18. Farrow #2
He exhaled once, slowly. “Okay.”
“Pack a bag. Eat at noon. The plant comes if Samuel can carry it. The rest stays here.”
“He’ll bring the plant.”
I smiled. “Yes, he will.”
Samuel was in the kitchen with Kohler when I went back down. He had a pan on the burner and was turning something onto a plate. He’d been listening at the head of the back stairs.
“How long do we have?” he asked.
“Eight hours. We need you ready to go with your bag and the plant.”
Kohler looked up from the table. “I have nothing to pack.”
“You have the sweater you came in,” Samuel said. “Reed will get you another. We’ll find you a coat that fits.”
Wiley set the plate in front of Kohler. “Eat this. You’re not allowed to lose weight on my watch.”
Samuel turned toward me. “Wiley?”
“He’s upstairs packing.”
“He won’t be packing. He’ll be sorting.”
At eleven, I checked the comm.
“Dane.”
“Salad course. She poured the wine herself. She’s been out of the room twice. Three minutes the first time. Two and a half the second. Both within parameters.”
“Eamon’s moving us tonight. Cambridge. Six p.m. Collins takes you and Cabot in from Woods Hole,” I said.
“He’s moving all three of them?”
“All three in the same vehicle.”
“That’s a hard target.”
“It’s the call Eamon made.”
Dane’s voice came through the comm at two-forty. “Coming out. Ferry at three-fifteen. Cabot’s quiet.”
“How quiet.”
“He hasn’t spoken since Eleanor walked us to the front hall. Maria put her hand on his shoulder when he left. He thanked her. Hasn’t said a word since.”
“Get him out. He’ll talk later.”
“Farrow, he has names.”
“How many?”
“Three. Two on the wedding. One on the catering rotation.”
“Read them.”
“Linnea Sorensen. She’s thirty-eight and has twelve years in the household. Daniel Costa. He’s a fifty-four-year-old houseman. He’s at the house every day. The third is Anneliese Voss, who is forty-two. She’s a catering coordinator for the South End event firm. She’ll be at the wedding.”
“Good work.”
“Maria put her hand on Cabot’s shoulder when he left. He says it stayed half a second longer than the other times she’d done it.”
I called Eamon.
“Got the names,” he said before I could speak. “Cabot sent them ninety seconds ago.”
“He works fast.”
“If they delivered the components today, the device gets assembled tomorrow or Monday. I’m betting on components. A finished device probably wouldn’t have come in through a service entrance in daylight.”
“Probably is doing a lot of work in that sentence.”
“It is. Federal will have the names by tonight. They will move on Sorensen and Voss Tuesday at oh-five-hundred. That’s the backstop.”
“What’s the play?”
“The road. Wherever they assemble it, they have to move it. Federal wants the device in transit, not on the property. Once it’s at Katama, taking it out signals the network and gives Maria room to trigger whatever she’s holding in reserve.”
“Tuesday’s late for the operatives.”
“Tuesday’s the earliest I can pull it without spooking Maria. If I move on her people before Tuesday, she’ll change the device location, the trigger window, or the operative roster. I need her holding the line until federal intercepts the device on the road.”
“And if federal misses the road?”
“Then we go to Plan B, grabbing the operatives Tuesday morning and Maria Wednesday morning before the ceremony. Cabot in the room when I tell Eleanor.”
He hung up.
The comm clicked again.
“Farrow, I shot Maria once from across the morning room. She knew I was raising the camera, and she didn’t move. She let the shutter go and turned her head a half-second after I lowered it.”
“That’s a person who isn’t afraid of being seen.”
“She has decided to be visible.”
Eamon entered the carriage house through the side door at five-thirty. The duffel bags were stacked at the foot of the stairs. Wiley’s box of files sat on top. Samuel’s fern was on the hall console. Kohler’s coat, a navy wool overcoat Reed gave him, was folded across the arm of a chair.
“Pereira’s at the head of the drive,” he said. “We leave at six. Pereira takes you, Wiley, Samuel, and Kohler straight in. Reed drives an empty SUV. Collins brings Cabot and Dane straight in from the Vineyard.”
Pereira was tall, with dark hair in a low knot and a black coat over jeans. She nodded once and got the bags loaded in three minutes. Kohler carried his own coat. Samuel carried the fern. Wiley carried the box of files himself and refused to let me take it.
