Spook Country

“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

A nd 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 pla

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?”