In the days and nights that followed he would pass as a beachcomber, watching their search cool as it spread across the world, wondering how she lived now. Waiting for the flight to Geneva that would settle his own fate.
There was a plastic surgeon there, and Phoenix had never liked his face.
Yet this, and most of all her life, depended on Lord coming.
His mind flashed once more to Lord, dying in her chair.
When the picture changed, Lord was sitting where Parnell had been, on SNI.
Instinctively, Phoenix touched Alexis’s shoulder. Her shudder became his.
Lord’s stare had a bleak directness. “I’ll be brief,” he said. “First, you’ve asked Stacy Tarrant to pledge her concert money to specific groups. She will.…”
As his eyes closed, Lord’s words came through a fog. “Second, you’ve asked that I ‘reclaim’ the hostages.” Lord paused. “I will.”
Alexis collapsed against him.
He felt his heart pounding.
When at last she faced him, SNI was flashing telephone numbers for voters to call. They used photographs as background: Alexis the starlet; Alexis smiling, the day of her wedding to Parnell. Alexis with her husband and young son.
“Please,” she whispered.
Gently, she placed one finger on the hood, tracing the angles of his face. He quivered as it crossed his cheek.
As she reached beneath his hood, he could not stop her.
On the screen, a computer printout appeared. Ninety percent of callers in the first three minutes wished for her to live.
Lightly, her index finger traced the curve of his mouth.
He did not move as she found the lines at the corner of his eyes, his eyelids as they shut again, the ridge of his nose. Her touch lingered there.
It stopped at the tears on his face.
His skin tingled. He could feel her head tilt, imagine her looking at him.
He opened his eyes.
She was staring at the eye slits of his hood.
Her hand slipped from beneath it, fingers raising to touch beneath each slit, barely grazing the burlap. As if she felt his breathing stop.
Paralyzed, Phoenix saw them as two figures beneath a single bare light bulb, utterly still. Each waiting for the other to move.
Slowly, she pressed the burlap to his face.
Blood pounded in his temple. Lips parted, she saw the color of his eyes.
Phoenix could no longer see or hear the television. Only Alexis.
Hand trembling, she began to slide the hood above his mouth.
“No,” he cried out.
Her face turned white.
The sound of his voice froze him there. Her hand seemed to move on its own.
“No,” he whispered, and then she looked into his face.
As she took one stunned step backward, his hood fell to the floor, between them.
When Lord walked from the set to the hallway, Stacy was there.
For a moment, they faced each other. The darkness lent a few feet of privacy.
“I tried to call.” Her voice was quiet. “You were out, and then the line was busy. So I came.”
He did not know what to say. “Did you ever have a day,” he finally asked, “when it seems you’ve relived your entire life story, and some other people’s.”
“Yes. Except I put you there.”
“No.” He paused for emphasis. “I did.”
Her head angled slightly, as if to hear what was not said. Finally, she murmured, “Carson told you something about John.”
“That dream.” He leaned against the wall, both hands in his pockets. “You’ve wondered about Damone, haven’t you. All along.”
“Not consciously—I haven’t wanted to face it.” When she flicked back her bangs, the gesture stopped at her temple. “I think now I wanted you to. Maybe, at first, I thought you knew something about him.”
“I keep hearing that.”
She looked away. “Whatever Carson said this morning, you didn’t know, did you?”
“No.”
“Oh, Tony—” she began, and then leaned on the wall across from him. “I’m so sorry.…”
“Don’t be.” He smiled a little. “Know what I wish, though?”
Her shoulders moved. “No.”
He waited until she looked at him again. “That we’ll be friends for a very long time, and never have to ask another question. Not like these.”
As she studied his face, Moore appeared at the end of the corridor.
Lord nodded to him. Stacy turned, saw Moore, and turned again.
“I’m going back to Sea Ranch,” she said in a lower voice. “I’d like you to come. You know, when you get free.”
“Sure.”
For another moment she just looked at him. Then he touched her lightly on the shoulder, and walked toward Moore.
Moore glanced at Stacy. “Ready?” he asked Lord.
“Uh-huh.”
They walked to the elevator and got inside. When he turned, she watched them from the corridor, until the doors shut.
Day Seven: Sunday
“WE’LL try to follow,” Moore said finally. “At a safe distance.”
They sat in the shabby motel room Moore had found to hide him: a lamp, two chairs, traffic noise outside, SNI droning in the background. A telephone they both kept watching.