I put my hand on Kohler’s shoulder.
“Cambridge. Forty minutes. Reed has water and almonds in the front car. There will be more in ours.”
A small breath. “You are going to feed me until I die.”
“That’s the plan.”
The sky had gone full dark. Pereira’s headlights were off, parking lights on. We were in the SUV in twenty seconds—Wiley up front, Samuel and Kohler in back with me between them, the fern on Kohler’s lap, and the box of files in the footwell at Wiley’s feet.
Wiley watched the house through the side mirror until the bend cut it off.
“Pereira.”
“Yes.”
“Just Wiley.”
“Wiley.”
“Thank you for the ride.”
I tapped the comm.
“Dane. In the car. Three principals intact. Plant intact.”
“We’re on the ferry. Brattle by seven.”
A black sedan came up behind us at the second light and held three lengths back for two blocks. It peeled off at Charlesgate. Pereira took the entrance ramp onto Storrow without changing speed.
The Charles opened on our left. Cambridge was a low scatter of lights across the river.
Samuel spoke quietly beside me. “Kohler. The fern is shaking.”
“It’s not the fern..”
Samuel put his hand over Kohler’s and left it there.
Pereira pulled into the driveway in Cambridge at six-twenty-six.
The Brattle house was a yellow Greek Revival behind a low iron fence. Reed’s SUV—the decoy—would come up Allston in twenty minutes. Collins’s vehicle, with Cabot and Dane, was an hour out.
Pereira killed the engine. “Out my side.”
We went in through the side door, into a mudroom, and then into the kitchen.
Samuel set the fern on the kitchen counter where the light from the window would reach it. He turned and pulled Wiley against him for a count of three.
Kohler stood in the kitchen doorway with his coat folded over his arm. “Where do I go?” he asked.
“Library, second on the right. There’s a fireplace.”
Wiley sat at the kitchen table. He put both hands flat on the wood and didn’t move them.
“Stanley?” he asked.
“Hour out. He’s quiet. Maria put her hand on his shoulder when he left. He’s coming in carrying that .”
Collins’s headlights came up Brattle at seven-twelve.
I was at the bay window. Wiley had moved to the library to sit with Kohler. Samuel was in the kitchen with something on the burner. The smell of garlic and butter wafted down the hall. None of us had eaten since noon.
Collins opened Cabot’s door first. He climbed out with his cable-knit and pressed trousers a little rumpled. He didn’t make eye contact when he walked through the door. He took his coat off and held it folded over his arm.
“Stanley, your coat.”
He looked at the coat in his hand as if he hadn’t realized he was still holding it. He hung it on the hall tree.
Dane walked in with the camera bag and the canvas jacket. He set them down on the bench in the front hall. Collins stayed outside to do a perimeter pass before coming inside.
I took Cabot to the small parlor and closed the door.
“Sit.”
He sat.
“Look at me.”
He looked. His eyes were unfocused at the edges.
“You walked into her kitchen this morning, and you sat at her table. You watched her for two hours and you came back with three names. That’s a successful job.”
“She put her hand on my shoulder.”
“As you said.”
“This time she let it stay one count longer. Farrow, tell me something positive.”
“Your three names. Federal moves Tuesday at oh-five-hundred. Wednesday, Maria will be in custody before the ceremony starts. Eleanor will find out who Maria was at six the next morning, sitting across a table from Eamon, with you in the room.”
“With me in the room?”
“ou’re the only person in Boston who can tell Eleanor what she just lost and make her believe it.”
He pressed both palms flat against his eyes for three breaths and took them away. His hands were steady.
“Okay.”
“Samuel is making dinner,” I said. “You’re going to eat it. Wiley and Kohler are in the library. You’re going to sit in there with them for thirty minutes before dinner and not talk about today.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not working tonight, Stanley.”
“Understood.”
I opened the door for him. Then I joined Dane in the small parlor.
I crossed the room and stopped beside him at the window.
Brattle was dark. A single sedan was parked across the street with no lights.
Collins had run the plate when he came in.
The widower in the brick house behind it didn’t drive after dark.
“We have four more days starting tomorrow,” Dane said. “We have three names, but we don’t have the device.”