A man with a cart came down the aisle and Lance asked for coffee and a tuna sandwich.

“I don’t recommend the tuna,” the man said.

“How about the cheese?”

“It’s safer.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Lance said.

The train wasn’t an express service, it stopped literally everywhere, but that was fine. It was one of those smaller stations he was headed for.

The file Roth sent for the gunman had an address in Trenton, New Jersey. A house in a quiet neighborhood called Chambersburg.

Lance doubted anyone was home but he would pay a visit all the same. It was a starting point. He knew Roth was right, that the trail would lead to Moscow, but he wanted to check all the stops along the way.

The file was surprisingly comprehensive. There was a photo, the address in Trenton, the name of the man’s handler in the GRU.

Lance couldn’t be sure if the civilian data was original or tied to an identity the man had assumed, but if it was accurate, the man was born in New York, was fifty-eight, and had served in the army. He’d been a lieutenant in the First Infantry Division during Operation Desert Storm. An army medical report said he’d been at Khamisiyah in Iraq when Saddam’s chemical weapons stockpiles were destroyed.

Lance flipped through the medical report. Complications followed the destruction of the chemical weapons. The man’s unit was sent in to destroy them with C-4 explosive and wasn’t given any kind of protective clothing for the job. The report contained hand drawings by men in the unit of the markings on the weapons. Lance recognized them as Iraqi military markings for munitions containing Sarin gas.

The entire unit got sick afterward, they couldn’t breathe and suffered uncontrollable muscle spasms. They had to be medevacked to an army hospital in Saudi Arabia, and from there to Germany. Some of them died in Germany, it was unclear how many, and there was talk of a lawsuit but it never materialized.

When the train arrived in Trenton, Lance got a cab to the address on the file. The place looked like a good, working class neighborhood, no different from a thousand others built in the sixties. The house was modest, but there was an expensive black town car parked in the driveway. Someone was sitting in the driver’s seat.

Lance got out and knocked on the window of the car.

“You the driver?” Lance said.

“Who’s asking?”

“Law enforcement.”

The driver raised his hands. “Hey, I don’t know what this guy’s mixed up in. I just go where I’m told.”

“You want to get out of here for a while? This might not be pretty.”

The driver didn’t need to be told twice. He turned the ignition and pulled out of the driveway.

Lance went to the door of the house and knocked on the window.