Gone Tomorrow

immediately applicable with a seated suspect on public transportation.
    Points three through six: irritability, sweating, tics, and nervous behavior. I was sweating, for sure, maybe a little more than the temperature and the jacket called for. I was feeling irritable too, maybe even a little more than usual. But I looked at myself hard in the glass and saw no tics. My eyes were steady and my face was composed. I saw no nervous behavior, either. But behavior is about external display. I was a little nervous inside. That was for damn sure.
    Point seven: breathing. I wasn’t panting. But I was prepared to accept that I was breathing a little harder and steadier than normal. Most of the time I am not aware of breathing at all. It just happens, automatically. An involuntary reflex, deep in the brain. But now I could feel a relentless in-through-the-nose, out-through-the-mouth rhythm. In, out, in, out. Like a machine. Like a man using equipment, underwater. I couldn’t slow it down. I wasn’t feeling much oxygen in the air. It was going in and coming out like an inert gas. Like argon or xenon. It wasn’t doing me any good at all.
    Point eight: a rigid forward stare. Check, but I excused myself because I was using it to assess all the other points. Or because it was a symbol of pure focus. Or concentration. Normally I would be gazing around, and not rigidly.
    Point nine: mumbled prayers. Not happening. I was still and silent. My mouth was closed and not moving at all. In fact my mouth was closed so hard my back teeth were hurting and the muscles in the corners of my jaw were standing out like golf balls.
    Point ten: a large bag. Not present.
    Point eleven: hands in the bag. Not relevant.
    Point twelve: a fresh shave. Hadn’t happened. I hadn’t shaved for days.
    So, six for twelve. I might or might not be a suicide bomber.
    And I might or might not be a suicide. I stared at my reflection and thought back to my first sight of Susan Mark: a woman heading for the end of her life, as surely and certainly as the train was heading for the end of the line .
    I took my elbows off my knees and sat back. I looked at my fellow passengers. Two men, one woman. Nothing special about any of them. The train rocked on south, with all its sounds. The rushing air, the clatter of expansion joints under the wheels, the scrape of the current collector, the whine of the motors, the squeals as the cars lurched one after the other through the long gentle curves. I looked back at myself in the dark window opposite and smiled.
    Me against them.
    Not the first time.
    And not the last.
    * * *
    I got out at 34th Street and stayed in the station. Just sat in the heat on a wooden bench and walked myself through my theories one more time. I replayed Lila Hoth’s history lesson from the days of the British Empire: When contemplating an offensive, the very first thing you must plan is your inevitable retreat . Had her superiors back home followed that excellent advice? I was betting not. For two reasons. First, fanaticism. Ideological organizations can’t afford rational considerations. Start thinking rationally, and the whole thing falls apart. And ideological organizations like to force their foot soldiers into no-way-out operations. To encourage persistence. The same way explosive belts are sewn together in back, not zippered or snapped.
    And second, a plan for retreat carried with it the seeds of its own destruction. Inevitably. A third or a fourth or a fifth bolt-hole bought or rented three months ago would show up in the city records. Just-in-case reservations at hotels would show up, too. Same-day reservations would show up. Six hundred agents were combing the streets. I guessed they would find nothing at all, because the planners back in the hills would have anticipated their moves. They would have known that all trails would be exhausted as soon as the scent was caught. They would have known that by definition the only safe destination is an unplanned destination.
    So now the Hoths were out in the cold. With their whole crew. Two women, thirteen men. They had quit their place on 58th Street and they were scuffling, and improvising, and crawling below the radar.
    Which was exactly where I lived. They were in my world.
    It takes one to find one.
    I came up from under the ground into Herald Square, which is where Sixth Avenue and Broadway and 34th Street all meet. By day it’s a zoo. Macy’s is there. At night it’s not deserted, but it’s