[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Mineola, on the north shore of Long Island at the tip of the Port Washington
peninsula. Mineola sounded solidly middle class; Sands Point, on the other
hand, apparently was the model for the town of East Egg in The Great Gatsby.
Fitzgerald s mansion was still there, I discovered, on Hoff-stots Lane, and
was currently for sale for $28 million. It seemed Accinelli had done well with
GPI. He certainly wasn t living in Sands Point on his military pension.
Manhattan made me think of Midori, living in Greenwich Village with our son,
Koichiro. He would be& about two and a half now. I d seen him only once, a year
earlier, and after Midori s betrayal I knew there was no way I could have
either of them in my life. A permanent gulf was best for all of us, even, much
as it saddened me to admit it, for Koichiro. I thought of him, of course, late
at night, when sleep wouldn t come, and the way he looked and felt the one
time I had held him in my arms. Sometimes I would open up a small vein of hope
about the far-off future, and imagine going to him, explaining who I was,
building a relationship, however uncertain, being part of his life. Those
tenuous hopes and fragile aspirations seemed ridiculous now, weak and naive in
equal measure, and I could have laughed at myself for ever having indulged
them.
Sands Point had its own website, which boasted that the community was entirely
residential: just eight hundred fifty families; a few houses of worship; a
primary and a secondary school; and unsurprisingly, a country club with an
eighteen-hole golf course. The country club was called the Village Club, and I
had a strong suspicion that Accinelli, an ethnic kid who had grown up on the
other side of the tracks in nearby Oyster Bay and then gone on to make
something of himself, would be a member. I checked the club s website. There
was no directory of members, but there was a collection of photos from a
recent New Year s Eve party, Accinelli prominent in several of them. An
attractive woman of about his age, whom I assumed was his wife, was on his arm
in all the photos. The people around them were well dressed, looked well fed,
and must certainly have been blessed by fortune. I made them as low-tax
Republicans and limousine liberals. Probably there was more to them than that,
but the shorthand would get me started as I determined how to invisibly
infiltrate their society.
I thought about posting the information to Kanezaki. The sooner he had the
name of the second target, the sooner he could apply the new data to the nexus
we were trying to build with Hilger, and, by extension, Dox. There wasn t an
obvious connection to the CIA, as there had been with Jannick, but& I hated the
thought of tipping off a government agency to an impending hit, even if the
tip-off was to someone with a good track record, like Kanezaki. It was just
too dangerous. I decided to play it by ear again. Worst case, I d tell him
immediately afterward, and find a way to placate him, as I had before.
Because I had accessed the bulletin board and then researched Accinelli from
computers in L.A., I had to assume Hilger might now be able to place me here.
I imagined how he would try to anticipate me, if that s what he wanted to do:
Page 74
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
He s coming from L.A. The most obvious airport would be LAX, but of course
there s Orange County, too, and Burbank. On the other end, JFK, La Guardia,
and Newark are all pretty much equally possible. I haven t given him much
time, so assume he goes straight to the airport after accessing the bulletin
board&
No. With a minimum of three airports on either side, the whole thing was too
unpredictable. He couldn t narrow it down enough to make it operational, not
unless he had a small army of people to rotate through all three possible
destination airports for surveillance of multiple incoming arrivals. Even so,
as always, I would assume the presence of a welcoming party, and use extra
caution leaving whatever airport I flew into.
I purged the nav system for a last time, input LAX as my next destination, and
returned the car at the airport. I caught a bus to the terminal, where I
discovered that United offered three red-eyes: two to JFK and another to
Newark. First class was sold out on the JFK-bound flights, but there was one
first-class seat left on the 10:30 to Newark. I bought a ticket, spent two
hours reading the latest Economist in the departure lounge, and slept for a
few hours before arriving in Newark at six-thirty the following morning.
I waited in the arrivals area with my carry-on after getting off the plane,
until the passengers from my flight had cleared out. Among the people who
remained, all presumably waiting for other flights, no one set off my radar,
but there was no way yet to be sure. I started walking toward the baggage
area, and no one followed me out. So far, so good.
I took the tram to another terminal and noted again I wasn t followed. If
someone was waiting for me, he was outside the terminal, not inside. That, or
they had enough manpower for a static approach. Regardless, there were a few
more things I could do to make sure.
I went to a pay phone and used the Yellow Pages to find a place called Image
Rent-A-Car that specialized in exotics. I was looking to rent a Mercedes for a
few days, I told them, the S Class. Did they have one I could pick up today?
Unfortunately, the Mercedes rentals were all out, the helpful gentleman on the
other end informed me. But they could have a navy 2006 BMW 750Li delivered to
me in most places in the tristate area in less than an hour four days, four
hundred free miles, seventeen hundred fifty dollars. I told him the BMW would
do, and that I d be happy to come to him, if he could give me an address.
I went outside, and the East Coast winter cold hit me immediately. I felt my
nostrils prickle, and a sudden wind cut right through the cashmere blazer I
was wearing. I wanted to hunch my shoulders and jam my hands in my pockets,
but didn t, in case I d missed something and needed to react quickly. I
scanned the area as I moved. There were people around, getting in and out of
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]