“IN THE shift from a fragmented world of powerful nation-states to the emphasis on cooperation and a dual-power structure in the postwar world—the West and East in a perpetual standoff—espionage fiction found its ideal soil for growth.”
There were maybe two hundred undergraduates filling this NYU auditorium, and at the front David Parker, in obligatory tweed, regaled them with his expertise on the world of spy fiction—an expertise Rachel never would have suspected. From the back wall, she reflected that the man she’d seen at his lowest had regained himself. As chapters from his new novel appeared in the rags, his star rose, and now he could preach to an army of aspiring writers and feed, like a born actor, on the attention it brought him.
Sitting in on History of the Espionage Novel had seemed like her best bet, since Parker’s home would certainly be under surveillance, so she stayed for the full hour and listened to Parker’s analysis of the two major strains of spy fiction—the fantastic (James Bond, Jason Bourne) and the realistic (George Smiley, Paul Christopher).
The students were a healthy bunch, fresh faced and appropriately cynical, which reminded her of the mishmash that had only half filled that other auditorium on the other coast, in 2009. Martin Bishop, now dead, but back then so full of dire optimism.
It had been three days and eighteen hundred miles since Boulder, and Rachel had crossed the New Jersey line in a 1985 Ford Escort she’d picked up in little Paxton, Nebraska, for $400. Neither the air conditioning nor the heating worked, and if she left her foot off the gas at a light it died, but the car had brought her all the way to High Bridge station, at the end of the Raritan Valley Line. She’d parked and taken the train to Penn Station before continuing on foot—she wanted to avoid the subways—down to NYU.
Halfway through her long journey, while dozing in an Illinois rest stop, she’d sunk into a vivid dream about James Sullivan, and while looking over the bright young faces of David’s students the dream came back to her. She and Sullivan were drinking martinis in a coastal bar, maybe Florida or California, and he wore a Che Guevara beret. He told her, “The Third World is just around the corner.” Then the bar rose and fell, as if an earthquake had struck, drinks spilling and customers tumbling, but Sullivan held her upright as their stools spun. The last thing she remembered was a huge wave smashing through the windows, filling the bar with salt water.
As the hour was wrapping up, Rachel moved down to the front, and Parker caught sight of her, stumbling over his final lines. Then he turned back to the students. “Next week, then, okay?” The auditorium was suddenly noisy with the sounds of packing up. Rachel approached the podium and told David, “Josie Woods.”
The name seemed to confuse him briefly; then he recognized it. “Okay,” he said.
She turned away and pushed through the students, and by the time she reached the street she’d pulled on the hood of her new jacket, picked up from a roadside Target. She continued to the corner of Waverly and Mercer and took the stairs down into the Josie Woods Pub, a brick-walled underground sports bar. Today, though, instead of sports, CNN played on the screens. She stared for a long time at the face of Mark Paulson, who explained to a newscaster why it was taking so long to declassify a report for public consumption. “Have you looked at the streets recently, Mr. Paulson?” asked the newscaster. “People are getting impatient.”
It was true. On her long walk to NYU she’d seen protesters heading to competing demonstrations around City Hall and Trump Tower. Painted faces and signs and effigies of both the president and the Bureau’s long-suffering director. She remembered Lou Barnes and Erin Lynch and morose Richard Kranowski making fun of the White House’s fear of the Massive Brigade. How did they feel now? The president’s poll numbers were tanking even worse than usual, which meant that theirs were, too.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she heard, and looked up to see David Parker heading toward her, laptop bag banging against his hip.
“Nice to see you, too, David.”
He sat down, agitated. “They warned me I might hear from you.”
She stiffened. “Who?”
“I don’t know their names. Couple days ago, these two stiffs told me to call if I heard from you.”
It wasn’t a surprise, not really. If Jakes had made a house call to speak with Kevin Moore, then someone certainly would have visited David. “What else did they tell you?”
