turnoff to the left. The idea is they were training pilots how to maneuver
around the mountains in Romania, on the way to bombing the oil fields. So they
did some practice flights hereabouts. Later on, some of the lumber guys used it
for a while, but the lumber industry pretty near died off. I don’t think it’s
much more than an airstrip anymore. You don’t fly masonry if you can avoid
it—you truck it.”
“So what happened to that airstrip? Ever get used?”
“Ever? Never? I don’t use those words.” His gaze did not leave the blonde in the
short cutoffs washing the sidewalk across the street.
“Reason I ask, you see, is an old business associate of mine, he lives near
here, and said something about it.”
The counterman looked uncomfortable. Janson pushed his empty coffee cup forward
to be refilled, and the man pointedly did not do so. “Then you’d better ask him
about it, hadn’t you?” the man said, and his gaze returned to the vision of
unattainable paradise across the street.
“Seems to me,” Janson said, tucking a few bills beneath his saucer, “that you
and your son both have an eye for the bottom line.”
The town grocery store was just down the street. Janson stopped in and
introduced himself to the manager, a bland-looking man with light brown hair in
a modified mullet. Janson told him what he had told the man at the diner. The
store manager evidently found the prospect of a new arrival lucrative enough
that he was downright encouraging.
“That is a great idea, man,” he said. “These hills—I mean, it’s really beautiful
here. And you get a few miles up the mountain and look around and it’s totally
unspoiled. Plus you got your hunting and your fishing and your … ” He trailed
off, seemingly unable to think of a third suitable item. He wasn’t sure this man
would be a regular at the bowling alley or take much interest in the video
arcade recently installed next to the check-cashing joint. Safe bet they had
those things in the cities, too.
“And for everyday stuff?” Janson prodded.
“We got a video store,” he volunteered. “Laundromat. This store right here. I
can do special orders, if you need ’em. Do that once in a while for regular
customers.”
“Have you, now?”
“Oh yeah. We got all kinds around here. There’s one cat—we’ve never seen him,
but he sends a guy down here every few days to pick up groceries.
Superrich—gotta be. Owns a place somewhere up in the mountains, some kind of Lex
Luthor hideaway, I like to think. People see a little plane touching down near
there most every afternoon. But he still uses us for groceries. Ain’t that a way
to live? Get somebody else to do your shopping!”
“And you do special orders for this guy?”
“Oh for sure,” the man said. “It’s all real, real secure. Maybe he’s Howard
Hughes, afraid somebody going to poison him.” He chuckled at the thought.
“Whatever he wants, it’s not a problem. I order it and a Sysco truck comes by
and delivers it, and he has a guy come get it, he don’t care what it costs.”
“That right?”
“You bet. So, like I say, I’m happy to special-order whatever you like. And Mike
Nugent at the video store, he’ll do the same for you. It’s not a problem. You’re
going to have a great time here. No place like it. Some of the kids can get a
little rowdy. But basically it’s as friendly as all get-out. You’re gonna have a
great time here once you settle in. My bet? You’re never gonna leave.”
A gray-haired woman at the refrigerated section was calling to him. “Keith?
Keith, dear?”
The man excused himself, and went over to her.
“Is this sole fresh or frozen?” she was asking.
“It’s fresh frozen,” Keith explained.
As the two carried on an earnest conversation about whether the designation
signified a way of being fresh or a way of being frozen, Janson wandered over to
the far end of the grocery store. The stockroom door was open, and he stepped
into it, casually. At a small metal desk was a stack of pale blue Sysco
inventory lists. He flipped through them quickly until he reached one stamped
special order. Toward the bottom of a long row of foodstuffs in small print, he
saw a bold check, from the grocer’s Sharpie marker. An order of buckwheat
groats.
A few seconds elapsed before it clicked. Buckwheat groats—also known as kasha.
Janson felt a stirring of excitement as thousands of column inches from
newspaper and magazine profiles whirred through his head in a ribbon of light.
Every day starts with a spartan breakfast of kasha … A homely detail found in
dozens of them, along with the near obligatory references to his “bespoke
wardrobe,” “aristocratic bearing,” “commanding gaze” … Such were the stock
phrases and “colorful” details of feature writing. Every day starts with a
spartan breakfast of kasha …
It was true, then. Somewhere on Smith Mountain lived a man the world knew as
Peter Novak.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
In the heart of midtown Manhattan, the bag lady stooped over the Bryant Park
steel-mesh trash can with the diligent look of a postal worker at a mailbox. Her
clothes, as was usual with derelicts, were torn and filthy and unseasonably
heavy—the clothing had to be thick enough to ward off the cold of a night spent
in an alleyway, and the warming rays of the sun would not impel her to strip off
a single layer, for her clothes and her sack filled with bottles and tin cans
were all she had to her name. At her wrists and ankles, grime-gray thermal
underwear showed beneath fraying, soiled denim. Her shoes were oversize
sneakers, the rubber soles beginning to split, the laces broken and tied
together again, in floppy schoolgirl knots. Pulled down low on her forehead was
a nylon-mesh baseball cap, promoting not a sports team but a once-high-flying
Silicon Alley “incubator” fund that went under the year before. She clutched the
grungy satchel as if it contained treasure. Her grip expressed the primal
urgency of possession: This is what I have in this world. It is mine. It is me.
Time for such as her was meted out by nights she escaped unmolested, by the cans
and bottles she collected and traded in for nickels, by the small serendipities
she encountered—the intact sandwich, still soft and protected by plastic wrap,
untouched by rodents. On her hands were cotton gloves, now gray and sooty, which
might once have been a debutante’s, and as she rummaged through the plastic
bottles and skeins of cellophane and apple cores and banana peels and crumpled
advertising flyers, the gloves grew even dirtier.
Yet Jessica Kincaid’s eyes were not, in fact, on the refuse; they returned
regularly to the small mirror that she had propped against the trash can and
that allowed her to monitor those arriving at and departing from the Liberty
Foundation offices across the street. After days of a fruitless watch, Janson’s
confederate, Cornelius Eaves, had called last night excitedly: Marta Lang seemed
finally to have made an appearance.
It was not a mistaken sighting, Jessie now knew. A woman matching Janson’s
detailed description of Deputy Director Marta Lang had been among the arrivals
that morning: a Lincoln Town Car with darkened windows had dropped her off at
eight in the morning. In the ensuing hours, there was no sign of her, yet
Jessica could not risk leaving her post. Attired as she was, Jessica herself
attracted almost no attention, for the city had long since trained itself not to
notice such unfortunates in its midst. At intervals, she shuttled between two
other wire trash baskets that shared a sight line to the office building on
Fortieth Street, but always returned to the one nearest it. About midday, a
couple of grounds maintenance people in the bright red outfits of the Bryant
Park Business Improvement District had tried to shoo her away, but only
halfheartedly: their minimum wages inspired no great exertions on the park’s
behalf. Later, a Senegalese street merchant with a folding stand and a portfolio
of fake Rolexes tried to set up shop near her. Twice, she “accidentally”
stumbled over his display, bringing it crashing to the ground. After the second
time he decided to relocate his business, though not before hurling a few choice
epithets at her in his native tongue.
It was nearly six when the elegant, white-haired woman appeared again, striding
through the revolving door of the lobby, her face a mask of unconcern. As the
woman stepped into the backseat of the long Lincoln Town Car and purred off
toward the intersection at Fifth Avenue, Jessica memorized the license, plate.
Quietly, she radioed Cornelius Eaves, whose vehicle—a yellow taxicab with its
off duty lights on—had been idling in front of a hotel toward the other end of