The truth of the matter h-3

by Andrew Klavan

  The truth of the matter

  ( Homelanders - 3 )

  Andrew Klavan

  Andrew Klavan

  The truth of the matter

  PART I

  CHAPTER ONE

  Waterman

  The revolving door went around and suddenly there he was: Waterman. The one man who might know the answers; the one man who might clear my name. He stepped out of the black office tower. He stood for a moment in the gray light of the late autumn afternoon, buttoning his overcoat and eyeing the flurries of snow falling from the slate-colored sky. Then he moved off along the sidewalk, joining the crowds of city commuters and Christmas shoppers.

  I followed him.

  I had been sitting at the window counter in the Starbucks across the street. Nursing a strawberry-banana smoothie, watching Waterman’s building, waiting. Now, I drained my cup with a rattling pull at the straw and stood up. Quickly, I zipped up my black fleece against the cold and hurried outside. As Waterman moved away, I crossed the street and joined the crowd moving along behind him.

  For the first time since this nightmare began, I felt a small, dizzying thrill of hope, real hope that I might find my life again, find my way home again. Waterman was the only person I knew of who might be able to explain how a year of that life had vanished from my memory, how I’d gone to sleep one night in my own bed and woken up entangled with the terrorist Homelanders and wanted by the police for the murder of my best friend.

  I shouldered my way through the dense crowds, hanging back about half a block behind my man. Waterman was a tall guy, bald except for a fringe of silver hair. His bare head rose above the other people on the sidewalk. It was easy to keep him in sight as he hurried along.

  But even as my heart lifted in hope, it was racing in fear.

  New York City was like some kind of paranoid nightmare. Okay, probably not for everyone-but definitely for me. The skyscrapers and office buildings rocketing up out of the ground hemmed me in on all sides. They seemed to blot out the sky, leaving only a small strip of iron gray visible between the building tops above. Below, the avenue ran under the rising walls like a narrow canyon between towers of colorless stone. The people and cars pushing through that canyon were crushed together shoulder to shoulder, fender to fender, as if they were in some kind of steel-and-glass stampede. Horns were honking constantly. Sirens sounded every few minutes. Jackhammers stuttered loudly where workmen dug holes in the pavement. The noise was overwhelming.

  And everywhere-everywhere-there were faces and eyes. The faces and eyes of ordinary citizens on their way home from work or shopping. The faces and eyes of slinking, sullen, suspicious men who might be my enemies or just city thugs. The faces and eyes of policemen-policemen and more policemen-so many-standing on every corner, sitting in patrol cars parked at the curb, studying the crowds, watchful, alert.

  To someone else, maybe to anyone else, it might have all seemed exciting and dazzling and full of energy. But I knew that at any moment, any one of these thousand faces, any pair of those eyes, might turn toward me, might recognize me. At any moment, someone could point a finger and shout, “Look! That’s Charlie West! Get him!”

  Up ahead, Waterman turned the corner and vanished from my sight. Afraid of losing him, I pushed through the people around me more quickly, slipping between bodies padded with heavy overcoats and down jackets, brushing by briefcases and purses and shopping bags filled with wrapped boxes. I got to the corner and scanned the scene. There were fewer people on the side street and it was easy to spot Waterman as he hurried along.

  I hurried along behind him. One block, then another. As we moved farther and farther from the center of town, the crowds and traffic thinned. There were fewer and fewer people on the street, fewer cars. It became harder- then just about impossible-to hide myself in the crowd. I could only hope that Waterman wouldn’t turn around and see me. Even though I thought he held the secret to my missing year, I didn’t know if he was a friend or an enemy. I was afraid if I confronted him on the street, he would run away-or attack me or turn me in. I just didn’t know. I wanted to follow him for a while and see if I could find out more about him before I approached. I wanted to choose the time and place we met.

