The Once and Future Spy (15 page)

“What is it you want from me?” Snow asked.

“What I want,” the Weeder told her, “is polite intercourse.”

“That’s a strange way of putting it.”

“Why did you change your mind about seeing me after I phoned from New York?”

“I figured I had enough to worry about without adding your problems to my list.”

The Weeder thought of the nails bitten to the quick, the strained smile thrown up like a barrier against tears. He realized
that she had been ambushed—though by what, he couldn’t say. “What do you worry about?” he asked her now.

“I worry about urethane in the wine, about acid in the rain, about parasites in the sushi, about radon in the potato cellar
under the house. I worry about too much ozone in the air damaging my lungs. I worry about the earth overheating. I worry about
a new ice age. Only yesterday I read that our galaxy is heading for a collision with the Andromeda galaxy.”

“That won’t happen for billions of years,” the Weeder said. “The sun will have burned out by then.”

Snow nibbled absently at a cuticle. “I worry about that too. Just because the sun sets at night is no guarantee it will rise
in the morning.” She leaned back tiredly in her rocking chair. The Weeder, remembering Nate, thought: People who are afraid
are more interesting than those who aren’t. Snow must have been reading his thoughts because she snapped, “I don’t worry to
be interesting. I worry because I’m lucid.”

“Lucidity,” the Weeder remarked, “is the enemy of passion. You’re always aware of yourself being aware of yourself.”

Snow regarded the Weeder as if she were seeing him for the first time. After a moment she said, “Aside from polite intercourse,
what do you really want from me?”

“Snowden’s your married name, isn’t it, Matilda? Your maiden name was Davis. Your father was one of the Acton Davises, a direct
descendant of Isaac Davis, who was killed leading the Acton Company against the British at the North Bridge in Concord in
1775.”

The Weeder put his glass down on the edge of the chimney and settled into a high-backed wooden chair facing Snow. “Isaac Davis
was married to a second cousin he met on Long Island. Her name was Molly. In those days a girl’s father picked her husband
for her—it had
to do with uniting families and farms, not love. When Isaac fell in love with Molly, he asked her father for her hand in marriage
and was flatly refused. So Molly got herself pregnant by Isaac to force her father’s hand—he could risk a scandal or let them
marry and hush things up. A great many girls did this in those days. It was the only way they could have a say in whom they
married. Her father gave his consent and the young couple married and moved to Acton. The baby died a few days after it was
born and the death was recorded in the Acton town ledger. Isaac was killed at the North Bridge. Molly was given her widow’s
third, which consisted of a slave named John Jack, who was valued at a hundred and twenty pounds sterling, a horse and a cart
and some cash—and sent packing by her husband’s family, who had enough mouths to feed. She returned to Long Island and wound
up keeping house for a great-aunt living on a small farm in the village of Flatbush. Her child, your ancestor, was born on
that farm.”

“I don’t see where all this is leading,” Snow said. “I don’t see what you want of me.”

“I’m coming to that. Molly’s maiden name was Fitzgerald. She detested the British with a passion. There wasn’t anything she
wouldn’t do to get at them. She became an ardent, outspoken patriot, championing the rebel cause at town meetings, which—if
you read the minutes of the meetings—rubbed some of the town elders the wrong way, since women in the Colonies weren’t supposed
to meddle in politics. Isaac, on the other hand, seems to have been very proud of her. When the British threatened to march
on Concord, Molly organized the women into groups that made cartridges and rolled bandages. After she was widowed and exiled
to Long Island, she wrote an acquaintance of her late husband attached to the Commander-in-Chief’s staff offering her services
to the rebel cause. Two days ago I discovered an unpublished letter from this acquaintance, whose name was A. Hamilton, indicating
he took her up on the offer. A spy sent out behind the British lines made his way across Long Island to Molly Davis’s farmhouse
in Flatbush. She helped him scout the British positions in Brooklyn.”

The Weeder, drained, settled back in his chair.

Snow rocked forward in hers. “And then what happened?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. The trail ends with Molly Davis. A week later the spy was caught by the British and hanged
at an artillery park in Manhattan on what’s now the corner of Third Avenue and
Sixty-third Street. What happened during the missing week is a mystery.”

“How can I help you solve it?”

“There’s a hint in a letter Hamilton wrote to the spy’s brother that Molly Davis kept a diary. The answers to my mystery must
be in its pages.” The Weeder studied Snow’s face. “The answer to your mystery too.”

