She paid and tipped her driver, walked over, and looked through the single plate-glass window. It was very small, two tables and a counter with stools. Garreth waved from his stool at the counter, nearest the window.
She went in.
Garreth, the old man, and Tito were seated at the counter. There were four stools, and the one between Garreth and the old man was empty. She took it.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Good morning, Miss Henry,’ said the old man, nodding in her direction.
Past him, Tito leaned forward, smiling shyly.
‘Hello, Tito,’ she said.
‘You’ll want the poached,’ said Garreth. ‘Unless you don’t like poached.’
‘Poached is fine.’
‘And the bacon,’ said the old man. ‘Incredible.’
‘Really?’ Beenie’s was as basic an eating establishment as she’d been in in a while. Unless you counted Mr. Sippee. But Beenie’s was indoor sit-down, she reminded herself.
‘Chef used to work on the Queen Elizabeth,’ said the old man. ‘The first one.’
In the back of the room, a very old man, either Chinese or Malaysian, was bent almost double beside a white-painted cast-iron range that must have been older than he was. The only thing in Beenie’s that wasn’t old seemed to be the steel fire hood suspended above the large square stove.
There was a pleasant smell of bacon.
A very quiet woman, behind the counter, without being asked, brought her a cup of coffee. ‘Poached eggs medium, please.’ The walls were hung with oddly framed bits of generic Orientalia. Hollis guessed the place would have been here when she was born, and would have looked pretty much the same, though without the massive stainless hood above the stove.
‘Delighted you can be here this morning,’ said the old man. ‘It’s been a long night, but it appears to have gone in our favor.’
‘Thank you,’ said Hollis, ‘but I still have only a very vague idea of what you’re up to, in spite of what I saw Garreth do last night.’
‘Tell me your idea of what we’re doing, then,’ he said.
Hollis added milk to her coffee, from a very cold stainless creamer. ‘Garreth told me that the’ – she glanced at the woman, who was standing beside the ancient cook – ‘the box, contained a, a large sum?’
‘Yes?’
‘Garreth, were you exaggerating?’
‘No,’ said Garreth. ‘One hundred.’
‘Million,’ said the old man, flatly.
‘What Garreth did… You spoke of laundering. He… contaminated? Am I right?’
‘Indeed,’ said the old man, ‘he did. As thoroughly as could be arranged, under the circumstances. The projectiles would be effectively atomized, as they entered. Of course they then encounter virtually solid blocks of extremely high-quality paper, edge-on. But our intent wasn’t to destroy that paper, but rather to make it difficult to handle safely. And also to tag it, if you will, for certain kinds of detection. Though there hasn’t been a remarkable lot of progress, in the past five years, with that sort of sensing. Another neglected area.’ He sipped black coffee.
‘You’ve made laundering it difficult.’
‘Impossible, I would hope,’ he said. ‘But you must understand that for the people who first arranged to have that hundred put in that box, the fact that it’s back here at all already borders on disaster. They did not originally intend for it to return to North America, or indeed to any part of the First World. Too unwieldy an amount. There are economies, however, in which that sort of money can be traded for one thing or another, without too punishing a discount, and it was to one or another of those economies that they intended it to go.’
‘What happened?’ Hollis asked, thinking how very strange it was that she had at least a general idea of what the answer would be.
‘It was discovered, in transit, by a team of American intelligence operators, assigned to look for a very different sort of cargo. They were ordered off the case immediately, but in a way that created a snag in the fabric of things, bureaucratically, and for that reason, and others, it eventually came to my attention.’
Hollis nodded. Pirates.
‘In terms of profiteering from the war, Miss Henry, this is a piddling amount. I found the sheer gall of it fascinating, though, or perhaps the sheer lack of imagination. Out the door of the New York Fed, onto the back of a truck in Baghdad, one thing and another, then sail it away.’
She had been about to mention the Hook, she realized, the giant Russian helicopter, and bit her lip.
‘In the course of determining who the parties involved were, I learned that this particular container had been equipped with a unit that monitored its whereabouts, and to an extent its integrity, and covertly broadcast the information to the parties involved. They had known, for instance, when it had been opened by the American intelligence team. And that put the wind up them.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘They lost their nerve. They began looking for different venues, easier markets, steeper discounts perhaps but less risk. The box went on its own very peculiar journey, then, and nothing ever quite worked out for them, none of those various potential launderings.’ He looked at her.
As various friends of his saw to that, she guessed.
‘And I imagine they were afraid, by then. It became a sort of permanent resident in the system, never quite arriving. Until it got here, of course.’
