“I been thinking,” Green said, “sitting here, looking at you two, sorry I couldn’t do what you want. I been thinking, and what I do have, I have the people that I worked with already, I know everything about who they are now because I made them who they are now.”

Anne Marie said, “What about them?”

“Well,” Green said, “every once in a while, not often, somebody stops being who I made them for one reason or another, inheritance, a general amnesty, death of an enemy. People go back to being who they started out as, maybe temporary, maybe forever. Now, I never done this before, I never even thought of doing it, but those identities are already in place, and I can get back at them again.”

Kelp said, “You mean, we borrow them?”

“That’s exactly it,” Green said. “Now, you borrow, you could be borrowing trouble. I want you to know that. I’m not in touch with the people, just the identities, so for all I know somebody may suddenly have to go back to being Joe Blow all over again, and there you are, the cuckoo in his nest. The photo on his passport; you. The fingerprint on his top-secret clearance; yours. And who he gets mad at is you, not me, for hacking into his identity, and some of these people have no sense of humor at all.”

“I can see that,” Kelp said.

“Another possibility,” Green said, “as long as we’re considering what’s the worst that could happen here, somebody else maybe cracked the new identity. The actual guy’s gone back to who he used to be, and when the assassination team arrives, who they find is you.”

“Ugh,” Anne Marie said.

Kelp said, “What are the odds, do you think?”

“Small,” Green said, “or I wouldn’t make the offer. Very very small, but possible. Like what you were telling me before, no guarantees. But you only want the identity for a month or two.”

“Maybe even less,” Kelp said. “I hope even less.”

“I could see what I could do,” Green said. “But first I got to meet your three friends, and take their pictures, and do stuff like that. Would you all like to come up to Connecticut?”

“We prefer to stay in the five boroughs, if we can,” Kelp said. “But you’re the one doing the favor, so it’s up to you.”

“Come to think of it,” Green said, “I probably couldn’t fit all four of you in the trunk anyway. So could we think of a place here in town? I’d prefer someplace private within someplace public, if you could think of anything like that.”

“There’s a bar I happen to know,” Kelp said, “that I think you’ll like.”

19

“HERE IT COMES,” Mark said.

Os was driving today, even though Mark considered Os a bit too volatile to be a completely reliable driver in a tight spot. On the other hand, the little two-seater Porsche they were in, hiding behind its gleaming whiteness, actually belonged to Os, so Mark had only limited control over who would drive the beast.

At least they’d discussed strategy ahead of time, so that Os knew, the instant Mark said, in re the green Subaru station wagon, “Here it comes,” that he should drive forward away from the compound entrance, in the direction the Subaru always took, already moving off when the Subaru made its turn onto the road behind them.

This had been Mark’s idea; start out in front of the Subaru and then, at the first passing zone some three miles down the road, permit it to pass, so that the driver of that car would have no reason to suspect they were following him, not if he’d first seen them out in front. Mark was very pleased with himself for this clever bit of misdirection.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw the Subaru grow larger as it overtook them. But it seemed to him it was growing larger more slowly than it should. Their earlier sightings of the Subaru had suggested its driver liked to go fast, and so he did, but at the moment so did the Porsche, which was not the plan.

“Os,” Mark said, “we’re not in a race. You want him to pass, remember?”

“He’ll pass. We’re not there yet.”

Nevertheless, here came the passing zone, and Mark could see just how hard it was for Os to ease his foot on the accelerator, lose momentum, permit another human being to go on by him without a fight. Os’s teeth were clenched, his eyes fixed on the road so he wouldn’t even see that overtaking hunk of Japanese green, and it was Mark who watched the Subaru bustle by, its lantern-jawed driver just as intent as Os.

“That’s fine, then,” Mark said, and at the very end of the passing zone, with in fact a big brown United Parcel truck thundering toward them the other way, a second car rushed past them, crowding Os to get itself back into lane before it would become a hood ornament on the United Parcel truck. The United Parcel truck bawled its outrage, the second car weaved but then got control of itself, and off it hurried after the Subaru.

Mark stared at that second car, now receding. That mud-colored Taurus. “Os!” he cried, as outraged as the United Parcel driver. “It’s the union!”

“Well, goddamn them,” Os said. “Almost put me in the ditch.”

“Os, they had the same idea we had!”

“Looks that way.”

“But they didn’t tell us!”

Os, crowding up closer to the Taurus, said, “We didn’t tell them either, Mark.”

“It’s not the same thing. Os, don’t get so close.”

“I can’t see the Subaru.”

“Forget the Subaru,” Mark told him. “The union doesn’t know about this car, so they won’t recognize us. They’re following the Subaru. You follow them. That way, you can stay farther back, and nobody’s going to know we’re here.”

“Not bad,” Os agreed, and slacked off.

For the next twenty minutes, their little caravan roamed rural Pennsylvania, farmland, woods, the occasional dorp, the green Subaru to lead the way, the mud-colored Taurus not far behind, the gleaming white Porsche some considerable way to the rear. It was all beginning to get boring when the Taurus’s brake lights all of a sudden went on.

Mark sat up: “Something’s happening.”

“About time.”

The Taurus had slowed. Behind it, the Porsche slowed. Then, after a minute, the Taurus accelerated again, so the Porsche hurried to catch up.

Mark said, “What was that all about?”

“False alarm.”

Another fifteen minutes on the road, and they approached a town, and this time it was the right turn signal the Taurus began to flash. Os obediently slowed, slowed even more, and they watched the Taurus turn in at a diner’s parking lot, stop in a slot, and the three start to get out. The Subaru was nowhere in sight.

There was other traffic around them, light but insistent, so they had no choice but to drive on, Mark glaring furiously back at the diner parking lot, the three chunky men moving toward the entrance, gabbing together, obviously following nobody.

Mark turned his glare to the front. “What happened?” he demanded. “What happened?”

“We fucked up,” Os said, grimly looking at the road. They were deeper into the town now, with side streets, so Os took one.

Mark said, “We? We fucked up? How? All we did was follow them.”

“Wrong them,” Os said, and pulled to the curb. There was no traffic on this little residential street “We were following the union guys. What we were supposed to follow was the Subaru.”

“They were following the Subaru.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? Os, they almost cut you off in that passing zone, almost got themselves creamed by that truck. They were trying to catch up with the Subaru.”

“Maybe,” Os said.

“Stop saying maybe,” Mark told him. “They were following the Subaru. So what went wrong?”

Os didn’t have an answer for that, any more than Mark did, so they sat in broody silence a few minutes, and then Os said, “Brake lights.”

“Yes?”

“Their brake lights went on, back there somewhere,” Os said, and waved a hand generally at the world.