Lord turned from it. “Safe for whom?”
“For you, and the hostages.” Moore leaned forward. “We can plant a transmitter on you and your car, and track their signals. That way Phoenix doesn’t see us, but we know where to find you. And if the drop’s not too complex, we can cover it—especially in a populated area.”
“Won’t he know that?”
“Maybe.” Moore paused. “We have helicopters, jeeps, even planes. There aren’t many places we can’t go.”
The murmur of Rachel’s voice came through Lord’s silence. “Though the FBI has clamped a lid on details, it is known that Phoenix has chosen Anthony Lord as the only acceptable courier. On the eve of the final broadcast, during which the terrorist threatens to execute Alexis Parnell, Lord has disappeared.…”
“My own personal Greek chorus,” Lord murmured.
Rising, Moore turned off the sound.
“I feel like I’m on a conveyor belt,” Lord told him after a time. “All my life, the thing I’ve been most afraid of is having no control.”
Moore only nodded. When Lord glanced at the telephone again, it was close to six.
This was their first discussion of Phoenix in several hours.
The time between had reminded Lord of being younger and away from home, in some strange place which held an uncertain future, and talking to hang on to what was known. They covered Lord’s only wife and Moore’s current one; the two years undercover with the Weathermen which had cost Moore his first marriage; what Lord thought Christopher might become; Moore’s daughter, his greatest pride and astonishment, and her success at Wellesley. What they both might do differently.
“I don’t know how you can stand this job,” Lord ventured now. “The waiting.”
“Oh, it’s interesting work, if people interest you, and you get used to the drawbacks.” Moore studied him. “I don’t know how you can stand the moral ambiguity.”
Their eyes met, and then Lord shrugged.
“Being undercover’s ambiguous, Johnny. It all is.”
“That’s your rationale?”
“Part of what it was. If no one is completely moral, I told myself, then what’s to keep them from railroading someone for reasons of their own.” Lord paused. “Some days it felt as if I was all my clients had, and now that seems so strange. Except for Christopher, if something happens to me it would be like resigning. Someone else would take my place, that’s all.”
Moore glanced at the telephone. After a time, he asked, “Just Christopher?”
Staring past him, Lord saw dawn breaking at the edge of the curtains.
“It amazes
me, Tony, considering how she should feel. I wasted half of Friday wondering if you were born with a horseshoe up your ass.”
Lord felt himself smile. At this, and for Moore’s efforts.
The telephone rang.
It made him start. Moore seemed slow to answer.
“Yes,” he said, then became quite still. “I can remember.”
The voice came to Lord as a reedy noise. Listening, Moore gazed at the wall, the television, his watch.
His eyes stopped moving.
Lord’s stomach tightened. The room felt cold.
“I’ll get back to you,” Moore said, and hung up.
He examined the floor for some moments. Lord forced himself to keep silent.
“He called our Boston office.” Moore’s voice was without emotion. “At six-thirty this morning. You’re to start in four hours.”
“Where?”
“To a roadside clearing off 101.” Moore looked up at him. “Four miles past the Eel River.”
Lord touched the bridge of his nose. “Humboldt County.”
“You’re to wear shorts and a T-shirt,” Moore went on, “to prevent concealed weapons. The money will be in a backpack in your trunk. When you reach the clearing, there’s a john and a telephone. At four o’clock, you’ll receive a call telling you where to go for more instructions. He’ll be watching with a rifle and a Bearcat scanner—that’s a box that picks up transmitter signals.” Moore folded his hands. “If you call anyone, or he picks up a signal, you die. Then her.”
Lord watched the hands. “In other words,” he finally said, “you can’t follow me.”
“From the point of the call, Phoenix says he means you to disappear. Only after that do you get Alexis.”
Lord looked up. “Not Damone?”
Moore’s gaze was level. “He didn’t specifically mention that.”
Lord turned from him. On the television, Rachel’s mouth moved, making no sound.
“Where do you think I’m going?”
“On foot, eventually, along a route he or his people could watch to make sure no one follows. Maybe until sometime between darkness and the broadcast, to cover his escape.”
Lord stood, hands in his pockets.
“You’ll have to keep alert, Tony. Remember the route. As soon as you get there, start thinking of a way out.”
“What’s to keep him from stopping me?”
Moore hesitated. “It’s much better for him to return Alexis. And you.”
Lord walked to the television, and switched it off.
When he turned to Moore, the agent’s eyes seemed larger than normal.
“I’ve never been a fatalist, Johnny.”