He hesitated, as if worried about bruising her feelings, then plowed on. “That you’ve gone off the deep end. They said that having this shit in the news again, it’s dredged up a bunch of demons in your psyche. They said that inevitably you’d come to me.”
“Demons?”
“They said you’d be looking for Ingrid.”
“Let me guess. Lyle Johnson and Sarah Vale,” she said, stifling a yawn. It wasn’t boredom, though; the exhaustion of crossing the continent was catching up to her.
He made no sign to suggest she was right or wrong. Her detective work meant nothing to him. “They said you’re dangerous.”
She smiled to help him see that she wasn’t dangerous, but from the look on his face she could tell it wasn’t working. “I’m just trying to find out what’s going on,” she said.
“What do you mean, what’s going on?”
“They were right about one thing. I do need to talk to Ingrid.”
His head bobbed. “Well, I’d like to talk to her, too, but I don’t know where she is. And I keep telling you guys that.”
“Who’s been asking?”
“Couple weeks after Watertown, this asshole shows up at my apartment. Bandage on his head. Says he’s one of yours.”
“Owen Jakes.” She shook her head. “By then I was out, under investigation. He wasn’t one of mine anymore.”
He nodded—maybe he knew the story, maybe he didn’t. “Well, that’s what he told me.”
“Go on,” she said.
David scratched his chin and explained that, at first, it had been friendly. Owen Jakes showed his badge and said that Rachel had asked him to check up on David. Jakes carried a file, and he referenced it while asking questions about Ingrid. Where were her relatives? She had none. What were her political leanings? To the left of left, usually. Then: “When was the last time you talked to her?”
“June 19,” David told him. “The day she disappeared.” Then he brought out the ultrasound, which he’d protected in a plastic sleeve and kept on a high shelf. “And you guys saw this already.”
“But you’ve spoken to her since,” Jakes said, a statement more than a question.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Maybe not by voice, but emails. Texts. A woman doesn’t send this,” he said, referencing the ultrasound, “and simply go silent. That’s not done.”
“Well, that’s how Ingrid does it.”
That was when the friendliness abruptly ended. Jakes stood and thrust a finger at him. “Cut the bullshit, okay? Ingrid wasn’t just another one of Martin’s followers—she was traveling with him.”
“What?”
“They were lovers. Are you really going to stand there and protect her when she went on a sex spree with Martin Bishop across the fucking nation? Tell me, David. Tell me where Ingrid’s hiding, or I swear to God I’m going to drag your ass into federal detention and throw away the key.”
Now, months later, David’s cheeks flushed from the memory. Why had Jakes gone after Ingrid Parker with such venom? Rachel didn’t know, but the story only reinforced her conviction that if there was an answer to be found it lay with Ingrid, and only with her. She pursed her lips. “So? Any ideas?”
“I didn’t know where she was back then. And I still don’t.”
“Really?”
He nodded, averting his gaze angrily, and she knew then that she was out of options. She covered her face with her hands, rubbed her eyes. Had she really thought she could track down Ingrid without the Bureau backing her up? Hubris. Maybe she should just turn herself in. Sign away her rights, just like Kevin Moore had. Was it too late for that?
Six nights ago, a man had come to kill her. He’d stripped himself of anything identifiable. He’d prepared her bath to stage a suicide, then come at her with a needle rather than a gun. That was the definition of too late.
Maybe it was exhaustion, or the realization that there was nothing left to fight for, but Rachel began to cry. It wasn’t obvious, just the dampening of her eyes, the blinking, and when she wiped at her left lid a single tear traced a line down her cheek. In that moment she was more terrified of breaking down in front of David Parker than she was of Johnson and Vale. She sniffed, pulling herself together, and stood.
“Okay, David. Thanks.”
He frowned up at her, brows knitted. “You all right?”
“Yeah—I’m fine. I just…” She just what? “Take care of yourself, okay?”
He looked confused.
“And so you know, David: There was never any suggestion that Ingrid and Martin Bishop were lovers.”
By the time she was out on the street the tears had returned, and knowing she was alone—or, hoping she was alone—she let them flow.