by John Farris
Eden jumped as if electrified and the hallucination ended. Tom Sherard gave her a perplexed look. She didn't tell him what she'd seen, but she knew it wasn't something left over from Dreamtime. The man was real.
Who he was or what he meant to her was inexplicable. She was left with a numskulled nauseated feeling to go with the headache behind her eyes.
Eden walked in off the terrace rubbing her eyes. In the suite's large living room Bertie Nkambe was on her cellular phone talking to her booking agent. Tom Sherard waited for Eden with a trace of anxiety in his normally stoic hunter's face.
"It isn't here," she said, too loudly, her voice barely under control. "We're in the wrong city. Maybe the device was supposed to come here, and Portia Darkfeather told me true. But if MORG changed their plans since she passed on, Portia wouldn't have known."
Bertie told her agent she'd call him back. She walked over to Eden and put an arm around her. Eden trembled.
"What do we do now?" Sherard asked.
"I don't know," Eden said, desperation in her face.
CHAPTER 17
PLENTY COUPS, MONTANA • JUNE 6 • 3:05 P.M. MDT
Eden's doppelganger strolled barefoot with Victor Wilding half a mile down the Jeep road south of the Muronga Reef Club, past a Fijian market and homely Methodist church. They came to a bungalow down a lane in a grove of coconut palms. Fallen green-hulled fruit littered the dooryard. There were chickens in a fenced coop. They walked up to the shaded veranda. No one seemed to be around, but the dpg had the odd feeling that they were being watched by several persons. She heard a vaporous hissing sound that she couldn't identify; it came from inside the bungalow. So did a draft of cold air through the open doorway.
The doppelganger looked curiously at Wilding, who seemed to be under a strain.
"Is anyone home?"
"He's always at home," Wilding replied. "It's okay, you can come closer—I mean, go on in."
He put a hand between her shoulders, guiding her through the doorway. The room inside was furnished in bamboo and rattan, colorful cushions and pillows, mats on the polished stone floor. The louvers on the windows were nearly closed. Shut away from the sun and deep in the grove, the bungalow should have been quite dark inside. But there was low even illumination everywhere, and a small spotlight was aimed down through a hole in the tapa cloth that covered the high thatched ceiling. It was focused on a hammock, and in the hammock lay Victor Wilding's friend Robin, who appeared to be sound asleep.
"He looks like you, Victor."
"We're ... identical twins."
"Oh!" The dpg looked from Wilding's healthy face to the pale death mask likeness upturned in the hammock. "Is this a bad time?" she whispered.
"No," Wilding said with a sigh that seemed to cause him pain. "He's always asleep."
She didn't understand.
"He was hurt in a fall. A head injury. He can't wake up."
"Shouldn't you get a doctor?"
"He's had the best. There was this thing, deep in his brain—you've seen it, you know what it looks like."
"I do?"
"The crown of thorns starfish. The reef destroyer. I thought ... I was told that Mark showed you one when he certified you the other day."
"Oh, that ugly ... yes, he did." Mark was her diving instructor, kind of a neat guy except she didn't care for his shaved head and know-it-all manner. She shuddered, visualizing the voracious alien-ugly crown of thorns that had been pointed out to her. They were like small brown bushes with cactusy spines and tensile arms that clung to brain coral, eating the soft tissues until the coral died. She looked at Robin again, moved slowly closer to him. She heard that hissing, breathy noise she'd heard as she came into the bungalow, saw a cloud of vapor issuing from the transparent mask fitted over the lower part of Robin's face. Odd that she hadn't noticed it before.
Victor Wilding said, his voice now dim to her ears, "The neurosurgeons removed it all, of course, and some portions of the destroyed brain. But his coma has lasted to this day."
She whipped her head around and saw bow-legged, deeply tanned Mark, wearing those steely mirrored glasses even indoors, standing a few feet to one side of Victor Wilding.
"Go ahead, Eden," Mark said. "Dive in. See what you can find out, and tell us about it."
