by Edward Es
Sid cringes and Bud starts to work up an apology, but it sticks in his throat. “How’s your dad, by the way?”
Stamp looks at the folder. “He’s about the same, thank you. Been getting around. Just not himself, though. He asked about you the other day.”
“I feel bad I haven’t been by. I’ve meant to—”
“That’s not what he asked about. He wanted to know if you were giving me any trouble lately.” Stamp looks at Sid, then at Bud. “I said no. You’re not going to make a liar out of me, are you?”
“I’m not here to make trouble for you.”
“He said to keep an eye on you.”
“Funny, last time I saw him he said the same about you. He said, ‘Watch Jonathan for me. Sometimes he doesn’t let his right hand know what his left hand’s doing.’”
Stamp looks at his right hand, top and bottom. “You want to tell me what’s on your mind?”
Bud taps the folder. “It’s your buddy, Holmes. I’m sure Herlihy filled you in.”
“My buddy?” the President asks with a sharp glance toward Sid. Sid rubs his eyes as Bud halfheartedly realizes he’s being a little too familiar. The President resumes his attempt at patience. “I’ve known Tom since MIT, and he’s been instrumental in my campaigns. I think I might resent the implication.”
Meyerkamp wobbles. “I’m sorry, Sir. It’s just that I’ve got serious evidence here that—”
“’The sonofabitch is building a rocket.’ I heard. You’re serious?”
Bud pulls a photo from the folder. “Look at this, right here.” He taps the picture hard. “There’s a canyon on his property and he’s got some kind of huge... thing over it. Won’t let anybody near it. Besides, look at all this.”
Stamp looks at the photograph as if it were blank. “Where’d you get this? Certainly isn’t LandSat. This is high altitude reconnaissance.”
Bud looks at Sid and everywhere but the President’s eyes. “It’s from an... a preexisting file.”
“Really? Then it must be pretty old. How do you consider it relevant?”
Bud thumps his fist on the desk. “Listen, I need to do a low pass and see what’s really there, but it’s under restricted airspace and ‘coincidentally’ the Major in charge won’t let me through. I don’t understand what’s going on here. Everybody and his grandmother’s out to protect this guy.”
Stamp stares at the fist so inappropriately resting on the platform from which the free world operates. “Tom built a children’s wing on the base hospital. Is it any wonder Major Halloran is a little reluctant to let a bunch of FBI through his airspace?” Again he looks at Sid, then Bud. “What do you want from me?”
“I want to go in there and take a look.”
“If Herlihy says there’s not enough to go on, then I defer to his judgment.”
Bud abandons all pretense of respect. “All right then, I’m sure there’s enough room in the pan for both of you. Him, I don’t mind seeing fry. You, I feel sorry for. I’ll be sure to tell your dad it’s not your left and right hands he should be worried about. It’s the First Cheeks. You’re liable to be parading them around if you continue to sweep this thing under your… Oval Carpet. For chrissake, you play golf with him, and now he’s Peter Pan and you’re Wendy.”
Sid steps between them, facing Bud. “I think you’re going too far this time, Bud. I don’t want to be associated with this kind of talk in this kind of place.”
Bud throws Sid a raging glance, but before he can say anything, the President pulls Sid aside. “This guy throws a nice block. You’re lucky to have him. Chapter one, paragraph one. ‘Get to know your enemy. Become one with him.’ Start showing a little empathy for Tom Holmes. You’ll not only get more cooperation from us, you might also do a better job.”
Bud pauses. “Maybe you’re right. But I could say the same about you. What makes all of you think he’s not capable of this? I can understand how he might be blinded by his pain. But why are you?”
Stamp catches his breath. “I tell you what. I’ll get the Major to let you fly over. Check back here in a few days. This is only because I’m concerned about Tom.”
Bud strikes quickly, a black, shark-eye look. “Tomorrow. I want to fly over tomorrow.” The President looks up at the ceiling, scratching his neck under his chin. Bud keeps pushing. “I have reason to believe there’s no time to waste, judging from his latest movements.”
