“‘Send it.’ You’re sure that’s what he said?”
“When you say it, I can see the movements of Allen’s mouth exactly. Now that I know what he said, it’s impossible to imagine that I didn’t pick up on it immediately.”
“But if it’s Reynolds these people are trying to keep the chip
from,” Stephen said slowly, articulating newborn thoughts, “then we’d be destroying any reason they would have to ransom Allen.”
“We have to weigh that with the possibility that Reynolds can help get Allen back if he knows the contents of the chip.”
They looked at each other. They were at an impasse, not a place you wanted to be when kidnappers had your brother, killers were on your tail, and some mad scientist was pointing a virus-cannon at your country.
Stephen ran his tongue over his lips. His mouth was so dry, it was like rubbing two sticks together. He took a sip of coffee, then said, “What do they expect us to do?”
“The people who took Allen? They expect us to sit tight, do nothing until they contact us.”
“Then let’s do the opposite. Let’s send Reynolds the contents.”
She smiled.
“And let’s go get Allen.”
The waitress approached with a tray of plates.
“To go, sorry, thanks,” Julia said. To Stephen, she said, “I’ll share with you.” She slid out of the booth.
He watched her in wonder.
“We have a plan now,” she said. “We can’t just sit around.”
“What’s our plan?”
“Share what we know with Kendrick and go get Allen.”
“Those are objectives, not a plan.”
“Oh, come on.” She held her hand out. “Gimme the keys. I want to see where they are. Can you get the food and pay?” She took a couple of steps, then turned back. “You’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.” He smiled, and she strode off. He guessed he was okay. It was either be okay or be useless—and he didn’t want to be that.
He had opened the driver’s door and leaned in to deposit the bag of food on the passenger’s seat when, from the rear seat, Julia spoke.
“We got a problem.”
“What?”
“They’re over the Atlantic, heading south.”
“Yeah?”
“A few hundred miles southeast of Nassau.”
“Heading for Cuba?” His mind tried to grasp the meaning of the jet’s leaving the United States. How would that hinder their pursuit?
“I don’t think Cuba. Haiti maybe. They’ve already flown outside the boundaries of the detailed maps hardwired into this laptop. Unless they sweep back into U.S. airspace, I’ll only be able to pinpoint the transmitter to the nearest city, but no better.”
“I’m not believing this,” he said. “We lost him?”
“Absolutely not. If we can get to within a hundred miles of wherever they take him, we can still track them down. Every activity leaves a trail, and I know how to find it and follow it.”
The road workers exited the restaurant, talking and laughing. Stephen climbed in and shut the door. He hitched an arm around his seat back, turning to address her.
“Foreign soil,” he said. “If the cards were stacked against us before, think how much more difficult getting to Allen will be in another country. Where would we go for help? The language barrier alone—”
“Stephen!” It was a verbal slap and quieted him as effectively as a palm upside the head. When she was sure he was listening, she said, “I’m telling you we can do this—we can find and rescue your brother. I don’t care if they take him to Antarctica.” As firm as her countenance had been, it somehow hardened even further. “We will get him back.”
She made him feel hope—insane and untenable maybe, but hope all the same.
He glanced away, at the men getting into a sedan across the parking lot, at the darkness of the night beyond. Did he believe her when he wasn’t pinned by her determined eyes? Incredibly, he did. He believed in his heart she could do what she said.
That’s all he needed.
He rolled his head in a muscle-stretching circle and let out a long, deep sigh. His heavy beard parted in a smile. “Have you ever thought of selling cars?”
“I’m pretty good at wrecking them.” She checked her watch. “Now get this thing moving. We’ve gotta get to Atlanta before the man we need to see gets too plastered to help us.”
seventy-one
The staccato pops of gunfire woke Allen from a fitful slumber. Before his eyes opened, pain from his shoulder and wrists welcomed him to consciousness. Nearby, a man spoke, something about a conference in Geneva. Music came on. One eye opened; the other was crusted shut. Light, shadows flickering over it. He remembered the plasma TV, rolled his head to see it. He forced open his other eye. A news commentator was replaced by a black-and-white western was replaced by a commercial for car wax was replaced by a televangelist … For a moment, he imagined that these images were not coming to him, but he was going to them: bouncing around through time and space, appearing and disappearing, a soul caught in the cosmic equivalent of a tornado. He wondered if the people he saw, saw him back, a flicker of a ghost, here and gone, swept off to the next sight and sound before surprise registered on the faces.
