As the Coast Starlight train moved northward near Monterey, Alan Spencer looked out the window at the familiar country. When he was young they had sent him to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. The train must be somewhere near Lewis Road now. That was the route. The school was on the bluff above Monterey Bay at the Presidio. He glanced at Marie. He felt the urge to tap her shoulder and say, “Look out the window. I spent a couple of years here once.” But that would have come too close to a topic he needed to avoid.
The highly accelerated Arabic course at the language school was sixty-four weeks. He had stayed beyond the basic course to master several regional dialects. After that he had spent another six months working on intelligence analyses with a team of expatriate Libyans at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Since most of their discussions were in Arabic, his fluency had increased dramatically.
He had not known, while they were developing plans to mount a mission to support a rebel faction in the Nafusa Mountains of Libya, that the mission was going to be his.
Alan watched Marie turn her head to stare out the window. “It’s pretty around here,” she said. “Ever been here before?”
“No,” he said. “I haven’t even seen all of Canada yet, let alone the US.”
“Very correct of you,” she said. “We’ll have to get busy traveling once we’re back in Canada.”
The brochure Alan had gotten with the tickets said that the train trip took about thirty-six hours. Marie had decided to use the time wisely. When the train stopped at the small station in Santa Barbara she had taken a cab up State Street to a bookstore, bought four travel guides to Canada, and rushed back. She had been reading much of the time since then.
At breakfast in the dining car the next morning they met an older woman who said she had booked her trip all the way to British Columbia. The final leg would be on a bus, but it would take her to Surrey and then Vancouver. After breakfast, Alan found the conductor and booked extensions of their tickets to Seattle so they would be on the bus with her. Customs officials would talk to this sweet elderly woman with hair curled like white floss, and it might make her traveling companions, the Spencers, seem innocuous too.
The Spencers practiced being Canadian, but for the moment Alan would allow Marie to rehearse the role only with him in their compartment, where nobody could overhear her mistakes. He had spent time years ago learning to pass as a Canadian before he had first arrived in Toronto as Alan Spencer. He told Marie that they weren’t ready to be Canadian in public, but they would work on it together.
Marie soon saw that the differences were not extreme. Most Canadians didn’t say “aboot” for “about” or end every sentence with “eh?” But there were subtler signs and differences for which she would have to prepare. For the moment they were only people from somewhere in English-speaking North America, and they should avoid saying anything about their origins.
Alan was relieved that the bus across the border existed. He had not had time to research this trip in advance. It had simply been an option he’d noticed at Union Station in Los Angeles. He had been assuming they would have to cross the border on foot in some remote spot between official border crossings. But during the years since 2001 there had been a proliferation of agencies and federal employees who watched the borders and the adjacent areas to prevent illegal crossings. Once it would have been an easy trip. Now, the Spencers might not have made it.
As the train approached the station for their stop in San Jose, Alan saw a big Sears store, so as soon as they could get off they went to the store and bought some fresh clothes, toiletries, and other essentials.
Their last night in the United States, Alan went through their backpacks and jettisoned things that they couldn’t bring across an international border. He dismantled the Colt Commander and the two Beretta Nano pistols, and emptied their magazines. He made a pile of barrels, springs, unattached trigger and sear mechanisms, slides, grips, and frames. Any part he could remove, he did. Every few miles during the night he would throw a piece or two out the window as far from the tracks as possible. When the train went over a bridge spanning deep water he dropped more.
He split the money into packets and counted it, so that neither of them would have more than ten thousand Canadian dollars or the US equivalent. That way neither would have to declare the cash.
Alan Spencer cut up their Dixon identification and credit cards and fed the pieces into the wind. By the time they reached the King Street Station in Seattle they were as clear of contraband as they could be. He took Marie to the bus they would be taking to Canada and sat with his arm around her, because he knew she would be nervous as they prepared to cross the border.
The bus driver handed out Canadian Customs Declaration Cards to the passengers who had booked themselves through to Canada. The Spencers had nothing left to declare that would prompt questions.
Shortly after they filled out the cards and the bus was in motion, Alan went into the bus’s restroom. He took from under his shirt a small canvas tool bag he had bought in the Sears store in San Jose. He took out a screwdriver, unscrewed and removed a wall panel that allowed access to the toilet’s water supply pipe, tied the bag to the pipe, and replaced the panel.
