“If I let you have the hard drive, which I’m not saying I’m going to do, that means my patrons are out a computer,” she told Lia. “What am I going to tell them?”
“What if I got you a new hard drive?” said Lia.
“And you set it up? The network administrator spent two whole days getting one of our machines to work the last time we had a crash.”
“I guarantee we can do it faster,” said Lia.
The nearby fax machine rang and then began to print.
The librarian went over to the machine.
“How did you do that?” asked the librarian. “I thought you didn’t know our number.”
Lia shrugged. “I have friends in high places.”
“Let me call the town attorney and make sure this is legal.”
“Please do,” said Lia.
Two hours later, Lia cradled her sat phone to her ear, pretending to use it as Robert Gallo talked her through the installation pro cess. Gallo had already made a copy of the working data on the original drive; once Lia was ready, he downloaded a compressed version to the drive. As she was waiting for the files to reconstitute themselves, Lia handed off the original drive to a state trooper who had promised to take it to the airport, where a courier would pick it up and fly it to Crypto City.
“Done,” Lia told the Art Room as the library’s card catalog appeared on the screen. She hung up the phone and got up from the computer.
“You better go tell Chief Ball that you took the drive,” suggested Telach. “He’s bound to find out.”
“Should I ask him why Amanda ran the credit check?”
“Hold that back. Maybe there’s something on the drive that will make it obvious.”
“Gotcha.”
“Are you talking to me?” asked the librarian, who had come over without Lia noticing her.
“Just to myself,” said Lia.
“Sounded like some conversation.”
“You should hear when I disagree.”
“he didn’t say when he would be back. Gone a few days.
That was the message he left.”
“And he didn’t say where he was going?”
“Uh-uh.”
Lia stared at the Pine Plains police dispatcher, trying to figure out if the blank look on her face was real or phony. It was hard to tell.
The phone rang before Lia decided. The Pine Plains police dispatcher pulled her thick-framed eyeglasses up off the bridge of her nose, then turned and answered the phone, preening her frosted curls as she picked up the receiver. Lia felt as if she’d been dropped into the middle of a
“Pine Plains PD. Dispatch speaking… No, I’m afraid he’s not… Yes, Marge, I recognized your voice. I’m sure we could get one of the part-timers over to direct traffic when you have your bake sale. When is it?”
“Lia, can you talk?” asked Telach.
“Excuse me a second,” Lia said to the dispatcher. She took out her sat phone and walked out into the hallway.
“Marie?”
“The state police found Amanda Rauci’s car at the Rhinecliff train station, about a half hour from where you are,” said Telach. “They just called the Secret Service, and the liaison passed the information over to us. What’s up with Ball?”
“Doesn’t seem to be in.”
The dispatcher was just hanging up when Lia returned.
“This is a number where the chief can reach me,” said Lia, writing it on a pad. Anyone calling the number would be forwarded to her sat phone. “Can you give me directions to the train station?”
“Which one?”
“How many are there?”
“Well, if you’re going to New York, there’s Millerton and Poughkeepsie.”
“Actually, I want the Rhinecliff station,” said Lia. “Where do those trains go?”
“Oh, that’s an Amtrak station. That goes north. You can go south to New York from there, too, I guess, but it’s more expensive, and not as close as Millerton.” the rhinecliff train station was a small, quaint little stop within a stone’s throw of the Hudson River. It had a tiny parking lot at the side, tucked around a curve in the road.
Amanda Rauci’s car was parked in a spot close to the walk that led to the station entrance.
A tow truck was hooking up the car’s bumper when Lia arrived. A small knot of troopers stood near the entrance, talking baseball. Trent Madden, the Secret Service agent who was following up on the Forester case, was with them.
“What’s the story?” Lia asked.
“Yanks beat Boston, nineteen to three,” said one of the troopers.
“Real funny.”
“Rauci must’ve taken the train this morning,” said Madden. “Engine’s cold. Train goes north to Albany and Canada, or west through Buffalo, and south to New York City. We’re checking all the stations.”
“She got a really good spot,” said Lia, looking at the rest of the lot. There were places for only twenty cars in the gravel lot; the overflow filled the nearby street and a church parking lot across the way. “Must’ve been here before everyone else.”
110
True to her word, Qui had remained at the small club where Dean had left her. She sat alone at a table toward the back, smoking a cigarette. The dim light softened the effects of age on her face; she looked twenty years younger. If rock and roll rather than Asian pop were blaring in the background, Dean might even have been convinced it was 1972 again.
“You’re back,” said Qui as he sat down.
“The business is all taken care of.” A waitress came over. Qui pointed at her empty glass.
“For my friend, a Scotch,” she added in Vietnamese.
“I don’t want a drink,” said Dean.
Qui patted his hand, and he acquiesced, though whether out of politeness or some sense that she needed to share something with him, he couldn’t say.
“What did you do?” she asked in English when the server had gone.
“I threatened to reveal that Cam Tre Luc was on the CIA payroll during the war.”
“Was he?”
“He was.”
“I guess it’s not surprising,” she said. “People pretend to be pure, but they’re not.”
“You know Cam Tre Luc?”
“No. But his kind is very familiar. The leaders of the country. They claim purity.” She smiled wistfully. “But so do we all, don’t we?”
The waitress came with their drinks. Qui took a sip of hers; Dean did not.
“We cannot go against our nature,” said Qui. “You couldn’t.
I should have realized when he told me that you called that you would come to rescue me.”
“You’re not implying that I’m pure, are you?” asked Dean.
“Not pure, Mr. Dean. Just that it is in your nature to try to fix things. You think it is a good trait, but it can cause much harm as well. Good and evil, at the same time. Thank you for trying to fix things with Cam Tre Luc.”