President Stamp exercises his authority to give in. “Very well, tomorrow. But you make sure you check with the Attorney General or me before you take any other steps. Am I clear?”
“Thank you, Sir. Mr. President.”
“Oh, please. I’d love to dance, but you already stomped on my foot. Now get out of here.” The President shoos them away with his hand, winking at Sid. Bud heads for the door, but before they exit he throws the small printout on the floor.
“By the way, take a look at this. Peter Pan might be up for an FAA violation.”
Stamp eyes the paper at his feet as Bud walks out, leaving Sid to tidy up his behavior again. Sid picks up the printout and hands it to the President, then tries to thank him, quickly dismissed with another shoo of the hand.
In the hall outside the anteroom, Sid finds Bud waiting with his arms folded, a piercing stare worth a thousand four-letter words. Bud knows enough to respect him for what he said, though he’d never tell him, gesturing for Sid to walk ahead. Sid complies, looking back as Bud remarks, ”You know, speaking of cheeks, you’ve got a pretty decent pair. I suppose I shouldn’t kick ‘em.” Sid stops and Bud walks by him.
President Stamp mulls over the predicament, takes the phone in his hand, puts it down, and takes it again. “Margaret, put a call through to Major Halloran at Nellis.”
He hangs up the phone as hesitantly as he picked it up.
It’s a cold canyon day in Zion National Park, the wind whistling through skeleton trees long since stripped of foliage by an early winter. Patches of snow on the ground, starkly white against the red canyon sand, pulsate as cloud shadows move across. A red autumn leaf swirls in a small eddy in the Virgin River, continuing on to another as it moves downstream. Tom, crouching on a rock, watches.
He sees Zion on a boulder some ten yards upstream in attack position, wiggling his butt. Tom looks at his eyes, follows the focused stare, and spies a field mouse darting between rocks across the river. Though the river is only twelve feet wide at that point, it’s certainly beyond the leap of any cat, proving the show of hunting skill to be just that. Tom moves to get a better angle. Suddenly, a diamondback rattler strikes from behind a rock so fiercely that the mouse is wedged in its jaw from the sheer momentum. Zion jumps straight up and out of his fur, landing on the side of the rock and slipping one leg into the water before he regains his balance and streaks toward the bushes. Tom falls backward, hitting his tailbone hard enough to cause a biting discomfort. As mad as he is startled, he bolts up and rubs his hands, blurting out, “Damnit!” He brushes off his pants, then looks up and sees the snake still there, waiting, the mouse either dead or paralyzed. It makes eye contact with Tom, sizzles its rattles, and withdraws behind the rock. Tom stares, then looks away. Then he stares again and, realizing he’d been holding his breath, exhales, walking backward. Finally, he turns, breaking into a jog toward his Hummer parked up on the road. Zion darts past him.
An eagle glides high above the river, her mouse now the property of another. She tilts her head, watching Tom’s vehicle speed down a dirt road flanked by a block wall. The Hummer makes an abrupt left turn into a guard gate and a barrier arm raises as the eagle continues upriver.
Tom skids across parking spaces in front of an imposing corrugated-aluminum structure that houses, evidenced by the ten-foot high logo on the side: Marshall’s Bread- “There’s Nothing Like It”. Tom slides down from the driver’s seat, cat hanging from one arm, carrying the box from Cardona under
the other. He kicks the car door so hard it comes open again and, paying no mind, shoulders through a small door cut into the receiving bay doors.
Tom crosses the expansive warehouse floor, empty but for a pile of pallets stacked in the corner near a lonely forklift. Offices on the far side look out to the warehouse through a long bank of curtained windows.
Dr. Kirshner peers through half-closed curtains and sees Tom walking toward the offices. He quickly puts out the cigarette he was smoking and shoves the ashtray into a drawer, then picks up a can of scented spray, covering his smoke tracks as he fans the air. He ends up throwing the can in the drawer with the ashtray, just in time as Tom explodes through the door. The Doctor sits a little too casually on a desk while Tom looks around and Zion sniffs the air.
“Smells like a lemon grove’s on fire.”