He experienced a sense of weightlessness as the plane bobbed gently over air currents and he swayed, handcuffed to the hook in the ceiling.
He swung his head the other direction. The cockpit door was open. Atropos sitting at the controls, seemingly staring at the stars beyond the glass.
He tried to think of something to say. He was thirsty. He had to use the restroom. He became aware of a cold pressure on his leg and crotch, the stench of ammonia, and realized he had already wet himself.
Explosions came from the television … canned laughter … A woman’s screams followed Allen back into unconsciousness.
Shadows tumbled in the gusty wind as Stephen waited for Julia outside a windowless tavern on one of downtown Atlanta’s rattier streets. He knew it must have been a trick of his eyes or faulty electrical currents that fed the anemic yellow light on the corner a half block away, but the illumination undulated intermittently, as though something unimaginable kept fluttering past—the spirit of despair or desperation, he thought, looking around.
On the other side of the street, outside another “lounge,” a loud argument escalated into a shoving contest. Stephen sighed, pushing his hands deeper into his pants pockets. Darkness shifted silently in a recessed doorway not far away. He had the uneasy feeling of being watched but had no desire to investigate. Instead, he turned away.
Staring at the streetlamp, trying to catch its flicker, he hoped she would hurry up. On the way over, she had explained that Sweaty Dave was an “identity broker,” someone who arranged the acquisition of false identity documents. He would gather the raw materials like signatures and photographs and send them to someone more specialized to turn into official-looking IDs.
Husbands wanting hassle-free relief from nagging wives or greedy exes; militants looking to distance themselves from governmental scrutiny; debtors desperate for a fresh start; but mostly, it was criminals on the run who made up Sweaty Dave’s client roster. They all thought they were buying a permanent escape from the mistakes of their past. But only one in ten succeeded in vanishing for good. The other nine eventually gave themselves away by slipping back into the grooves cut by their old habits and penchants.
Then again, some bad guys simply chose the wrong false-document handler, such as Sweaty Dave. The Bureau busted him several years ago, Julia explained, leading to a Faustian bargain for his freedom: he would continue his illicit brokering activities in exchange for timely tips on who was using his services. The Bureau would then wait months, even years, to collar certain fugitives, taking great pains to falsify the means of their detection. Sweaty Dave’s operation was simply too sweet to risk causing criminals to cast a suspicious eye at it.
Julia had said
she wasn’t worried about using an FBI informant. They needed the temporary ability to leave the country undetected, and by the time their patronage found its way to someone who mattered, they’d be long gone.
The tavern door behind him crashed open. Julia backed out, tugging on the arm of a man who obviously had no desire to be with her.
“Lady, you’re really starting to tick me off!” the guy yelled, craning his head back toward the dark refuge of the lounge. As soon as he cleared the door, a heavy spring started pulling the door shut.
Someone inside called out, “You tell ‘er, Sweaty!” and two or three people howled in laughter. The door slammed closed, cutting off the noise.
“Now look—!” the man said and swung around to face Julia. Instead, he flattened into Stephen. He took a shaky step back, eyeing Stephen up and down. He turned to Julia. “What’s this! You going to rough me up?” To Stephen: “Well, do it, big man. Whadda I care?” Defiantly, he pushed a greasy lock of black hair off his forehead.
Stephen rolled his eyes toward Julia, who made an exasperated expression and said, “Stephen, meet Sweaty Dave.”
