I was pleased to hear Lucas’s name. He’d been recommended earlier by Lacoste in Montreal as someone with Frazier’s degree of generosity in interagency cooperation. Given the vastness of the RCMP-they were the Canadian equivalent of the DEA, FBI, Secret Service, Border Patrol, ATF, and most everything else, all rolled into one-a helpful, willing contact would be nice to have. Of course, the size of their organization tended to make the Mounties about as fast and flexible as a supertanker in mid-river, but it also endowed them with quasi-supernatural powers-and computers to match.
Judy Avery, still bearing the stylistic rigidity of a military background, began by curtly nodding in my direction when we’d all sat back down after formal introductions. “Nice job on your interrogation. From what Walter’s been telling us, your source sounds pretty reliable. We checked out what he told you of past crossings and found several corroborations with our own data.” She pulled a map out from under the other paperwork strewn across the table and laid it open. “Within the last month, here, west of Richford, and here, not far from the railroad tracks west of North Troy, we picked up probes from what we thought might be the Sonny network, and which your efforts have just confirmed. Those were individual crossings, probably made to test our reaction.”
“We know they’ve been successful elsewhere, though,” picked up Abe Gross, from INS, “because we talked to a couple of newcomers twelve days ago, and they were not professional crossers.”
“Right,” added Carter. “One of our agents took ’em near Highgate Springs, just north of here. They came in skirting the water, along a footpath where we had a mobile sensor just a few weeks before. It was dumb luck we caught ’em. One of our units drove up before their ride did, on routine patrol.”
“You got no information on who was supposed to pick them up?” I asked.
Gross answered for him, “They didn’t know. They’d been told where to go, and to wait for a ride-”
“Which we provided them,” Carter added, to general laughter again.
Judy Avery pointed to her map. “That’s another confirmation by your source, of course, since he mentioned Route 133, too. But apart from one other crosser who was caught wading along Mud Creek, just east of Province Hill Road, who did trigger one of our monitors, those were the only entries we knew about. These other spots you’ve identified are news to us, and some of them are located right where we have sensors.”
“Infrared units,” Carter mused, “which means if you know where they are, you can step around to their back.”
I had gotten to my feet by now, to gain a better perspective on the map. “Can we back up a little? I see a lot of roads that cross the border. Where exactly are the points of entry, and how’re the Border Patrol units deployed?”
Avery was across the round table from me and guided me from her seat, even though the map was upside down to her. “Here we are at sector headquarters, just below Swanton. Our substations in Vermont are east of Swanton on Route 78, and in Richford, Derby, and Beecher Falls, right next to New Hampshire.”
Andy Marcotti of Customs, looking slightly bored, was sitting next to her. He suddenly joined in, adding, “We’ve got twelve ports of entry altogether. Most of them aren’t manned twenty-four hours, though. They’re just little outposts-one-person operations that handle the odd car or pickup now and then. If there’re any immigration problems, they’ll either call for help or direct the vehicle to the nearest large port where INS has people working alongside ours, usually Highgate Springs or Derby Line, near Newport-those’re the two flagship ports.”
Steve Moore, the Vermont State Trooper, added, in direct answer to my implied question, “Which means that a lot of those roads you mentioned are just there, open for grabs.”
“Well,” Carter protested gently, “not exactly. Most of them have barriers across them, or will have soon.”
Moore laughed. “Right, and the others have little signs telling you to go to the nearest port and report in.”
“Those are monitored, though,” Avery explained, unamused, “for the most part with cameras, so if the crosser doesn’t show up at the nearest port, we know who to go after.”
There was a telling pause, during which a small element of embarrassment in the air told me that everyone had perhaps overstated their case just a little.
Avery, whose intelligence job allowed her the broadest overall view of reality, confirmed that impression. “It’s got its holes, and where we’ve tried to plug them, things aren’t always perfect. But our figures tell us our apprehension rate’s pretty high.” Here, she finally yielded to a self-deprecating smile. “But like they say-there are white lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
There was a knock on the door, and a small, gentle-looking, rather dapper man, wearing a suit and a mustache, was ushered in, looking more like a lost European tourist than one of the Mounties of lore. Carter stood up and waved him over. “Jacques-glad you could make it. You know everyone here, right? These two are Joe Gunther and Lester Spinney. They basically got this whole ball rolling in the first place.”
Jacques Lucas shook our hands, smiling softly, and murmured in a thick French accent, “I have spoken with Lacoste. You are to be congratulated.”
I smiled in return, my mind abruptly reaching back to when I’d been a boy, visiting my Uncle Buster in Vermont’s so-called Northeast Kingdom. The subject of Mounties had come up, as it did with a lot of boys near the border in those days, and my uncle had reacted impulsively as usual, piling me, my brother, and a cousin into his truck, and taking us across the border to the nearest RCMP outpost he knew of. We’d marched across the threshold with bated breath, fully expecting a room filled with scarlet-clad, blond-haired young gods, all standing at least six and a half feet tall, and were met instead by a single, older, slightly rotund corporal, sitting at a desk, dressed in a uniform about as colorful as a tree trunk. He’d been very kind, and had showed us recruiting posters of the ideal we’d come to meet-had even pulled out his dress uniform, hanging in a closet-but we’d never recovered, and it wasn’t until I was a cop myself when a variation of the same awe I’d once felt for them returned with the realization of just how huge and powerful their organization was.
As a result, despite his demure appearance, I shook Jacques Lucas’s hand with respect. I also responded to his praise. “I’m not sure compliments are in order. We may be zeroing in on a whole lot of nothing.”
Lucas waved away my pessimism and settled into the last chair at the table, nodding and smiling at the others in a generalized greeting. “I would like to say to all of you that I wear today two hats. The Québec Provincial Police know that I am here, and I am expected to report back to them also.”
Avery was back at her map, brusquely efficient once more. “We were just discussing the points of entry the Sonny network has supposedly targeted. It is pretty obvious to me, at least, that more has gone into the choosing of these spots than just running a few people across and seeing if they get caught. As Bob just pointed out, some of the infrared sensors are being bypassed surgically, which indicates a precise knowledge of their location and orientation. And judging alone by the small number of people we’ve caught, we know that information wasn’t obtained by blind luck. That implies help from local residents, perhaps on both sides of the border.”
Bob Carter spoke up again, since it was mostly his troops who maintained relations with the people whose properties straddled or abutted the boundary. “We looked into that as soon as we heard about this network. Comparing that list with the geographic points your Nguyen Van Hai gave us, we did come up with a few that match.” He stabbed the map with a blunt finger at three points.