Snow didn’t understand. “What mystery is
my
mystery?”

“The baby conceived out of wedlock by Molly and Isaac died soon after birth. Isaac was killed at Concord in April 1775. Molly’s
baby—the great-grandfather of your great-grandfather—was born in Flatbush in 1777. Which means Isaac Davis wasn’t his father.”

“I’ve always heard that Molly was pregnant when Isaac was killed, that whoever recorded the birth made a mistake when he copied
off the date in the ledger.”

“Maybe.”

“What does ‘Maybe’ mean?”

“It means maybe. And it implies ‘Maybe not’.”

Snow let the rocking chair glide back again. “My grandfather sometimes went on for hours about the Revolution and Isaac and
Molly. He could talk a streak once he started. To me it was all spilled milk, though I admit I used to wonder what she was
like.”

“She was strong-willed,” the Weeder said. “You could see that from the way she got herself pregnant so she could marry the
man she loved. She was supposed to have been a great beauty. At least that’s what Isaac Davis said, but he may have been prejudiced.
I came across two references to her in diaries written by other Acton women. That’s how I know about her. Even in the puritanical
Colonial times, girls tended to pretty themselves up to attract men. But Molly seems to have toned herself down. Her hands
were rough and blistered from working on the farm; she is said to have worked the fields like a man. Her hair, for practical
reasons, was cropped short. She favored loose-fitting clothes …” The Weeder’s voice trailed off as he realized he could have
been describing the woman sitting across from him in the rocking chair. “I’m guessing,” he continued carefully, “but behind
her bold gaze must have lurked a shyness, a sadness. She’d been ambushed by grief. She’d lost a baby at birth, a husband.
That kind of thing leaves its mark on the eyes.”

The Weeder’s story, his ardor in recounting it, seemed to weigh on
Snow. “If you’ve come to me for the diary, I don’t have it,” she said. She noticed the disappointment in his face and added,
“Maybe you’ll have better luck at the local historical museum—they have a collection of Revolutionary diaries.”

“I’ve been in touch with the museum. I’ve been in touch with the library. You’re my last hope. Are you sure there isn’t an
old trunk somewhere? That’s where you find this kind of document.”

Snow shook her head.

“I suppose your grandfather must be dead?”

“Long dead and long buried.” A thought occurred to her. “He used to show me photographs in an album.”

The Weeder said, “Photographs won’t help me—”

“I remember,” Snow said, “that he kept the album in an old wooden sailor’s chest with an enormous padlock on the outside.
I always suspected there were other things in the trunk beside the photo album.”

“Where is the chest now?”

Snow thought a moment. “I suppose everything Granddad had went to his wife, who was younger than he was. When she died, she
was living with my grandfather’s sister, Esther, who’s my great-aunt. Esther’s still alive. She sold the house and moved to
Boston a few years ago.”

“Will you give me her address?”

“It won’t help you any. Esther’s become a recluse. Since she lost all her hair she won’t let anyone she doesn’t know come
calling.”

The Weeder asked in a low voice, “Will she see me if you’re with me?”

“She might.”

He smiled at her. “How about it, Matilda? Will you help me solve our mystery?”

Snow ran the ball of her thumb across the scar over her eyebrow. “I’ll make you a deal,” she said suddenly. “I don’t drive
anymore and I need a ride into Boston tomorrow. You drive me in and hang around while I do a couple of errands, and I’ll take
you over to meet my great-aunt Esther.”

W
anamaker missed the beginning of the call because of a burst of static. “Say again,” he demanded once the line had cleared.

Huxstep, who had shoehorned his bulky body into a public telephone booth in Concord, said, “You-know-who told me to call you.”

“Why doesn’t you-know-who call me himself?” Wanamaker demanded.

Huxstep had the good sense to ignore the question. “You want I should give you the good news or the bad news first?”

Wanamaker groaned something about having enough static in his life already. “Start with the good,” he said.

“The good news is we traced the Hertz car to the long-term parking lot at Logan Airport. The airport cops spotted it there
about five hours ago.”

To Wanamaker that sounded like bad news. “We’ve got ten days left before the Ides of March and you’re telling me he took a
plane somewhere?”

“He took a taxi somewhere,” Huxstep said. “The somewhere was an Avis office in Boston. He thought he was muddying the water.
But it was amateur hour, you see what I mean?”

“So you got a fix on the car he’s driving,” Wanamaker said, trying to coax Huxstep through the narrative.