"Okay." She looked away from him, toward the sun that was directly overhead, and adjusted the fit of her own mask. Then, as she had been taught, she did a back-fall out of the low boat and sank down flippers-first into an altogether-different environment, not the sea but similar in its saline composition: the warm fluid within Robin's brain. The crinkled reeflike lobes were immense, scary in scale, laced with deep-red veins and filled with flickerings, intense pale blue flashes, storms not of the sky but of the spirit that still lived amid the wastelands. And there was, unexpectedly, a lot of noise. Static-y crackles, kettledrums, whistles, and poppings. She swam slowly around, needing only an occasional kick to maintain her momentum in this universe, looking into the deep crevasses, lost where she was but afraid to become even more lost by slipping into one of those convoluted canyons. She needed to explore but also she could use some help now that she had arrived, and she asked for it.
Robin? I'm here. Are you listening?
CHAPTER 18
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE • JUNE 6-7 • 3:10 P.M – 12:26 A.M. CDT
Old Hickory Lake, just to the east of Music City, USA, is a nearly one-hundred-mile-long impoundment of the Cumberland River, with over four hundred miles of wooded shore. It looks, from several thousand feet up, like a crinkly paper dragon in a Chinese New Year's parade. Old Hickory is a center of the power- and houseboat culture common on the man-made lakes and rivers of the South. Some of the houseboats complementing the mansions on Old Hickory's bluffs that belonged to Country recording artists and Music Row executives are upward of a hundred feet in length and fancy enough to cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The houseboat on which Randy and Herb, recently of Plenty Coups, Montana, were to spend the night with their one-kiloton nuclear device was tied up to a dock in a finger cove down a private road patrolled by MORG security specialists. No one except members of the team assigned to guarantee their safety and anonymity knew that Randy and Herb were there. The boys had stopped on the way down to gas the truck at a Texaco by exit 38 on the Pennyrile Parkway in southwestern Kentucky, where they also had picked up their guide, a MORG Homefolks agent who had been raised in Gallatin and knew every foot of Old Hickory's saw-toothed shoreline. He didn't know what Randy and Herb had with them besides their fishing gear. He had obtained the proper licenses, and after they'd settled in he took them out after largemouth in the bass boat included in the short-term lease.
When they returned to the dock around six-thirty, the sun flashing low through tall hickories and pin oaks on the west bank, two good-looking women were grilling steaks in the large galley. One was from the Los Angeles office of Homefolks; the other worked out of Washington. They introduced themselves as Cheryl and Sandi. Cheryl had school-girl frosted bangs, a sexy overbite, and a slight stutter. Sandi was a big febrile blond with a total lack of artifice, the sort usually known as "a man's woman." They had flown into Nashville during the afternoon, and would be leaving on early flights the next day. Another MORG agent who had brought the women to the houseboat drove the fishing guide away. He would never lay eyes on Randy and Herb again.
The women were not so fortunate.
After ribeyes rare, home fries, and a tossed salad the women cleaned up the galley while Randy and Herb showered and changed clothes. They spent the next three hours playing canasta in the big salon, which was decorated and furnished with all the joie de vivre of a Danish mortuary. There was no drinking. None of them talked about themselves; they were on the job and personal histories were irrelevant. They didn't listen to music. Sandi told two jokes and discovered that Randy and Herb, whose banter was quick and hip but laced with jailhouse idiom, lacked real humor. Well, Jesus. Cheryl's cutesy stutt
er got on Sandi's nerves to where she wanted to clock Cheryl with the heel of her sandal. She took to nibbling her voluptuous lower lip during the card game. Through the in-slanted bow window they could see a vivid streak of lake like fire underwater and a moon three days from the full.
About eleven o'clock Randy, who had dark slick-backed hair and frowsy sideburns, threw in his cards and yawned. He went into one of the staterooms. After another minute Sandi also got up, drifted to the galley for a drink of water, then followed Randy.
He had already undressed except for his socks. He was sitting on the edge of the double-size bunk. Sandi wondered if there was something about his feet he was protective of; but socks were all to the good, she hated the toe-sucking so many guys were into. She glanced at the scars that clung to his hide like pale leeches. He had taken quite a few hits, nine-millimeter or .40 caliber just as a guess. He had a penis smaller than her thumb. Without preamble Sandi pulled off her halter top.
