Twelve

It was a relatively short drive to where I picked up Carla Pope, at Manchester’s famed Airport Diner, about five minutes’ drive to the silly over-named airport that served this city and its neighbors: the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. Yeah, right.

She got in and said, “Any more coffee and I won’t sleep for a week.”

“Worse things could happen.”

“How did it go?”

“Went fine.”

“Seemed to take a while.”

“Oh, I had to make a quick stop on the way over, at that Irving gas station back there.”

“To gas up?”

“Among other things,” he said. “I found two tracing devices on the undercarriage of the Ford. They’re now under a Chrysler mini-van with Connecticut plates. I’m hoping the mini-van brings our tracers right to the Nutmeg State.”

“How do you know there were only two?”

“Are you doubting my abilities?”

“Every minute I’m with you I have doubts,” she said.

Carla started yawning and I knew what was going on: even with the caffeine, she was coming down with the Winston Churchill effect—the relief and let-down that comes from being shot at with no injury.

“Let’s take a break,” I said, pointing out the windshield at the nearby Holiday Inn Express. “Spend the night here, sleep in late, head out to Vermont tomorrow.”

“I want to go now.”

“We go now, it’ll be late by the time we get to Vermont. We’ll be even more tired, more fuzzy, and we’ll make mistakes. We’ll shoot ourselves in the feet. Maybe literally.”

“But—”

“That Holiday Inn is used by a lot of flight crews. Fairly anonymous. We walk over, I pay in cash, and we’re gone in the morning.”

“Separate rooms?”

“Of course.”

“Room service?”

“Sure.”

“Any limits?”

“Use your best judgment,” I said. “If you have any left.”

I like hotel rooms, I like their sameness, the quiet, knowing I’m not responsible for cleaning or dining or anything else.

So a number of quiet hours passed.

In the morning we walked back to the diner, had a quick and late breakfast, and then got back into my Ford and started driving.

I got us onto Route 101 east, planning to take Interstate 93 north a while to Concord, the state capitol. “National technical means of verification,” I said.

“What?”

“Don’t you remember your history?”

“Some history, but I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“Yesterday. The tracking devices. The espionage. Spycraft.”

We sped east, past the Mall of Manchester and a whole slew of big box stores. I had the quick feeling that I hoped Robert Frost wasn’t looking down, shaking his spectral head in dismay at what happened to his home state. Stopping in the woods on a snowy evening my ass.

“Back in the days of nuclear weapons talks, both sides agreed that the telemetry for some of their missile launches would be broadcast in the clear, making it easy for the other side to track the performance and ensure there was no cheating going on. But in addition, it was always understood that spying and spy-tools—also known as national technical means of verification—would be used.”

We were now approaching the tollbooths in Hooksett. From there, we would eventually find a state highway that would take us west to Vermont.

“Yesterday I checked the undercarriage of the Ford with my eyeballs. Didn’t find a thing. But among my bag of tricks was a surveillance tracking device that located the first one, no doubt descended from something that was used to track Soviet missile tests. But I didn’t stop there and I kept looking … and I found the second one. And this one was tricky, using some sort of new battery technology I couldn’t initially recognize, and which wasn’t picked up by my detection device.”

“Serious players.”

“Very serious. But I hope they have a sense of humor when they ended up in Stamford or Hartford.”

“They’ll probably find out sooner rather than later.”

“Still, it gave us time to get to Vermont.”

“Besides the obvious,” she said, “what else is in Vermont?”

“My personal technical means of verification.”

We were eventually on Route 113, a state highway that led us through some wooded and pasture lands on our way west, and I felt better about the status of Robert Frost’s spectral viewing from up above somewhere or somewhen. There were small towns, grassy commons, and the occasional statue of a Civil War soldier standing forever at guard. Think state highway and you might think of a four-lane ribbon of concrete and asphalt; in New Hampshire, you’d be thinking wrong. Here, a state highway can be just two lanes of a better-than-average paved road, which we were currently on and driving steadily along.

