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“Small world,” Canidy said to the monster fishmonger cabbie.
The fishmonger did not reply. He put the car in gear…then sniffed audibly and slightly cocked his head.
Canidy heard him grunt, and watched as he quickly rolled down the driver’s window and then the front passenger’s window—He’d do the back ones, too, Canidy thought, if he could reach them—before driving off.
It was almost two o’clock when the cab pulled up at 2 Lexington Avenue. Other than a couple walking up the sidewalk to the Gramercy Park Hotel—a man and a woman coming in late from some formal event, judging by their attire—there was no one else around.
Nor was there anyone in the lobby as he went through, nor at the front desk.
When he got to the elevator bank, the indicators showed the cars were all stopped on upper floors.
He pushed the call button, then considered taking the steps up. About the time he decided he was just too exhausted to do that, an empty car arrived and opened its doors.
In his suite, he found his uniform lying on his bed, cleaned and pressed.
He pulled the .45 from the small of his back and put it under a pillow on the bed.
Then he peeled off his fish-slimed clothes, stuck them in a bag, and considered what to do with them.
Nobody’s going to steal anything smelling this bad.
He went to the suite door, opened it, and put the bag in the hallway, looping its drawstring closure over the doorknob. Then he phoned the hotel operator and gave instructions that he needed the clothes he’d left outside his door back from the laundry service by eight o’clock, and he asked for a wake-up call.
I’ll put in a call to Donovan first thing. With any luck, I can have Eric Fulmar here by tomorrow afternoon, or at least before I meet with Nola on Monday.
He then took a hot shower, pulled on fresh boxers and a T-shirt, and crawled into the soft, king-sized bed.
Ann would like this bed, he thought, yawning and rolling onto his back. And I would like Ann in it….
[ ONE ]
Aboard the Red Rocket
Rock Island Train Number 507
Davis, Oklahoma
1215 6 March 1943
“We should be going to Amarillo instead,” Rolf Grossman said as he placed what looked like a very fat black cigar on the folding table of the Pullman compartment. “Strike while the iron is hot.”
The “cigar” was a five-hundred-gram stick of explosive wrapped tightly in a thin skin of black paper.
“Is that a good idea?” Rudolf Cremer said, watching him compulsively put together another pouch bomb. “On a moving train?”
Grossman glared at him.
“I know what I’m doing,” he said, then turned back to the table.
He put one of the acid-timed fuses—disguised to look like an ink pen—beside the explosive and its detonator, then
pulled from his suitcase a small black leather pouch. He attached the fuse and detonator to the explosive, tinkered with the pen timer, then carefully slipped the assembly into the pouch.
“Now we have a half kilo with a short fuse,” he said, clearly pleased with his work, “and another with a long fuse.”
With his history, Cremer thought, how the hell can he tell the difference?
“We have no need for either until we get to Kansas City,” Cremer said.
