The Once and Future Spy (31 page)

T
he wind, the seas, had calmed down. The Weeder too. He clung to the buoy of hope Snow had thrown him from her world. The cliché-where
there’s life there’s hope-had it backwards. Where there was hope there was life.

As soon as Mildred was able to open her eyes her spirits picked up and she began flirting with Huxstep. “I have an almost
uncontrollable weakness for tattoos,” she confessed, pushing her breast into his wrist as she rolled back his right sleeve.
She ran her fingers over the faded blue pennant tattooed on his biceps, tracing the words Give me liberty or give me death.
“It must have hurt when they did that,” she said with respect.

Huxstep grunted. “Suffering pain is not something I remember.” He looked over at the Weeder, sitting on the deck with his
right wrist handcuffed to the cement block. “Inflicting pain is another story.”

Mildred arched invisible eyebrows. “Let me see what you have on that other arm of yours,” she said huskily.

On the shelf above Huxstep’s head the radiotelephone speaker emitted a burst of static. The Admiral’s voice, more nasal than
usual, could be heard over the static. “… you there? For God’s sake, answer.”

Huxstep flicked a switch onto broadcast and growled into the handphone. “Where else would I be?”

The Weeder, matching from the deck, braced himself for the verdict.

“… make the nearest landfall and put him ashore.”

Huxstep’s eyes narrowed imperceptibly in disappointment. He repeated the order to be sure he had gotten it right. “You want
for me to make the nearest landfall and put him ashore?”

“Affirmative. I repeat. Affirmative.”

Mildred grabbed the phone out of Huxstep’s hand. “I want to speak to Mr. Wanamaker,” she shouted.

The Admiral’s voice crackled over the circuit. “I’m acting for Wanamaker. Today was the Ides of March. The ball game is terminated.
In this business there are no extra innings. Put Huxstep back on.”

Huxstep took the phone. “I’m here.”

The Admiral pleaded, “If you love me, for God’s sake turn him loose.”

Huxstep winced at the word “love,” tried to swallow the emotion that welled up, failed. He muttered “Wilco” into the phone,
clicked the toggle switch to Receive. The loudspeaker fell silent.

Mildred, her face contorted, her eyes reduced to slits, produced a minuscule handgun from under her skirt. “If you won’t do
what has to be done, I will,” she whispered.

Huxstep appeared to hesitate. “The Admiral seemed pretty sure of himself.”

“The Admiral’s not running this show,” Mildred argued. “Mr. Wanamaker is. And I’m the one who’s Mr. Wanamaker’s man Friday,
not you. You’re the jackass-of-all trades, like you said. For all we know someone may have been holding a gun to the Admiral’s
head when he talked to you. For all we know it wasn’t even him but someone imitating him.”

“That’s a possibility,” Huxstep agreed. He seemed confused. Mildred hammered home her points. “It doesn’t make any sense to
release him. He knows too much. Even if they’ve called off Stuff tingle he knows it existed. He knows about Mr. Wanamaker
and Subgroup Charlie. He knows you tried to kill him in the parking lot. He knows we tried to kill him in the library, in
that abandoned building. You’re crazy if you think he’s going to let bygones be bygones after all this spilled milk.”

Huxstep regarded the Weeder and nodded. “You got to be right. The Admiral must have been off his feed this morning.” He removed
his Smith & Wesson. 357 Magnum from a drawer and carefully fitted the silencer onto the barrel.

Mildred’s eyes ignited with desire. Her chest heaved as she whispered, “Only wound him, Huxstep. That way we can see his eyes
when we throw him overboard.”

Huxstep looked at her with new interest. “I don’t think I gave you enough credit. You’re bursting with ideas.”

“I’ve got others,” Mildred noted suggestively.

“I guess you have,” Huxstep said.

In his mind’s eye the Weeder could hear the beat of the kettledrum quicken. A moment more, he told himself, and it would all
be over. He shut his eyes and struggled to keep his limbs from trembling, his heart from sinking under the weight of pure
fear. His head began spinning, as if he had reached a height without adequate oxygen. The last thing he heard before he blacked
out was the hiss of Huxstep’s Magnum spitting out the bullet that punched a hole the size of a fist in anything it hit.

T
he Admiral made no effort to hide his irritation. “You’re supposed to put your foot down on the brake, not the gas pedal,
when the light turns orange,” he said dryly. “Jesus, where did you learn to drive?”

Huxstep took a quick look at his watch and concentrated on the road.

