The Saboteurs (Men at War 5)

The idea was for each agent to buy two round-trip tickets to different destinations. They would give these—one for each destination—to Grossman and Cremer, who would travel on one and keep the other as an alternate route, a backup.

The reason Koch and Bayer and not Grossman and Cremer were buying the tickets was so that if someone should later try to retrace their path, there would be no one able to recall either agent having ever purchased a ticket or the destination of those tickets.

And there was enough speculation between them that they had already left a very clear trail.

Bayer navigated through the crowd. He noticed that Koch had gone to a line for a ticket window at one end of the semicircle. Bayer, accordingly, headed to a line at the opposite end.

Bayer’s line was shorter. He had only three people in front of him, including a young mother holding on her hip a toddler who didn’t want to be held.

Surprisingly, the line moved quickly, though, and after only ten or so minutes of Bayer being annoyed by the toddler at his feet he was at the window.

“Destination, sugar?” the young blonde woman behind the window asked pleasantly.

Bayer was caught off guard for a moment, surprised at how attractive she was. And that Southern accent seemed to drip with sweetness.

He smiled, but didn’t reply.

“Where you going?” she said.

“Birmingham,” he said, then remembered to add, “Round-trip.”

“Atlanta or Mobile?”

He looked blankly at her. “No,” he said after a moment. “Birmingham, please.”

“Atlanta or Mobile?” she repeated.

Bayer, staring, wondered if he couldn’t be heard over the din of the room.

The blonde rolled her eyes.

She said, “You have to connect to get to Birmingham, sugar. You can go to Mobile, then go north. Or you can go to Atlanta, then go west.”

Shit! Bayer thought. We went over this!

“Atlanta, please,” he said, trying not to appear nervous.

“That one departs in fifteen minutes or four hours. Is fifteen minutes a problem?”

He thought for a moment, then shook his head.

“Six dollars.”

“Six!” he said.

She gave him a big smile, a flash of bright white teeth.

“It’s the Orange Blossom Special, sugar. Real luxury. Air-conditioning and diesel power. You want cheaper, take the coal-fired train to Mobile.” She paused. “It departs in two hours.”

“No, no,” he said, “that’s fine.”

He pulled out his wallet and removed a ten and two singles.

“Two, please,” he said, putting the cash on the marble. “I’m with, uh, a friend.”

Her eyebrows went up for a second, then she reached into a drawer, came out with eight tickets—two for each of the round-trip’s four legs—then put four tickets each into two sleeves decorated with oranges and slid the sleeves toward him.

“Track 20. Y’all have a nice trip.”