The Divide (41 page)

She hoped the memory of what she’d said might haze with the hangover but it hadn’t. And though she had tried ever since to pluck up the courage to call him and apologize, she hadn’t been able to. But now that they had heard from Abbie, now that Josh had actually seen her, there was no excuse. Somehow, without alerting suspicion, Benjamin had to be told.

That afternoon, the money stashed in the washing machine (it seemed appropriate and, for want of a safe, as good a place as any), she gave Josh a wink and asked him to come out into the garden to help her do some planting. She had no idea if the FBI had bugged the house as well as the phones. They’d certainly had ample opportunity. There had been so many agents in the place these past months, going through Abbie’s things and asking a million questions about her so they could “profile” her, chances were they’d planted something. Until now there hadn’t been anything worth eavesdropping on, but now that there was, Sarah wasn’t taking any risks.

Josh didn’t know about her abusive call, so while sparing him the lurid details, she told him. It was amazing how much he had grown up since his father left. Abbie had always been the one with whom Sarah had discussed important emotional matters. But Josh had revealed himself to be every bit as good a listener and wiser, if more sparing, in his counsel. Before Sarah even thought to suggest it, Josh said that he would be the one to call Benjamin.

He had it already figured out. So as not to alert any eavesdroppers, he would tell his father that there was a lot to sort out about his going to NYU—forms to fill out and so on. By the by, he would mention that Sarah was embarrassed about their last phone call and suggest that while he was in New York maybe the three of them could have lunch or dinner. It seemed to Sarah a fine plan.

They went inside and Josh ran up the stairs to his room to make the call while Sarah tried to focus on preparing supper. Within five minutes he was down again. It was all fixed, he said. Benjamin would fly in on Friday. They would have dinner. He sent her his love.

 

 

 

Josh wouldn’t say how he knew which number to call. He said he had promised Abbie that he wouldn’t tell anyone and that it was safer that way. When he arrived home from school the previous evening he’d handed Sarah a piece of paper with the number on it. It was a New Jersey area code and probably, he said, a pay phone. Somewhere like a mall or a gas station.

All week Sarah had been racking her brains to think of the best place to call from and had finally opted for Roberto’s, a restaurant she and Benjamin often used to go to. There were two cowled phone booths at the back, beyond the restrooms, and always enough bustle and noise from the kitchen to mask any conversation. It was also only a few blocks from the bookstore. So on Thursday morning at twelve-fifteen, as if on a whim, she announced to Jeffrey that she was going to buy him lunch.

The place wasn’t crowded but as one o’clock drew nearer it began to get busier. They ate their Caesar salads and chatted about business then Jeffrey started telling her about a new French movie he and Brian had been to see at the Angelika Film Center. Sarah did her best to look interested, although every time anyone went toward the restroom all she could think about was what would happen if, at one o’clock when she went back there, both phones were being used. She looked at her watch. Four minutes to go.

“Are you okay?”

“Sorry?”

Jeffrey was frowning at her.

“You seem a little distracted.”

“No, I’m fine. Jeffrey, I’m so sorry. I just remembered. I was supposed to call Alan Hersh this morning. It’s apparently something important and I completely forgot. Will you excuse me a moment?”

“Sure.”

She picked up her purse and got up and walked back across the restaurant, weaving her way among the tables where suddenly every face seemed to be staring at her. She felt like Al Pacino in
The Godfather,
on his way to get the gun. Both phone booths were free. She chose the one farther from the restrooms. It was two minutes before one o’clock. She put her purse down on the little stainless-steel shelf and took out a sandwich bag of quarters and Josh’s piece of paper. And as the second hand of her watch ticked toward the hour, her breathing fast now and shallow and her hands trembling so badly she almost spilled the coins, she picked up the receiver, inserted the money and dialed.

“Hello?”

Sarah gasped and swallowed and for a moment couldn’t speak. To hear the voice, after all these long months, overwhelmed her.

“Mom?”

“Hello, my love.”

“Oh, Mom.”

