Now, as he leans on the wall of the bridge in the fading light, he is considering what to do next. He has money, some of it the remnants of a summer of hard manual work. He thinks that it is perhaps time for him to get back in the saddle, and head to a city. Maybe somewhere down South, though he has found that he likes the cold and the dark forests. His motivation is hampered by the fact that he has no special need for more cash, or any desire to do anything with that he already has. Also that after a life spent amongst buildings, they have suddenly stopped having any meaning to him. Empty roads and unbounded spaces seem to have more resonance than whatever lies on either side.
He looks up when he hears the sound of a car approaching from along the road from the north. After a while its headlights, used earlier in the afternoon than is the local custom, peer up over the hill. Soon the car follows them down into the village, past the small general store and videotape library. It is a Lexus, very black and new. It stops smoothly outside the inn.
The car makes a ticking sound as the engine cools. Nobody gets out for a few moments. Zandt watches it until he is sure that the shapes inside are looking at him. His own car, something cheap and foreign he bought off a bleak lot in Nebraska, is sitting in front of the outbuilding that holds his room and several others. The keys to the car are in his pocket, but he cannot get to it without taking himself closer to the Lexus. He could turn, walk across the bridge and between the houses on the other side, head up into the hills, but he does not have a mind to. He should, he knows, have paid cash for his lodging. That is his usual practice. But when he arrived he had none, and it was late. Withdrawing some from an ATM in the nearest town would have left just as clear a sign. The time to avoid this confrontation, whatever it may hold, is two weeks past. He merely looks down again at the water below, and waits.
Over at the car, the passenger door opens and a woman climbs out. She has medium-length dark hair, wears a dark green suit, and is of average height. Her face is striking, meaning that you will either find her plain or beautiful. Most people put their money on the former, which is fine by her. Her silence on the journey has already irritated Agent Fielding, who first met her three hours previously — and who, had he not been tasked with driving her down to Pimonta, could have been home several hours by now. Fielding still has no idea why he has been dragged all this way, which is just as well, because it could only barely be classified as official business. He is simply doing what he is told, a much-underrated skill.
The woman closes the door with a soft clunk that she knows the man at the bridge can hear. He doesn't move, or even look up, until she has walked down past the inn, past the boarded-up premises of a defunct local potter, and onto the bridge.
She walks to within a few yards of him and then stops, feeling slightly absurd and rather cold.
'Hello, Nina,' he says, still without looking.
'Very cool,' she replies. 'I'm impressed.'
He turns. 'Nice suit. Very Dana Scully.'
'These days we all want to look that way. Even some of the guys.'
'Who's in the car?'
'Local agent. From Burlington. Nice man gave me a lift.'
'How did you find me?'
'Credit card.'
'Right,' he says. 'Long way to come.'
'You're worth it.'
He looks sceptically at a woman he had once thought striking, and now finds plain once more.
'So what do you want? It's cold. I'm getting hungry. I'd be surprised if we have anything to say to
each other.'
For just a moment she looks beautiful again, and hurt. Then, as if none of this meant anything to her, or ever had, 'It's happened again,' she says. 'Thought you'd want to know.'
She turns on her heel and walks back up toward the car. The engine is running before she opens the door, and within two minutes the valley is empty and quiet again, leaving just a man on a bridge, his mouth slightly open, his face pale.
He caught up with her twenty miles south, driving hard down narrow mountain roads and slinging the car around every bend. Southern Vermont isn't designed for speed, and the car twice started to plane on ice patches. Zandt noticed neither this nor the handful of local drivers who had just time to register his approach before he was behind them, gaining speed, leaving their cars rocking in his wake. At Wilmington he hit a junction. The Lexus wasn't visible in either direction. He reasoned that she'd be heading for the nearest place where she could get airlifted back to civilization, and took the left turn up Route 9 for Keene, just over the state line in New Hampshire.
He made better time on the wider road, and soon began to see the Lexus's distinctive tail lights in the distance ahead, flickering through trees on a kink in the road, or blinking off the other side of a dip. He eventually caught it on a straight patch just south of Hardsboro, where the road passed by a cold, flat lake that looked like a mirror reflecting a sky full of shadows.
He flashed his headlights. There was no response. He pulled closer, flashed again. This time the Lexus picked up a little speed. Zandt accelerated, pressing hard, and saw Nina turn and clock his face through the back window. She spoke to the driver, who didn't slow.
Zandt floored the pedal and pulled out from behind, roared forward until he was just ahead, then angled in and braked the car hard. He was out of the door before the engine had died, and so was Fielding, hand already coming back out of his jacket.
'Put it away,' Zandt suggested.
'Fuck you.' The agent held the gun in both hands. Meanwhile Nina climbed out of the other side of the
car, stepping carefully to avoid the mud. 'I'm telling you,' Fielding said evenly. 'Back off.'
'It's okay,' Nina said. 'Shit. There go the shoes.'
'Fuck it is. He tried to force us off the road.'
'He probably just wanted to talk. It can get lonely out here.'
'He can talk to my dick,' Fielding said. 'You — put your hands on the car.'
Zandt remained where he was until Nina made it round the front of the Lexus and onto the road.
'Are you sure it's him?' he said.
'You think I'd come all this way otherwise?'
'I never understood a single thing you did. At any stage. Just answer the question.'
'Will you just get your hands the fuck on the hood of the car?' Fielding shouted. There was the soft,
mechanical sound of a safety being flicked off.
Zandt and Nina turned to look at him. The agent was full-on furious. Nina glanced up the road, where a large white Ford that shrieked 'rental' was headed toward them, driving slowly so the inhabitants could
get a good view of the lake in what remained of the light.
'Easy,' she suggested. 'You want to explain a friendly-fire incident to your SAC?'
Fielding glanced over his shoulder. Saw the car pull over into a vantage point, about a hundred yards
away. He lowered the gun. 'You going to tell me what the hell is going on?'
Nina shook her head curtly, then turned back to Zandt. 'I'm sure, John.'
'So why are you here instead of there?'
She shrugged, a habitual motion. 'Actually, I don't know. Shouldn't be, and I most certainly shouldn't
be talking to you. You want to walk on me, or shall we go someplace and talk?'
Zandt looked away, across at the flat surface of the lake. Parts of it were black, others a frozen grey. On the other side was a little clearing and a wooden holiday home, with plenty of cords of wood stacked up against the side. The structure didn't look prepackaged or catalogue-bought: more like someone, or two someones, had sat for many evenings somewhere hectic and sketched it out on pads brought home from the office, desperate for some other story to be in. Not for the first time, Zandt wished he was someone else. Maybe the guy living in that house. Or one of the tourists up the way, who were now standing in a clump by the water and looking across at the trees, their brightly coloured anoraks making them look like a small herd of traffic lights.