Page 106 of The Chain

She pulls her cap lower.

“This is a bad idea. Now they know who we are but we don’t know who they are,” Pete mutters.

Rachel nods. Her instincts have been to trust this person, although why should she? Pete’s paranoia would have been the safer default position.

But she is so desperately worried about Kylie. Every choice she has is a bad one. Action is bad. Inaction is bad. It is a classic zugzwang situation. You have parachuted into the minefield and there is no safe way out. Maybe this is how The Chain tests people, by sending someone out as bait for potential defectors? Any person in here could be The Chain’s agent. And now she and Pete are going to have to—

A large man wearing glasses shuffles over and sits down in the booth with them. “You took a hell of a risk coming here,” he says with a hint of an Eastern European accent. He holds out a large hairy paw. “I suppose I am the bold Theseus. You must be the brilliant Ariadne.”

“Yes,” Rachel says, shaking his hand.

He’s very tall, six five or six six, and he’s big too, somewhere between 275 and 300 pounds. He’s maybe in his early fifties. He still has most of his hair, which is long and straggly. His scruffy beard is turning gray. He’s wearing faded brown jeans, Converse sneakers, and a trench coat over a corduroy jacket and a T-shirt with an image of the cover ofZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He doesn’t seem like the diabolical mastermind behind The Chain. But you never can tell, can you? He’s holding what looks like a double Scotch or bourbon.

Pete offers his hand. “You come with her?” the man asks, shaking it.

Pete nods.

The man gives them a vulnerable, weak, rueful, scared kind of smile and swigs the remainder of his drink. “Well, you can’t have gotten guns or knives or nerve poison through security, but that’s only delaying the inevitable, isn’t it? If you’re from The Chain, you know who I am now, and I’m dead,” he says. “However, ifI’mfrom The Chain, I know who you are andyou’redead.”

“Would you really know us? How many people do you think have been through The Chain? It must be hundreds,” Pete says.

“You’re right. Hundreds. Maybe thousands; who knows? My point is that you’ll have a photograph of me by now and you can match it up against the database and have me killed as soon as I leave this airport. Just add me to the to-do list of whoever is currently on The Chain and they’ll kill me and my daughter. Anyone can be gotten to. You can kill presidents and kings and heirs apparent and pretty much anybody if you’re motivated enough.”

He takes off his glasses and sets them on the table. His hazel eyes are keen and intelligent and sad, Rachel thinks. And there’s a professorial or clerical air about them. They are, perhaps, a pair of hazel eyes to believe in.

“We’ll have to trust each other,” Rachel says.

“Why?” the man asks.

“Because you’ve got the look of someone who has gone through what I’ve gone through.”

The man examines her carefully and nods. “And you?” he asks Pete.

“I helped. At the end. I’m her ex-brother-in-law.”

“A military man, by the looks of it. I’m surprised they allowed that—or did you try to sneak that past them?”

“He’s retired, and they said that he was OK. I really had nobody else,” Rachel explains.

“The Chain is a cage always in search of the most vulnerable birds,” the man mutters, and he stops a passing waiter and orders another double bourbon.

“Either of you ever done any kriging or matrix programming or regression analysis?” he asks.

“Kriging?” Rachel asks, wondering what the hell he’s talking about.

“It’s a Gaussian-process regression. A tool for statistical analysis. No?”

Pete and Rachel shake their heads.

He taps the table number. “The number seventy-three means what to you?”

“John Hannah, offensive lineman for the Pats,” Pete says quickly.

“Gary Sanchez briefly wore number seventy-three when he first came up with the Yanks,” Rachel says.

The man shakes his head.

“What does it mean to you?” Rachel asks.

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