“Right.” Miriam nodded, then shoved the piece of paper across the table at Brill. There was a pair of fifty-dollar bills and a train ticket concealed under it. “Here is what we’re going to do. In a minute, you’re going to stand up while he isn’t looking and walk to the other end of this carriage—behind you, over there, where the doors are. If—” she swallowed—“if things go wrong, don’t try anything heroic. Just get off the train as soon as it stops, hide in the crowd, make damn sure he doesn’t see you. There’ll be another train through in an hour. Your ticket is valid for travel on it, and you want to get off in Cambridge. Go out of the station, tell a cab driver you want to go to this address, and pay with one of these notes, the way you saw me do it. He’ll give you change. It’s a small house; the number is on the front of the door. Go up to it and tell the woman who lives there that I sent you and I’m in trouble. Then give her this.” Miriam pushed another piece of paper across the table at her. “After a day, tell Paulette to use the special number I gave her. That’s all. Think you can do that?”

Brill nodded mutely. “What are you going to do now?” she asked quietly.

Miriam took a deep breath. “I’m going to do what we in the trade refer to as a hostile interview,” she said. “What was his name, again?”

“Hello, Edsger. Don’t move. This would not be a good place to get help for a sucking chest wound.”

He tensed and she smiled, bright and feral, like a mongoose confronting a sleepy cobra.

“What—”

“Don’t move, I said. That includes your mouth. Not very good, is it, letting your mark turn on you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I think you do. And I think it’s slack of you, nodding off just because you’re on the iron road and no world-walkers can sneak up from behind.” She smiled wider, seeing his unnerved expression. “First, some ground rules. We are going to have a little conversation, then we will go our separate ways, and nobody will get hurt. But first, to make that possible, you will start by slowly bending forward and sliding that pistol of yours out into this shopping bag.”

The courier leaned forward. Miriam leaned with him, keeping her pistol jammed up against his ribs through her jacket. “Slowly,” she hissed.

“I’m slow.” He opened his jacket and slid a big Browning automatic out of the holster under his left armpit—two-fingered. Miriam tensed, but he followed through by dropping it into the open bag.