The bus crossed the border at Blaine, Washington, and then stopped at Surrey, British Columbia. He had prepared Marie for Canadian customs by telling her to steel herself to look calm, a little bored, but alert. There was a primary inspection station where a man from the Canada Border Services Agency examined their documents, and then a baggage claim where they took possession of their backpacks, and a secondary inspection station where other Border Services people inspected the backpacks and asked questions.
Alan said they had flown to Los Angeles three weeks ago, done a great deal of sightseeing and hiking in parks around Southern California at Joshua Tree and Death Valley and the Angeles National Forest, and were planning to return home to Toronto by train.
As Alan had expected, the inspector showed little interest in their story. The clothes he had chosen for them in San Jose were right—cheap and utilitarian, bought because they’d run out of clean clothes on a trip. The worn hiking boots and gloves they’d had in Big Bear, the lightweight ski jackets for cool mornings and evenings, helped bolster his story that they were hikers. Alan had included brimmed hats to wear in public places where there were surveillance cameras, and shorts. The trip through customs took only about ten minutes, but the tension made the experience seem much longer.
After the luggage had been reloaded into the bus, they climbed in, returned to their seats, and got moving again. Alan returned to the bus’s restroom, removed the wall panel, took his canvas tool bag, and put it into his backpack. From the shape and the weight, he could tell the pistol, silencer, and magazines were intact. Then he replaced the panel. Soon the bus pulled into the station in Vancouver.
Alan hailed a cab to Victoria, and checked in at the Empress Hotel. The hotel was old and formal and luxurious, so Alan took Marie to a department store where they bought more formal clothes and a pair of suitcases.
Marie said, “What are we doing next?”
“Listening to Canadians talk. Looking at what they wear and buying some of it so all of our clothes will have the right labels. Making ourselves into the least likely people to be troublesome.”
“So we’re killing time again?”
“Not killing it. Just slowing down a bit while we get used to things.”
He decided to stay at the Empress Hotel for five more days. They went to museums, shopped, and explored, always listening to the people around them. Most of Alan’s attention was devoted to assuring himself that nothing had changed. Nobody was following them, the Canadian police were not waiting for them when they returned to the Empress each afternoon, and their pictures had not begun to appear in newspapers or on television.
On the fifth day, Alan went out alone for a while, and then returned with tickets for the Via Rail Canadian Snow Train.
For the ten days of travel to Toronto, Marie listened and practiced. She studied other people on the train and in hotels, observing customs, mannerisms, inflections, and pronunciations. When they were alone he drilled her. Canadians used the metric system for temperatures and distances, but they expressed their height in feet and inches, their weight in pounds. When they bumped into you they said “soary” for “sorry.” Marie had a good ear, and soon she was repeating entire anecdotes that she’d heard Canadian women tell, pronouncing each word exactly as she’d heard it.
When they arrived in Toronto, Spencer didn’t immediately take possession of his apartment. Instead he checked in to a hotel across the street. The apartment was at Yonge Street just south of Queen, and he spent a lot of time sitting near the Yonge Street window overlooking the apartment building and watching.
Alan Spencer knew that if US military intelligence had discovered that he was the same man who had been Daniel Chase, Peter Caldwell, and Henry Dixon, they would have found the apartment on Yonge Street. The rent had always been paid by Weyburn Dynamics, an entity he had invented in the second year after he set up his American identities and begun to invest the twenty million dollars. His main hope of anonymity now was that the insularity he had given the identity of Alan Spencer would hide him.
He had resisted the temptation to let any of his American identities blur into this one. He had never given Chase, Caldwell, or Dixon a financial interest in the Weyburn Company or had them serve on its fictitious board of directors.
Alan Spencer and the Weyburn Company held no money in American banks, invested in no American corporations, and did no business in the United States. The money was invested broadly in Canada and in companies in various commonwealth nations and a few European ones. He owned stock in Canadian “hydro” producers, Canadian real estate, shopping malls, mining, lumber, oil. His investments had at first been intended as a series of ways of storing money that didn’t belong to him. Weyburn was essentially a lawyer’s office and a bank account that paid a few Canadian businesses to provide services—including filing Canadian taxes and financial reports, paying for the apartment, and providing the company with a mailing address in Toronto. His investments had done well, but not well enough to attract the attention of American business interests.
