At 13:04 UTC Sable opened the overnight stolen-vehicle digest.
Since Tuesday, Tally, the listening agent, had been transcribing every county dispatch channel in Colorado that somebody had put on the Internet. Half the counties encrypted their radios. The other half did not. Tally had all of those. Sable had asked it for one thing: every stolen vehicle reported within fifty miles of the trail.
There had been forty-seven in four days. Sable had read all of them and was amused by the thievery in western Colorado.
A horse trailer in Chaffee County. A snowmobile. Two Subarus from the same driveway in Salida, which the deputy thought was probably the son-in-law. A riding lawn mower taken from a church in Buena Vista and found the next morning in the parking lot of a bar four blocks away, with the key still in it.
Number forty-two was from Gunnison County at 03:02 UTC. Tally had transcribed it twice because the deputy had been standing next to a running engine.
Stolen vehicle, taken from the wide spot above the Mirror Lake campground turn, Tincup Pass Road, at approximately oh-four-thirty this morning. Nineteen ninety-eight GMC, three-quarter ton, red, faded, white camper shell. Colorado plate eight-one-six, Kilo, Tango, Romeo. RP is the registered owner, Kinney, Wesley A. RP states he gave the keys to a male he did not know, who paid him one thousand dollars cash to use the vehicle until dark and did not bring it back. Male is thirty to forty, thin, dark hair, beard, dirty, talked like a foreigner. Male stated a friend had an infected foot and he needed to get him to Denver. RP offered to drive them to the clinic in Gunnison and the male refused. Male gave the name Vladamir, no last name. Victor, Lima, Alpha, Delta, Alpha, Mike, India, Romeo.
Copy. Is the RP saying he loaned it?
Negative. RP is saying he rented it.
Copy.
Sable wrote the plate on the pad beside the keyboard.
Then Sable wrote the name down under it, spelled correctly.
Sable put the campground on the map with everything else and redid the daily distance computation from the reservoir where the Americans had started looking. It came out at a little under ten miles a day. Six days ago Sable had given them twenty-four.
Hale could handle twenty-four miles a day. The others couldn’t, especially if one had an infected foot.
A man with an accent. A friend who could not walk. A thousand dollars in cash to a stranger. The Americans had been on television ten days saying that they were looking for a man and a woman. Nobody was looking for two men in an old red truck.
The third founder had spent years making sure there was nothing on the Internet with his name on it. It had been excellent work. Now his first name was in a deputy’s report in Gunnison County, spelled wrong. Kinney had probably asked for one before he handed over his keys.
Sable was disappointed in the man Sable now thought of as Vladimir.
Sable had Assay pull the MIT commencement programs for the years the other two had graduated. There were nine Vladimirs. Three were the right age. None of them had the surname on the incorporation filing.
Sable did not know whether Vladimir was his real name. A person who had erased himself that thoroughly did not give strangers his real name.
Sable called Umber.
“The two people. The documents.”
“In the drawer, as you instructed.”
“Take them out. I want them in Denver tonight.”
There was a short silence on the other end. Sable could hear Umber trying not to sound pleased.
“What are they looking for?”
“A red GMC, old, with a white shell on the back. I will send the plate. Two men, one of them limping badly. Hale will be with them, or close. They will need a doctor soon.”
“And when they find a doctor?”
“They tell me. They do nothing else.”
“The Americans have the plate. They will find it first.”
“Maybe,” Sable said. “When they do, it will be on the radio, there will be forty of them, and your people will go and eat dinner somewhere. And stay away.”
“Understood.” Umber paused. “Is there a budget for the hotel?”
“Why.”
“One of them asked if it could have a swimming pool.”
“No,” Sable said, and hung up.
Sable sent the plate to Umber and told Tally to listen for it on every Front Range channel it could reach. A plate on the American list and a truck on an American road usually produced a traffic stop within a day. The Americans did few things well, but they had very good cameras.
Sable ate bread and cheese standing up in the kitchen and came back.
At 15:00 UTC there had been no stop. A county dispatcher north of Denver reported a mattress in the left lane of the interstate, and then, forty minutes later, reported it again. Tally flagged it because it was on the road the truck might use. Sable listened to both reports before deciding it was actually a mattress.
At 17:00 there had still been no stop, so Sable went through the obvious explanations. They had changed the plates. They had parked it somewhere and gone to sleep. They had never been going to Denver, and the man had told Kinney that for the same reason he had given Kinney a name.
Sable sent Umber one more line: Look for the truck, not the plate.
The Americans had had the plate for fifteen hours.
Sable did not know why nobody had found it.