Chapter 60

Springfield was wearing the same suit I had seen him in before. Gray summer-weight wool, with a silky weave and a slight sheen. It was creased and crumpled, like he slept in it. Which maybe he did.

He said, “You think this is the place?”

I didn’t answer. I was too busy checking all around me. I looked at hundreds of people and dozens of cars. But I saw nothing to worry about. Springfield was alone.

I turned back.

Springfield asked the question again. “You think this is it?”

I asked, “Where’s Sansom?”

“He stayed home.”

“Why?”

“Because this kind of thing is difficult, and I’m better than he is.”

I nodded. It was an article of faith with NCOs that they were better than their officers. And they were usually right. Certainly I had been happy with mine. They had done plenty of good work for me.

I asked, “So what’s the deal?”

“What deal?”

“Between you and me.”

“We don’t have a deal,” he said. “Yet.”

“Are we going to have a deal?”

“We should talk, maybe.”

“Where?”

“Your call,” he said. Which was a good sign. It meant that if there was going to be a trap or an ambush in my immediate future, it was going to be improvised, and therefore not optimally efficient. Maybe even to the point of being survivable.

I asked him, “How well do you know the city?”

“I get by.”

“Make two lefts and go to 57 East 57th. I’ll be ten minutes behind you. I’ll meet you inside.”

“What kind of a place is that?”

“We can get coffee there.”

“OK,” he said. He took one more look at the building with the old restaurant at its base and then he crossed the street diagonally through the traffic and turned left onto Madison Avenue. I went the other way, just as far as the Four Seasons’s back door. The Four Seasons’s back door was right there on 58th Street. It was a block-through building. Which meant its front door was on 57th Street. At 57 East 57th, to be precise. I would be inside about four minutes ahead of Springfield. I would know if he had brought a crew. I would see whether anyone came in before him, or with him, or after him. I walked through to the lobby from the rear and took off my hat and my glasses and stood in a quiet corner and waited.

Springfield came in alone, right on time, which was four minutes later. No time for hurried deployment out on the street. No time for conversation. Probably no time even for a cell phone call. Most people slow their walk a little, dialing and talking.

There was a guy in formal morning dress near the door. A black tail coat, and a silver tie. Not a concierge, not a bell captain. Some kind of a greeter, although his title was probably much grander. He started toward Springfield and Springfield glanced at him once and the guy ducked away like he had been slapped. Springfield had that kind of a face.

He paused a moment and got his bearings and headed for the tea room, where I had once met the Hoths. I stayed in my corner and watched the street door. There was no backup. No plain sedans stopped outside. I gave it ten minutes, and then added two more, just in case. Nothing happened. Just the regular ebb and flow of a high-end city hotel. Rich people came, rich people went. Poor people scurried around and did things for them.

I walked into the tea room and found Springfield in the same chair that Lila Hoth had used. The same dignified old waiter was on duty. He came over. Springfield asked for mineral water. I asked for coffee. The waiter nodded imperceptibly and went away again.

Springfield said, “You met the Hoths here, twice.”

I said, “Once at this exact table.”

“Which is technically a problem. Associating with them in any way at all could be classed as a felony.”

“Because?”

“Because of the Patriot Act.”

“Who are the Hoths, exactly?”

“And running across the subway tracks was also a felony. You could get up to five years in the state pen for that, technically. So they tell me.”

“I also shot four federal agents with darts.”

“No one cares about them.”

“Who are the Hoths?”

“I can’t volunteer information.”

“So why are we here?”

“You help us, we’ll help you.”

“How can you help me?”

“We can make all your felonies disappear.”

“And how can I help you?”

“You can help us find what we lost.”

“The memory stick?”

Springfield nodded. The waiter came back with his tray. Mineral water, and coffee. He arranged things carefully on the table and backed away.

I said, “I don’t know where the memory stick is.”

“I’m sure you don’t. But you got as close to Susan Mark as anyone. And she left the Pentagon with it, and it isn’t in her house or her car or anywhere else she ever went. So we’re hoping you saw something. Maybe it didn’t mean anything to you, but it might to us.”

“I saw her shoot herself. That was about all.”

“There must have been more.”

“You had your chief of staff on the train. What did he see?”

“Nothing.”

“What was on the memory stick?”

“I can’t volunteer information.”

“Then I can’t help you.”

“Why do you need to know?”

I said, “I like to know at least the basic shape of the trouble I’m about to get myself into.”

“Then you should ask yourself a question.”

“What question?”

“The one you haven’t asked yet, and the one you should have, right at the start. The key question, you dumbass.”

“What is this? A contest? NCOs against officers?”

“That battle was over long ago.”

So I spooled backward to the beginning, looking for the question I had never asked. The beginning was the 6 train, and passenger number four, on the right side of the car, alone on her eight-person bench, white, in her forties, plain, black hair, black clothes, black bag. Susan Mark, citizen, ex–wife, mother, sister, adoptee, resident of Annandale, Virginia.

Susan Mark, civilian worker at the Pentagon.

I asked, “What exactly was her job?”