  It was late November, almost Thanksgiving. The stores were decked with Christmas decorations. There were elaborate displays in some of the windows. I hurried past a Victorian scene with miniature electronic skaters moving over a frozen lake, past a depiction of “The Night Before Christmas” with Santa’s sleigh landing on a rooftop. My eyes strayed over the animated figurines. For the first time, I dared to think that maybe I could be home for the holidays, back with my mother and father, back with my girlfriend Beth for our first Christmas together… or anyway, the first Christmas together that I could actually remember.

  I guess my mind sort of drifted as I was thinking about that, daydreaming about it. Because all at once, I came back to the present, I looked ahead of me-and Waterman was gone.

  I stopped dead. Desperately, I looked left and right. I was on a street of brownstones, quaint four-story apartment buildings pressed together in a long row, each with a stone stairway leading up to the front door. I scanned the stairways to see if Waterman was going up one of them. I scanned the doors to see if Waterman was going inside. He was nowhere.

  I started walking again, started walking faster, nearly running-rushing to get to the last place I’d seen him. I reached the spot on the sidewalk where he’d vanished.

  That’s when I saw the alley.

  It was a passage of concrete between two brick walls. It ended in a windowless wall of stone. The passage was too narrow for a car. There was nothing in it but a pair of trash cans.

  And Waterman. He was there too.

  He was standing very still near the alley’s end, his hands in his overcoat pocket. He was waiting there.

  He was waiting for me.

  I stared at him. I swallowed hard. I guess he’d known I was behind him all along. I guess he was the one who had chosen the place for us to meet.

  Well, there was nothing much I could do about it now. I could either speak to him or walk away. And after all this time searching for him, there was no chance I was going to walk away.

  My pulse pounding in my head, I started slowly down the alley. I went about halfway and stopped. I stood shivering, my breath frosting in front of me as it hit the cold air.

  “Hello, Charlie,” Waterman said. He had a soft southern twang to his voice.

  I had to swallow again before I could answer him. “You’re Mr. Waterman.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you know me. You know who I am.”

  He gave a brief, tight smile. “I know you, Charlie. I know who you are. And I know what’s happened to you. I can explain everything.”

  It would be impossible to describe what I felt then. A soaring sense of relief and hope. It was like a gigantic bird of some kind taking flight inside me. Was there really a chance I might be able to stop running, to stop being alone, to stop being afraid? Was there really a chance I could find my life again?

  “Tell me,” I said. My voice was hoarse. I could barely get the words out. “Tell me everything.”

  With another slight smile, Waterman shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not that easy.” He shifted his gaze, looking past me, looking behind me.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see what he was looking at. Another man had entered the alley. He was a heavyset man with broad shoulders and a belly that pressed against the front of his gray overcoat. He had an LA Dodgers baseball cap pulled down low over slickly handsome features: thick lips, a Roman nose, sunken eyes.

  Confused, I looked back at Waterman
, but Waterman went on looking at the man in the Dodgers cap.

  Then Waterman said: “Shoot him.”

  I spun around in time to see the man in the Dodgers cap lift a gun and point it at my chest. In the narrow alley there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

  The man pulled the trigger. I heard the gun whisper, saw the smoke, felt the impact in the center of my chest.

  And then I was falling and falling into utter blackness.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dreams and Whispers I was home again, a soft pillow under my head, warm and secure with the covers pulled up around my ears. I could hear my mother calling me from the foot of the stairs, telling me it was time for school…

  But I didn’t go to school. I was suddenly walking along Spring River in my hometown of Spring Hill. I was holding Beth’s hand. The leaves on the birch trees around us were orange and yellow against the white bark and the wind was stirring in them. Beth’s blue eyes were turned up to me. Her curling honey-brown hair moved at the edges of her smooth features as the wind blew. I looked at her and hurt with yearning. We had fallen in love during my trial for Alex’s murder. We had fallen in love… but I couldn’t remember it. I wanted desperately to remember. But it was part of that missing year.

