Gone Tomorrow

came on us fast. I was in Texas, with Sansom. Raising money. We didn’t have time for proper deployment.”
    “Why didn’t the feds have someone on the train?”
    “They did. They had two people on the train. Two women. Undercover, borrowed from the FBI. Special Agents Rodriguez and Mbele. You blundered into the wrong car and rode with them all the way.”
    “They were good,” I said. And they were. The Hispanic woman, small, hot, tired, her supermarket bag wrapped around her wrist. The West African woman in the batik dress. “They were very good. But how did you all know she was going to take that train?”
    “We didn’t,” Springfield said. “It was a huge operation. A big scramble. We knew she was in a car. So we had people waiting at the tunnels. The idea was to follow her from there, to wherever she was going.”
    “Why wasn’t she arrested on the Pentagon steps?”
    “There was a short debate. Those feds won it. They wanted to roll up the whole chain in one go. And they might have.”
    “If I hadn’t screwed it up.”
    “You said it.”
    “She didn’t have the memory stick. So nothing was going to get rolled up anyway.”
    “She left the Pentagon with it, and it isn’t in her house or her car.”
    “You sure about that?”
    “Her house has been torn down to the slab and I could eat the largest remaining part of her car.”
    “How well did they search the subway train?”
    “Car number 7622 is still in the yards at 207th Street. They say it might take a month or more to rebuild.”
    “What the hell was on that memory stick?”
    Springfield didn’t answer.
    One of the captured phones in my pocket started to vibrate.

Chapter 62
    I pulled all three phones out of my pocket and laid them on the table. One of them was skittering around, an eighth of an inch at a time. Vigorous vibration. Its window said Restricted Call . I opened it up and put it to my ear and said, “Hello?”
    Lila Hoth asked, “Are you still in New York?”
    I said, “Yes.”
    “Are you near the Four Seasons?”
    I said, “Not very.”
    “Go there now. I left a package for you at the desk.”
    I asked, “When?”
    But the line went dead.
    I glanced at Springfield and said, “Wait here.” Then I hustled out to the lobby. Saw no retreating back heading for the door. The scene was tranquil. The greeter in the tail coat was standing idle. I walked to the desk and gave my name and asked if they were holding anything for me. A minute later I had an envelope in my hands. It had my name handwritten across the front in thick black letters. It had Lila Hoth’s name up in the top left corner, where the return address would be. I asked the desk clerk when it had been delivered. He said more than an hour ago.
    I asked, “Did you see who dropped it off?”
    “A foreign gentleman.”
    “Did you recognize him?”
    “No, sir.”
    The envelope was padded, about six inches by nine. It was light. It had something stiff in it. Round, and maybe five inches in diameter. I carried it back to the tea room and sat down again with Springfield. He said, “From the Hoths?”
    I nodded.
    He said, “It could be full of anthrax spores.”
    “Feels more like a CD,” I said.
    “Of what?”
    “Afghan folk music, maybe.”
    “I hope not,” he said. “I’ve heard Afghan folk music. At length and up close.”
    “You want me to wait to open it?”
    “Until when?”
    “Until you’re out of range.”
    “I’ll take the risk.”
    So I tore open the envelope and shook it. A single disc spilled out and made a plastic sound against the wood of the table.
    “A CD,” I said.
    “A DVD actually,” Springfield said.
    It was home-made. It was a blank disc manufactured by Memorex. The words Watch This had been written across the label side with a black permanent marker. Same handwriting as the envelope. Same pen. Lila Hoth’s handwriting and Lila Hoth’s pen, presumably.
    I said, “I don’t have a DVD player.”
    “So don’t watch it.”
    “I think I have to.”
    “What happened on the train?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You can play DVDs on a computer. Like people watch movies on their laptops on airplanes.”
    “I don’t have a computer.”
    “Hotels have computers.”
    “I don’t want to stay here.”
    “There are other hotels in the city.”
    “Where are you staying?”
    “The Sheraton. Where we were before.”
    So Springfield paid our tea-room bill with a platinum credit card and we walked from the Four Seasons to the