The Old Man

by Thomas Perry

  After the luggage had been reloaded into the bus, they climbed in, returned to their seats, and got moving again. Alan returned to the bus’s restroom, removed the wall panel, took his canvas tool bag, and put it into his backpack. From the shape and the weight, he could tell the pistol, silencer, and magazines were intact. Then he replaced the panel. Soon the bus pulled into the station in Vancouver.

  Alan hailed a cab to Victoria, and checked in at the Empress Hotel. The hotel was old and formal and luxurious, so Alan took Marie to a department store where they bought more formal clothes and a pair of suitcases.

  Marie said, “What are we doing next?”

  “Listening to Canadians talk. Looking at what they wear and buying some of it so all of our clothes will have the right labels. Making ourselves into the least likely people to be troublesome.”

  “So we’re killing time again?”

  “Not killing it. Just slowing down a bit while we get used to things.”

  He decided to stay at the Empress Hotel for five more days. They went to museums, shopped, and explored, always listening to the people around them. Most of Alan’s attention was devoted to assuring himself that nothing had changed. Nobody was following them, the Canadian police were not waiting for them when they returned to the Empress each afternoon, and their pictures had not begun to appear in newspapers or on television.

  On the fifth day, Alan went out alone for a while, and then returned with tickets for the Via Rail Canadian Snow Train.

  For the ten days of travel to Toronto, Marie listened and practiced. She studied other people on the train and in hotels, observing customs, mannerisms, inflections, and pronunciations. When they were alone he drilled her. Canadians used the metric system for temperatures and distances, but they expressed their height in feet and inches, their weight in pounds. When they bumped into you they said “soary” for “sorry.” Marie had a good ear, and soon she was repeating entire anecdotes that she’d heard Canadian women tell, pronouncing each word exactly as she’d heard it.

  When they arrived in Toronto, Spencer didn’t immediately take possession of his apartment. Instead he checked in to a hotel across the street. The apartment was at Yonge Street just south of Queen, and he spent a lot of time sitting near the Yonge Street window overlooking the apartment building and watching.

  Alan Spencer knew that if US military intelligence had discovered that he was the same man who had been Daniel Chase, Peter Caldwell, and Henry Dixon, they would have found the apartment on Yonge Street. The rent had always been paid by Weyburn Dynamics, an entity he had invented in the second year after he set up his American identities and begun to invest the twenty million dollars. His main hope of anonymity now was that the insularity he had given the identity of Alan Spencer would hide him.

  He had resisted the temptation to let any of his American identities blur into this one. He had never given Chase, Caldwell, or Dixon a financial interest in the Weyburn Company or had them serve on its fictitious board of directors.

  Alan Spencer and the Weyburn Company held no money in American banks, invested in no American corporations, and did no business in the United States. The money was invested broadly in Canada and in companies in various commonwealth nations and a few European ones. He owned stock in Canadian “hydro” producers, Canadian real estate, shopping malls, mining, lumber, oil. His investments had at first been intended as a series of ways of storing money that didn’t belong to him. Weyburn was essentially a lawyer’s office and a bank account that paid a few Canadian businesses to provide services—including filing Canadian taxes and financial reports, paying for the apartment, and providing the company with a mailing address in Toronto. His investments had done well, but not well enough to attract the attention of American business interests.

  Next Spencer began to watch the apartment through the windows of Toronto buses. He studied Yonge and Queen Streets as his bus passed the apartment building. The area was always bustling and full of traffic, and its sidewalks were crowded with pedestrians. The apartment was a few blocks north of Lake Ontario, and only a couple of blocks from the entertainment district, close to thousands of businesses in the glass skyscrapers that had grown up in the southern part of the city in the past twenty years.

  The apartment was on the ninth floor. He had chosen it in person about a dozen years ago, had the rent and services charged to Weyburn Dynamics, and made sure that only the company was listed as the tenant in the building’s records, and that the suite number was not on any directory. His lease included an in-house cleaning service that came in once a week to dust, vacuum, and clean the windows, but otherwise nobody entered.

  The glass of the large windows was opaque and reflective from outside. The building had a lobby where security people made visitors show identification before they could reach the elevators or the stairs.

  He went past on the bus at 6:00 a.m., noon, and 5:30 p.m. the first day. He took the bus the next day at 7:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., and 8:00 p.m. He took pictures through the bus windows with his cell phone. Each day he altered his schedule. He studied everything—possible observation posts in vehicles that were parked in this busy area too often, the presence of people who stayed on the street for too long. He walked the area at various times of the night. He found nothing that made him suspicious.

  On the fifth day at 6:00 a.m., Alan Spencer made his first entry into the apartment building. He signed in, showed one of the security men in the lobby his passport, rode the elevator to the second floor, and then went back down the staircase and watched the two security men through the small window in the stairwell door. Neither had picked up a telephone or left his post at the reception desk. He watched for five more minutes and then walked up to the second floor and took the elevator to the ninth.

  The apartment had not been altered since he’d last visited five years before. The three bedrooms,-three baths, kitchen, dining room, living room, conference room, and office all appeared the same. He made a quick tour and verified that the tables had been polished, the bed linens were fresh, and the windows cleaned. Then he began his work.