  I felt a jolt and suddenly Beth was gone. The river was gone and so were the birch trees. Suddenly I was moving quickly and another guy’s face was moving quickly in front of me. Mike-Sensei Mike-my karate teacher. He was throwing blows at me, quick chops and punches, too fast to block. They hit me in the chest and the shoulder, jolting me again and again. Mike’s face was as it always was, long and lean with chiseled features under that neatly combed black hair he was so proud of and the big black mustache. But then he opened his mouth to speak-and the voice that came out wasn’t his. It was deep and rumbling with a British accent. Somehow I knew it was Winston Churchill’s voice, the voice of the man who was British prime minister during World War II. He spoke the words that Mike had taught me, the philosophy he’d taught me: “Never give in; never give in-never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force: never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

  I didn’t want to give in, but they were after me. I was in the woods. It was dark. It was pitch-black night. All around me, dogs were howling, sirens were sounding, footsteps were drawing near. It was the Homelanders. The Homelanders were coming for me. The Homelanders was a group run by Islamo-fascist terrorists from the Middle East. They hated… Well, they hated a lot of things. They hated our country. They hated the idea that people should be free to choose how they live, to choose what they believe. There were Americans among them too, homegrown traitors they’d recruited because it was easier for them to move around the country, to get at their targets. The Homelanders thought I was one of them, one of their American traitors. Only they thought I had betrayed them as well. So they were chasing me, closing in on me, and then…

  Then suddenly, bright lights blinded me. The night whirled red and blue. I wasn’t in the woods anymore. I was on a city street. The police were coming for me. Their cars were racing at me from every street, from every side. They thought I’d killed my best friend, Alex Hauser. I’d been put on trial for it, convicted of it. I’d been put in prison. I’d escaped.

  But I couldn’t remember any of that. It was like falling in love with Beth. Like falling into league with the Homelanders. It was all part of that missing year, that chunk of memory that had somehow disappeared.

  I felt another jolt-and now suddenly they had me. The police. I was captured. Under arrest. In handcuffs. Detective Rose-the man who’d arrested me for Alex’s murder, the man who was relentlessly hunting me still- was leading me to a patrol car that would take me back to prison. I was surrounded by state troopers. They were crowded around me, pressing in on every side. The open door of the patrol car was getting closer and closer. They were going to put me in the car and take me back to prison. But now a voice was whispering in my ear:

  You’re a better man than you know. Find Waterman.

  Find Waterman…

  Suddenly, with another jolt, my eyes came open. I was awake. My heart was pounding-and it pounded faster as I realized I was still in utter blackness.

  Am I dead?

  That was the first thought that went through my mind. But then there was another jolt. I bounced heavily and felt a throbbing ache in my head. Oh man, it hurt-it hurt like crazy. Well, at least I wasn’t dead anyway. Not with a headache like that!

  But then, where was I?

  I reached out and felt the space around me. Metal. Plastic. Some kind of padding material. Some kind of heavy insulated wires.

  I listened. An engine. Rushing wind. Highway noises…

  With a spurt of claustrophobic panic, it came to me: I was locked in the trunk of a moving car.

  My first instinct was to start pounding on the trunk lid, to start shouting, “Help! Let me out! Let me out!” Which would’ve been pretty dumb, I know. I mean, whoever put me in the trunk of a car probably hadn’t done it by accident. They probably weren’t walking around, thinking, Hey, what happened to Charlie? Gee, I hope we didn’t leave him in the trunk of the car! Obviously, they’d dumped me in here on purpose, and so if I started shouting, “Help! Help! Let me out!” they probably wouldn’t say, Oh, okay, sorry, we thought you liked it in there. All it would do was alert them that I was awake. So, like I say, screaming for help: dumb idea. And I knew it was a dumb idea. But still, let me tell you, in my fear and claustrophobia, the urge to start screaming anyway was almost overwhelming. I had to work hard to fight it down. I had to force myself to breathe slowly, deeply. I had to force myself to think. I thought: Okay, what’s my situation? How did I get here? What happened to me?