He drops Zion onto the desk, prompting Kirshner to pull a handkerchief from his back pocket and sneeze heartily into it. Kirshner over-rubs his nose. “That darn cat.” The Doctor sneezes again, eyeing Zion as he paws at the secret drawer. “Why do you bring this cat here when you know it makes me sick?”
“As far as I know, Doc, no one ever got emphysema, cancer, or heart disease from a cat.”
Kirshner ignores the lecture and takes the box from Tom, pulling out the valve. He turns it over and looks into it with the eyepiece that lives around his neck. “Excellent work. Louis has outdone himself. With any luck, we should have this in and running in a week.”
“I want it in tonight.”
Kirshner dribbles out a nervous laugh. “Tonight? That’s impossible. Why, everyone’s gone home, and even so—” The Doctor knows this look all too well. He puts the box down. “Is something wrong?”
“Suppose you tell me.”
Kirshner walks to the window and looks out. “We’ve got trouble. All of a sudden, people are asking questions, wanting to come on the property.”
“People?”
“FBI, although they won’t admit it. I’m sure it was FBI that stopped me at the market.”
“At the market?”
“They’re everywhere, Thomas. This one walked up to me right in front of the bananas. He said he knew what was going on. That I’d be smart if I quit before it was too late.”
“And?”
“I put down my bananas and swore I’d never eat one again.” Tom laughs as Kirshner reels around. “This is no laughing matter.”
“How soon can we go?”
The Doctor parts the curtains again to look at nothing. He turns back to Tom, hoping he’s not hearing what he’s hearing. “When we started this project, you told me you’d never take chances. You said, in the end, we would probably never go.”
“I lied. When can we go?”
“I just don’t think—” Tom repeats the look. There’s always been an unspoken understanding between them, loyalty born of similar experiences with darkness.
“Werner, I’d threaten you, but since you once told Hitler to goosestep to hell, I doubt it would do any good. You’ve known all along I was serious.”
The Doctor’s response sounds childlike in its resignation. “Two weeks at the earliest. If I start with this valve tomorrow, run some tests, maybe two weeks.”
“When’s the next window?”
“You can’t be serious. I don’t know. I...” It’s no use fighting. He drags himself to a computer terminal where Zion sits on top of the monitor, tail dangling in front of the screen. Kirshner sneezes again, scaring the cat across the room, and impatiently pulls up a graphics program: spheres with tracks arcing to and from one another.
“Well,” trying not to be heard, “there’s one tomorrow.” Speaking with contorted enthusiasm, he says, “Here’s one in eighteen days.”
Tom grabs Zion by the midsection, walks across the office, and opens the door. He turns and declares, “Put the valve in tonight. Skip the tests, and put everybody on alert.” Kirshner is too stunned to retort as Tom pulls the door closed behind his exit. He peers through the curtains as Tom disappears through the door at the other end of the warehouse floor, sneezes one last time, and slams the curtains closed.
The Holmes mansion is a daunting structure, extracted from the same matter as the spectacular cliffs that surround it. The colors, textures, and substance of the land were coalesced into a dwelling which, though dwarfed by the majesty of Zion Canyon, holds its own compared to Tom’s Hummer, which looks like a toy car as it approaches, winding up the switchback driveway that scales the butte upon which the home was built.
Towers jut up in no particular symmetry, giving the impression of a village built upon itself. Irregular levels suggest it was erected on a hillside, as was the custom of the Anasasi that settled the canyon thousands of years before, though it rests on level ground. Tom has erected a palace, a monument to the previous inhabitants of the fifteen thousand acres he calls home.
A setting Sun sprays shadows up the canyon, those from distant cliffs cast subtly, feather-like. The house, instead, casts a severe pattern, a shadow like crooked teeth across the curving riverbed below. Tom parks the dust-covered Hummer a few feet from the front door, a full story of roughly carved cedar, and walks toward it. Zion bounds ahead and enters before him through a cat door cut into one of the door panels.
