I laughed like I’d never heard the question before. “Sadly no relation. How much royalties could I get off It’s a Wonderful Life?”
“That’s a good movie,” he said, like I had confirmed a connection to the most famous Capra. “Says you live in New York: why are you up here?”
“I was looking to get a job in Albany. Didn’t get it.” Could I be more hard luck?
He studied the license some more, like it was a long book. He handed it back to me then downed the rest of his coffee.
“Then it’s a wonderful life, Sam Capra, you got a ride,” the trucker said, and he laughed at his own joke. So did I.
18
I was now part of the flux into the Port of New York and New Jersey, the river of goods going out into the wider world. I just wanted to be swept along by the current and hope I didn’t jam up in an eddy or a byway.
The denim delivery truck paperworked its way into one of the port’s terminals on Newark Bay, past the checkpoints and the inspection sheds, all at a steady clip. I thanked the trucker, slipped him his bribe (which we called gas money), and stepped out of the cab.
Ports are busy. People are intent on their work. From my Wal-Mart stop I was dressed in jeans and a denim shirt and work boots and a Yankees baseball cap. I carried not a knapsack but two duffel bags on which I’d marked FACILITIES along the side with a Sharpie pen. I could have come from a ship; I could have come from an office inside the port complex. I hoped I was invisible.
I watched containers being hauled off the docks and craned into the bowels of the ships and, when the holds were full, stacked along the flat decks. The loadings were as graceful as a dance. The trucks inched forward, were relieved of their burdens, then turned around and joined another line to be loaded again with goods from Europe and Africa or from American ports to the south: Charleston, Miami, New Orleans, Houston.
I walked past a line of cargo ships. There was an entry gate, with a guard. The line of fencing curved away as I walked out past a loading area and within a few hundred feet the guard shack lay out of sight.
I climbed the fence fast, dropped over the other side. No one yelled.
I walked, without haste, past towers of containers. I faced a choice. Pick a ship or pick a container. If I tried to board a ship and then hide, I was going to be dealing with people. Not good. It was taking a risk to enter a container; I might end up at the bottom of a shipment, unable to force open the door. I had tools inside my duffel with which I could cut open an air hole, but I preferred to pick my own coffin for the next ten days.
No one was paying any attention to me. But my chest felt tight. Anyone could stop me; anyone could challenge me. If I looked the least bit suspicious I would draw attention. Howell and his watchers knew by now that I had run; I could make no assumptions about how close they were on my tail.
“Hey!” a voice called.
A guy, twenty feet away, hurried toward me. I froze. He wore a shirt that indicated he worked for a shipping contractor. He carried an electronic handheld bar reader and he said, “Where’s the closest john, man? First day-and this place is too goddamned big.”
I jerked my head toward the nearest building and I hoped I was right.
“Thanks.” He took off.
If there wasn’t a bathroom there-would he remember me? I watched him walk off toward the building. I might have a lot less time to find what I needed than I thought. Yeah, I asked this guy, but he told me wrong. No I didn’t notice if he had an ID clip on…
I knew what kind of container I was looking for. The sides showed a stenciled shipping company ownership mark tied to an individual number. Containers were routinely bought and sold and bartered among the shippers; I could see on some of the containers that they had been restenciled, the shadows of old paint edging the new numbers.
Most containers I saw boasted a so-called tamper-proof seal. But I could see a few of the seals dangled from the openings, broken. Again, these seals are not quite up to the ironclad image that politicians feed the public masses. The seal is often a strip of plastic, sized like the wristband a patient wears in a hospital. The number matches the ID number on the side of the container and the seal is simply fed through the door’s levers. I saw a few that had no seal at all: the moving, positioning, emptying, loading, and moving again of a multiton container means that these strips of plastic can easily be torn off or brushed away during the process.
And no one checks; no one cares. The rivers of commerce cannot be dammed.
A line of big ships lay ahead. The ownership marks disclosed a shipping company based in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. It would have to do. Unfortunately the containers headed for the UK did not have a large neon sign marked London over them. But I could hide and slip away, unseen, in the chaos and the maze of Europe’s largest and busiest port. I chose a container on the bottom of a large stack-it would be the last to be loaded. The door faced away from the crane and I didn’t care what was being shipped-as long as it wasn’t snakes or scorpions. This was my chance.
The seal was in place; I sawed through it with a knife from my bag, leaving ragged edges so it would appear that the seal had been damaged in transit. I opened the door, stepped inside, closed the door.
It took all of five seconds. I knelt close to the door. Listened. I waited to hear footsteps running toward me, but there was only the sound of the continual movement of goods, the screech and grind of the containers above me, slowly being hoisted into the air. I dug in my duffel and found a flashlight. I clicked it on and scanned the container. Stacks of boxes. I had half expected it to be empty-after all, what does America build anymore that the rest of the world uses? Maybe I’d find leveraged financial products or subprime mortgages.
I inspected one section of boxes. They all read CLEAN-PAK HAND WIPES. Others read VERMONTER HERBAL SOAPS HANDMADE IN USA, with a stylized landscape scene of a New England farm on the boxes. Eight to ten days stuck in here; at least I wouldn’t smell as bad as ten days with no shower.
I hunkered down away from the door. Eventually I felt the container rise, leave earth, swing toward the ocean, and then settle down-slowly.
I leaned against a box of Vermont soap, wrapped a blanket around me, and slept.
19
Ten days in a steel coffin. No way to pass the time, except to think, and to plan. Imagine if you had ten days shut off from the world; no phone, no web, no television. Cutting the electronic cord separated me from the incessant twittering chatter of modern life. The quiet might drive many people mad, but I welcomed it. The only good thing about the prison in Poland had been, after the initial weeks of questioning, the long silences, just me and the stone walls. The power of time to think is a forgotten pleasure in today’s world. This was not so different from the stretches of useless quiet in the CIA prison, except no one was torturing me. But the line I’d crossed weighed on me in a way it hadn’t when I’d thought out the plan. Howell might well issue a kill-on-sight order on me. I had broken away from the invisible cage. No second chance now.
Waking, I used the flashlight and established my tiny camp inside the steel coffin. Inside the duffels, I had the Glock and two clips of ammo I’d stolen from the safe in Ollie’s office. I had a hopefully delicious assortment of protein bars and fruit. Bottles of water. Extra batteries for the flashlight. Toothbrush, toothpaste, and toilet paper. A small container for waste. A first-aid kit and sleeping pills. A charged iPod with Mahler and the Rolling Stones and an extended battery. Two changes of clothes: gray shirts, jeans. All the cash I’d saved after the passport fiasco, a few hundred dollars.
It wasn’t much with which to start a long and dangerous journey to find my lost wife and child. I checked my watch. The cargo ship should have departed by now. A constant hum of engine played. But I didn’t want to risk opening the door and being spotted-although with thousands of containers, I thought the odds of being seen were low-until we were at least a day out of America. The ship wouldn’t turn around for a stowaway at that point; they
