At dawn on weekdays, ten piers full of commercial fishing boats brought Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay to a boil. One by one they joined a bobbing traffic jam to the day’s best fishing spots. With them always was the forty-five-foot stern dragger Sea Dog. Every so often she bypassed the good fishing spots, and her captain ignited the pair of supplementary ten-cylinder diesel engines hidden in her belly. No one guessed it, what with the Sea Dog’s dented hull and ungainly array of masts and poles and tangled netting, but she could cruise at twenty knots, meaning Nova Scotia could be in sight in time for breakfast the next day.
“Ideally we can take the Sea Dog to Halifax,” Drummond said to Charlie, who was still unable to resist running his fingers through the stubble that used to be his hair. They were in a gas station minimart a few miles into Maryland, weaving around hanger racks of Baltimore Orioles souvenir T-shirts, heading to the pay phone to call the Sea Dog’s captain.
Every few seconds a big rig blew past on I-95, rattling the flimsy building. The only other customer was a middle-aged man focused on keeping a low profile himself; he was selecting condoms. The woman at the register appeared poised to nod off. As benign as the two seemed, Charlie no longer regarded anyone without suspicion.
“From Nova Scotia we can obfuscate our trail with a stop at Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, the French territory ten miles southwest of the Burin Peninsula,” Drummond said. “There we should have no difficulty finding cargo ship passage to Europe.” Their eventual destination was a clinic in Geneva. “And if at any time before we’re at sea, I start blathering about the Merrimack River or for whatever reason you’re unsure of what to do, where do we go to ground…?”
On the drive from Virginia, Drummond had drilled Charlie on contingencies which, unlike a Fairview Inn, were not on the law enforcement agencies’ Fax Blast list. As if reciting a mantra now, Charlie replied, “Fleabags, flophouses, and whorehouses.”
“Correct,” Drummond said.
“Sounds like it would make a good TV show, doesn’t it?”
Amused, seemingly in spite of himself, Drummond deposited two quarters into the coin slot and dialed a Los Angeles number. Fifty cents bought three minutes of talk time to anywhere in the United States. After one fuzzy ring, a synthesized voice said, “You have reached a number that is either not working or has been disconnected. Please hang up and try your call again.”
Undaunted, Drummond remained on the line and hit 2.
Nothing happened.
He waited two seconds, then hit 2 twice more.
“Three,” came the synthesized voice again. Then the line went dead.
“Excellent,” Drummond said. Turning to Charlie, he added, “Don’t worry, it’s not contingency plan time yet. The captain of the Sea Dog is a former operative of the old school, which is to our benefit, because Fielding and his team are better equipped to pick up the trail when silicon chips are involved. ‘Three’ is the number for the dead drop where we’ll book our trip.”