"You don't have to get undressed," Randy told her, as if he felt overmatched by her bountiful upstart jugs. "I don't need all that much."
And at ten past the hour Cheryl snuggled naked beside Herb in the other stateroom, hoping his sexual preferences wouldn't g-g-gross her out.
By midnight the last growlings of boat traffic had faded from the lake. They were all asleep except for Sandi, who had two problems: she was an insomniac, and after giving Randy the blowjob he'd required, she was seriously turned on. Randy being the fastidious kind of guy, in spite of his rough looks, who really didn't care all that much for pussy or its companion orifice. Sandi tried bringing herself off but flopped. Victim of a puritanical upbringing, she'd always been a little ashamed about masturbating.
A couple of stiff shots of black label would've calmed her, but there was no booze aboard. And she wasn't going to get any sleep next to Randy, who had clogged sinuses. No place to go except for a short walk around the houseboat's two decks. Nothing to read but the collected works of the Reverend Billy Graham and magazines for the outdoorsman. Men with space-age hunting bows, camouflaged to the eyeballs, holding up the heads of unsuspecting deer they'd whacked. The music library consisted of white gospel music. Her tastes were classical. She played viola in a chamber group at home in Fairfax County. Satellite TV presented a digital jigsaw puzzle. The message on the screen read, indefinitely, SEARCHING FOR SIGNAL. What was she supposed to do, turn the damn houseboat around? Shaping up to be one of those nights. Solitaire and gummy freezer pizza at three A.M. She was prohibited from making phone calls. She missed Toddie, her Yorkshire terrier.
She wondered what Randy and Herb were doing here. What the assignment was.
None of her business, of course.
But short of running naked in the woods and howling at the moon there was nothing else to do but think about Randy and Herb, a curious pair. Unusual types for MORG agents. Intel was her customary game, MORG's Russian desk. Speculation was a difficult habit to break.
The guys didn't have much gear with them. Two or three gym bags. They were in the stateroom with Randy and Herb. The fishing stuff, including that big tackle box (more on the order of the toolboxes that itinerant auto mechanics, like her father, took with them from job to job), was there in the salon, close to the galley, in an alcove where rods were stored with waders, creels, and a spare trolling motor for the bass boat. Randy and Herb's box was padlocked. More lock than the contents—hooks, lures, line, extra reels—seemed to call for.
If that was all they had in there.
Sandi prowled around and around, soft-footed, pausing to glance at the tackle box. Then for no good reason, probably because she was bored, she picked it up.
Well, Jesus. Heavier than she'd thought it would be. She had to drop the box, yanking a bare foot back out of the way, and the sound of the box hitting the deck crisped the blond furze along her naked spine. She backed away, mouth going dry, into the galley. She ran a glass of water for herself and leaned a haunch against the sink, seeing herself like a pink-and-cream nudie calendar pinup in a black window. She gave the tackle box more glances. Still none of her business.
But now she had to know.
It was a good lock, but Sandi had worked better ones, with whatever tools were at her disposal. She needed forty-three seconds to open the lock. She took it off and raised the heavy lid, saw at once why the box weighed so much. It was sheathed with lead inside, quarter-inch thickness, and within this lead casket was a Russian-made yellow carrier bag, property of the Strategic Rocket Forces. She didn't touch the sealed bag. She had a strong hunch about its contents: a plutonium-implosion bomb. Given its size, Sandi estimated the bomb to be a KT'er. Assuming a surface blast, forget survival up to four-tenths of a mile from ground zero. Serious damage to exposed human beings as far as seven and a half miles away.
Her first reaction was alarm, her second total confusion.
If Randy and Herb were MORG agents, what were they doing with—
Portland.
And now Nashville?
Good God. The company she'd worked twelve years for. Why?
Sandi closed the lid of the tackle box and, hunkered down with gooseflesh rising on her thighs and forearms, she tried to replace the padlock with shaky hands.
Get out of here!
