his eyes as he keyed the mike. “Subject went down that Schooley Mill fuck road and was hidden by the trees for about two minutes. He might have stopped in there. You better check it.”
Sitting in the van with the wheel off on Reservoir Road, Lloyd Dreyfus turned to the man beside him. “That can down at the spring wasn’t the drop. The subject was just testing the water.”
“You sure?”
“Hell no.” But Dreyfus felt it in his gut. He looked at his map. The drops were close together, too close really. Albright should have been more careful. He’s getting careless.
“Think he’s spotted the plane?”
“No,” Dreyfus said. “Brown’s too high. He flew right over us a couple minutes ago. You can’t hear him at that altitude and you can’t see him unless you know where to look.”
Dreyfus keyed the radio mike. “Stay on him, Clarence. I want to know when he’s coming back.”
“Roger.”
To the man beside him Dreyfus said, “Have the guys get the wheel back on. Get ready to roll fast.” Then he switched frequen- cies and began moving his agents.
Ten minutes later when Vastly Pochinkov passed the Methodist church on Route 216 and turned onto Brown Bridge Road, he was photographed from a station wagon parked in the church parking lot amid four other cars. He never noticed. His eye was captured by the svelte figure of a woman in shorts walking toward the church door.
He glanced at his wife in the passenger seat as she hunted for a glove on the floor. She had dropped it and was feeling blindly. She was too fat to bend over and look for it.
Why is it. he wondered, not for the first time. that all Russian women have figures like potato sacks while American women keep their figures well past middle age? You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but this potato bag was only thirty-four years old and had had the figure of a ballerina when he married her just twelve years ago- It took a lot of vodka these days to prime himself for an expedition between those padded pillars she called thighs.
“Get ready, Nadya, Get the gloves on.”
The road began to twist and descend as it dropped toward Brown Bridge. Pochiakov slowed to twenty-five miles per hour, watched the odometer and looked for Schooley Mill Road.
There!
He saw the Dr Pepper can when he was fifty yards away. He glanced around as he braked to a stop. The glen was empty. Nadya stepped out, a green garbage bag in hand, and placed it fifteen feet west of the tree. While she was doing that, Pochinkov walked over to the Dr Pepper can, glanced around once and placed a second one beside it.
They got back in the car, closed the door and rolled.
The Buick was climbing the hill on the south side of the river when the van shot out of Lime Kite Road and roared the thousand feet to the entrance to Schooley Mill. The driver braked to a halt and two men wearing’gloves jumped out. One opened the green trash bag while the other took flash photos.
Inside the van Lloyd Dreyfus was listening to Agent Brown in the Cessna. “Subject is about a half mile south of Ednor Road, northbound on New Hampshire. I’d say you have no more than six or seven minutes … He just passed the drop car, which was southbound.”
The two men piled back into the van within a minute. The agent at the wheel fed gas when he heard the rear door slam. When he reached the asphalt of Brown Bridge, he made a hard left and beaded east, back up the road, toward Lime Kite.
The lane was empty when Harlan Albright entered four minutes later. He didn’t even get out of the car. After a glance at the soda cans, he merely braked to a stop beside the trash bag and picked it up. He set it on the floor in front of the empty passenger seat as he pulled the door shut with his left hand and took his foot off the brake.
Glancing in he could see trash: a wadded-up bread wrapper, a couple empty vegetable cans, three squashed soda-pop cans and an old meat wrapper. They had, he knew, been carefully washed so they would not attract dogs. Under the trash was the money, $200,000 in used twenties, one hundred bundles of a hundred twenties each.
It was 5 P.M. when he pulled into his driveway in Silver Spring. The Sunday Post was still lying by the mailbox. He took it into the house with him, turned on the television, and settled back with the newspaper,
26
Toad Tarkington awoke at four- thirty Monday and went to the bathroom. He got back into bed, but he wasn’t sleepy. Still dark outside. Wide awake and irritated because he couldn’t sleep, he went to the window and peered out Some clouds with stars visible between them. Not too many stars. though. Funny, but early in the morning, just before dawn, the stars seem to fade, almost as if the weaker ones grow tired of shining and are sent home early.
He prowled the little room, restless. He pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt and was sitting in the easy chair when the light began to spread on the eastern horizon.
The telephone rang,
“Tarkington.”
“Lieutenant, this is the shift supervisor at the hospital. Your wife is awake and she asked for you.”
“I’ll be right over. You tell her!” He dropped the instrument onto the book and grabbed for his shoes.
The sedan refused to start. He jabbed at the accelerator and held the key over. The engine ground and ground and didn’t fire. Too late he realized he had probably flooded it.
Heck. It was only three-quarters of a mile or so over there- He slammed the door behind him and began to trot. Awake! Asking for him! He picked up the pace.
The sun was about ready to come over the earth’s rim. The clouds above were blue, turning pink. Above them was blue sky.
The last three blocks he sprinted, down the street and across the windswept dirt that would someday be a lawn and across the empty parking lot with its tumbleweeds and right through the front door.
The nurse at the desk was grinning as he charged by. He studded around the corner and lunged down the hall for the ICU.
A doctor was there beside her bed, talking to her as a nurse took her pulse. The doctor stepped back as Toad skidded to a halt inside the door and walked forward, into Rita’s line of sight.
She tried to grin.
“Hey, babe.” He bent over and kissed her.
“Yeah, Mrs. Moravia, she’s out of the coma. And she recognizes me! She’s asleep right now, real tired, but she’s out of the comat”
“Oh, thank God!”
“I really think she’s gonna be okay, Mrs. Moravia. It’s like a miracle. She doesn’t remember anything about the flight or the ejection, but she remembers me and being in Nevada and the other flights, and she kept asking how long she’s been in the hospital. The doctor and the nurses are excited! I’m excited!” That was an understatement of major proportions- He was so worked up he felt like he could fly by merely flapping his arms.
After promising to call again after his next visit with Rita, Toad called his parents. He called his sister to give her the news. He called Harriet, Rita’s best friend- Due to the time difference on the East Coast, Harriet was at work. And he called Jake Grafton.
Captain Grafton was also at the office and he could hear the activity in the background, but Toad could almost see Grafton leaning back in his chair and propping his feet on his middle desk drawer as if he had all the time in the world. The captain kept him on the phone almost twenty minutes, making him tell of Rita’s every word and gesture, listening as long as Toad wanted to talk. Finally Toad realized the captain must have something else to do, and said a reluctant goodbye.
“You tell her I said to get well quick.”
“I will, sir.”
“And tell her Amy asks about her every day. Amy and Callie have been pulling real hard for her.”