  Spencer removed each of the electrical socket covers, light switch covers, and light fixtures searching for bugs or cameras. He took the slipcovers partially off each piece of furniture. He examined each cupboard, took all the drawers out, and studied the insides and undersides of counters, tables, and desks. He opened the bottoms of telephone receivers and appliances. He examined the objects on shelves to see if they contained electronic devices. As afternoon arrived he took the grate off each vent, hood, or heating fixture. He took apart the smoke detectors, thermostats, and sound system speakers. He spent time opening the television set and cable box, looking for parts that didn’t belong. He found nothing in the apartment that was not as it should be.

  He walked through the apartment taking cell phone pictures of all the disarray, and then prepared to leave. He pulled and teased a bit of synthetic wool from the carpet to make some lint. He placed a bit of it on the tops of the doors to the bedrooms, the bathrooms, and the closets. He left a small battery-operated camera running under the front of the couch that faced the doorway.

  On the way out of the building he stood at the apartment doors beside his, below his, and above his to listen for sounds of occupancy. He heard television sets in three, classical music in one, and an angry couple quarreling in one. There was only one apartment door where he heard nothing. As he turned to leave he heard the ping of the elevator arriving down the hall, and walked toward the doors. The woman who emerged from the elevator was short and elderly. She smiled as he passed her in the hall.

  He pushed the elevator button to reopen the doors, stepped in, and then held the “door open” button. He listened until he heard an apartment door open. He waited a second, and then looked back. He saw the door of the apartment beside his swing shut. He let the elevator close and rode down to the lobby.

  He made his way back to his hotel across the street by taking a circuitou
s route that took him behind the hotel, around a block, and through the front door of a bar. He ordered a Macallan scotch over ice, drank it, and then left through the back door near the kitchen. There was nobody following him.

  When he entered their hotel room, Marie kissed him, and then pulled back to look at him. “I missed you. How did it go?”

  “Good so far,” he said.

  “I figured. You taste like single malt scotch.”

  “Sorry,” he said, pronouncing it as a Canadian.

  “No, it’s a good taste,” she said. “What time do you want to go down to dinner?”

  “Give me a half hour. I just need to shower and change.”

  She moved the tip of her tongue to her lips. “Maybe I’ll order one of those at dinner.”

  After three visits to the apartment he still found the bits of carpet lint had not been disturbed and the only image recorded on the hidden camera was his own. He reassembled everything he had dismantled. The next day he waited for the woman who did the cleaning in the apartment once a week. After she had been in the apartment for a few minutes he entered and found her at work cleaning the windows. That satisfied him that she was who she claimed to be. He decided that he and Marie could move in to the apartment.

  Two days after that, while Marie was out having her hair done, he began to refresh his Arabic.

  29

  By February Julian Carson was already a familiar sight in Craighead County, and particularly in Ruthie’s neighborhood in Jonesboro. He had taken a job at Arkansas State University in the Department of Chemistry and Physics ordering, issuing, and assembling various pieces of equipment for the laboratories. Ruthie had finally finished her nursing degree in January and was working in labor and delivery at St. Bernards Medical Center on East Jackson Avenue.

  Julian used most of his days off to help on the family farm. He was good at maintaining and fixing tools and machinery, and winter was the time when most of that work had to be done. Ruthie had grown up on a farm outside town too, so she was used to the work, and put in some off days with him.

  The wedding was scheduled for March, because all of April, May, June, and July had been spoken for by other couples, and they didn’t see much point in waiting. The church was free on March thirtieth, and so was the minister, so they took the date.

  When March thirtieth came, the Reverend Donald Monday presided. He had known Ruthie since she was baptized, but the Carsons didn’t make it to church, because they made the rounds of the farmers’ markets on Sunday mornings. Julian’s father had often said, “If everybody else went to church on Sunday mornings I would too, because there wouldn’t be anybody out to buy my vegetables.”

  Mr. Monday was not a strict minister, and he understood that people had to sell whatever they sold when other people were available to buy it. He was a scholarly and benevolent man.

  He tended to select the biblical texts for weddings that fell on the optimistic side. He favored leading off with Genesis 2:18–24: “It’s not good for man to be alone; I will make a suitable helper for him.” In keeping with science, religion, and personal experience, that led naturally to: “Be fruitful and multiply” from Genesis 1:28.

  Because he was a sincere admirer of good, strong women, the sort of woman Ruthie manifestly was, his thoughts turned to Proverbs 3:15, the virtuous wife. “She is more precious than rubies. And all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.” He wound it up with John 2:1–11, the story of Jesus at the wedding in Cana, where he turned water into wine and a good time was had by all.

  Mrs. Finlay, the church organist, accompanied the children’s choir, which Ruthie’s cousin Ayana directed. Nearly all of the relatives and a good number of the congregation turned out for Ruthie’s wedding, because that was the sort of place the town was.