Sandi felt an inquiring touch on one shoulder and jumped up with a shriek. She had a glimpse of Randy, socks and bare ass, reacted by throwing a karate fist at his chin. He moved his head two inches with the reflexes of a mongoose and the short blow only grazed his jawline. He struck hard to her solar plexus with stiffened fingers and Sandi's big body sprawled on the galley floor. Wind knocked out of her. Randy was on her immediately, seizing the hand that held the padlock, stepping inside her elbow with his right foot. He twisted her fist sharply toward her body; her arm couldn't move and the torque snapped both wrist bones. She dropped the lock and lost control of her bladder. All of the fillings in her back teeth were visible but Sandi couldn't breathe, couldn't scream. He backed away from her and looked around as Herb came out of his stateroom towing fumble-footed Cheryl. She still had sleep in her eyes and wasn't resisting him. But she balked at the sight of Sandi writhing on the deck.
"Whatever this is about," she said, "I d-d-d-d—"
Randy glanced from Herb to Sandi and said, "Sweet Patootie had herself a look at Babycakes. I'll take care of it."
Herb clamped a hand over Cheryl's mouth as she struggled, terror bolting into her eyes.
"What about this one?"
Randy allotted Cheryl a few seconds' thought, then nodded.
"Don't make any more mess," he said. "It's a fuckin' rental."
CHAPTER 19
MADISON, WISCONSIN • JUNE 7 • 2:35 A.M. CDT
With her nervous system hotwired from all the caffeine she'd swallowed—pills and colas—in order to stay halfway alert, Eden Waring pushed her chair back from the desk where she'd been staring at the screen of a laptop computer and said quietly, "Found it."
Bertie Nkambe was curled up asleep on a sofa. Tom Sherard put down the book he was reading, walked over to Eden, and stood behind her chair looking, from her angle, at the active matrix screen.
"Sure?"
"This is definitely the school I saw when I was dreaming. The same style of buildings, either old-time collegiate or boxy-modern. Vandy has an observatory too, but it's smaller than Wisconsin's."
"Vanderbilt University?" She had tapped into their Web site, which featured an introduction to the school, a tour of the campus. "Where is it?" Sherard asked.
"Nashville. Another state capital, like Madison. Let's see if they have a Web site. We'll find out what the city looks like and hope there's a big lake in the neighborhood. Then I'll know for sure."
The best source the search engine found for Eden was the Tennessee Film Commission's site, which provided information and photos for Hollywood production managers looking for locations in the area. She printed out a photo of the Greek-revival capitol building near downtown Nashville, studied i
t, walked outside onto the balcony to get some fresh air and have another look at the city of Madison, lucent but nearly motionless at this hour against a dark-bodied lake.
"The capitol buildings are different," she said, looking at Sherard with reddened, transfixed eyes in the hush of night. "Madison's capitol has a dome. Nashville's doesn't. There are big stadiums in both cities. The lake I saw must be Old Hickory. Okay. Now I'm sure. It's Nashville. But that's all I know. God help those people down there. I don't think I can."
CHAPTER 20
SAN FRANCISCO • JUNE 2-6
The assassin who now called himself Corey DeSales had spent the better part of the week making himself available in the San Francisco area. Days and nights on the move, taking little time to sleep in his hideaway in Sausalito. Riding BART across the Bay. Strolling through Berkeley by the university, browsing in the bookstalls on Telegraph. Making his way through the summer crowd around the street-cart bazaar fronting Sproul Plaza. Always alert for the contact he was confident would come now that he was available again. The assassin had a new identity, but They would know him. Although he had prudently changed his face his vibes hadn't changed; they were as individual as fingerprints. Impact Sector, he knew, had his vibrations on file. They had developed a machine, now scanning the earth from a proprietary spy satellite, that could locate him in a matter of minutes.
In San Francisco he rode cablecars, hung out at the Marina and Ghirardelli Square, the Embarcadero and Golden Gate Park. The weather was fair most days after noon, the nights mild until the fog returned.
At least once a night he made it over to Chinatown. For one thing, he liked the food. For another, he liked to shop for little things to brighten up his digs. And then there was the girl who sold watercolors down the block from the Ya Lin restaurant—the "Elegant Forest"—in that part of Chinatown known as the Alleys.