Huxstep would not be hurried. “He made a big point of asking directions to Cape Cod, so we knew right off he wasn’t going
there.”

“Did you, or did you not, locate him?” Wanamaker wanted to know.

“Since this part of the story comes under the heading of good news, you ought to be able to figure out the answer.”

Wanamaker was tempted to remind Huxstep that he was a utility infielder talking to the man who managed the team, but he decided
this would only divert the conversation unnecessarily. So he waited for Huxstep to continue.

Huxstep cleared his throat with so much enthusiasm that Wanamaker thought he was being disconnected. Huxstep went on. “You-know-who,
meanwhile, remembered something from our visit to the subject’s loft in New York. The subject was looking for a pot of gold
at the end of the rainbow, which said pot of gold was supposed to be in Concord, Massachusetts.”

“What pot of gold?” Wanamaker asked, thoroughly confused. If this was the good news he hated to hear the bad.

“So we staked out the three roads into Concord,” continued Huxstep, determined to tell the story in his own way, “me on one,
your man Friday on another, you-know-who on the third. And guess what your man Friday saw one hour into the stakeout?”

“The Avis rental car,” Wanamaker said tiredly.

“The Avis rental car,” Huxstep agreed. “So after that all we had to do was some elementary road work and we knew where he
was sleeping and who he was visiting.”

“You mind if I ask you a question?” Wanamaker said, his voice oozing irony.

“It’s your nickel.”

“When is you-know-who going to terminate the operation?”

“Your question brings me to the bad news part.”

“I was hoping you might have forgotten.”

“The bad news part is the subject has been in contact with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and you-know-who is
worried that he might have told her the story of his life.”

“That is definitely bad news,” Wanamaker agreed.

“So unless you object, you-know-who is thinking of”—here Huxstep read off, word for word, what the Admiral had printed out
for him on the back of an envelope—”killing two birds with one
stone. But to do that he has to wait until the birds of a feather flock together.”

Wanamaker exploded. “Unless I object! You tell you-know-who that I’m sitting here in Washington and he’s out there in the
goddamn catbird seat and it’s up to him to figure out what to do, and not me, and once he figures out what to do, he should
go and do it. You tell him that rank has its privileges, and one of them is operating independently without trying to lay
off the blame on someone else if things go wrong by getting that someone else to authorize something at a distance. You tell
him—” Wanamaker ran out of steam. “You tell him,” he said in a tight voice, “to plug the leak. How he does it is his business.”

“I will pass on your instructions,” Huxstep said with unaccustomed dignity. “Plug the leak. How he does it is his business.”

T
he Weeder was squirming at an execution taking place in his imagination. He tossed on his hammock of a bed listening to the
dull hum of traffic on the highway beyond the motel. A toilet flushed somewhere on the floor above him and the water spilled
through pipes in the wall near his head. He heard the sound of the tires of a slow-moving car crunching on gravel in the motel
driveway. His heart missed a beat. He leapt from the bed and checked the door to make sure it was double-locked, then parted
the curtains the width of a finger. The Weeder expected to see the Admiral pointing at the door of his room. He expected to
see the burly man with the enormous handgun held at present arms, and the woman with the veil start toward it. But the only
thing he saw was a dozen parked cars. He watched for a long while but there was no sign of life in any of them. Had he imagined
the wheels crunching on the gravel? Had he imagined the Admiral, the burly man, the rail-thin woman? Had he imagined the attempts
on his life?

If only he had. But he could still feel the heat of the flame from the fire breather on the back of his neck. He could still
see the burly man sighting over his finger and mouthing the words “Bang, Bang! You’re dead!”

Feeling not the slightest bit sleepy, the Weeder slipped back into the hammock of a bed. He closed his eyes and tried to empty
his head of thought. He had a vision of himself skating between thoughts,
avoiding them as if they were patches of thin ice. The patches were marked by warning posts planted in the ice. One said Rods.
One said Hair triggers. One said Wedges. He skated safely past the posts toward images vaguely visible on the horizon. In
his mind’s eye he could see one of them—it was Nate Jumping barefoot from a longboat into the shallow water off a North Shore
beach, wading ashore in the darkness and sitting on a rock to put on his stockings and the shoes with the silver buckles.
He thought he could make out Molly, her dark hair cut short, walking toward Nate with an imperceptible limp, her eyes wary
of a new ambush—only it wasn’t Molly he was seeing, it was the woman named Snow, washed by currents of melancholy, too lucid
to be passionate, always aware of herself being aware of herself.