patrolled. Law enforcement had my information. In a strange way, though, the advantage had shifted a bit. Until a few minutes earlier, I hadn’t been aware that a massive search for me was in progress and we had been driving right into the spider’s parlor. But we were aware of that now and could take precautions. All they had was the full cooperation and participation of every law enforcement officer, soldier, and militia member covering the entire East Coast, while we had almost a full tank of gas.
This presented a whole new set of problems I hadn’t anticipated, starting with getting through customs. I could no longer be Rollie Stone. Even Chair might need a new identity. My famous Rodney Dangerfield imitation probably wasn’t going to work, so somehow I’d have to get ahold of new identification. Laura was reading my mind; her brow furrowed and her left cheek crunched up, pulling her mouth to the side. A full McKayla. “We’re gonna have to get some new identification,” she said. She looked at me. “Don’t worry, they’ll figure out something.”
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said evenly. “They don’t know that we read their BEAT. So instead of going north, which is what they’ve got to be expecting me to do, let’s work our way west.”
It was amazing how quickly my mind made the necessary adjustments from being uncertain exactly where I was going to not having the slightest idea where I was going. We got off at the next exit. We were just outside Lake City, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Erie. “We should stop and figure this out,” I said. “Let’s find a diner.”
We followed Laura’s iPad to Leo’s Own Diner, a shining silver imitation railway car directly across a rutted road and a seedy strip mall from Lake Erie. Exactly the kind of place you might run into Jack Reacher. The parking lot was about a third full, which seemed about right for early evening dinner. The handicapped spot at the far end of the parking lot was vacant. Perfect. For me, Leo’s main attraction was its long ramp that rose to a side door.
As we entered, the waitress, a solidly built woman who seemed a bit old for her yellow pinstripe uniform and Converse high-tops, was moving from table to table with a dishrag and a coffeepot. When she saw us, she pulled a chair away from a table and beckoned us over. “I’ll be right with you,” she promised, laying down two menus and continuing her coffee rounds.
While Laura hit the ladies’ room, I glanced around Leo’s Own. The cash register was sitting on the bakery display case, next to the main entrance. A counter ran almost the entire length of the diner, fronted by evenly spaced round swivel seats with glittering red plastic tops. The one directly in front of me had been repaired with gray duct tape. Several booths covered with the same tired red vinyl were built in by the windows facing the road and the mall. At a right angle to the booths were three small square tables. Two flat-screen TVs over the counter were set to a Cleveland Indians game; the sound was off, and the captions were too small for me to read.
We were seated at one of the three tables. I tried but failed to remember the last time I’d slid into a booth. A kid about ten years old, sitting in a booth with his family, was leaning into the aisle to get a better look at Mighty Chair. He had a straw in his mouth, and every few seconds he’d straighten up and say something to a man I assumed was his father. The man responded by looking at me, then playfully slapping the boy’s hand.
The menu offered typical diner fare, any dish made anywhere in the world, from grits to fajitas to moo shu pork, all of it guaranteed delicious and prepared in fifteen minutes. Laura returned; she’d put on pinkish lipstick, taken her hair out of the bun, and added just enough eye shadow to make her appear simultaneously younger and more mature, a woman’s trick I’d never quite figured out. “You know what you want?”
“Everything looks good,” she decided, perusing the menu. She lifted her eyes over the top and caught me staring at her. “So?”
“You can’t,” I said, locking eyes. “Everything is too much.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but it was our waitress who said, “Sorry.” She took a pencil from behind her ear and held it ready by her pad. “What can I do you for?” The greeting Leo Says Hi! with an illustration of a smiling man in a yellow pinstripe shirt waving at us was printed on the name tag pinned to her shoulder. A handwritten slip of paper inserted in it identified her as Midge. Woven leather straps hung from her glasses, as if her face were inside parentheses. Laura asked, “What have you got that’s gluten free?”
I buried my face behind my menu so she wouldn’t see me laughing. Here we were, right in the middle of our escape, and she was concerned about gluten. Midge paused before responding, staring at Laura as if she recognized her but couldn’t quite place her. Then as Midge pointed out the yellow starbursts that identified gluten-free choices, Jenny popped into my mind. Nice going, mind, I thought. You trying to tell me something? Maybe it was some kind of defense mechanism kicking in, maybe it was a test of my loyalty, but as attractive as Laura was at that moment, I desperately missed Jenny. I wanted to talk to her, tell her where I was and where I was going, but mostly I just wanted to hear her voice and know she was okay. That we were okay. The second I got across the border I was …
“Sir?” Midge was impatient, tapping her pencil. “What can I get you?”
I ordered. As we waited, we began planning the next few hours. She had not been assigned to take me to the border, that was supposed to be Pittsburgh’s job. “I don’t know anything about it,” she said. Then she put her hand on top of mine and said confidently, “We’ll just have to figure it out when we get there. There are a lot of navigators up there, and Mom’ll put us in touch with them.”
We talked about going west but decided the longer we stayed in the country the greater the chance we would be spotted. As there was no “best option” we agreed to go north and figure it out when we got closer. Considering the precautions we would be forced to take, there was no way of even guessing when we would reach the border. As my mother used to tell me, we’ll be there when we’re there. Whenever that was, we would wait until either morning or evening rush hour, or maybe a day or three or six, then slip across in the traffic. Just in case, though, she asked, “You have anything in there that might be a problem? Any pot? A gun?”
I coughed into my fist. A gun? Well, there’s a problem. But until we reached the border, there was no reason to dump it. “We’ll be fine,” I told her, waving off the question. Adjust and adapt; and when necessary, give ’em the old one-two.
Midge filled our water glasses. “Food’s coming,” she said pleasantly. “Kitchen’s just a little backed up.”
When she was gone, Laura leaned into the table and asked, “What about that whatever it is that I don’t know about? Is that something we need to worry about?”
“No, nothing.” I pointed to my forehead. “It’s here.” I could have pointed to my ass too, as I was sitting on it.
Ten minutes later we were still waiting for our meal when people started shifting in their seats to look at the TV sets. “Turn up the sound, Dusty,” a woman with a helmet of blond hair in one of the booths shouted to the counterman. Dusty gave her a serious look, an “I know what I’m doing” look, then reached up and did so. A somber President Wrightman was speaking from the Oval Office, a look of deep concern on his face. The chyron at the bottom of the screen, in bold letters large enough for me to read, stated ominously: LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE: PRESIDENT TO ANNOUNCE EXECUTIONS.