  Then I remembered: Waterman.

  I felt another jolt as the car went over a bump. I flinched as the pain lanced through my head like a jagged bolt of lightning. I winced. I thought: Ow! Then I thought: Waterman. Right. Waterman in the alley. And the man in the Dodgers cap. And the gun…

  The gun. The man in the Dodgers cap had shot me. Quickly, my hand went to my chest. I felt the bruise, the stinging pain under my fleece where the gunshot had hit me.

  But that’s all I felt. No dampness. No blood. Plus I was alive. Which meant I hadn’t been shot with a bullet. A bullet to that spot would’ve almost surely hit my heart, almost surely killed me, with plenty of blood to go around. Flinching at the pain in my head again, I realized: it wasn’t a bullet. It was a dart, a drug of some kind. The man in the Dodgers cap had fired a tranquilizer weapon at me. I’d been knocked out, but I was unhurt. I was alive.

  Okay. So that was my situation. On the plus side, I was alive. That definitely had to be counted as a positive. In terms of negatives: well, the whole locked-in-the-trunk-of-the-car thing. It was hard to find anything good to say about that.

  In fact, as I thought about it, I felt the panic and claustrophobia start to rise up in me again.

  Again, I forced myself to breathe deeply. Never give in, I told myself. Never, never, never, never.

  Feeling stiff and uncomfortable, I shifted in the small space. I discovered I had a little room to move. My eyes were adjusting to the darkness now too. I could see that I was facing the rear of the car. I struggled to turn around, to face the front, to see what else I could see. Moving like that redoubled my sense of claustrophobia. Made me feel like I was in a coffin, buried underground, left for dead. Not a pleasant feeling.

  All the same, I did manage to make the turn onto my back then onto my other side. When I finished, I could see the barrier between the trunk and the backseat. That gave me an idea. I struggled to get closer to the barrier. I managed to press my ear against it. I listened.

  Sure enough, I could hear what was going on inside the car. I could hear voices in there. At first, it was hard to make out the words through the barrier. The rumble of the car’s motion k
ept drowning them out too. But if I lay very still and kept my breathing shallow, I could hear some of what was being said.

  “We don’t have much choice. One way or another, we’ve got to act.”

  That last part came to me clearly. I was pretty sure it was Waterman speaking. I recognized the distinctive southern twang I’d heard in the alley.

  Somebody answered him, but the voice was muffled.

  Then Waterman said, “No. And it isn’t going to be pretty finding out. But I don’t see what other options we have. They’re close. Very close. We can’t just wait and hope for the best.”

  This time, the answering voice was clearer: “He may still be worth something to us as he is.” I guessed it was the guy in the Dodgers cap speaking.

  “It’s gone too far for that, Jim,” said Waterman. “As he is, he can only be a liability.”

  Again, there was an answer I couldn’t hear.

  I licked my dry lips, staring into the darkness of the car’s trunk. Were they talking about me? Were they deciding what to do with me? I thought they probably were.

  Then I heard Waterman say flatly, “Well, then we’ve got to get rid of him.”

  There was another jolt, another flash of pain through my skull.

  We’ve got to get rid of him.

  That didn’t sound good at all.

  Now I could feel the car changing direction, slowing. We were getting off the highway. I figured we must be approaching our destination. Was this the place where they were going to get rid of me?

  “I don’t know,” the second speaker-Jim-began. “Either way, I think we have some kind of responsibility-”

  “No,” said Waterman, cutting him off. “This was part of the deal. We knew it would be like this from the beginning.”

  After that, the voices stopped for a while. I shifted in the car again. I felt around me, trying to find some way to get the trunk open or maybe some weapon I might be able to use: a tire iron maybe. But there was nothing. The trunk’s latch was hidden inside the body of the car. And the only objects around me were those insulated wires, which I now realized were a pair of jumper cables. Not much help.