Toothacher wrinkled up his incredibly Roman nose in displeasure. “For a couple of quarters there are places where you can
vacuum a car,” he remarked. “You wouldn’t be out of pocket. You could pass it off as an extra toll and get reimbursed. Wanamaker
would never know the difference.”

Huxstep turned onto the unmarked road that ran parallel to the airport’s perimeter. “Another thing,” the Admiral said. “The
story you gave Wanamaker about the Weeder bashing Mildred with a wrench seemed pretty farfetched. Couldn’t you have thought
up something slightly more”-he racked his brain for the right word -”plausible?”

That was too much for Huxstep. “I would like to respectfully point out that the Admiral has been in the car forty-five fucking
minutes and he has so far managed to complain about everything under the sun including my driving and my vacuuming and the
story I made up to explain to the dumbest fucking agent in the entire United States of America intelligence establishment
why one of his lady employees
won’t be showing the half of her face you could see under that veil at the office no more.”

“One thing I’ve noticed,” the Admiral said sweetly, “is that your sentence structure doesn’t improve with time.”

Huxstep snorted, tucked the stray hairs that appeared back up into his nostrils with delicate clockwise thrusts of his thick
pinky.

The Admiral closed his eyes in pain.

Huxstep turned off the road at the gate in the chain link fence guarded by a squad of Marines in full battle dress. An officer
checked his laminated pass and saluted. The enlisted men dragged open the gate and waved the car through. The shuttle to Guantánamo
stood at the bitter end of a runway, its engines revving. Huxstep pulled up near the portable steps. A seaman deuce wrestled
the Admiral’s two Vuitton suitcases up the steps and into the plane. Huxstep came around and opened the door for the Admiral.

Stepping out onto the tarmac, Toothacher feigned surprise. “Well, that’s a new arrow in your quiver,” he yelled over the whine
of the jet engines. “I’m not accustomed to you holding open doors.”

Huxstep yelled back, “Fuck the Admiral.”

“Teh, tch,” cooed Toothacher. He caught Huxstep’s eye and batted both of his lids at him in a conspiratorial double wink.

Huxstep melted. “It won’t be the same around here without the Admiral,” he shouted awkwardly.

“Me too,” Toothacher agreed. “The idea of happy hours at Guantánamo without you to run interference doesn’t thrill me.”

Huxstep angled his head away so the Admiral wouldn’t see the mist in his eyes. “You can’t say I didn’t go and prove it,” he
yelled.

“Prove what?”

“That I”-Huxstep took a deep breath to work up his nerve and screamed-”love the Admiral more than numbers.”

Toothacher nodded emphatically. “You did,” he shouted. “You do-I know it.”

Huxstep buried the Admiral’s hand between both of his and squeezed it, then turned quickly and fled back to the safety of
his car. Toothacher organized the various limbs of his lanky body so that they would function more or less harmoniously and
ambled up the portable steps toward the stunning-looking petty officer with the handlebar mustache smiling invitingly from
the plane’s door.

S
ucking on the wedge of a lemon, Snow rewound the tape on her answering machine and played it back. Fargo’s voice, tripping
over words as if they were obstacles to conveying information, came across loud and clear. “Snow, it’s me, Michael. Your friend
Sibley has slipped away from the hospital. It happened two days ago. I only just found out about it. I’m coming up on the
next plane.” Fargo left a telephone number in Boston for her to call if Sibley showed up before the FBI agents arrived. If
she forgot the number she could call the local police and ask them to get in touch with Fargo at the Justice Department’s
Boston office. “Be careful, Snow,” he added. “I don’t think he’s dangerous but you never know. If you hear from him, humor
him. Play along with whatever story he tells you.”

Snow smiled to herself. He must take her for a complete idiot. She wasn’t going to fall into that trap again. Silas hadn’t
slipped away from any hospital. The Admiral, to save his own skin, had arranged for him to be set free. She hoped Silas was
smart enough to realize she would be watched and stay away from her. She hoped he wouldn’t stay away forever.

Snow could tell from the blinking light that there was another message on her tape. It began with the sound of a dental bridge
clicking into place in a gum. “Guess who came to dinner?” a musical voice asked.

The words came equipped with the mocking laughter of someone who twitched in her sleep remembering the juicy rabbits she’d
chased in her time.

G
reat-aunt Esther opened the front door and pulled Snow inside and locked and bolted the door behind her. “He’s upstairs,”
she whispered excitedly.

Snow peeled off her mackinaw, stamped her boots to get the snow off and followed Esther into the house. “How is he?” she asked
her great-aunt, who was bareheaded and bald and wore an enormous cashmere shawl wound around her frail body.