‘But why did it, finally?’
He sighed. ‘Things are winding down, for these people. So I sincerely hope. There’s less to be made, and the wind begins to blow from a potentially cleaner direction. An amount of this sort, even quite stiffly discounted, begins to seem worthwhile. At least for the smaller fish. And make no mistake, these are the smaller fish. No faces you’ve seen on television. Functionaries. Bureaucrats. I knew their like once, in Moscow and Leningrad.’
‘So there’s something here, in Canada, that they can do with it?’
‘This country certainly isn’t without resources of that kind, but no. Not here. It’s headed south, across the border. Into Idaho, we think. Most likely a crossing called Porthill. Just south of Creston, British Columbia.’
‘But won’t it be that much more difficult to launder, there? You told me last night that that much illicit cash constitutes a negative asset.’
‘I believe they’ve made themselves a deal.’
‘With whom?’
‘A church,’ he said.
‘A church?’
‘The kind with its own television station. The kind with an adjacent gated attraction. In this case, with an adjacent gated community.’
‘Jesus,’ she said.
‘I wouldn’t go that far, myself,’ he said, and coughed. ‘Hundred-dollar bills in the collection plate are the norm, however, I’m told.’
Now the woman appeared behind the counter, from the stove, and placed one plate of eggs and bacon in front of Hollis, a second in front of the old man.
‘Look at that,’ he said. ‘Exquisite. If you were in the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, and ordered poached eggs and bacon and toast, what you would be served would in no way differ from this. The presentation.’
And he was right, she saw. The bacon was perfectly flat, rigid, weightless, grease-free, crisp. Pressed, somehow. The eggs poached with a whisk, equally perfect, on a small bed of potato. Two slices of tomato and a sprig of parsley. Arranged with a casual, accomplished elegance. The woman returned with smaller plates of buttered toast for each of them.
‘You two eat,’ Garreth said. ‘I’ll explain.’
She broke the first of her eggs with her fork. Soft yellow yolk.
‘Tito was in the container facility last night, at midnight, when the buzzer sounded.’
She nodded, mouth full of bacon.
‘I punched our nine holes through the box. Leaving nine small but painfully obvious bullet holes. When the box was craned down from that stack, today, and put on a flatbed trailer, those nine holes would have been glaringly obvious. Aside from which, with them open, there was the possibility that a sensor in the facility would register the cesium. Except that Tito climbed up and stuck custom-made magnetic plasters over each hole, both sealing and, we hope, concealing them.’
She looked down the counter to where Tito was being served his plate of eggs. His eyes met hers, briefly, and then he began to eat.
‘You said they put it on a truck today,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘And they’re taking it into the United States, through Idaho?’
‘We think Idaho. The unit inside is still functioning, though, and Bobby is keeping track of that for us. We should be able to anticipate where they’re going to cross.’
‘If we fail to do that,’ the old man said, ‘and they enter the country undetected, we do have other options.’
‘Though we prefer the radiation be detected at the crossing,’ Garreth said.
‘And will it be?’ she asked.
‘It certainly will be if the border’s told to expect it,’ said Garreth.
‘The right combination of calls,’ said the old man, dabbing egg from his lips with a white paper napkin, ‘and careful timing, will take care of any collaborators our financiers may have at the crossing point.’
The woman brought Garreth his eggs. He began to eat, smiling.
‘And what will the result of that be?’ Hollis asked.
‘A world of trouble,’ the old man said, ‘for someone. A lot of that may depend on the driver, in the end. We really don’t know. Although we’ll certainly’ – and he smiled more widely than she’d seen him do before – ‘enjoy finding out.’
‘Speak of the devil,’ said Garreth, taking a pager from his belt and reading something off its tiny screen. ‘Bobby, He says look up. It’s rolling.’
‘Come here,’ said the old man, getting up, his napkin still in his hand. He moved closer to the window. She followed. Felt Garreth close behind her.
And then the turquoise container, on an almost invisible flatbed trailer, looking as though wheels had been glued to it, descended the ramp to the intersection, pulled by a spotless, shiny, red, white, and heavily chromed tractor-truck, its twin exhaust stacks reminding her of the Cuisinart casing around the barrel of Garreth’s rifle. At its wheel was a dark-haired, square-jawed man she thought looked like a cop, or a soldier.
‘That’s him,’ she heard Tito say, very softly.
‘Yes,’ said the old man, as the light changed and the truck and container crossed the intersection, up Clark and out of sight, ‘it is.’
