Page 155 of Hang on St. Christopher

“Walk,” he said.

“Where to?”

“We’re going down to the basement.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“You shouldn’t,” he said.

CHAPTER27

THE BASEMENT

I had no play. I walked downstairs and found that the door in the hallway leading to the cellar was open. I walked down the shaky wooden stairs into an unfinished basement: concrete floor, washer, dryer, boxes. He unfolded a garden chair and had me sit on it. He sat opposite.

He took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one.

“Smoke?” he asked.

“I’ve sort of given up.”

“No kidding?”

“Two years now.”

“I’ve been trying to give it up, but I can’t do it. What did you use? The patch? Gum?”

“Sheer tyranny of will,” I said.

He laughed and drew on the ciggie. He looked at my driver’s license, warrant card, and credit cards. None of it interested him. He knew who I was already.

“When did you make me?” I asked.

“On the very first morning you tailed me. What on earth possessed you to get a black Buick GNX?”

“I asked for a fast car and that’s what they suggested.”

“You stuck out like a sore thumb, man. I think they only ever made a couple of thousand of those things.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“You don’t do well when you’re not on your home turf, do you, Duffy?”

“I do okay.”

“The FBI practically deported you in ’eighty-two. What were you thinking coming back over here for anything more than a tourist jaunt?”

“I thought that was all water under the bridge.”

“No water under the bridge, Duffy. Whenyouenter the country, all sorts of alarm bells go off. I probably would have made you anyway even if you hadn’t been driving a black Buick GNX.”

I nodded. “Maybe I will take one of those cigarettes.”

He lit one and put it in my mouth, and I breathed in the gorgeous, comforting Virginia tobacco of a Marlboro red.

“Why Iceland?” I asked.

“I always go there when I go to Europe. Reykjavik Station is one of our hubs. I change passports there. And then usually again in London. Is that how you found me? The hotel? You went to every hotel in Reykjavik with my photograph from the airport?”

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