Amerikan Eagle (49 page)

It came to Sam like a flash of lightning from a cloudless sky. “Mr. President, there is one thing you could do for me.”

“Eh? What’s that?”

Sam took a breath. “Sir, my wife and son. They could use your help.”

“How’s that?”

“My wife, Sarah, and my little boy, Toby. They’re being kept at the internment facility at Camp Carpenter, outside of Manchester. They haven’t done anything wrong. They were picked up by mistake just before the summit. I’ve tried to get them out, but …”

Long pursed his lips. “Your wife, she didn’t do anything?”

“Mr. President, she’s just a school secretary. She’s the daughter of the city’s mayor. She’s a supporter of yours for years now, and my boy, he’s only eight. How could they be a threat?”

There was silence for a few moments, just the grumbling and rumbling of the steam engine. Sam could feel sweat trickling down his neck. Long stared at him. Then he nodded. “All right. You write down their names right there on that pad, and I’ll check it out, and maybe I can get ’em sprung.”

“Mr. President?”

“Eh?”

“Could you make it an official pardon? That way, my wife won’t have to be scared about being picked up again. You know how mistakes are made.”

Sam wondered if he had pushed too hard, if everything was threatened. But Long smiled and said, “That must be some wife, you’re so desperate to get her home. All right, a pardon. I guess you deserve that after what you did for me and your nation. But I need the names, and they need to be checked out. Now, if you don’t mind, Inspector …”

Sam didn’t mind. He took out his fountain pen, scrawled Sarah and Toby’s names on the notepad, hardly believing he had pulled it off. Long took it and headed to the far door, yelling out, “All right, you sons of bitches, I got one more piece of paperwork to take care of, and then let’s get this train goin’ the hell out of here!”

Sam went out the way he’d come in, and by the time his feet were back on the platform, the sharp shrill of the
train whistle cut through the afternoon air. The
Ferdinand Magellan
glided away, the President, and current dictator, of the United States safe and sound.

Sam looked again at the sheet-covered bodyguards, and he shuddered, thinking of the bloody mess on the tracks below. Reginald Hale, killed in a foreign land, trying to murder a foreign leader.

He knew he should feel remorse at what had happened, regret for the poor man’s wife, who had done so much in vain to free her husband. But as he walked down the bloodstained platform, he didn’t care.

His family was coming home.

He spent several hours in Marshal Hanson’s office, telling and retelling his story to Hanson, to the Secret Service, and even to a bandaged and angry Special Agent LaCouture of the FBI. And when it was over, LaCouture said to the Secret Service, “You heard what the man said about Hale and how he got here. I want arrests to start right away. We’ll start with that writer tenant of yours, that Tucker.”

Sam said, “Walter … he’s just a science professor, a pulp writer, that’s all.”

LaCouture touched the bandage across his broken nose and snarled, “The hell he is. He’s an accomplice to an assassination attempt.”

Hanson intervened, “Sam, you know that’s how it’s going to be. I know he’s your neighbor, but he’s got to be brought in.”

LaCouture glared at him and said, “Just be thankful I ain’t chargin’ you, too, Inspector.”

Sam said, “You know, Jack, your nose really looks good. It truly does. Do you want me to rearrange it again?”

LaCouture cursed and moved toward him, but Hanson and two Secret Service agents hauled him back, and Hanson said, “All right, all right. My inspector here has had a long day. I’m sure he can talk to you tomorrow if you’ve got any other questions. Okay?”

With that, the office emptied until it was just Hanson and Sam.

“Sam,” Hanson said, going back to his desk. “You did something magnificent today, something historical. You saved the President’s life.”

“Tell you the truth, I didn’t care about the President,” Sam said bitterly. “I cared about those poor bastards in Burdick and everywhere else. That’s what I was thinking.”

Hanson took off his glasses, polished them with a handkerchief. “If you say so. Look, you’re beat. Time for you to go home, take a few days off. Then you come back, and we’ll clear all this up.”

Sam was too tired to argue. “Sure. That sounds good.”

As he went to the door, Hanson called out, “One more thing—”

Sam turned and saw something flying at him. He caught it instinctively with one hand. He looked down at the thick black leather wallet, opened it up. The gold
shield of an inspector. Not the silver shield of an acting inspector.

