“What about where my mother is?” I asked. “You said they tried to kill her and failed, so she must be safe, or safer than here. I could go there.”
“Safer is a matter of time, for her,” said Elijah.
“Then how about another country?”
“A couple of years ago we could have got you out through Saint-Pierre,” said Elijah, “but the French have closed that down. And after the refugee riots England’s a no-go, Italy’s the same, Germany—the smaller European ones. None of them want trouble with Gilead. Not to mention outrage from their own people, the mood being what it is. Even New Zealand’s shut the door.”
“Some of them say they welcome woman fugitives from Gilead, but you wouldn’t last a day in most of them, you’d be sex-trafficked,” said Ada. “And forget South America, too many dictators. California’s hard to get into because of the war, and the Republic of Texas is nervous. They fought Gilead to a standstill, but they don’t want to be invaded. They’re avoiding provocations.”
“So I might as well give up because they’ll kill me sooner or later?” I didn’t really think that, but it’s how I felt right then.
“Oh no,” said Ada. “They don’t want to kill you.”
“Killing Baby Nicole would be a very bad look for them. They’ll want you in Gilead, alive and smiling,” said Elijah. “Though we no longer have any real way of knowing what they want.”
I thought about this. “You used to have a way?”
“Our source in Gilead,” said Ada.
“Someone in Gilead was helping you?” I asked.
“We don’t know who. They’d warn us of raids, tell us when a route was blocked, send us maps. The information’s always been accurate.”
“But they didn’t warn Melanie and Neil,” I said.
“They didn’t appear to have total access to the inner workings of the Eyes,” said Elijah. “So whoever they are, they aren’t top of the food chain. A lesser functionary, we are guessing. But risking their life.”
“Why would they?” I asked.
“No idea, but it’s not for money,” said Elijah.
According to Elijah, the source used microdots, which were an old technology—so old that Gilead hadn’t thought of looking for them. You made them with a special camera, and they were so small they were almost invisible: Neil had read them with a viewer fitted inside a fountain pen. Gilead was very thorough in its searches of anything crossing the border, but Mayday had used the Pearl Girls brochures as their courier system. “It was foolproof for a time,” Elijah said. “Our source would photograph the documents for Mayday and stick them on the Baby Nicole brochures. The Pearl Girls could be counted on to visit The Clothes Hound: Melanie was on their list of possible converts to the cause, since she always accepted the brochures. Neil had a microdot camera, so he’d glue the return messages onto the same brochures, and then Melanie would return them to the Pearl Girls. They had orders to take any extra brochures back to Gilead for use in other countries.”
“But the dots can’t work anymore,” said Ada. “Neil and Melanie are dead, Gilead found their camera. Now they’ve arrested everyone on the Upstate New York escape route. Bunch of Quakers, a few smugglers, two hunting guides. Stand by for a mass hanging.”
I was feeling more and more hopeless. Gilead had all the power. They’d killed Melanie and Neil, they would track down my unknown mother and kill her too, they would wipe out Mayday. They would get hold of me somehow and drag me into Gilead, where the women might as well be house cats and everyone was a religious maniac.
“What can we do?” I asked. “It sounds like there’s nothing.”
“I’m coming to that,” said Elijah. “As it turns out, there may be a chance. A faint hope, you could say.”
“Faint hopes are better than none,” said Ada.
The source had been promising to deliver a very big document cache to Mayday, said Elijah. Whatever this cache contained would blow Gilead sky-high, or so the source claimed. But he or she hadn’t finished assembling it before The Clothes Hound was robbed and the link was broken.
The source had contrived a fallback plan, however, which he or she had shared with Mayday several microdots ago. A young woman claiming to have been converted to the faith of Gilead by the Pearl Girls missionaries could enter Gilead easily—many had done so. And the best young woman to transfer the cache—indeed, the only young woman acceptable to the source—would be Baby Nicole. The source did not doubt that Mayday knew where she was.
The source had made it clear: no Baby Nicole, no document cache; and if no document cache, then Gilead would continue as it was. Mayday’s time would run out, and Melanie’s and Neil’s deaths would have been for nothing. Not to mention my mother’s life. But if Gilead were to crumble, it would all be different.
“Why only me?”
“The source was firm on that point. Said you’re the best chance. For one thing, if you get caught they won’t dare kill you. They’ve made too much of an icon out of Baby Nicole.”
“I can’t destroy Gilead,” I said. “I’m just a person.”
“Not alone, of course not,” said Elijah. “But you’d be transporting the ammunition.”
“I don’t think I can,” I said. “I couldn’t be a convert. They’d never believe me.”