by Dean Koontz
were still looking for her, and the best guess anyone could make about the situation was that the drug dealers who had killed her husband were after her and her son, either because they were afraid she would eventually identify them in a police lineup or because she was somehow involved in drug traffic herself.
“My mom a drug dealer?” Chris said, offended by that insinuation. “What a bunch of bozos!”
Although no bodies had been found at Big Bear or San Bernardino, there had been a sensational development that guaranteed the media’s continued interest. Reporters had learned that considerable blood had been found at both scenes—and that a man’s severed head had been discovered in the alleyway behind the Brenkshaw house, between two garbage cans.
Laura remembered stepping through the redwood gate behind Carter Brenkshaw’s property, seeing the second surprised gunman, and opening fire on him with the Uzi. The burst had taken him in the throat and head, and at the time she had thought that the concentrated automatic fire might well have decapitated him.
“The surviving SS men pushed the call-home button on the dead man’s belt,” Stefan said, “and sent his body back.”
“But why not his head?” Laura said, sickened by the subject but too curious not to ask the question.
“It must’ve rolled away from the body, between the garbage cans,” Stefan said, “and they couldn’t find it in the few seconds they had to look. If they’d located it, they could have laid it on the corpse and folded his arms around it. Anything a time traveler wears or carries is taken with him on a jaunt. But with the sirens approaching and the darkness in the alley ... they didn’t have time to find the head.”
Chris, who might have been expected to revel in these bizarre complications, slumped in his chair, legs curled up under him, and was silent. Perhaps the hideous image of a severed head had made Death’s presence more real for him than had all the gunfire directed at him.
Laura made a special point of hugging him and subtly reassuring him that they were going to come out of this together and unscathed. The hugs, however, were as much for her as for him, and the pep talks she gave him must have seemed at least somewhat false, for she had not yet convinced herself that in fact they would triumph.
For lunch and dinner she got take-out from the Chinese restaurant just across the street. The previous night none of the restaurant’s employees recognized her as either the famous author or the fugitive, so she felt reasonably safe there. It seemed foolish to go elsewhere and risk being spotted.
At the end of dinner, while Laura was cleaning up the cardboard containers, Chris produced two chocolate cupcakes with a yellow candle on each. He had bought the packet of Hostess pastries and a box of birthday candles at the Ralph’s supermarket yesterday morning and had hidden them until now. With great ceremony he carried the cupcakes from the bathroom, where he had secretly inserted and lit the candles, and golden reflections of the two flames shimmered brightly in his eyes. He grinned when he saw that he had surprised and delighted her. In fact she had to strive to hold back tears. She was moved that even in the thrall of fear, in the midst of danger, he’d still had the presence of mind to think of her birthday, and the desire to please her; it seemed, to her, to be the essence of what mothers and children were all about.
The three of them ate wedges of the cupcakes. In addition five fortune cookies had come with the take-out food.
From his pillowed perch upon the bed, Stefan opened his cookie. “If only this were true: ‘You’ll live in times of peace and plenty.’”
“It might turn out to be true,” Laura said. She cracked her cookie and withdrew the slip of paper. “Oh, well, I think I’ve had enough of this, thank you: ‘Adventure will be your companion.’”
When Chris opened his cookie, there was no slip of paper inside, no fortune.
A flicker of fear passed through Laura, as if the empty cookie actually meant that he had no future. Superstitious nonsense. But she could not suppress her sudden anxiety.
“Here,” she said, quickly handing him both of the remaining cookies. “Getting none in that one just means you get two fortunes. ”
Chris opened the first, read it to himself, laughed, then read it to them: “‘You will achieve fame and fortune.’”
“When you’re stinking rich, will you support me in my old age?” Laura asked.
“Sure, Mom. Well ... as long as you’ll still cook for me, and especially your vegetable soup.”
“Going to make your old mom earn her way, huh?”
Smiling at the interplay between Laura and Chris, Stefan Krieger said, “He’s a tough customer, isn’t he?”
“He’ll probably have me scrubbing his floors when I’m eighty,” Laura said.
Chris opened the second cookie. “‘You’ll have a good life of little pleasures—books, music, art.’”
Neither Chris nor Stefan seemed to notice that the two fortunes made opposed predictions, effectively canceling each other, which in a way confirmed the ominous meaning of the empty cookie.
Hey, you’re losing your mind, Shane, you really are, she thought. They’re just fortune cookies. They don’t really predict anything.
Hours later, after the lights were out and Chris was asleep, Stefan spoke to Laura from the darkness. “I’ve devised a plan.”
“A way to destroy the institute?”
“Yes. But it’s very complicated, and there are many things we’ll need. I don’t know for sure... but I suspect some of these items can’t be purchased by private citizens.”