“Congratulations, Sam,” Hanson said. “Now get the hell out of here.”

Sam clasped the wallet and shield tightly in his hand and tried to remember when this scrap of leather and metal had once meant so much.

At his desk, he picked up his coat draped over the chair, the sleeve still damaged where that cig boy had tried to cut him the other day. Poor sweet Sarah. Never did get around to mending that sleeve. By his typewriter was the day’s mail. One envelope stood out—from the state’s division of motor vehicles. He recalled the request he had made so many lifetimes ago. He tore open the envelope, read the listing inside of yellow Ramblers belonging to area residents of Portsmouth.

There was only one. He read and reread the name and decided it was time to go home.

* * *

He pulled the Packard into his driveway, and he saw lights on downstairs. Lots and lots of lights.

Sam leaped out of the car, raced up the front steps, and opened the door.

Sarah. His Sarah, standing there, his lovely Sarah, looking at him, staring at him.

It was wrong. Everything was wrong.

She was standing there, arms folded. Her face was pale and looked thinner. Her hair hadn’t been washed in a while, and her pale blue dress was stained and wrinkled.
Her silk stockings looked like they had runs, and her shoes were scuffed and soiled.

“Sarah,” he said.

There was a pause. “You got a haircut.”

“Yeah, you could say that,” he replied, knowing nothing could be said about Burdick, nothing at all; that secret was terrible to keep but too terrible to share.

A voice from the kitchen, sobbing. “Mommy, look at what happened to my models! They’re all smashed!”

Sam called out, “Toby! What’s wrong?”

His son ran in, holding a cardboard box in front of him, the smashed pieces of his models sticking out. Sam’s heart ached at seeing the tears on his boy’s face. He said, “Toby, look, I’m sorry, we’ll get you new ones.”

“But Dad, these are
mine
! We built them together!”

Looking at Sarah stiffly standing there, Sam said carefully, “Bad men came into the house, Toby. Bad men came in and broke your toys. But I promise you, we’ll either fix them or we’ll get new ones.”

“It won’t be the same! It won’t! Why didn’t you stop them, Daddy? Why didn’t you stop the bad men?”

“Toby, please …”

“You promised! You promised! I hate you! I
hate
you!”

“Toby, back to your room.” Sarah raised her voice, “Mommy needs to talk to Daddy.”

Still sobbing, Toby tore from the room, carrying the broken pieces with him, as Sam looked to his wife.

“How long have you been back?” he asked.
I hate you
, the little voice had shouted.
I hate you …

“Only a few minutes.”

“How did you get here?”

She said, “A Long’s Legionnaire who hadn’t taken a
bath in a month drove us back. We got home to this.” Sarah gestured to the broken furniture, the piles of books, the debris of what their life had been.

Sam said, “Long’s Legionnaires broke in, while I was away on the job.”

“And you didn’t have time to clean up so Toby and I didn’t have to look at this when we got home?”

He ran a hand over his hair. “The past couple of days, I haven’t had time to take a breath. I did the best I could.”

“So I’ve heard,” she said, lips pursed. “You saved the life of the Kingfish. Congratulations, I guess.”

Something dark flared inside him. “Not
guess
, Sarah. You should say
congratulations
. It’s because I saved Long that I was able to get you and Toby out. Nothing else was going to work. I saved his Cajun ass and in return, he got you and the boy out.”

“Sure, I understand.” Her eyes blazed at him. “Acting like a dictator or a Roman emperor dispensing favors because it suits him. I understand a lot. And I’m sorry about Tony, Sam. I truly am.” Tears glittered in her eyes, and she wiped at them and then refolded her arms.

He stared at her, wondering what was going on behind those sharp brown eyes, and then he heard himself saying, “Why did you do it, Sarah?”

“Do what?”

“You know what I mean,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “Why did you give yourself up to the FBI?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Toby and I got picked up while we were walking down one of the lake roads to a neighbor’s house.”

“That doesn’t make sense—you and Toby being picked
up like that, just walking along the road. Unless the FBI was following you, which I doubt. With the summit coming here, with all the resources being stretched out, I can’t see why the FBI would spare the agents to tail you almost a hundred miles away.”

