“Is this a program that’s already in existence? Or is it... being debated?”
Will hesitated, looked like he was about to say something, then shook his head.
“You don’t know, but you won’t tell me?”
Will didn’t respond.
“Holy shit,” Tanner said.
70
The train ride to Boston took six hours and forty minutes. The two men sat across from each other, a table between them.
Will Abbott spent most of the first hour busily tapping away at a laptop and complaining about the agonizingly slow Wi-Fi, drinking Amtrak coffee, eating mini-pretzels, and talking on his cell phone. At one point he seemed to be talking to his wife, about a baby. Abbott’s wife was apparently upset that he wasn’t coming home tonight.
Tanner, who missed having an iPhone, used one of his new disposable phones to check in first with Sarah, and then with Lucy at the office. When he’d finished, he sat and watched the scenery race past. And he thought.
He was sitting across from a man who’d tried to have him killed.
It was sort of like enemy spies being traded on the Glienicke Bridge, the Bridge of Spies, in Berlin. It had that weight. A kind of mutual wariness. He was sitting close enough to smell the man’s Drakkar Noir. Very high school.
Will Abbott was a balding man around Tanner’s age who looked as if he spent all of his time hunched over a computer, like so many other people these days. But at the same time there was something about him, a red thread of desperation, that could make him a dangerous adversary.
He thought about what Abbott had said.
So how’d you convince them? Tanner had asked.
I speak with the authority of a powerful US senator. The higher-ups listen...
“So I’m getting some pressure to release you,” Earle had said to him. “From your friend on Capitol Hill.”
“Pressure?”
Earle smiled. Deep vertical gullies creased his cheeks. “We’re going to make a deal, you and me.”
“What kind of a deal?” Tanner had said.
“I believe William Abbott is the owner of the laptop you accidentally grabbed. That’s why he’s calling in his chips.”
“Just to be clear, I didn’t say whose laptop I have.”
“No, you didn’t have to. But that’s fine. I’m letting you go. And here’s what you’re going to do. If you want your troubles to go away permanently, anyway. You’re going to hand the laptop back to its rightful owner. And if we’re able to grab him with the laptop, why, then, you and me, we’re good. Vaya con Dios.”
It was strange: Tanner’s instincts told him to trust this guy Earle. Even though he’d had him abducted, had threatened him — at the same time, he’d never offered false assurances or fake comfort. He was basically a straight shooter.
“Deal,” Tanner had said.
Earle offered his hand, and the two men shook.
Finally, Tanner had thought, a way out.
After they’d been in the train for an hour, Abbott put down his phone, and the two started to talk. Tanner was too social a man to let the entire journey pass in silence. He said, “So you have a baby? I couldn’t help but overhear.”
“Uh, yeah. Eight weeks.”
“Tough gig, being chief of staff to a senator and having a newborn.”
“It is.”
Tanner kept mulling over Abbott’s cryptic words.
This is Washington, man. I can’t let them own me.
No wonder Abbott was so desperate.
“Boy or girl?” Tanner asked.
71
In the late afternoon, the train pulled into Back Bay station in Boston. The two men got off. The station stank of diesel. The platform was crowded with people who were just getting back to Boston from meetings in New York or maybe Washington. Like a herd of cattle, they all migrated in close pack formation toward the exit doors, the escalator up to the station’s main level, and then the inevitable Darwinian struggle to hail a cab outside on Dartmouth Street, where there seemed to be no cab stand, just the occasional passing taxi.
Tanner wanted to go home and collapse and be done with the insanity of the last two weeks. But he had just one more stop to make.
After five minutes of trying to flag down a cab, Tanner gave up. He turned to Abbott, pointing down the street toward the South End. “Just a couple of blocks that way and then to the left.”
They set off for Tremont Street, Tanner with his dirt-flecked knapsack and Abbott with his briefcase. They walked in silence. That spot on his lower back, the wound that had been bandaged, was throbbing again. It was probably infected. He’d have to take care of it when he had a little time.
In about ten minutes they’d reached the great granite-and-glass insurance company skyscraper that had the SportsClub Boston occupying the northwest corner of its street level with its familiar blue-and-red logo. On the way in Tanner glanced over at the fruit stand, saw Ganesh, and exchanged greetings.
He pulled open a glass door for Will Abbott and followed him into the gym. At the front desk, where members had to swipe their bar-coded card or key fob to gain entry, Will said, “I’m going in with you. Swipe me in as your guest.”
They passed a row of glass-walled offices, the manager and the membership director and so on, and then a kickboxing class or maybe it was a Zumba class; Tanner wasn’t sure of the difference. Music blasted inside the room, but it was muted by the glass walls. They took the stairs down to the men’s locker room.
“Buenas tardes, Mr. Tanner,” said a short, swarthy man wearing a red SportsClub Boston uniform shirt, pushing a cart full of used towels.
“Hey, Ramon,” Tanner said.
In the second bank of lockers he immediately spotted his brass combination lock.
“Right here,” he told Abbott.
It was smuggling the computer out of his office in the gym bag that had first given him the idea. They’d already searched his home, and they’d surely search every inch of Tanner Roast’s offices for the laptop. Leaving it in the office safe — even hidden as it was — wasn’t a good idea.
But the one place where you wouldn’t stash anything of value was a gym locker. He’d gone in with the laptop in his duffel bag and came out with a bag that was about three pounds lighter.
Tanner found his locker, but the brass combination lock was no longer there. He pulled the door open.
The locker was empty.
72
For a moment everything felt unreal. Like the world had abruptly flipped upside down. Tanner felt light-headed. He just stared into the gaping maw of the locker.
Everything was gone. Not just his ratty old gym clothes and his deodorant. Everything.
This couldn’t be happening.
“Is this a joke?” Abbott snapped.
Tanner said nothing. He raced out of the locker room and thundered up the stairs, Abbott following right behind him.
They passed the Zumba-or-kickboxing class, and then Tanner stopped at the manager’s office. The manager was a tall, blond young woman with a strong Polish accent named Agnieszka.
“Can I help?”
“My locker — my locker is empty.”
“Pardon?”
“There’s stuff missing from my locker.” Tanner stared.
“You didn’t see notice?” the manager replied. “I post at entrance to men’s locker. Everyone must to remove contents of lockers by yesterday twelve noon for clean of locker area. Anyone who did not, we remove for you. We cut locks.”
“You removed — where? — where did you put stuff?”
“In lost and found.” She pointed out of her office and down the hall.