  The wedding proceeded with the precision that Ruthie had hoped for. Her father was dead, so her uncle David the lawyer walked her down the aisle. Reverend Monday’s weddings tended to be smooth and practiced, without a false note or a hesitation. There were people sitting in the pews who would have caught a change in the wording the way a teenager would hear a change in a popular song’s lyrics. It had been said of Mr. Monday that he had you married and celebrating your third anniversary before you could stop to think.

  All seemed to go flawlessly through the last “I do” and Mr. Monday’s “I now pronounce you.” Then the bride and groom turned to each other in a brief but tender kiss, and then completed the turn to face the congregation. Among the many happy faces in the pews there were two faces that were not smiling. They belonged to Harper and Waters, who sat near the back of the church.

  Julian knew that they must have slipped in during the processional, while the voices of Ayana’s choir sang and Ruthie, resplendent in her wedding gown, had every eye on her, particularly Julian’s.

  Ruthie stiffened and tightened her grip on Julian’s arm. He whispered, “It’s okay. They don’t matter.”

  At the reception, Julian and Ruthie both watched for them, but Harper and Waters never reappeared. The Carsons left for their honeymoon in Sarasota that night, but the two men didn’t show up there either.

  Mr. and Mrs. Julian Carson stayed for a week in Sarasota, walked on the fine white sand beach and swam in the hotel pool because the Gulf wasn’t warm that week and seemed untamed to Ruthie. They ate at good restaurants and spent a great deal of time in their room. Julian woke each morning with the thought that life was very good.

  When they returned to Jonesboro, Julian entered the house alone, and found no sign that agents had been inside while they were away. “That’s the end of that,” said Julian. “If they had wanted to, they could have come in. But they didn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  He brought her inside, got a flashlight from a kitchen drawer, and led her to the bedroom. There was a jewelry box on Ruthie’s dresser with a smooth lacquer top. There was a very thin layer of flour that he had blown onto it from his palm, and when he moved her finger across it the finger left a mark. He showed her places on the hardwood floor near each of the doors where he had blown puffs off lour to make footprints show, and they were undisturbed. Nothing had been touched.

  Ruthie turned to him, smiled, and said, “I’ll never cheat on you, Julian.”

  He said, “Didn’t we just promise that in church?”

  “Yes, but this is practical. With all your tricks and traps you’d catch me.”

  “Keep believing that,” he said.

  She hugged him. “So they’re done, right? They’ll leave you alone now.”

  “I quit. I guess they’re convinced.”

  What Julian knew was that until the old man was found, his case would remain active. What it meant was that Julian was on a long leash, but it was still a leash.

  It was possible that the high-level people, the ones like Mr. Ross, Mr. Bailey, Mr. Prentiss, and whomever they reported to, suspected him of helping the old man escape. If so, they would be listening to Julian’s phone calls and reading his mail in case the old man tried to reach him. What they were doing beyond that was hard to know.

  Mr. Ross knew that Julian had talked with the old man in Chicago and in San Francisco. Did he suspect that Julian had warned the old man at Big Bear? Mr. Ross knew Julian wasn’t an enthusiastic member of the team. Julian had told Mr. Ross that he believed the old man had never intended to steal the money. And Julian had not hidden from Mr. Ross that he was quitting because of the hunt for the old man.

  Julian had confidence that the old man would be too smart to try to communicate with James Harriman, and he would have no way of knowing that James Harriman was Julian Carson, or where Julian Carson was.

  But Julian remained alert. Watching for military intelligence agents had become part of his daily routine, just one of the things he did. His long experience living in chaotic and dangerous countries made watchfulness a reflex.

  When he was driving he checked his rearview mirrors and noted each car behi
nd him and how long it stayed there. When he woke at night he would listen until he was sure that what had awakened him had not been a footstep or a tool moving in the keyway of a lock. He scanned every crowd for faces that were familiar and for faces that were not but seemed interested in him.

  About once a week he inspected the house to look for anything new plugged into an out-of-the way socket, any change in the configuration of the phone junction box or the circuit box. Each time, he would prepare a trap, a particular arrangement of objects on the workbench in the garage or on the seat of his truck that would show him if someone had touched it. He draped a length of black thread across the space between the side of his house and the fence about two feet from the ground, and checked regularly to see if it had been dislodged.

  He knew that there could be someone watching him at the university too. The old man would be just as likely to try to speak to him at work as at home, because at the university there were always people coming and going, and he might think he would not be noticed in a crowd.

  Julian studied people within the department—professors, secretaries, lab assistants, graduate students—trying to pick up a hint that one of them had agreed to help the government keep track of him. During his own intelligence work he had recruited civilians and used them that way. Often all it took was a little flattery. People liked to feel important.

  After a few months without another visit from the military intelligence people, he began to wonder if the old man was already dead. Maybe they had caught up with him and killed him on the spot or rendered him to Libya and Faris Hamzah. Maybe the whole operation was over and Julian’s penalty for quitting would be that he would never find out.

  30

  Alan Spencer looked at his watch. It was nearly six o’clock. He put down his glass of red tea and said in Libyan Arabic, “It’s been a pleasure to see you again. But now my wife will have returned home and be expecting me. Please excuse me.” He bowed to Abdul Othmani, and then to Mahmoud Tanzir, stood, and left the restaurant.