The Ghost

because he thought—if anyone was watching—he thought it would look as though I was leaving the building carrying Adam Lang’s book?”
    “Why the hell would he do that?”
    “I don’t know. For the fun of it? To see what would happen?”
    “To see if you’d get mugged?”
    “Okay, all right, it sounds mad, but just think it through for a minute. Why are the publishers so paranoid about this manuscript? Even Quigley hasn’t been allowed to see it. Why won’t they let it out of America? Maybe it’s because they think someone over here is desperate to get hold of it.”
    “So?”
    “So perhaps Kroll was using me as bait—sort of a tethered goat—to test who was after it, find out how far they’d be willing to go.”
    Even as the words were leaving my mouth I knew I was sounding ridiculous.
    “But Lang’s book is a boring crock of shit!” said Rick. “The only people they want to keep it away from at this point are their shareholders! That’s why it’s under wraps.”
    I was starting to feel a fool. I would have let the subject go, but Rick was enjoying himself too much.
    “‘A tethered goat’!” I could have heard his shout of laughter from the other terminal even without the phone. “Let me get this straight. According to your theory, someone must have known Kroll was in town, known where he was Friday morning, known what he’d come to discuss—”
    “All right,” I said. “Let’s leave it.”
    “— known he might just give Lang’s manuscript to a new ghost, known who you were when you came out of the meeting, known where you lived. Because you said they were waiting for you, didn’t you? Wow. This must’ve been some operation. Too big for a newspaper. This must’ve been a government —”
    “Forget it,” I said, finally managing to cut him off. “You’d better catch your flight.”
    “Yeah, you’re right. Well, you have a safe trip. Get some sleep on the plane. You’re sounding weird. Let’s talk next week. And don’t worry about it.” He rang off.
    I stood there holding my silent phone. It was true. I was sounding weird. I went into the men’s room. The bruise where I’d been punched on Friday had ripened, turned black and purple, and was fringed with yellow, like some exploding supernova beamed back by the Hubble Telescope.
    A short time later they announced that the Boston flight was boarding, and once we were in the air my nerves steadied. I love that moment when a drab gray landscape flickers out of sight beneath you, and the plane tunnels up through the cloud to burst into the sunshine. Who can be depressed at ten thousand feet when the sun is shining and the other poor saps are still stuck on the ground? I had a drink. I watched a movie. I dozed for a while. But I must admit I also scoured that business-class cabin for every Sunday newspaper I could find, ignored the sports pages for once, and read all that had been written about Adam Lang and those four suspected terrorists.

    WE MADE OUR FINAL approach to Logan Airport at one in the afternoon, local time.
    As we came in low over Boston Harbor, the sun we had been chasing all day seemed to travel over the water alongside us, striking the downtown skyscrapers one after the other: erupting columns of white and blue, gold and silver, a fireworks display in glass and steel. O my America, I thought, my new-found-land—my land where the book market is five times the size of the United Kingdom’s—shine thy light on me! As I queued for immigration I was practically humming “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Even the guy from the Department of Homeland Security—embodying the rule that the folksier an institution’s name, the more Stalinist its function—couldn’t dent my optimism. He sat frowning behind his glass screen at the very notion of anyone flying three thousand miles to spend a month on Martha’s Vineyard in midwinter. When he discovered I was a writer he couldn’t have treated me with greater suspicion if I had been wearing an orange jumpsuit.
    “What kind of books you write?”
    “Autobiographies.”
    This obviously baffled him. He suspected mockery but wasn’t quite sure. “Autobiographies, huh? Don’t you have to be famous to do that?”
    “Not anymore.”
    He stared hard at me, then slowly shook his head, like a weary St. Peter at the pearly gates, confronted by yet another sinner trying to wheedle his way into paradise. “Not anymore,” he repeated, with an expression of infinite