“He’s sleeping like a baby,” Esther told her. “He didn’t admit it in so many words, but he’s had a bad time of it. Whoever
he was running from must have caught up with him. It’s written on his face. It’s written in his eyes.”

With Snow limping after her, Esther tiptoed around the hairless dog stretched out on the carpet and went upstairs. She eased
open the door to a bedroom at the end of the hallway. The flame from a single candle dispatched flickering shadows across
the walls of the room. Fully dressed except for his shoes, with a needlework bedspread thrown over him, Silas was curled up
in a fetal position in the middle of a four-poster. “He wouldn’t go to sleep until I lit the candle,” Esther whispered. “I
think he’s afraid of the dark.”

Esther drew Snow out of the room. “Let him sleep it off,” she whispered.

“He doesn’t have a hangover,” Snow protested.

“I wasn’t suggesting he had,” Esther said. “I was suggesting he
could use a rest.” Esther regarded her grandniece. “You are a little bit jumpy yourself, if you want to hear the truth.”

Snow smiled sadly. “It took me a while but I know the truth.”

Esther snapped a bridge into place. “That’s more than most can say.”

Snow sank into a rocking chair next to the four-poster, pulled a blanket up under her armpits and mounted guard over the figure
sleeping on the bed. When the candle burned down she lit a new one from the sputtering flame of the old one and embedded it
in the holder. She dozed off toward midnight but came awake when Silas started moaning. A moment more, he seemed to mutter
under his breath, and it will all be over. He shifted position on the bed, arching his spine as if something was jabbing into
it, then settled back onto the mattress. The sight of him curled up on the bed aroused emotions in Snow she had considered
dead. She had been ambushed by grief. Then, like a hostage who becomes emotionally involved with her captor, she had become
attached to her grief; it had been her habit. Now she was being ambushed once more-this time by love.

She must have dozed again around first light but woke with a start to find Silas sitting on the edge of the bed staring at
her. “Did I say anything in my sleep?” he wanted to know.

Esther had been right about his face, his eyes, Snow realized. “You were asking for a moment more. You were saying it would
all be over.”

The Weeder stood up and Snow came off the rocking chair into his arms. They clung to each other. After a while Snow took his
hand and examined it. The scab had fallen off. His life line was visible again. The sight of it seemed to reassure her. She
returned to her chair and began rocking back and forth on it. The Weeder settled onto the floor at her feet. “Tell me what
happened,” she urged him.

Hesitantly at first, gathering momentum as he went along, the Weeder described his ordeal: how he had been anesthetized by
the men who picked him off the Boston street; how he had come to on a boat, manacled to a piece of metal jutting from a bulkhead;
how the Admiral had promised he would be shot before being thrown overboard; how, thanks to Snow, Toothacher had phoned up
and instructed Huxstep to release him; how Mildred and Huxstep had argued after the Admiral’s phone call-

Snow kept the chair rocking in the same rhythm. “All this happened-when?”

“The Admiral phoned Huxstep a few hours after you phoned me. It was the Ides of March. Huxstep put me ashore late that night.”

“Was Huxstep with you on the boat the day before the Ides of March?”

The Weeder nodded. “He was there the whole time I was there.”

Snow said, “Huxstep’s the one who does tricks with numbers.”

“That’s right.”

“Go on with the story,” Snow ordered. She smiled encouragingly.

The Weeder described Mildred pulling out a minuscule pistol. She had been ready to shoot him herself if Huxstep wouldn’t do
it. Huxstep had looked as if she had convinced him. He had fitted a silencer to his gun. It had been a terrible moment-the
Weeder had been certain Huxstep was going to shoot him. His head had started spinning, his heart had started sinking under
the weight of pure fear. He remembered hearing the beat of a kettledrum, the hiss of a gun going off as he fainted. When he
had regained consciousness the boat had been heading toward Nantucket, the lights of which were visible on the horizon.

“What happened to Mildred?” Snow asked.

The Weeder shrugged. “She was gone. So was the block of cement. So were the handcuffs.”

Snow rocked forward and cradled his head against her thighs. “You put your life on the line to stop an atrocity,” she said.
“You’re every inch the patriot Nate was.”

“You really think that?” the Weeder asked.

“Anyone who knew the nightmare you’d been through would think that,” she assured him.

The Weeder’s head burrowed into her lap. When he spoke again his words were muffled. “Knowing you believe in me changes the
way I look at the world,” he said.