From the small, faltering way she said it, Sarah knew she wasn’t the only one fighting tears. Suddenly, stupidly, she didn’t know what to say. There was both too much and nothing.

“Baby, how are you?”

“I’m okay. How are you?”

“I’m okay too.”

There was a long moment of silence. Sarah could hear music playing in the background, then the blare of a horn. She longed to ask where Abbie was, but knew she shouldn’t.

“Mom, I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, baby.”

“Listen, we only have a short time—”

“My love, come home, please—”

“Mom—”

“Everyone will understand, if you just tell them what happened—”

“Don’t! I told Josh you mustn’t do this!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

There was another long pause.

“Did you get the money?”

“Abbie, honey—”

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now listen very carefully. I’m going to tell you what to do. It’s very important you do everything exactly as I tell you. Do you have a pen?”

There was a man coming down the corridor now. Sarah turned her back and wiped her tears and reached for her purse. She assumed he must be on his way to the restroom. But he wasn’t. He was going to use the other phone.

“Mom?”

“Yes. Hold on a moment.”

She found a pen but her hands were shaking so much that she knocked her purse off the shelf and its contents spilled across the floor.

“Damn!”

The man, a nice-looking young guy in a brown sports coat, squatted beside her and helped her scoop everything up. He looked her directly in the eye, maybe a little too directly, and smiled. Could he be . . . ? She thanked him and stood and picked up the phone again.

“Sorry,” she said, striving for a jauntiness that even to her own ears sounded half-demented. “I just dropped my purse.”

“Are you ready?” Abbie said.

There was a tap on Sarah’s shoulder and it startled her so badly she almost cried out. The guy was holding her lipstick. She smiled and took it and thanked him.

“Is there somebody there?” Abbie asked anxiously.

“It’s okay.”

“Who is it?”

“Don’t worry. Everything’s under control.”

She knew she had to sound light and breezy now. Just in case. The man probably wasn’t an agent. They wouldn’t do it like that, so unsubtly. Would they? She could tell Abbie was on the verge of hanging up. But she didn’t. She asked if Sarah was ready, then started dictating her instructions.

When Sarah got back to the table, Jeffrey said he’d been about to call search and rescue. He had already almost finished his pasta and had asked for hers to be taken away and kept warm. The waiter had seen her return and at once brought it back. She had never in her whole life felt less like eating. Jeffrey asked if everything was okay and she said yes, thanks. Everything was fine.

B
en reached the mall a little after seven-thirty, a good hour earlier than he was supposed to be there. He was worried about the traffic and worried too that in the dark, if it was one of those massive places with twenty acres of parking, he might get lost and blow the whole thing. In fact it turned out to be even bigger than he expected, but more by luck than brilliance he found the right spot without any trouble at all.

Zone M, row 18, at the far corner of the lot, across from Petland and Old Navy. He could even see the black trash can, the third from the left, in which he was supposed to dump the bag. There didn’t seem to be any security cameras, which was probably why Abbie had chosen the place. It occurred to him that she might already be here, watching him from somewhere even now. If she was, it was probably best not to peer or snoop around too much in case it scared her away.

He drove around the lot, slowing here and there for shoppers pushing their loaded carts out to their cars, and then he pulled out onto the highway again and drove west for half a mile until he saw the red flashing neon arrow and a sign that said
Bar Rodeo.
He pulled in and parked then went inside and sat at the bar and ordered himself a beer.

He was pretty certain he hadn’t been followed. He’d slipped out of a side door at The Waldorf, where he was staying, then crisscrossed Manhattan in three different cabs, walked through Macy’s and out the other side, then taken a fourth cab to the car-rental place. Any agent who’d managed to keep up with all that, then trail him through the traffic all the way out here to Newark, deserved immediate promotion.

Bar Rodeo was pretending, none too convincingly, that it was somewhere out west. There were a few cowboy pictures on the walls and a rather forlorn-looking fake buffalo head that seemed to be watching the ball game on the TV above the bar. The barman was wearing a red satin waist-coat and one of those little black Maverick neckties and greeted every customer with a no doubt obligatory if slightly halfhearted
howdy.

