“Who?” Elliot asked.
“Ah, that’s right. I never did tell you Al’s name. Dr. Albaugh was one of my brightest graduate students at Columbia. A brilliant thesis on the differences between Austrian and Chicago School approaches to—oh, never mind. I was back at Park Avenue and Seventieth Street at six thirty, waiting there the next hour. How is it you didn’t see me?”
“I got back to our apartment by ten of six and cut over to Lexington after escaping through the fire exit on my way out. Must’ve passed within a block of you.”
Dr. Vreeland shook his head at the irony. “At seven thirty, after none of you had showed up, I returned up to our apartment and encountered two FBI agents. Probably the same two you saw.”
Elliot whistled. “Lucky they didn’t recognize you—disguised or not.”
“I took the offensive,” Elliot’s father said. “I told them I was a neighbor—a friend of the family’s—and wanted to know what exactly they were doing in what was now Cathryn Vreeland’s apartment.”
“And?”
“They said that they had been assigned to obtain an affida-184
Alongside Night
vit from your mother assuring the public that I had died naturally. That it was vital for national security that there be no trouble about me at last Thursday’s demonstrations. A good cover story, and essentially true.”
“I saw the article in Sunday’s paper,” Elliot said. He had a sudden, horrid thought. “You don’t think it took the FBI that long to—get—the statement from Mom?”
“I don’t think so. Your mother is a practical woman. She would have given the agents the statement they wanted so we could escape unhindered. Once safely out of the country, we could say what we liked anyway. Nonetheless, I have since learned a few data that explain what happened. The two agents had a second assignment: to take your mother, sister, and you into custody overnight—just long enough to make certain that you did not appear at the rally in my stead, but released in time to attend my funeral that afternoon. What evidently occurred is that sometime early Wednesday evening the Bureau learned that I was, in fact, alive—and decided to keep your mother and Denise to blackmail me with. Either I continued playing dead—or I would never see them again, one way or another.”
“But why wasn’t the statement in Thursday morning’s papers?”
Dr. Vreeland shrugged. “Confusion about how to counter my strategy, I suppose. I think I know why the statement was put in Sunday, though—to let me know that the very proof I had manufactured to convince the world that I was dead was to keep me that way. Again, one way or another.”
“But there’s no way they could do that. All you would have to do is come forward and accuse them of the kidnaping—”
“To be called an expertly coached impostor, created by the Administration’s enemies.”
“But with fingerprints—”
“Supplied by the FBI?” Dr. Vreeland asked. “The point is, by Alongside Night
185
the time I had managed to prove my identity—assuming I had managed to keep out of a solitary-confinement cell or a state insane asylum—the best witnesses—my immediate family—
would be dead.”
“Not as long as they didn’t have me.”
“But, you see, until a few minutes ago, I was convinced that they did. Though I don’t see how they could have known that on Saturday.”
“Well, anyway. What did you do after you left the agents at our apartment?”
“At about eight I drove back to Dave Albaugh’s bookstore, where I arranged for him to act as my inquiry agent, then at nine I came here and checked in.”
“That’s three times in one night that I managed to miss you by this much,” said Elliot, holding thumb and forefinger half an inch apart.
“What’s this?”
Elliot completed his account of that Wednesday evening—
his eight-thirty call to the Rabelais Bookstore and inability to reach Phillip Gross—ending up with his checking into the Hilton no more than ninety minutes after his father. “Next morning,” he continued, “I went back to the Rabelais and was told that Al had ‘gone south for the winter.’”
“Dave left temporary orders to evade questions. By the time you phoned, he had already locked up to begin initial inquiries for me, and he worked at it all night. If I’d had even the slightest inkling that you weren’t also in FBI custody, I could have left messages for you at the Rabelais and a dozen other places.”
“Well, never mind that now,” said Elliot. “What do we—”