The man glaring at Stephen had a severely bloated face: chipmunk cheeks, tennis ball chin—complete with fuzz—and rolls of fat on his forehead. Within this soft terrain, beady eyes sat too close together, molelike. His lips were fat and puckered, not unlike two wet worms writhing over each other. And indeed he was sweaty. A thin sheen of
moisture that looked more akin to oil than perspiration covered every inch of his pasty flesh. He was about five eight and as similar to the Pillsbury Doughboy as anyone Stephen had ever seen.
“Dave, can you help us?” Stephen asked, kind, composed. His tender manner appeared to soothe Sweaty Dave’s wrath. The identity broker’s shoulders slumped.
“This ain’t the way it’s done,” he said to Stephen. He turned to Julia. “This ain’t the way it’s done.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Two Gs before I even look at you again,” Sweaty Dave said, holding up his palm and actually turning his head away from them.
She nodded. After a quick scan for nearby predators, Stephen pulled a wad of cash from his back pocket. He quickly peeled away twenty hundred-dollar bills and set them into the man’s upturned hand.
Sweaty Dave pushed the cash into a front pocket of his jeans. Then he shoved past Julia and Stephen and shuffled away, mumbling. “Can’t even have a drink in peace anymore … I’m telling ya .. . Next time I’m not gonna be so nice …”
She raised her eyebrows at Stephen, and the two followed Sweaty Dave down the street. Before reaching the end of the block, he turned into a dark portico. Keys rattled. Posters of comic-book heroes covered the inside of the store’s display windows. A sign ran the width of the store above the door and window: Dave’s Comix Trove.
A bell jangled as Sweaty Dave pushed the door open and snapped on the lights. He called back, “Either of you comic-heads? The Dark Knight? Strangers in Paradise? The Sandman? Gone but not forgotten. Lock that behind you.”
Stephen pulled the door shut and thumbed a dead bolt. Piles of comic books rose like skyscrapers everywhere. With practiced agility, Sweaty Dave negotiated a narrow path toward the rear of the store. Julia followed, then Stephen, who had to walk sideways to avoid knocking over the piles.
Sweaty Dave stopped at a door on which someone had painted a horrendously bad rendition of Superman spreading open his shirt to reveal the S emblem underneath. He snatched a comic off a nearby pile and held it up to them. “Wolverine? Either of you a Wolvie fan?”
“Sorry,” she said.
Sweaty Dave shook his head, disgusted, and tossed the comic down. “‘Course, it’s gone downhill since Larry Hama stopped writing it, but—”
Stephen tuned him out.
They stepped into the back room. Here, too, stacks of comics rose from every surface. The room was indistinguishable from the storefront, except for an old wooden desk and a bookcase behind it, both buried under mounds of comic books. Stephen looked for something, anything, that would give away Sweaty Dave’s secret trade. Nothing did. He turned to see Sweaty Dave staring at him.
“Yes, you, tough guy,” Sweaty Dave said. He pointed to the bookcase.
Stephen stepped around the desk and noticed that the piles of comics to the left of the bookcase were about six inches away from the wall—just enough to slide the bookcase along the wall behind them. Sweaty Dave nodded, and Stephen leaned into the right side of the bookcase. It slid easily, revealing a hidden portal of pitch blackness.
“Light switch on the right,” said Sweaty Dave. “Think you can handle that?”
Stephen turned on the light and gasped at the room beyond. It was about twenty feet square and immaculate. White walls, aluminum countertops, an expensive-looking camera on a tripod facing a curtained wall. A huge bookcase dominated the opposite wall and was partitioned into hundreds of cubbyholes, each holding a stack of forms or documents or cards.
Sweaty Dave ushered them in. He stepped in front of the bookcase of forms, seeming to survey it with great pride. When he turned to face them, he was smiling. He clapped his hands together and said, “Now. What can I do you for?”
Two hours later, the two walked back to the van several blocks away.
“How many times did we sign our new names?” Stephen complained, shaking his right hand.
“Enough times to be able to duplicate it flawlessly, without hesitation. It didn’t take me so long.”
“Oh yeah. Jane Ivy. I got stuck with George Van Dorgenstien. I had the i and the e mixed up for the first twenty signatures.”
