“I’d have stood up for you,” she said. “Whatever it took.”
He nodded. “I know you would. There should be more like you.”
“Take this,” she said.
She held out a slip of flimsy paper. It was a travel voucher, issued by the desk back at Quantico.
“It’ll get you to New York,” she said.
“What about you?” he asked.
“I’ll say I lost it. They’ll wire me another one.”
She stepped close and kissed his cheek. Stepped away and started walking.
“Good luck,” she called.
“To you too,” he called back.
4/
r/ (, walked to the airport, twelve miles on the shoulders of roads built for automobiles. It took him three hours. He exchanged the FBI voucher for a plane ticket and waited another hour for the first flight out. Slept through four hours in the air and three hours of time zones and touched down at La Guardia at one o’clock in the afternoon.
He used the last of his cash on a bus to the subway and the subway into Manhattan. Got out at Canal Street and walked south to Wall Street. He was in the lobby of Jodie’s office building a few minutes after two o’clock, borne along by sixty floors of workers returning from lunch. Her firm’s reception area was deserted. Nobody at the counter. He stepped through an open door and wandered down a corridor lined with lawbooks on oak shelves. Left and right of him were empty offices. There were papers on desks and jackets over the backs of chairs, but no people anywhere.
He came to a set of double doors and heard the heavy buzz of conversation
/