“Good Lord,” Dad said. “Microfilm.”
“You have anything we can look at it with?”
He fetched a large magnifying glass from a desk drawer.
“Still can’t read the print,” he said. “But I’m betting that’s a CIA letterhead, up there at the top.”
We looked at each other, his expression a blend of marvel and dismay.
“Looks like Cabot was right about at least one thing,” I said. “Lemaster was passing secrets.”
“Which makes me wonder if he might be right about every thing. I feel like a bigger fool than ever, doing all those favors for Ed. Shouldn’t you give this to the Agency?”
I considered the idea for about half a second.
“Hell, no. They had their chance with me. Besides, now I’ve got the perfect offering for Cabot. Who needs an artificial lure when you’ve got live bait? I’ll put the microdot back on the dust jacket and slip the book into the dead drop, with a note telling him how it works.”
“He’ll be thrilled.”
“I know I am. I’m beginning to think this might even work.”
39
A horn blast from the dawn ferry, reliable as an alarm clock, awakened me to my first morning on Block Island. I’d just enjoyed my soundest night of sleep in days. The ocean air probably had something to do with it. So did my new sense of security.
At the ferry terminal in Port Judith the night before, I’d telephoned David to let him know I was safely on American soil, and to expect me back soon in Georgetown. Having earlier heard my account of the strange Nethercutt funeral, he perked up right away when I mentioned Block Island.
“One last mission?” he said jokingly. “Sounds risky.”
“Oh, you know what they say,” I answered, playing along. “ ‘Caution is the enemy of discovery.’ “
“Hey, I just read that in A Spy for All Seasons!”
Which, come to think of it, was probably where I’d first seen it as well, too many years ago to count.
“Glad you found a copy. Maybe in a few days I’ll have more of them for you.”
“Reading you loud and clear, Dad.”
“Yes, well…” Had I missed something in that exchange? “Aren’t you just about due for fall break?”
“Coming up in two days.”
“Going anywhere?”
“Still deciding.”
“Well, drop me a text when you know, now that my cell phone’s back in action. And I should probably give you the name of my hotel.”
We traded small talk a few minutes more before it was time for him to head to dinner.
“Good luck, then, Dad.”
“Thanks. Same to you with your schoolwork.”
“Schoolwork. That’s a good one, Dad.”
“Uh, right. I’ll call when I’m back.”
Goodness. He was certainly getting wrapped up in those spy novels, if my one little reference got him that fired up.
But what intrigued me more, I suddenly realized, was the way the Lemaster quote-”Caution is the enemy of discovery”-made the perfect counterpoint to the advice Jim Angleton had given me when I was seven years old: “Caution is the eldest child of wisdom.”
Might Angleton also have uttered the same advice to Lemaster at one time, only to have his operative turn those words upside down in a later novel? I recalled Valerie Humphries’s tale of Angleton marking up his copy of The Double Game as if it were the Rosetta Stone, the key to everything. It made me wonder what must have caused Lemaster’s words to pop into my head just now, and why David had reacted to them so sharply. The mind works in strange ways, I suppose, especially when you’re still a bit foggy from a transatlantic flight.
After hanging up, I’d conferred with a weathered old shipping clerk at the ferry terminal, who assured me that none of the trucks for FedEx, DHL, or the other delivery services ever went ashore before nine a.m.
That meant today was probably the earliest Cabot could receive the book with the microdot, and even that would be pushing it. His farmhouse was less than two miles from my hotel, which gave me a few hours to eat breakfast, rent a bike, and get into position.
Block Island is only about ten square miles, and even on a bicycle you can reach any part of it in less than half an hour. The drawback to such coziness, especially now that most of the tourists were gone, was that I’d stand out. This was evident when I went down for breakfast at 7:10. I was alone in the hotel dining room.
I scanned my maps and drank coffee. The view out the window was of circling seagulls and slate clouds. The air held a premonition of winter, a briny rawness that made you long to curl up by a fire with something hot to drink. Litzi would like it here. Thinking of her made the room seem more desolate than ever.
“Here’s a refill for you.”
The waitress had materialized at my elbow. She spotted the picture of Cabot’s house right away.
“That’s a nice old place. You house hunting?”
I pushed a napkin over the photo, which only made me look more suspicious.
“Early stages. Just browsing for now.”
“That’s what they all say.”
She slid the check beneath the saltshaker and glided away.
Small places like this didn’t keep secrets well. If my snooping was too obvious I’d soon draw unwanted attention.
It felt good to stretch my legs on the bike, cranking it uphill in low gear as I pedaled out of town. The air was cold enough to numb my fingers, but sweat soon dampened my back beneath the rucksack. I’d packed a lunch and a big bottle of water along with the binoculars. Hardly anyone was on the road, which again made me feel conspicuous, and as I passed the few scattered houses near the turnoff to Cabot’s, I imagined his neighbors looking up from their breakfast tables to wonder who the stranger was.
His property was right across a gravel road from Wils Nethercutt’s. Their facing boundaries formed a rough V, reaching its vortex at the paved road to the south. The northbound dirt road bisected the V. The farther up it you went, the farther away you got from each of the diverging property lines. I was looking on the right for the nature preserve. The map showed that it was a quarter mile up the hill.
Halfway there I passed a footpath that crossed the dirt road from either side, with gates at the threshold of Cabot’s and Nethercutt’s properties. It was overgrown, barely used. Knowing their history as rivals, I wondered how many years it had been since anyone had walked from one place to the other.
A small wooden sign marked the entrance to the nature preserve. Sandy trails disappeared into the underbrush. I locked the bike at a rack and pulled the binoculars and bird book from the pack. An older couple emerged on foot on one of the trails, half out of breath from their morning stroll. The man took a look at my gear and frowned.
“Little late to be bird-watching this far north, isn’t it?”
“Oh, you never know. You always get some stragglers on the flyway.”
Whatever that meant. He looked skeptical.
“Well, good luck with it.”
Great. If I looked out of place to them, how would I look to Cabot and his assistant if they spotted me up on the hillside, poking around in the brush? Too late to worry about that now.
I trooped through the browning underbrush, stirring sparrows from cover. It smelled good up here, the clean scent of late autumn. Nearing the top of a slight rise I spotted Cabot’s shingled rooftop, and as I crested the hill the whole place came into view-the weathered front porch with its wooden railing, green shutters, and glass-paned aluminum storm door. The porch faced south, and I was facing east, with the Atlantic visible beyond the house, down the slope of the island. Maybe two acres of brown grass surrounded the house, enclosed by more underbrush.