I had the radio set low to some classic rock station, but still, the dead air inside the Ford was making me quite uncomfortable, with Carla just staring out the windshield, occasionally squeezing her hands together. So I decided to break the ice, or at least scrape it around some.

“Tell me more about your brother,” I said.

“Why?”

“To pass the time, to learn more about him, that sort of civilized thing.”

“You worked with him for a couple of years.”

“Not long enough to know him,” I said. “We had the ultimate professional relationship. He worked well with me, I paid him handsomely in return, and when the job was done, we had a nice meal at a restaurant and then went back to our own respective corners.”

“You start,” she said. “Then I’ll fill in the blanks.”

“All right,” I said, driving by a beautiful white Colonial farmhouse, with neat barns and pastureland. Perfect for tourists and landscapers. Disneyworld New Hampshire.

“Rough and tough, with a fine sense of humor,” I said. “Grew up in Boston, worked off and on for a number of not-so-wiseguys. Freelance at what he did. Divorced with twin sons. Adores his kids and still has fond thoughts about Wanda, his ex-wife, though they’ve been apart for a while.”

Carla laughed. I had to turn my head to make sure I was hearing what I thought I was hearing. She had a merry smile on her face. “Not bad, save for one thing. He didn’t grow up in Boston. None of us did. We grew up in Providence.”

“Ah, home to the quiet ones.”

“H. P. Lovecraft?”

“No, organized crime. The Providence mob … they’re content to let their Boston cousins to the north get all the notoriety, headlines, best-selling books, and Oscar-winning movies while they quietly did their business. How did your brother get hooked up with them?”

“High school bored him. What else can I say?”

Up ahead was an intersection with a blinking red light dangling overhead. I took a left. We hadn’t seen a real traffic light in nearly an hour.

“What did he do for the boys from Federal Hill?”

“A lot of traveling, I guess. All up and down the East Coast, running errands, meeting people, doing … whatever he was told to do.”

“Were you the typical younger sister, trying to get big brother back home where he belonged? Tried to keep him on the straight and narrow? Is that it?”

She turned her head to look at the peaceful landscape sliding by. “No.”

Carla said not another word, even when we drove over the Connecticut River and were back in the Green Mountain State.

A couple of phone calls later, I met up with Tracy Zahn, my own private intelligence agency, who was taking the day off and had on faded blue jeans and a thick black turtleneck sweater. Even with the bulky clothes, she looked pretty damn fine. We met at a Little League baseball field outside of Bellows Falls, which was empty of fans and players. I parked near a squat green concrete building that looked like it served as a concession stand and dugout for the home team.

Tracy had parked under a maple tree and I walked over to meet her, sitting next to her on the hood of her light green Volvo station wagon.

“Well, hello there,” she said.

“Hello there,” I said.

She looked over my shoulder. “You cheating on me already?”

“Not hardly,” I said. “She’s … assisting me on this search, from another angle. Two minds being better than one, that sort of thing.”

Tracy kept looking over my shoulder. “Lean-looking wench, isn’t she.”

“Haven’t noticed.”

She returned her look to the baseball park. “Bring back any fond memories?”

“No.”

“What, no Little League, peewee football, semipro soccer?”

“I don’t like team sports,” I said.

“Says you.”

She laughed, a sound I decided I still liked. From the rear pocket of her jeans, she removed a folded over piece of white paper. I took it in hand, opened it up. It was still warm from being tight up against her butt.

George Windsor was written out in neat handwriting. The Putney Homestead Bed and Breakfast.

“That’s your man’s name,” she said. “And as of this morning, he was staying at the Putney Homestead.”

“Where’s that?”

“Just south of here in Brattleboro. Nice little inn. I’m surprised he’s there, after having stayed at the Green Mountain. The Green Mountain is a much better facility.”

“I don’t think he has fond memories of the place,” I said. “What else can you tell me?”

She bit her lower lip. “Not as much as I wanted, my friend. All I know is that he’s somebody important, from D.C., and that the cops here are lining up to kiss his bony ass.”

“Do you know why?”

“Only if you answer a question.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

She gestured to the ballpark. “Why are we meeting here? Why not in town? Or at my office?”

