the block.
Eaves did not know the larger purpose of his assignment; he did know enough not
to ask whether it was an officially sanctioned job. Jessica Kincaid, for her
part, had been stinting with explanation. Were she and Janson pursuing a private
vendetta? Had they been assigned to an ultra-secret project requiring the ad hoc
enlistment of irregular talent? Eaves, who had been retired from active duty for
a few years and was eager to have something to occupy his time, did not know.
The only authorization he required was Janson’s personal entreaty—and the look
on the young woman’s face: it was the limpid confidence of somebody who was
doing what had to be done.
Diving into the backseat of Eaves’s cab, Jessica yanked off her cap, wriggled
out of her rags, and changed into ordinary street clothes: pressed chinos, a
pastel-colored cotton sweater, penny loafers. She scrubbed the grime off her
face with moist towelettes, fluffed her hair vigorously, and after a few minutes
was at least vaguely presentable, which is to say, inconspicuous.
Ten minutes later, they had an address: 1060 Fifth Avenue was a handsome prewar
apartment building, its limestone facade grown pearl gray from the city air. A
discreet green awning stood before its entrance, which was not on the avenue but
around the corner, on Eighty-ninth Street. She glanced at her watch.
All at once, her scalp prickled with apprehension. Her watch! She had worn it
when she was on her observation post in Bryant Park! She knew that the
Foundation’s security guards would be alert to any anomalies, any discordant
details. Hers was a slim Hamilton tank watch, which had once belonged to her
mother. Would a bag lady wear such a watch? Anxiety burrowed deep within her as
she pictured herself the way she had been, trying to figure out whether a guard
equipped with binoculars might have dialed in on the glinting object on her
wrist. She would have done so in their place. She had to assume that they would,
too.
She flashed on the mental picture of her outstretched arms, foraging through the
trash like a pauper archaeologist … She saw the image of her gloved hand, and
then, overlapping it, the frayed cuff of the long-sleeved thermal undershirt.
Yes—the sleeve length of the undershirt was several sizes too big for her: her
wristwatch would have been entirely concealed by it. The knot in her stomach
loosened slightly. No harm, no foul, right? Yet she knew it was precisely the
kind of careless mistake they could ill afford.
“Take me around the block, Corn,” she said. “Slowly.”
Driving the maroon Taurus up the winding mountain path known as Clangerton Road,
Janson found the unmarked turnoff that the counterman had mentioned. He
continued a short distance past it, pulling the car as far off the road as
possible, plunging it into a natural cave of greenery, behind shrubs and a stand
of saplings. He did not know what to expect, but caution dictated that his
arrival be as stealthy as he could manage.
He walked into the woods, a spongy bed of mulched pine needles and twigs beneath
his feet, and doubled back toward the small lane he had driven past. The air was
filled with the resinous scent of an old-growth pine forest, a scent that
recalled nothing so much as the disinfectants and air fresheners that so
insistently aped it. Much of the woodland seemed wholly untouched by human
habitation, a roadside forest primeval. It was through such a forest that
European settlers had journeyed four centuries earlier, establishing themselves
on the virgin territory, making their way by flintlock, musket, knife, and
barter with an aboriginal people who greatly outnumbered them and were
infinitely wiser in the ways of the land. Such were the obscure origins of what
would become the mightiest power on the planet. Today, the terrain was some of
the most beautiful in the country, and the less it bore the evidence of those
who lived there, he reflected, the more beautiful it seemed.
And then he found the airstrip.
It was a sudden clearing in the forest, and disturbingly well maintained: the
bramble and bushes had been clipped back recently, and a long oval strip of
grass was neatly trimmed. It was a void, empty except for an SUV with a
tarpaulin over it. How the vehicle got there was a mystery, for there was no
apparent means of access to the strip, save from the skies above.
The strip itself was admirably hidden by the dense growth of trees surrounding
it. Still, those trees could serve Janson’s own purposes, protecting him as he
set up a one-man observation post.
He nested himself in the middle of an old pine tree, largely concealing himself
behind its trunk and the profusion of its needle-laden fronds. He steadied his
binoculars against a small branch, and waited.
And waited.
Hours chugged past, his only visitors the occasional mosquito and less
occasional centipede.
Yet Janson was scarcely aware of the passage of time. He was in another place:
the sniper’s fugue. His mind, part of it, drifted through the zone of
semiconscious thought, even as another module of consciousness remained at a
state of acute awareness.
He was convinced that there would be a flight today, not only because of what
the grocery-store manager had reported but because a command-and-control
structure could not rely solely upon electronic transfers of information:
packages, couriers, people, would all have to come in and out. Yet what if he
was wrong and had been wasting the most valuable commodity of all—time?
He was not wrong. At first it was like the drone of an insect, but when it grew
steadily louder, he knew that a plane was circling and slowing overhead for a
landing. Every nerve, every muscle in his body strained for complete alertness.
The plane was a new Cessna, a 340 series twin-engine craft, and its pilot, as
Janson could tell by the fluid grace with which it touched down and came to a
stop, was an extremely skilled professional, not a country doctor playing crop
duster. The pilot, dressed in a white uniform, emerged from the cockpit and
folded down the hinged, six-step aluminum stairs. The sun glared off the shiny
fuselage, obscuring Janson’s vision. All he could make out was that a passenger
was quickly ushered off the plane by a second assistant, this one in a blue
uniform, and brought to the SUV. The assistant yanked the tarpaulin from the
vehicle, revealing a Range Rover—armored, he surmised, from the way the body
rode low on the chassis—and he held open the backseat for the passenger. Moments
later, the 4X4 sped off.
Damn it! Janson strained intently through his scope to see who the passenger
was, yet the glare of the sun and the car’s darkened interior defeated his every
attempt. Frustration welled up in him like mercury in an overheated thermometer.
Who was it? “Peter Novak”? One of his lieutenants? It was impossible to say.
And then the car disappeared.
Where?
It was as if it had vanished into thin air. Janson slid from his perch and
peered through his scope from a number of different vantage points before he
finally saw what had happened. The lane, only just wide enough to allow passage
of the vehicle, was carved into the woods at an oblique angle. The surrounding
stand of trees thus rendered it invisible from most points. It was a brilliant
feat of landscape design meant to go unnoticed and unappreciated. Now the
Cessna’s engines revved up, and the small plane turned around, taxied, and took
flight.
As acrid fumes of fuel drifted through the woods, Janson set off toward the
drive. It was about eight feet wide and was overhung by branches that were about
six feet off the ground—just high enough to allow clearance for the armored
Range Rover. The tree-sheltered drive was recently paved—a driver who knew the
road could make good time—yet could not be seen even from overhead.
It would be an on-foot reconnaissance mission, then.
Janson’s task was to follow the drive without walking on the drive; once again,
he stayed parallel to it, ten yards away, lest he activate any surveillance or
alarm equipment attached to the drive itself. It was a long walk, and soon a
strenuous one. He bounded up razorback ridges, pushed through densely wooded
patches, and across steep, eroded slopes. After twenty minutes, his muscles
started to protest the strain but he never let his pace slacken. As he grabbed
another branch for purchase, he was painfully reminded that his hands, once
tougher than leather, had lost their calluses: too many years of tending to
corporate clients. Pine sap stuck to his palm like glue; splinters of bark
worked their way under his skin. As his exertions continued, heat blanketed his
upper body and neck like a rash. He ignored it, keeping his attention focused on