83 Strathcona
‘And you’re writing your thesis on Baptists, Mr. Milgrim?’ Mrs. Meisenhelter set a two-slice silver toast-rack on the table.
‘Anabaptists,’ Milgrim corrected. ‘These are really delicious scrambled eggs.’
‘I use water, rather than butter,’ she said. ‘The pan is a little more trouble to clean, but I prefer them that way. Anabaptists?’
‘They do come into it, yes,’ Milgrim said, breaking his first piece of toast, ‘though really I’m concentrating on revolutionary messianism.’
‘Georgetown, you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s in Washington.’
‘It is.’
‘We’re delighted to have a scholar with us,’ she said, though as far as he knew she managed this bed-and-breakfast on her own, and he seemed to be the only guest.
‘I’m happy to have found such a quiet and pleasant place,’ he said. And he was. He’d wandered through a deserted Chinatown, into what Mrs. Meisenhelter told him was the city’s oldest residential neighborhood. Not a very affluent one, that was evident, but it was also evident that that was starting to change. A place in the process of doing what Union Square had done, he guessed. Mrs. Meisenhelter’s bed-and-breakfast was part of that transition. If she could get guests in to help her pay for it, she might do very well, later, when things had gone upscale.
‘Do you have plans for the day, Mr. Milgrim?’
‘I have to see to my lost luggage,’ he said. ‘If it hasn’t turned up, I’ll need to do a little shopping.’
‘I’m sure they’ll find it, Mr. Milgrim. If you’ll excuse me, I have to see to the laundry.’
When she had gone, Milgrim finished his toast, carried his breakfast things to the sink, rinsed them, and went up to his room, the thick flat sheaf of hundreds like an oddly shaped paperback in the left side pocket of his Jos. A. Banks trousers. It was the only thing he’d kept from the purse, aside from the phone, a small LED flashlight, and a pair of Korean-made nail-clippers.
The rest, including whatever that was that the phone had been plugged into, he’d deposited in a red mailbox. She hadn’t had any Canadian cash, the handsome, vaguely familiar-looking woman on the New York State driver’s license, and credit cards were more trouble than they were worth.
He needed to buy a loupe today, and a small ultraviolet light. A currency-testing pen, if he could find one. The bills looked good, but he needed to make sure. He’d already seen two signs declining American hundreds.
But first the secret flagellants of Thuringia, he decided, sitting on the edge of the candlewick bedspread and loosening the laces of his shoes.
His book was in the drawer of the bedside table, along with the phone, his U.S. Government pen, the flashlight, and nail-clippers. His place in the book was marked with the only scrap of the envelope he’d kept, the upper left-hand corner, marked ‘HH’ in faint red ballpoint. It seemed part of something, somehow.
He remembered getting on the bus, the night before, with the purse under his arm, beneath his jacket. He’d already gotten change, at the Princeton, as planned earlier, had inquired about buses and fares, and had had exactly the right amount ready, in unfamiliar, oddly blank-looking coins.
He’d sat, almost the only passenger, midway back, by a window, while his hand, as stealthy as if expecting attack, had explored what at first had seemed the very ordinary and unpromising reaches of the purse.
Now, rather than picking up the book, he picked up the phone. It had been on, when he’d found it, and he’d immediately turned it off. Now he turned it on. A New York number. Roaming. Almost a full charge. The phone book seemed to list mostly New York numbers as well, by first names only. The ring was set for silent. He set it on vibrate, to be sure that it was working. It was.
He was about to silence it again when it began to vibrate in his hand.
His hand opened it and put it to his ear.
‘Hello?’ he could hear someone, a man, saying, ‘Hello?’
‘You have the wrong number,’ he said, in Russian.
‘This is definitely the correct number,’ said the man on the other end, in accented but serviceable Russian.
‘No,’ said Milgrim, still in Russian, ‘it is the wrong number.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Thuringia.’ He closed the phone, immediately opening it again and turning it off.
His hand opted for the morning’s second Rize, entirely reasonable under the circumstances.
He put the phone back in the drawer. It didn’t seem a good thing to have kept, now. He’d dispose of it later.
He was opening his book, ready to pick up where he’d left off on the story of Margrave Frederick the Undaunted, when he suddenly saw St. Marks Place, that past October. He’d been talking with Fish, in front of a used-record store, the sort of place that actually sold records, the vinyl kind, and through the window, in black and white, a woman’s face had regarded him from the wall. And for an instant, settling back on the pillows, he knew who that was, and that he also knew her in some different way.