I refolded the piece of paper, slipped it into my coat. I said, “Things … might get pretty interesting over the next day or two. I don’t want you to be involved.”

“I’m already involved.”

“I like you,” I said. “Any more involvement … bad things might happen.”

“How bad?”

“Very bad.”

She nodded. “All right, thanks for the warning. And here’s a warning right back to you, friend. George Windsor is up here on some sort of federal investigation, looking for a very bad man, and once he finds that man, he intends to, quote, nail his balls to the barn door, unquote.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“Be careful,” she said with a sly smile. “I’ve developed an affection for your balls, and the body attached to it.”

Back in the Ford, Carla Pope of the FBI said, “Local talent?”

“Local real estate agent,” I said. “She’s got connections, knows the news and the gossip. She’s helping me out.”

“I’m sure she is,” she said.

I glanced down at her folded hands. “Gee, look at those claws pop out. You’re something else, Miss Pope.”

“It’s Mrs. Pope, and you can still keep on calling me Carla.”

From Bellows Falls to Brattleboro is about thirty minutes on Route 5, bypassing Interstate 91, to enjoy the view and to avoid snoopy State Police troopers and overhead aircraft or drones.

“What did you find out from the hot real estate agent back there?”

“A full name,” I said. “George Windsor. And where he’s currently residing, the Putney Homestead Bed and Breakfast, outside of Brattleboro. He certainly doesn’t enjoy staying at a chain hotel.”

“George Windsor,” she said. “True name?”

“True as it gets, if it gets him into a police station and feels confident he’s not going to get rousted.”

“True name, true job?”

“Department of Justice? I … I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem right.”

“What does?”

I stopped at an Irving Service Station, made a quick inquiry of a cheerful teen boy working inside, and then went back out to the Ford. I kept on driving. On Main Street in Brattleboro I pulled in, just by the Old Brooks Library, a hundred-plus-year-old Victorian-style building.

“What’s here?” Carla asked.

“A bit of anonymous surfing,” I said as I got out.

“Then why here? We must have passed about a half dozen libraries from the time we left Manchester.”

“This library’s small, but not too small. We go into a small town library, then we’re remembered. I don’t want to be remembered.”

She looked up at the old edifice. “You really need me in there?”

I smiled. “I’ve grown accustomed to your chilly face.”

Inside the library had the hushed silence, smell of old books, and the low hum of knowledge being stored that still gave me a brief frisson of joy, years after I had gotten my first adult library card some years and miles ago. A helpful male librarian with a black Van Dyke beard and a pierced eyebrow directed Carla and I to the banks of the computers, and as we sat down, Carla said, “What a waste of space.”

“Say again?”

“All these old books, all these crowded shelves.” She started tapping on the keyboard. “Everything out there can be scanned and stored.”

I pulled a hard plastic chair next to Carla. “Then what? An EMP pulse, a screw-up in some computer file, or a zombie apocalypse later, these books will still be patiently waiting on shelves, waiting to be read. What do you think of when I say the word archipelago?”

The keyboard tapping went on. “You haven’t said that word.”

“I just did.”

“All right, I suppose Indonesia. Or the Philippines. Or maybe the old Soviet prison system.”

“Extra points for the Gulag reference, Carla. When I think of archipelago, I think of all these hundreds of libraries, spread across the country, all of them a little island of knowledge. Each existing by themselves, each connected to each other.”

She cocked an eye at me. “You certainly had the interesting upbringing … whoever you are.”

“You have no idea,” I said.

The thought of sharing Google and Bing searches with someone else gave me a queasy feeling, like sharing my toothbrush with a roommate who was coughing and hacking up his lungs. But Carla was quite good at making Google and Bing dance to our tunes, and we went hither and yon looking for the elusive and currently dead Kate Salzi. We did the usual Facebook, home address, and general searches, and Carla was able to dip in and out of some semi-secret federal databases.

Within an hour, we were finished, in more ways than one.

Kate Salzi didn’t exist.

And neither did George Windsor.