Ben still hadn’t quite recovered from the shock of it all. He’d flown to New York expecting to talk about college with Josh and make peace with Sarah. And here he was, furtively preparing to dump fifteen thousand bucks in a New Jersey trash can for his terrorist daughter.

At the noisy restaurant last night in Oyster Bay, just as he’d started to think the peacemaking with Sarah was going rather better than he’d dared hope, she and Josh had looked at each other, nodded, then leaned forward over their steaks and broken the news.

By then, of course, they were both many fathoms deeper into the conspiracy than he was. Josh kept saying things like
blowing her cover
and
making the drop,
as if he were already a paid-up member of the Mob. Ben just sat there with his eyes growing ever wider. While Josh was more into the mechanics of it all, Sarah was into the psychology. She couldn’t stop going on about Rolf.

“She’s obviously completely in thrall to the guy,” she said. “Joshie said she was like this totally different person. And I could hear it in her voice. All hard-edged, kind of manic. She needs help, Benjamin. We’ve got to get her away from the guy.”

Ben didn’t need convincing. Only two weeks ago he’d had a visit from a new FBI agent from Denver who had apparently taken over the case from Frank Lieberg. The guy’s name was Kendrick and he seemed a much more sympathetic character than any of the other agents they had so far had dealings with. At one point he had even gotten out his wallet to show Ben some pictures of his own daughter and said he just couldn’t begin to imagine how he’d cope if something similar happened to her.

What had happened to Abbie, he told Ben, was a classic case of infatuation, what had come to be known as Patty Hearst or Stockholm syndrome: a young woman from a loving, well-off family who at a vulnerable moment becomes besotted with a charismatic man, inevitably older and more experienced. The man convinces her that the values she has grown up with are wrongheaded and morally corrupt, and leads her into a way of life in which criminality becomes a romantic, even a thrilling, moral alternative. There was usually an element of wanting to shock or outrage or even to punish parents. And often, Kendrick added, a little uncomfortably, a strong sexual element, which blurred reality and tied the woman ever more closely to her new mentor.

Ben had gone on to cross-examine him about Rolf and was depressed to learn how little they still seemed to know. It was more than six months since he’d passed on what Hacker had told him that evening in Missoula, about Rolf possibly being the Michael Kruger or Kramer who had been involved in those bombings some years ago. Kendrick said they had checked out every possible connection but found nothing that cast new light on the guy’s true identity.

Partly because of their last incendiary phone call and partly because he didn’t want to upset her with things she must have already more or less figured out for herself, Ben hadn’t told Sarah any of this. And last night, at dinner, it hadn’t seemed appropriate, particularly in front of Josh. But there they were, talking about
making the drop,
concocting a plot in which Ben somehow seemed to have emerged as the lead player and which (though he didn’t know chapter and verse) could no doubt get him sent to jail if he got caught. God help us, he’d thought, our golden child has made criminals of us all.

Sipping his beer and distractedly watching the ball game above the young barman’s head, Ben kept thinking Sarah might after all have been right. She should probably be doing this, not him. Even before she went on the run, Abbie had made it clear that she didn’t want to see him. In her new volatile state of mind, the sight of him tonight was likely to send her into a rage. Seeing her mother, on the other hand, might just conceivably soften and touch her. Abbie, of course, was expecting Josh to deliver the money and the sweet kid would have willingly done so. But there was no way Ben and Sarah were going to let that happen. After talking it over last night, examining the idea from every possible angle, they had all agreed it should be Ben. Physically, he was the strongest. And, if it came to it, he might be able to grab hold of her, overpower her, maybe get her into the car and make her see the sense of turning herself in. Maybe.

He thought of Eve and had a sudden urge to call her, then remembered that on Abbie’s instructions he had left his cell phone at the hotel in case the cops used its signal to track him. Anyway, he had spoken to her only a couple of hours ago, without giving any indication of what he was about to do. She had told him something that had unsettled him a little.