She bit her lower lip again. Sam said, “But after I told you to get out of your dad’s place, you must have made a phone call. You surrendered to the FBI. You wanted to be arrested. Why?”

Sarah didn’t say a word.

He pressed on. “Doesn’t make sense. You giving yourself up to the FBI. Unless you did that on purpose so I’d be blackmailed and would have to cooperate with them when they were looking for my brother. Somebody wanted me to look for Tony. Somebody wanted Tony to be found.”

Her voice quavered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sarah … you can do so many things with ease and grace, from taking care of Toby when he has the flu to cooking a Sunday meal … but you can’t lie worth shit. And another thing—you lied to me when you said you didn’t know anyone who owned a yellow Rambler. But your friend from school, Mrs. Brownstein. The one who helped you with the Underground Railroad. Your mahjongg partner. She owns a yellow Rambler.”

“How am I supposed to know who drives what?” she said carelessly. “What difference does it make?”

“The difference is that a Rambler was used to slow down the train the night that body was dumped. Like it was a setup. And it was. Wasn’t it?”

Tears came back to her eyes, and Sam knew that the
woman in front of him, his wife, his lover, the mother of his child, the high school cheerleader he had wooed for such a delightful time, was a stranger.

“Who was he?” No reply.

“Tell me Sarah,” Sam went on. “The man on the train. Oh, I know his real name and where he was coming from. He had escaped from a camp in New Mexico. And what does he do? Does he go south to Mexico, to escape from America, or does he go west to California, where he can disappear in the crowds? No. He makes his way east, heading to the small port city of Portsmouth. Your friend slows the train down enough to jump off, and he ends up here, right? At the city’s Underground Railroad station. A station that—”

A memory, incomplete but coming clear.

“This station … your station … gets wanted people up north to Montreal,” Sam said. “That’s the whole point of why he came here. To get to Montreal. And up in Montreal this week is a delegation from the Soviet Union. Not in Vancouver, or Ottawa, the capitol. They were waiting for someone, weren’t they? Why was he so important?”

“Please …”

“Sarah, who was he?”

“I don’t know,” she said urgently. “All I know is that he had to get off that train, get in our basement, and then get out the next morning. He had to be in Montreal. He just had to be. But he was murdered.”

“And you didn’t tell me any of this that day you knew he was murdered?”

She said, “Not my place to tell you that.”

“Who killed him?”

“How the hell should I know?” she snapped.

“Because you know more than I ever imagined,” Sam said. “And you surrendered to the FBI, didn’t you? Betrayed me so I’d feel compelled to find Tony, to find him and set him up for his murder.”

“Sam …”

“Dammit, that’s what Tony told me just before he was murdered. That there was a grand plan and he and I were part of it. He knew all along he was on a suicide mission. He knew I would play my part as a cop, and you did your part as well.”

Then something seemed to slam in the back of his head. “You used Toby, didn’t you? My God, Sarah, you used our son!” Her face seemed set in granite. He had to catch his breath before he could go on. “Toby asked a lot of questions about spies. Told me he didn’t like getting in trouble but sometimes he had to. That’s right, had to. He was so scared he started wetting the bed. And when he got in trouble at school, he’d see the principal. Frank Kaminski. You know who his brother is. You used Toby as a courier, didn’t you, Sarah? To pass along messages to Kaminski. And I bet you told him to get into trouble on purpose so he’d be sent to the principal’s office.”

He kept looking at the woman he once thought had no surprises for him. “Who’s pulling the strings? Who’s ordering you?”

She stared at him with an expression he had never seen before.

It was disdain.

“Sam … Toby’s hero, so true and noble … and you can’t even see what’s going on right in your own house, can you, Sam? The Underground Railroad—you think that got in place by accident? Do you think thousands of
us, hell, tens of thousands, aren’t working day and night to defeat Long and crush Hitler? Do you?”

“Sarah—”

“Amateur revolutionaries, you called us. It’s always been the amateurs who made things right, who fought against the evil and the powerful. But we’re not amateurs, none of us, and we’re working with our brothers in Moscow, London, and yes, even Berlin, to set things right.”

He couldn’t believe what he was going to say next, but it was the only thing he could think of. “Who’s we?”