Up close, where the paint was peeling, and the sag in the porch steps was obvious, the house lost a lot of its charm.
Jonathan climbed the four steps to the porch and stomped his feet, ostensibly to remove the snow from his boots, but also to make as much approaching noise as he could.
He’d just raised his hand to knock when the door pulled open.
Striker beamed a delighted smile. “Jonny-boy,” he said, pushing open the fraying screen door. He’d lost a lot of weight and grown a lot of beard since Jonathan had last seen him, and his bald pate — now ringed with gray rather than black — gleamed white as bone. His pallor, combined with his Santa beard, painted a picture of ill health. The cane didn’t help to improve the image.
Jonathan extended his hand. “Hello, Striker,” he said.
“I don’t answer to that name anymore, Jonny. Call me Carl.”
“Only if you call me Digger. I’ve never responded to Jonny.”
“It’s a deal.” As they shook, Carl’s hand felt cold.
“You remember Boxers,” Jonathan said, gesturing to Big Guy.
Another big smile. “The man who always caused me to rework my fuel charts.”
Boxers didn’t much like being teased about his size, but he managed a smile anyway as he shook Carl’s hand.
“Come on in, boys,” Carl said. “Let’s get caught up.”
“I have some other people to introduce you to,” Jonathan said. He waved for the others in the car to join him. “One of them is going to startle you a little.”
Becky led the way up the stairs, followed by David, and then Yelena. Jonathan introduced them one at a time, and then, when it came to Yelena, he paused for a moment for the recognition to materialize. The First Lady still wore her frumpy clothes, but she had removed all the feature-altering prosthetics.
Carl scowled. “Why are we all looking at each other like this?”
“I just wanted to give you a moment to recognize her.”
Carl added pursed lips to his scowl. “Do we know each other? Please don’t tell me I fathered one of your children.”
Jonathan suppressed a laugh, but of course Boxers didn’t, and Yelena just looked appalled.
“This is Anna Darmond,” Jonathan said, and Yelena presented a demure hand.
“Hi, Anna.” Carl shook her hand — her fingers, really, the way you’re supposed to shake a lady’s hand if you’re of a certain age. “Why do I sense that I should have just heard a deep organ chord when I did that?”
Boxers crossed his arms and smiled even more broadly. “Yeah, Boss, why is that?”
Jonathan felt himself blushing.
Becky took a shot at it. “Anna Darmond,” she said. “The Anna Darmond.”
“Are there a lot of them to choose from?” Carl wasn’t getting it.
“She’s the First Lady of the United States,” Becky said. She seemed to take pride in uttering the syllables.
“Huh,” Carl said. “Well, welcome to Vermont. I gotta tell you, though, you needn’t campaign here. Tony’s got my vote for sure.”
“I bet he doesn’t tomorrow,” Boxers said.
Jonathan shot him a glare.
“Come on in, have a seat and get warm.”
The inside of Carl’s house hadn’t seen a dust cloth in a very long time. The low-angled morning light made the sun itself look dirty as it shined through the cloud of motes. The fifteen-by-fifteen-foot room was packed with mismatched furniture, making it look smaller than it actually was. Lots of old-style guns-and-cannons early American upholstery on sagging, overstuffed cushions. Jonathan noticed as many kerosene hurricane lamps as modern ones, calling into question the reliability of the electrical service. The heat from the woodstove made Jonathan wish he’d worn shorts and a T-shirt.
One chair in particular — the one that sat closest to the front window — was surrounded by well-read and bookmarked magazines. At a glance, Jonathan saw copes of Flying, Helicopter, and Aviation Week. Given the collection of pornography that adorned the walls, everything from the merely risqué to truly offensive, he wasn’t the least bit surprised to see copies of Woman Pilot in the mix as well.
“Sit, sit, sit,” Carl said. He made a beeline for his chair, and let the rest fend for themselves. After he sat, he lifted a mason jar half-filled with clear liquid. “Can I offer anyone some vodka?” he asked. Then he looked to Jonathan. “Oh, that’s right, you’re a scotch fan. I can put some shoe polish in it for you.”
The others were appalled, but Jonathan got it as the joke it was. He was also halfway surprised that Boxers didn’t take him up on the offer.
“So,” Carl said, clapping his hands together. “I understand that we’re going to invade Canada.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The first thing Nicholas noted as consciousness returned was that he had free access to his hands. Clearly time had passed — it was nowhere near as dark as it had been before — but as far as his brain was concerned, he’d been in the back of the van just a second ago, talking to—
“Josef!” he said. His vocal cords sounded crusty, and his voice came as a hoarse whisper. His eyes snapped open. “Joey, are you here?”
It took effort to sit up. His body felt beaten — bruised and stiff. As he rose, a heavy wool blanket fell away, and he felt enveloped by a shroud of cold.
“Joey?”
He heard a snore from behind him, and he turned to see his son on the floor, likewise wrapped in a heavy blanket identical to his, a sort of red-and-blue tartan plaid. Josef’s eyes were closed and his face looked peaceful, his color good. Nicholas moved to wake him, then decided not to. What would be the point? Let the boy sleep through all the worry.
Awareness came in fragments. Nicholas sat in a tiny unfurnished room whose floor was made of heavy wood and whose walls were stone. Up high, near the ten-foot ceiling, cold air rolled in through a half-moon window that was blocked with bars.
Could this be a prison?
Stupid question. It could be anything at all, just as this could be any day at all. Given the temperature of the place, it could even be Russia. And that would be the place they would be taken, wouldn’t it? Why else would Russian-speaking kidnappers snatch them away in the middle of the night?
Could this be Tony Darmond’s way of getting rid of the familial thorns in his side?
He pushed it away. That was the dullness of his brain talking. Even if weren’t preposterous, it would make more sense just to kill them. To keep them around was just a liability. No, this was about something, but that wasn’t it.
As he twisted in place to stretch his back, he noticed that someone had dressed him in a thick sweat suit. They’d even put heavy socks on his feet. Was it ridiculous to feel gratitude toward your kidnapper? Was that what the famed Stockholm syndrome was all about?
He brought his legs under him to stand, and he realized that his bladder was full to bursting. In the same moment, he saw the old style chamber pot throne in the corner, with a roll of toilet paper on the floor next to it.
“Oh, wait till Josef sees this,” he mumbled aloud.
Gathered with the rest around the steel-and-Formica dining room table, Carl Oppenheimer seemed pretty much disinterested in knowing why they were invading Canada, but completely absorbed in the how of it all.
Jonathan shared the latest satellite imagery of Saint Stephen’s Reformatory, now just over an hour old. What he saw concerned him.