Joe Haldeman - Work Done for Hire

Maybe when I get to Maine I can pick up a flamethrower or a machine gun. Or maybe when I pull the snub-nose out of its policeman holster, they’ll all throw up their hands and surrender.

There were three computers in an alcove off the Union Station waiting room. Pretty shabby ones, keys yellowed with age and the grunge from thousands of random grimy fingers. I made a mental note to autoclave my hands when I was done, and used the Visa card as a key to the wonderful world of global communication.

Google Earth took ten seconds to show me an aerial view of a cottage with the address on Ring Road. At greatest magnification, the roof of the A-frame was a stark grey rectangle at the end of a brown dirt driveway off the “ring road” that circled the small island’s perimeter. I bought a print of that view and also a map of the island; folded them up and put them in the bag with the other incriminating stuff—carefully saved the foil and rolled it up inside the sling that hid it.

This part had to be done quickly: I took a cab to the JW Marriott Hotel and waited in line for two minutes. No one sidled up to me. I showed the clerk the reservation receipt from the glove compartment of the car, and he gave me the key to 1138. I declined help with my bag.

No one else in the elevator. I went up one floor and got out, re-wrapped my hand with the foil, then walked back down to the lobby and went outside to the taxi rank and said “Union Station.”

If they were able to follow me, well, we’d have our confrontation in a very public place. Not in room 1138.

Back at the station I found a place to sit with my back to a wall, and tried not to look too furtive while I killed a half hour with the Washington Post and watery coffee. When it was ten minutes to boarding time, I went toward the train. On the way, I stopped at the bookstore and looked for something that might keep me occupied for some hours. Thrillers were a little too close to real life, so I picked up a copy of Stranger in a Strange Land , which I’d read when I was too young. Maybe it would give me some tips for dealing with aliens. Assuming the bad guys were not citizens of the United States.

My seat was half occupied by a black gentleman who was sound asleep in the window seat, so I went on to the bar car, or “lounge,” where I would have wound up anyhow.

I got a beer and sat down at a table not too close or too far away from the security guard, a serious-looking woman in a grey uniform with a Glock in a fast-draw holster clamped to her thigh. Had she been trained to detect nervous amateur spies carrying little holsters clipped to their belts? Evidently not.

I studied the Post editorials long enough to be able to discuss global ocean trash issues or the current revolution in Somalia with her, but she didn’t come over.

The train was underground for some time, and then spent a few minutes speeding over the suburbs in elevated mode, and then slowed down to connect with the twentieth-century rails that served Amtrak through most of the northeastern corridor. Slowed down regularly for nineteenth-century curves.

After the Baltimore stop, I checked back in the coach and the black guy was gone; both those seats were empty. Clipped my ticket to the back of the seat in front of me and cranked back the seat; the train wouldn’t reach Boston for another seven hours.

A conductor woke me up when the train was approaching Boston, about ten at night. I got off and South Station was a huge quiet cavern full of places to eat, all closed.

A sleepwalking rent-a-cop directed me to a twenty-four-hour place a couple of blocks away, the South Side Diner, which was full of interesting people. I probably was not the only one carrying a gun, but nevertheless felt somewhat out of place, neither intoxicated nor obviously unwashed. Though I wanted a shower so much I might have used the gun to force my way into one.

I’m sure there were fine restaurants still open in some other part of town, but I only had an hour. I nibbled on a fried-egg sandwich, which seemed safe in all respects other than cardiac, and went back to the station to wait for the late train north.

I felt like a time traveler marooned in the twentieth century, or the nineteenth.

The small crowd waiting for the train was mostly old black or Hispanic people. The few who were white or prosperous-looking were absorbed in their readers or papers. How many of them had sought out this slow venue because they were also carrying guns? How many were not ? We were a fairly desperate-looking crowd, myself definitely included.

The gun was chafing my side, so I went into a men’s-room stall and returned it to the Amtrak bag. I doubted there would be a quick-draw situation on the Portland train.

A good thing, too. I was exhausted from travel, and once I got to Portland it would still be at least four hours to Bangor on the bus.

When I got to Bangor, what then? Daniel Craig and Sean Connery would always appear all fresh in their tuxedos, with plenty of weaponry and ammo tucked away somehow. I couldn’t visualize either with dark shadows under his eyes and his gun in an Amtrak bag.

At least I wouldn’t look dangerous. And I could put it back in the holster before I confidently kicked down the door.

It was not quite six in the morning when the squeal of the bus brakes woke me up at the bus station in Bangor. There wasn’t an actual station; it was just a Greyhound sign outside a coffee shop. It said 24 HOUR SERVICE, but didn’t look open; to be on the safe side I went to the back of the bus and used the noisome toilet there.

Good thing. The diner was locked, but when a church bell started tolling at six, a cab pulled up. He had a card on his dash that said BAR HARBOR AIRPORT $25. The window went down as another man and I approached.

It didn’t look like an actual cab. It didn’t have a meter that I could see.

“How much to Bass Harbor?” I said. That was where the ferry left for Swan’s Island. The other man said he had to be at the Bar Harbor airport right now and would pay fifty bucks.

The cabdriver, who looked like a sleepy high-school boy with a fake beard, said to the other guy, “Get in.” He checked a laminated card and said if I went along, he could drive me from the airport to the Bass Harbor ferry for $100.

I decided not to tell him that I’d have to pay with a dodgy credit card. We could work that out later. He read the other man’s credit card with an iPod attachment.

The ride alternated between quaint New England hamlets and beautiful dense pine forest, with some neatly planted potato fields and a few random acres of inexplicable desolation. Like a war had happened, but only went for a block or two.

I tried to ignore how my left hand felt. It was throbbing, baking under the foil cover—closer to braising, I suppose, than actual baking. Cooking with moisture. But I was too close to Kit and her captors to take it off and broadcast my presence.

The last record they would have of my little beeper would be when I had checked into the Washington Marriott. Of course, by now they might assume I was on the run and could be anywhere.

We got to the airport, a low brick building with a pretty tall hotel, in about twenty minutes. I got out and stretched while the other passenger collected his bags and ran for the plane.

“Mind if I sit up front?” I asked. “I’m about to die back there.” The backseat was broken and came forward at a little more than a right angle. That gave me an excuse.

“Come on up,” he said, and took my card as I got in.

The iPod read it and beeped. He frowned and tried it again, and it beeped again. “Mister…”

“Be calm,” I said, the .38 pointed at his midsection. “This is serious business. Government business.”