Chapter 18 - The Beacon Safehouse
The sun was climbing high into the autumn sky by the time the battered sedan turned off the interstate onto a winding, tree-lined dirt track high above the Hudson River near Beacon, New York.
The safe house here was nothing like the damp Victorian shingle cottage in Sandy Hook. It was a modernist stone-and-glass cabin built directly into the granite cliffside, surrounded by dense stands of scarlet-and-gold sugar maples that overlooked the breathtaking expanse of the Hudson Valley.
"Dr. Alistair Vance—no relation to our federal friend, thankfully," Dominic explained as he parked the car beneath a heavy timber carport. "He’s a retired professor of comparative legal history who spent forty years translating ancient maritime codes before the academic world decided he was too eccentric to publish."
The heavy oak front door swung open before we even reached the porch. A tall, white-haired man with thick-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses and a tweed jacket patched at the elbows stood in the doorway, holding a steaming mug of black coffee in one hand and an antique briar pipe in the other.
"Russo," the old man said, his voice dry and crackling like autumn leaves. "I heard on the morning shortwave radio that you were currently dodging federal interceptors in the New York harbor. I assumed you'd be sleeping with the striped bass by now."
"Good morning to you too, Alistair," Dominic replied with a faint, tired grin, ushering me past the threshold into a warm, sunlit room lined from floor to ceiling with thousands of heavy, leather-bound academic texts. "I brought a guest. She needs a secure terminal, a pot of strong black coffee, and a safe place to rewrite her doctoral defense."
Professor Alistair peered over the top of his glasses, fixing his sharp, intelligent blue eyes directly on me. He took a slow sip of his coffee, noting my mud-stained boots, my ruined apron, and the heavy cardstock check still clutched in my left hand.
"Ah," Alistair murmured, a knowing smile touching his lips. "A Columbia linguist caught in the gears of an international customs conspiracy. Let me guess—you found a syntax flaw in the 1954 Trieste Protocol amendments that the Eastern District U.S. Attorney’s office tried to weaponize for an illegal asset seizure."
May you like
I blinked in astonishment. "How did you—?"
"My dear child, I wrote the commentary on those amendments back in nineteen-eighty-two," Alistair interrupted, turning and walking toward a massive oak desk covered in stacks of manuscripts and an old-fashioned mechanical typewriter. "The federal government has been trying to exploit those loopholes for decades. Come in, sit by the fire. Let’s see what kind of mess you’ve gotten yourself into."