“I can get anything you need,” she said confidently. “I have the contacts. Anything.”
“We’ll have to have quite a lot of money.”
“That’s thorny. I’ve only got forty bucks left, and I can’t go to the bank and withdraw funds because that would leave a record—”
“Yes. That would draw them straight to us. Is there someone you can trust and who trusts you, someone who would give you a lot of their own money and tell no one they’d seen you?”
“You know all about me,” Laura said, “so you know about Thelma Ackerson. But, God, I don’t want to drag her into this. If anything happened to Thelma—”
“It can be arranged without risk to her,” he insisted.
Outside, the promised rain arrived in a sudden downpour.
Laura said, “No.”
“But she’s our only hope.”
“No.”
“Where else can you raise the money?”
“We’ll find another way that doesn’t require a lot of financing.”
“Whether we come up with another plan or not, we’ll need money. Your forty dollars won’t last another day. And I have nothing.”
“I won’t risk Thelma,” she said adamantly.
“As I said, we can do it without risk, without—”
“No.”
“Then we’re defeated,” he said dismally.
She listened to the rain, which in her mind became the heavy roar of World War II bombers—and then the sound of a chanting, maddened crowd.
At last she said, “But even if we could arrange it without any risk to Thelma, what if the SS has a tail on her? They must know she’s my best friend—my only real friend. So why wouldn’t they have sent one of their teams forward in time to just keep a watch on Thelma with the hope she’d lead them to me?”
“Because that’s an unnecessarily tedious way to find us,” he said. “They can just send research teams into the future, to February of this year and then March and April, month after month, to check the newspapers until they find out where we first showed up. Each of those jaunts only takes eleven minutes in their time, remember, so it’s quick; and that method is almost certain to work sooner or later because it’s doubtful we could stay in hiding the rest of our lives.”
“Well ...”
He waited a long time. Then he said, “You’re like sisters, you two. And if you can’t turn for help to a sister at a time like this, who can you turn to, Laur
a?”
“If we can get Thelma’s help without putting her at risk... I guess we have to try.”
“First thing in the morning,” he said.
That was a night of rain, and rain also filled her dreams, and in those dreams were explosive thunderclaps and lightning, as well. She woke in terror, but the rainy night in Santa Ana was unmarred by those bright, noisy omens of death. It was a comparatively peaceful storm, without thunder, lightning, and wind, though she knew that it would not always be so.
3
The machinery clicked and hummed.
Erich Klietmann looked at the clock. In just three minutes the research team would return to the institute.
Two scientists, heirs of Penlovski and Januskaya and Volkaw, stood at the programming board, studying the myriad dials and gauges.
All the light in the room was unnatural, for the windows were not merely blacked out to avoid providing beacons for night-flying enemy bombers, but were bricked in for security reasons. The air was stuffy.
Standing in one corner of the main lab, near the gate, Lieutenant Klietmann anticipated his trip to 1989 with excitement, not because that future was filled with wonders but because the mission gave him an opportunity to serve der Führer in a way that few men ever could. If he succeeded in killing Krieger, the woman, and the boy, he would have earned a personal meeting with Hitler, a chance to see the great man face to face, to know the touch of his hand and through that touch to feel the power, the tremendous power of the German state and people and history and destiny. The lieutenant would have risked death ten times, a thousand times, for the chance to be brought to the personal attention of der Führer, to make Hitler aware of him, not aware of him as just another SS officer, but aware of him as an individual, as Erich Klietmann, the man who saved the Reich from the dire fate that it had almost been forced to endure.
Klietmann was not the Aryan ideal, and he was acutely aware of his physical shortcomings. His maternal grandfather had been Polish, a disgusting slavic mongrel, which made Klietmann only three-quarters German. Furthermore, though his other three grand-parents and both of his parents had been blond, blue-eyed, with Nordic features, Erich had hazel eyes, dark hair, and the heavier, more sensuous features of his barbarian grandfather. He loathed the way he looked, and he tried to compensate for his physical shortcomings by being the most vigilant Nazi, most courageous soldier, and most ardent supporter of Hitler in the entire Schutzstaffel, which was tough because he had so much competition for that honor. Sometimes he had despaired of ever being singled out for glory. But he never gave up, and now here he was, on the brink of heroism that would earn him Valhalla.
He wanted to kill Stefan Krieger personally, not only because that would win der Führer’s favor but because Krieger was the Aryan ideal, blond and blue-eyed, every feature truly Nordic, and from fine breeding stock. With every advantage, the hateful Krieger had chosen to betray his Führer, and that enraged Klietmann, who had to labor toward greatness under the burden of mongrel genes.