“It all has to do with matching your age and nationality to people with similar profiles who are already dead.”
“You mean there really is a George Van Dorgenstien?” He shivered.
“Was. He’s dead. Plus, it didn’t help that we needed a rush job. That meant we had to find a match among the birth certificates Sweaty already had on file.” She sounded beat.
They arrived at the van, and he opened the passenger’s door for her.
She climbed in, turned to him. “We have to be back here to pick up the new documents in”—she checked her Timex—“six hours.”
“Got it.” He walked around to the driver’s door. He started the car and pulled away from the curb, glad to be leaving the neighborhood, at least for a while. They traveled in silence.
Finally Stephen said, “You must be pretty whipped, huh?”
When she didn’t reply, he turned to see her slumped against the door. Her face was turned away, but in the fractured glow of passing streetlights, he could make out the slow rise and fall of her chest. A gray spot of fog appeared on the glass near her nose, then faded away before her soft breathing replaced it again, like a beacon quietly proclaiming her existence. Stephen supposed that even life-threatening excitement could stave off sleep for only so long.
“Sweet dreams,” he whispered and started looking for a place to hide the van and rest his own increasingly heavy eyes.
seventy-two
Allen’s head slammed painfully against the cage’s iron bars. A fresh ribbon of blood broke from his brow and ran into his eye. Ignoring the pain, he spun around to defend himself, only to find the cage door closed and the men who’d taken him from the plane walking away. He slumped against the back bars. Everything hurt: his shoulder throbbed; his face ached as though it had been used as a punching bag, which essentially it had; his throat felt raw; the other assorted aches in his legs, back, and arms were less severe but added up to a whole lot of misery.
He wiped the blood away and tried to look around. Spikes of pain pushed through the backs of his eyes—the one swollen shut, as well as the one he laughably thought of as his good eye. Rotating his neck instead of his eye produced a pulsing ache that was much more tolerable. He appeared to be in an animal cage, probably designed for a lion or tiger, judging by the size. Bars ran on all sides, including the floor. At about four feet tall, the cag
e discouraged standing altogether. The sky spanned from orange to blue, the colors of morning. Through his light Windbreaker, he rubbed his arms against a nip in the air.
He shifted into a slightly less uncomfortable position. To his right, close enough to touch, the corrugated metal of a Quonset hut arched up and out of sight. Directly ahead of him, past a red dirt runway, metal hangars, and an unkempt field, a tall chain-link-and-concertina fence seemed to mark the compound’s boundaries. Beyond it, a lush jungle rode steep green hills to a crest of red-rock cliffs. Around him lay more Quonsets and fields, one bearing a flagpole, bent and rusted.
He’d seen it all before; it was the old air base on the video he’d viewed on Julia’s computer. Somewhere was a labyrinth of hallways, made that much grungier looking by the proximity of sterile laboratories. Considering what else that memory chip revealed, this backwater arrangement of old barracks and hangars hid secrets that could very well affect the planet’s entire population.
The fragrances that hung in the humid atmosphere affirmed the vitality of the jungle on the other side of the fence. They were sweet and woodsy and wet. He could smell the earth, and it smelled somehow different from the earth of Tennessee, more ancient.
He noticed the birds now, their caws and calls, chirps and whistles. The musical sound reinforced Allen’s already overwhelmed sense of surrealism. He rested his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. Exhaustion and anxiety swirled like colored oils through his confused brain. Countless questions presented themselves—Is escape possible? What are Stephen and Julia doing? Are any of my injuries life-threatening or incapacitating if they remain untreated?— and were pushed aside by a mind too overworked to grapple with any of them.
Think! he admonished himself, but the word held no meaning. He repeated it until repeating it was all he could do.
He must have dozed off; he came sharply awake when something struck the cage. Crouched beside the cage, looking at him through the bars, was a man who appeared to be in his midfifties, handsome and regal looking despite his clothes. He was wearing a camouflage jumpsuit covered with pockets and a matching beret.
Germ Page 30