‘I think I’ll wait for them,’ Hoffer said. Then the caravaner said his wife and children were out walking and was Hoffer by any chance American? The family had gone to Florida last year and loved it, Disney and the beaches and everything. This year they were on a tighter budget, with the recession and everything and him losing his job. He asked if Hoffer wanted a beer. Hoffer reckoned he could bear to listen to a few stories about Florida, so long as the price was right.
‘Sure,’ he said, ‘why not?’
Then the man said something that warmed Hoffer’s heart. ‘You know,’ he started, handing over a can, ‘I can’t help thinking your face looks familiar. Have you ever been on TV?’
The Germans weren’t late. They were a couple in late middle age, showing signs of having earned well and saved well over their lives. They wore pension fund clothes and drove a pension fund car. When Hoffer told them what he wanted, they unlocked their caravan and took him inside. There wasn’t much room, but Hoffer managed to look comfortable as he wedged his legs under the table and sat down.
They were bemused by his questions at first. The woman said she just wanted to forget all about it, but her husband had drunk a beer or two and got back in the mood pretty quickly. His English wasn’t great, but it was better than Hoffer’s delicatessen German. Hoffer eventually focused in on the back car of the three.
‘The driver,’ said the German, ‘large man, not very happy. He would not speak to me a word just. There is some resentment here still, but I do not excuse.’
‘Uh, right,’ said Hoffer, ‘absolutely. Was there a passenger?’
‘On the back chair, yes. He talked to the other driver—’
‘You mean the driver of the middle car?’
The German nodded. ‘—and then the other driver went away, but the man on the back chair would not talk with me. He was smile, smile all the time.’
‘Smiling,’ Hoffer said.
‘This is how I say. And I am telling him what is the problem here? But he is smile only.’
‘Smiling,’ his wife corrected.
‘Can you describe this man, sir?’
‘Um... he wore a suit, shirt, but no tie I don’t think. He was not large like the other men. Glasses he wore, round ones, and his hair it was white.’
‘Blonde,’ his wife said. ‘White is for old people.’
‘What happened?’ Hoffer asked. The couple probably hadn’t noticed how his attitude had changed.
‘It was very confusing. The people from the middle car drove away in the front car. The people from the front car talked to the men in the third car. Then three men pushed the second car out of the way.’
‘The blond man stayed in his car?’
‘Oh, yes, in his car he stayed. Then all together they drove off, no apology to me.’ The man’s cheeks had reddened furiously. He was beginning to drift back into his mother tongue. His wife stroked his arm, calming him.
‘You’ve been very helpful,’ Hoffer said.
‘Something to drink?’ asked the woman.
‘Nein, danke,’ said Hoffer. He might have had no training in the language, but it was surprising what you could pick up from a few war films and sandwich bars. He unwedged himself from beneath the table and said his farewells, then got back into his car and lit a cigarette. Kline had confronted the D-Man, and the D-Man had escaped, which either made Kline very stupid or the assassin very clever. No one had been shot, that was the really surprising thing. It warmed Hoffer’s heart. If the D-Man was not a close-range performer, then all Hoffer had to do was get close enough to him. The further away he stayed, the more danger he was in. But then again, the closer he got, the more chance there was that he’d come slap bang up against Kline and his commandos.
And he’d already seen what they would do at close range. They’d saw your fucking head off and leave it for a surprise.
‘What kind of shit am I getting into?’ he asked himself, starting his car up and heading towards the south.
Part Three
18
We flew into Boston. I always try to do that, avoid JFK. The place is more like a cattle market than an airport, and they do more checks there than anywhere else. We flew as Michael Weston and Belinda Harrison, since our real passports were the only ones we had. I knew we’d taken a calculated risk. Airlines keep computer records, and anyone can access computer data. That was another reason for flying into Boston: it was a long way from our ultimate destination.
At the airport, I found us a hotel room in town, and we took a taxi. Bel was still disoriented from the flight. It was tough on a beginner, flying backwards through time. We hadn’t touched any alcohol on the flight; alcohol stopped you retuning yourself. We watched the films and ate our meals and took any soft drink we were offered. Bel was like a child at first, insisting on a window seat and peering out at the clouds. She made me tell her some things about the USA. She’d never been there before, and only had a passport at all because Max and she had taken a couple of foreign holidays. He never took her with him on business trips.
‘His wasn’t a very honourable profession, was it?’ she said suddenly, causing me to look up from my newspaper. I thought of a lot of answers I could give her, the standard one being something about guns never killing anyone, it was only people who did that.
‘More honourable than mine,’ I said instead. Then I went back to my reading. Bel was coping in her own way. We’d talked about Max, of course, edging around the actual discovery of his mutilated corpse. Bel had gone through a few transitions, from hysterical to introspective, hyperactive to catatonic. Now she was putting on a good act of being herself. It was an act though. When we were together in private, she was different. I tried not to show how worried I was. If I needed her to be anything this trip, I needed her reliable.
It was a good flight. There were a couple of babies on board, but they were up at the bulk-head and didn’t cry much anyway. Some children nearer us went through a bored stage, but their parents and the aircrew were always prepared with new games, toys, and drinks.
It would have been a good time for me to do some thinking, but in the event I didn’t think too much about what we were doing. I had a very vague plan, and maybe if I thought it through too hard it would begin to look mad or full of holes. So instead I read old news, and did some crosswords, showing Bel how you worked out the answers from cryptic clues. That part was easy: the flight, getting past customs and immigration (tourists didn’t even need proper visas these days), finding a hotel... it was all easy.
But by the time we reached the hotel, just off Boston Common, I realized I was mentally exhausted. I needed rest and relaxation, if only for a few hours. So I closed the curtains and undressed. Bel had slept a little on the plane, and wanted to go out exploring. I didn’t argue with her.
She woke me up a couple of hours later and told me how she’d walked around part of the Common, and seen where they used to make some TV series, and then walked up and down some beautiful cobbled streets, and seen inside a gold-domed building, and wandered into the Italian part of town...
‘You must walk fast,’ I said, heading for the shower. She followed me into the bathroom. I hadn’t heard half of it. I’d given her fifty dollars and she’d used some of it to buy herself a meal and some coffee.
‘I had a hot dog and some Boston baked beans.’
‘Yum yum.’
She deflated only slowly. When I came back from the shower she was flicking channels on the remote TV, finding episodes of Star Trek and other old reruns, plus the usual talk shows and sports, and the cable shopping and Christ channels.