Now, with little more than two minutes left before the research team would return through the gate from 1989, Klietmann looked at his three subordinates, all dressed as young executives of another age, and he felt both a fierce and a sentimental pride in them so strong it almost brought tears to his eyes.
They had all come from humble beginnings. Unterscharführer Felix Hubatsch, Klietmann’s sergeant and second in command of the unit, was the son of an alcoholic lathe operator and a slattern mother, both of whom he despised. Rottenführer Rudolph von Manstein was the son of a poor farmer whose lifetime of failure shamed him, and Rottenführer Martin Bracher was an orphan. In spite of coming from four different corners of Germany, the two corporals, the sergeant, and lieutenant Klietmann shared one thing that made them as close as brothers: They understood that a man’s truest, deepest, and dearest relationship was not to his family but to the state, to the fatherland, and to their leader in whom the fatherland was embodied; the state was the only family that mattered; this single bit of wisdom elevated them and made them worthy fathers of the superrace to come.
Klietmann discreetly dabbed at the corners of his eyes with his thumb, blotting the nascent tears that he was not able to suppress.
In one minute the research team would return.
The machinery clicked and hummed.
4
At three o’clock, Friday afternoon, January 13, a white pickup entered the rainswept motel lot, came straight to the rear wing, and parked next to the Buick that bore a Nissan’s license plates. The truck was about five or six years old. The passenger-side door was dented, and that rocker panel was spotted with rust. The owner was evidently refinishing the pickup in a patchwork fashion, because some spots had been sanded and primed but not yet repainted.
Laura watched the truck from behind the barely parted drapes at the motel-room window. She held the Uzi in one hand at her side.
The truck’s headlights blinked off, and its windshield wipers stopped, and a moment later a woman with frizzy blond hair got out and walked to the door of Laura’s unit. She rapped three times.
Chris was standing behind the door, looking at his mother.
Laura nodded.
Chris opened the door and said, “Hi, Aunt Thelma. Jeez, that’s an ugly wig.”
Stepping inside, hugging Chris fiercely, Thelma said, “Well, thanks a lot. And what would you say if I told you that was a monumentally ugly nose you were born with, but you’re stuck with it, while I’m not stuck with the wig? Huh? What would you say then?”
Chris giggled. “Nothing. ’Cause I know I’ve got a cute nose.”
“Cute nose? God, kid, you’ve got an actor’s ego.” She let go of him, glanced at Stefan Krieger, who was sitting in one of the chairs near the TV set, then turned to Laura. “Shane, did you see the heap I pulled up in? Am I clever? As I was getting in my Mercedes, I said to myself, Thelma—I call myself Thelma—I said, Thelma, isn’t it going to draw a hell of a lot of attention at that sleazy motel when you pull up in a sixty-five-tbousand-dollar car? So I tried to borrow the butler’s car, but you know what he drives? A Jaguar. Is Beverly Hills the Twilight Zone, or what? So I had to borrow the gardener’s truck. But here I am, and what do you think of this disguise?”
She was wearing a kinky blond wig glittering with droplets of rain, horn-rimmed glasses, and a pair of false dentures that gave her an overbite.
“You look better this way,” Laura said, grinning.
Thelma popped out the fake teeth. “Listen, once I turned up a set of wheels that wouldn’t draw attention, I realized that I’d draw some attention myself, being a major star and everything. And since the media’s already dug up the fact that you and I are friends and have tried to ask me some pointed questions about you, the famous machine-gun-packing authoress, I decided to come incognito.” She dropped her purse and the stage teeth on the bed. “This getup was for a new character I created in my nightclub act, tried it about eight times at Bally’s in Vegas. It was a primo flop, that character. The audience spat at me, Shane, they brought in the casino’s security guard and tried to have me arrested, they questioned my right to share the same planet with them—oh, they were rude, Shane, they were—”
Suddenly she halted in the middle of her patter and burst into tears. She rushed to Laura, threw her arms around her. “Oh, Jesus, Laura, I was scared, I was so scared. When I heard the news about San Bernardino, machine guns, and then the way they found your house at Big Bear, I thought you ... or maybe Chris ... I was so worried ... ”
Holding Thelma as tightly as Thelma was holding her, Laura said, “I’ll tell you all about it, but the main thing is we’re all right, and we think maybe we have a way to get out of the hole we’re in.”
“Why didn’t you call me, you silly bitch?”
“I did call you.”
“Only this morning! Two days after you’re splashed all over the newspapers. I nearly went crazy.”
“I’m sorry. I should’v
e called sooner. I just didn’t want to get you involved if I could avoid it.”
Reluctantly Thelma let go of her. “I’m inevitably, deeply, and hopelessly involved, you idiot, because you’re involved.” She pulled a Kleenex from a pocket of her suede jacket and blotted her eyes.