Next Spencer began to watch the apartment through the windows of Toronto buses. He studied Yonge and Queen Streets as his bus passed the apartment building. The area was always bustling and full of traffic, and its sidewalks were crowded with pedestrians. The apartment was a few blocks north of Lake Ontario, and only a couple of blocks from the entertainment district, close to thousands of businesses in the glass skyscrapers that had grown up in the southern part of the city in the past twenty years.
The apartment was on the ninth floor. He had chosen it in person about a dozen years ago, had the rent and services charged to Weyburn Dynamics, and made sure that only the company was listed as the tenant in the building’s records, and that the suite number was not on any directory. His lease included an in-house cleaning service that came in once a week to dust, vacuum, and clean the windows, but otherwise nobody entered.
The glass of the large windows was opaque and reflective from outside. The building had a lobby where security people made visitors show identification before they could reach the elevators or the stairs.
He went past on the bus at 6:00 a.m., noon, and 5:30 p.m. the first day. He took the bus the next day at 7:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., and 8:00 p.m. He took pictures through the bus windows with his cell phone. Each day he altered his schedule. He studied everything—possible observation posts in vehicles that were parked in this busy area too often, the presence of people who stayed on the street for too long. He walked the area at various times of the night. He found nothing that made him suspicious.
On the fifth day at 6:00 a.m., Alan Spencer made his first entry into the apartment building. He signed in, showed one of the security men in the lobby his passport, rode the elevator to the second floor, and then went back down the staircase and watched the two security men through the small window in the stairwell door. Neither had picked up a telephone or left his post at the reception desk. He watched for five more minutes and then walked up to the second floor and took the elevator to the ninth.
The apartment had not been altered since he’d last visited five years before. The three bedrooms,-three baths, kitchen, dining room, living room, conference room, and office all appeared the same. He made a quick tour and verified that the tables had been polished, the bed linens were fresh, and the windows cleaned. Then he began his work.
Spencer removed each of the electrical socket covers, light switch covers, and light fixtures searching for bugs or cameras. He took the slipcovers partially off each piece of furniture. He examined each cupboard, took all the drawers out, and studied the insides and undersides of counters, tables, and desks. He opened the bottoms of telephone receivers and appliances. He examined the objects on shelves to see if they contained electronic devices. As afternoon arrived he took the grate off each vent, hood, or heating fixture. He took apart the smoke detectors, thermostats, and sound system speakers. He spent time opening the television set and cable box, looking for parts that didn’t belong. He found nothing in the apartment that was not as it should be.
He walked through the apartment taking cell phone pictures of all the disarray, and then prepared to leave. He pulled and teased a bit of synthetic wool from the carpet to make some lint. He placed a bit of it on the tops of the doors to the bedrooms, the bathrooms, and the closets. He left a small battery-operated camera running under the front of the couch that faced the doorway.
On the way out of the building he stood at the apartment doors beside his, below his, and above his to listen for sounds of occupancy. He heard television sets in three, classical music in one, and an angry couple quarreling in one. There was only one apartment door where he heard nothing. As he turned to leave he heard the ping of the elevator arriving down the hall, and walked toward the doors. The woman who emerged from the elevator was short and elderly. She smiled as he passed her in the hall.
He pushed the elevator button to reopen the doors, stepped in, and then held the “door open” button. He listened until he heard an apartment door open. He waited a second, and then looked back. He saw the door of the apartment beside his swing shut. He let the elevator close and rode down to the lobby.
He made his way back to his hotel across the street by taking a circuitous route that took him behind the hotel, around a block, and through the front door of a bar. He ordered a Macallan scotch over ice, drank it, and then left through the back door near the kitchen. There was nobody following him.
When he entered their hotel room, Marie kissed him, and then pulled back to look at him. “I missed you. How did it go?”
“Good so far,” he said.
“I figured. You taste like single malt scotch.”
“Sorry,” he said, pronouncing it as a Canadian.
“No, it’s a good taste,” she said. “What time do you want to go down to dinner?”
“Give me a half hour. I just need to shower and change.”
She moved the tip of her tongue to her lips. “Maybe I’ll order one of those at dinner.”
After three visits to the apartment he still found the bits of carpet lint had not been disturbed and the only image recorded on the hidden camera was his own. He reassembled everything he had dismantled. The next day he waited for the woman who did the cleaning in the apartment once a week. After she had been in the apartment for a few minutes he entered and found her at work cleaning the windows. That satisfied him that she was who she claimed to be. He decided that he and Marie could move in to the apartment.
Two days after that, while Marie was out having her hair done, he began to refresh his Arabic.