'You told me that when you and Donny left that farm, you were photographed, right? Some guys were in the hills, monitoring the situation, and they got a photo.'
'Yes.'
'You're sure?'
'Of course I'm sure. Why would I make something like that up?'
'Well, you might have it mixed up with something else.'
'It was very straightforward. Donny knew where the farm was, we drove out there. We found Trig and some big blond guy he said was Irish. We left after Donny talked to Trig. We got to our car, got in, and this guy came out of nowhere and took our picture. That's it.'
'Hmmm,' he said. He put the phone down.
'She says yes, definitely, there was a picture taken.'
'What did the guy look like?'
Bob asked her.
'Guy in a suit. Heavy-set, blunt, I guess. I didn't get a good look. It was dark, remember? Cops. FBI agents.'
'Just cops,' Bob said.
'Don't you see,' said Bonson.
'Some kind of Soviet security team. Covering for Fitzpatrick.'
Yes, Bob thought. That made sense.
'And that was everybody that was out there?' he asked.
'Well .. . Peter, Peter Farris.'
'Peter?' Bob asked. Peter? Something rang in his head from far away.
'I don't know that he was there.'
'Who was Peter?' he asked, struggling to remember.
He thought he could recall Donny mentioning a Peter somewhere some time or other and had a bad feeling.
'He was one of my friends in the movement. He thought he was in love with me. He may have followed us out there.'
'You don't know?'
'He disappeared that night. His body was found several months later. I wrote Donny about it.'
'Okay,' said Bob, 'I'll call you as soon as I get back, and we can work this out however you want. You're safe in all this snow?'
'We may be snowed in for a few days, it's so isolated.
But that's okay, we have plenty of food and fuel. Sally's here. It's not a problem. I feel very safe.'
'Okay,' he said.
'Good-bye,' she said.
'That was a dead end,' he said, after hanging up.
Peter, he thought. Peter is dead. Peter disappeared that night. Yet something taunted him. He remembered other words, spoken directly to him: It's not about you this time.
'Well, it's another good bit of circumstantial that the Russians had committed to a major operation, and they were running high-level security on it.'
Then a thought just sort of fluttered through Bob's mind.
'It is odd,' he noted, 'that of all the people that went to that farm--Trig, a kid named Peter Farris, Donny-they're all dead. In fact, they all died within a few months of that night.'
'Everybody except your wife.'
'Yeah. And--' Except my wife, he thought.
Except my wife.
Bob stopped, caught up suddenly. Something snapped into perfect focus. It wasn't there, then it was, there was no coming into being, no sense of emergence: it was just indisputably there, big as life.
'You know--' started Bonson.
'Shut up,' said Bob.
He was silent another second.
'I get it,' he said.
'The picture, the timing, the target.'
'What are you talking about?'