“You have another one of those?” Laura asked.
Thelma gave her a Kleenex, and they both blew their noses.
“We were on the lam, Aunt Thelma,” Chris said. “It’s hard to stay in touch with people when you’re on the lam.”
Taking a deep, shuddery breath, Thelma said, “So, Shane, where are you keeping your collection of severed heads? In the bathroom? I heard you left one behind in San Bernardino. Sloppy. Is this a new hobby of yours, or have you always had an appreciation for the beauty of the human head unencumbered by all the messy extremities?”
“I want you to meet someone,” Laura said. “Thelma Ackerson, this is Stefan Krieger.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Thelma said.
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t get up,” Stefan said. “I’m still recuperating. ”
“If you can excuse this wig, I can excuse anything.” To Laura, Thelma said, “Is he who I think he is?”
“Yes.”
“Your guardian?”
“Yes.”
Thelma went to Stefan and kissed him wetly on both cheeks. “I’ve no idea where you come from or who the hell you are, Stefan Krieger, but I love you for all the times you’ve helped my Laura.” She stepped back and sat on the foot of the bed beside Chris. “Shane, this man you have here is gorgeous. Look at him, he’s a hunk. I’ll bet you shot him just so he couldn’t get away. He looks just like a guardian angel ought to look.” Stefan was embarrassed, but Thelma would not be stopped. “You’re a real dish, Krieger. I want to hear all about you. But first, here’s the money you asked for, Shane.” She opened her voluminous purse and withdrew a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills.
Examining the money, Laura said, “Thelma, I asked you for four thousand. There’s at least twice that here.”
“Ten or twelve thousand, I think.” Thelma winked at Chris and said, “When my friends are on the lam, I insist they go first class.”
Thelma listened to the story, never expressing disbelief. Stefan was surprised by her open-mindedness, but she said, “Hey, once you’ve lived at Mcllroy Home and Caswell Hall, the universe holds no more surprises. Time travelers from 1944? Pah! At McIlroy I could’ve shown you a woman as big as a sofa, who wore clothes made of bad upholstery fabric, and who was paid a handsome civil-service wage to treat orphaned children like vermin. Now there is an amazement.” She was clearly affected by Stefan’s origins, chilled and amazed by the trap they were in, but even under these circumstances she was Thelma Ackerson, always looking for the laugh in everything.
At six o’clock she put in the stage teeth again and went up the street to get take-out from a Mexican restaurant. “When you’re on the run from the law, you need beans in your belly, tough-guy food.” She came back with rain-dampened bags of tacos, containers of enchiladas, two orders of nachos, burritos, and chimichangas. They spread the food out on the bottom half of the bed, and Thelma and Chris sat on the top half. Laura and Stefan sat in chairs at the foot of the bed.
“Thelma,” Laura said, “there’s enough food here for ten.”
“Well, I figured that would feed us and the cockroaches. If we didn’t have food for the cockroaches, they might get mean, might go outside and overturn my gardener’s pickup. You do have cockroaches here, don’t you? I mean, after all, a swell place like this without cockroaches would be like the Beverly Hills Hotel without tree rats.”
As they ate, Stefan outlined the plan he had devised for closing the gate and destroying the institute. Thelma interrupted with wisecracks, but when he was finished, she was solemn. “This is damned dangerous, Stefan. Brave enough to be foolish, maybe.”
“There’s no other way.”
“I can see that,” she said. “So what can I do to help?”
Pausing with a wad of corn chips halfway to his mouth, Chris said, “We need you to buy the computer, Aunt Thelma.”
Laura said, “An IBM PC, their best model, the same one I have at home, so I’ll know how to use all the software. We don’t have time to learn the operating procedures of a new machine. I’ve written it all down for you. I could go buy it myself, I guess, with money you gave me, but I’m afraid of showing my face too many places. ”
“And we’ll need a place to stay,” Stefan said.
“We can’t stay here,” Chris said, enjoying being a part of the discussion, “not if we’re going to be doing stuff with a computer. The maid would see it no matter how hard we tried to hide it, and she’d talk about it because that would be weird, people holing up in a place like this with a computer.”
Stefan said, “Laura tells me that you and your husband have a second house in Palm Springs.”
“We have a house in Palm Springs, a condo in Monterey, another condo in Vegas, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we owned—or at least had time shares in—our very own Hawaiian volcano. My husband is too rich. So take your pick. My houses are your houses. Just don’t use the towels to polish the hubcaps on your car, and if you must chew tobacco and spit on the floors, try to keep it in the corners.”
“I thought the house in Palm Springs would be ideal,” Laura said. “You’ve told me it’s fairly secluded.”
“It’s on a large property with lots of trees, and there’re other show-biz