Watchers

number and street address were ascertained and verified. Even if Dilworth shouted a warning and hung up the instant he recognized one of the Cornells’ voices, it would be too late. The only way he could try to foil the NSA was by not answering his phone at all. But even that would do him no good because, after the sixth ring, every incoming call was being automatically “answered” by the NSA’s equipment, which opened the line and began tracing procedures.
    “The only thing could screw us now,” Lem said, “is if Dilworth gets to a phone we don’t have monitored and warns the Cornells not to call him.”
    “It’s not going to happen,” Cliff said. “We’re on him tight.”
    “I wish you wouldn’t say that,” Lem worried. As the wind got hold of it, a metal clip on a loose line clanged loudly off a spar, and the sound made Lem jump. “My dad always said the worst happens when you least expect it.”
    Cliff shook his head. “With all due respect, sir, the more I hear you quote your father, the more I think he must’ve been just about the gloomiest man who ever lived.”
    Looking around at the wallowing boats and wind-chopped water, feeling as if he was moving instead of standing still in a moving world, a little queasy, Lem said, “Yeah . . . my dad was a great guy in his way, but he was also . . . impossible.”
    Hank Gorner shouted, “Hey!” He was running along the dock from the
    Cheoy Lee where he and Cliff had been stationed all day. “I’ve just been on
    With the Guard cutter. They’re playing their searchlight over the Amazing
    Grace, intimidating a little, and they tell me they don’t see Dilworth. Just
    the woman.”
    Lem said, “But, Christ, he’s running the boat!”
    “No,” Gorner said. “There’s no lights in the Amazing Grace, but the Guard’s searchlight brightens up the whole thing, and they say the woman’s at the wheel.”
    “It’s all right. He’s just below deck,” Cliff said.
    “No,” Lem said as his heart started to pound. “He wouldn’t be below deck
    at a time like this. He’d be studying the cutter, deciding whether to keep going or turn back. He’s not on the Amazing Grace.”
    “But he has to be! He didn’t get off before she pulled out of the dock.”
    Lem stared out across the crystalline-clear harbor, toward the light near the end of the northern breakwater. “You said the damn boat swung out close to the north point, and it looked as if he was going north, but then he suddenly swung south.”
    “Shit,” Cliff said.
    “That’s where he dropped off,” Lem said. “Out by the point of the northern breakwater. Without a rubber boat. Swimming, by God.”
    “He’s too old for that crap,” Cliff protested.
    “Evidently not. He went around the other side, and he’s headed for a phone on one of the northern public beaches. We’ve got to stop him, and fast.”
    Cliff cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted the first names of the four agents who were positioned on other boats along the docks. His voice carried, echoing flatly off the water, in spite of the wind. Men came running, and even as Cliff’s shouts faded away across the harbor, Lem was sprinting for his car in the parking lot.
    The worst happens when you least expect it.
     
     
    As Travis was rinsing dinner dishes, Nora said, “Look at this.”
    He turned and saw that she was standing by Einstein’s food and water dishes. The water was gone, but half his dinner remained.
    She said, “When have you known him to leave a single scrap?”
    “Never.” Frowning, Travis wiped his hands on the kitchen towel. “The last few days . . . I’ve thought maybe he’s coming down with a cold or something, but he says he feels fine. And today he hasn’t been sneezing or coughing like he was.”
    They went into the living room, where the retriever was reading Black Beauty with the help of his page-turning machine.
    They knelt beside him, and he looked up, and Nora said, “Are you sick, Einstein?”
    The retriever barked once, softly: No.
    “Are you sure?”
    A quick wag of the tail: Yes.
    “You didn’t finish your dinner,” Travis said.
    The dog yawned elaborately.
    Nora said, “Are you telling us you’re a little tired?”
    Yes.
    “If you were feeling ill,” Travis said, “you’d let us know right away, wouldn’t you, fur face?”
    Yes.
    Nora insisted on examining Einstein’s eyes, mouth, and ears for obvious signs
    of infection, but at last she said, “Nothing. He seems