The foyer alone is as large and elegant as a New Mexican townhome. Skylights in ceilings of staggered heights send shafts of light cutting across walls of delicate pink plaster and antique Navajo wall hangings. Tom stops to look in a mirror, straightening his hair and brushing dirt off his pants onto the red Saltillo floor. Hanging next to the mirror is a chrome-framed poster, a caricature in sparse black ink strokes of a woman seated at a piano, her long hair covering one eye. In bold, cursive print underneath: Isabel Flore- A Sampling of Bach- Lincoln Center- January 11. Tom stares at her.
Rosalee, his housekeeper and surrogate mother, a full-blooded Paiute of sixty-six, hurries in carrying Zion in her arms. “Mr. Tom! Where have you been? We expected you hours ago,” she exclaims as Tom hugs her, sensing her agitation.
“Rosalee, when I see your beautiful face, ‘I feel the stars shining on my back.’”
“You speak the words of my father,” Rosalee says with a mild blush. Tom finds rest in her embrace, finally holding her at arm’s length. “Isabel, she has been waiting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so upset.” Tom’s brief smile falls. “Is there trouble?” Rosalee asks.
“Where is she?”
“In the Cantina.” Tom kisses her forehead and walks away. She watches him with a look of pity and fear, sensing what she knows nothing about.
A portion of the Holmes mansion was built around a miniature butte, surrounded on all sides of an inaccessible courtyard by glass, looking into various rooms, and they looking upon it.
The Cantina, one such room, is just large enough to hold a compact but complete bar, two stools, and two small tables; a cocktail lounge compressed into a walk-in closet, illuminated only by light reflected off the minibutte. Silhouetted, facing outward, is a woman with waist length ebony-black hair. Isabel Flore holds a smoldering cigarette in one hand, a glass of wine in the other. Tom walks in and stops when he sees her, noticing a suitcase by her feet. He also notices the cigarette.
“I thought you quit for good this time.”
She responds without turning. “I never quit. You ‘suggested’ I stop. There’s a difference.”
“What about the conversation we had? The one about your health?”
“Well, you know what they say…” Isabel, a stunning beauty from the hill country of Spain, turns around. “It’s not the years in your life, it’s the life in your years.” Thirty-six, as sensuous as she is angry, Isabel has loved deeply Tom for several turbulent years, even at the distance he kept her. What stilted intimacy he’s been able to find, emotional or otherwise, he has found in her. Isabel’s devotion and concern for him
have been matched only by the frustration of not seeing them through.
“I thought that was what we were talking about. Life,” he says.
She barely looks around for an ashtray and ends up putting the cigarette out in her wine. “I have a theory about smokers. We secretly like putting our lives in danger. That way it seems like we have some kind of control. If we stop, we live longer. Make sense?” No answer. She looks into his eyes. “You should understand that.”
“Let’s not argue. Not today.”
“I see. Are you in charge of arguing now? You seem to be running everything else around here.” She pulls a wad of paper from her pocket and throws it at him, holding tears at bay. “What about this? Since when am I informed by my agent that I’m booked on one of your cruises? Are you suddenly my manager?”
“Isabel, I didn’t mean to—”
Isabel shouts, starting to cry. “You can’t, order me around like some… ingenue!” She grabs her cane, propped against the window, and attempts to storm out. Born with a clubfoot, her furious limping exclaims the tantrum of sorrow. Tom stops her and pulls her to him. She drops her cane in an outburst of tears, embracing him. “Please don’t do it! Please don’t!” She looks up at him with begging eyes. “You of all people. You know what it’s like to lose someone you love.” He can’t respond. “You’re everything in the world to me. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” Still no answer. “Do you know how empty it feels to know you can’t even give someone a reason to live?”
Tom closes his eyes. “Isabel, don’t you know? I could never have made it this far without you.”
He rocks her and feels compelled to tell her what she wants to hear, but doesn’t believe. “I’ll come aboard somewhere. I’ll surprise you. Would you like that?”
“Yes, Tommy,” she doubts, looking into his eyes. “That would be nice.” She picks up the suitcase and walks toward the door.
“Here, let me help you,” Tom says.
“No. I’ve got it.”