“We can try to tap in from the phone company. Catch his instructions.”
“Is that it?”
Moore studied his folded hands. “As long as you’re driving,” he said at length, “we can probably follow in a plane with a telescopic sight, from high enough so he can’t see. At least we’ll know when and where you’ve driven.”
“What about at night?”
“Then we’ve lost you.”
Lord sat on the edge of the bed.
Moore exhaled. “Once you get there, keep as far back as you’re able—you’ve got no hope with him up close. Don’t worry about getting a look at his face: if he means not to harm you, he’ll be wearing the hood so you can’t ID him later. The important thing is to make him show you Alexis.”
“And if he won’t?”
“Then something’s wrong.” Moore considered him. “Drop the money and run as far and as fast as you can.”
Lord was quiet. “Without Alexis.”
“You’re supposed to help us bring her back. Get yourself killed, and you’ve been no help at all.…”
“He won’t let me go far,” Lord cut in softly, “and you’ll never find me. Or her.”
“We’ll sew a transmitter in the band of your shorts—you can activate it by pinching.” Moore kept his tone factual. “Its signal has a five-mile range. If we pick it up, we’ll get there as soon as we can. At least that way there’s a chance you’ll lead us to Alexis.”
Rubbing his temples, Lord could not imagine moving from the room.
“There is one other option,” Moore said evenly. “I can take your place.”
When Lord turned to him, Moore’s gaze was without judgment.
“Listen to me, Tony. You’re a civilian, and risk is in the nature of my work. I can try giving Phoenix the same choice we’ll give Parnell. Me or no one.” Pausing, Moore finished slowly. “Phoenix gave one reason for wanting you to come. I’m not sure there aren’t others, are you?”
Lord found that he could not look at him.
“It’s gone too far,” he said finally. “When I get back, you can buy me a drink.”
At eleven, Lord crossed the Golden Gate Bridge in a white government car, wearing a T-shirt and running shorts with a thin silver disk sewn in the band. Moore had retrieved his running shoes.
From San Francisco to the Eel River was close to three hundred miles, the last five hours Lord was sure of. He drove the first two as if in a dream; passing the turnoff for Sea Ranch, the familiar slipped behind him.
Far ahead, mountains began rising in green waves. They grew nearer on a level of consciousness that Lord did not quite accept; the last seventy-two hours had moved too fast, and he had slept for six of them. Four cups of black coffee shot through him like a second pulse.
Sunset would come at 7:10.
Somewhere overhead, Moore was in a light plane. But the time before dusk kept running as the traffic thinned around him.
Think of Alexis.
The concrete narrowed to two lanes. Mountain and shadow grew larger, foothills rose to surround him, civilization became scattered churches, ice sheds, gas stations, pickup trucks with gun racks. To pass them carrying five million dollars seemed surreal.
Abruptly, the road started a precipitous climb, tracing the contour of cliffsides which kept winding out of sight. Shadows began falling, and then the country closed around him.
To his left, the Mendocino River ran through a deepening gully. Mountains thrust from all sides; the pines became taller and mixed with redwoods; tumbled by spring torrents, boulders lay beside the road in broken chunks.
His watch moved toward two o’clock.
For an hour Lord climbed a twisting pattern of shadow and rock and white-water gully as its pieces changed shapes and colors. By three the Mendocino had become the Eel, deeper and wider, and the mountains rose so steeply they seemed to fall on him. The pines had vanished; the green and brown deepened in the permanent shadow of redwoods which came to the road in dense towering stands, blocking the light. The sky narrowed to a ribbon above the Eel.
The redwoods, Lord realized, might soon hide him from view. His palms grew damp in the constant rhythm of shifting and braking and accelerating.
Three-thirty. In one half-hour, he would hear Phoenix’s voice.
The river twisted suddenly.
Lord saw the bridge first, then the redwood grove beyond it, a monolith without light. A few seconds later he could read the sign: Humboldt County.
Crossing the river, Lord looked east. The Eel swept from a trackless wilderness of mountain and forest that went to the Sierras; miles away, thin fog sat like smoke at the tops of trees. Then he left the bridge behind, and there was no more sky.
It was like entering a cathedral—vast, dark, still. Lord watched four miles start on his odometer. Driving slowly now, already tired. His stomach raw-feeling.
At ten minutes until four, he found the contact point.
It was a dirt path, almost hidden between the trunks of two redwoods. One turn, and the road vanished behind him.
His car was alone in a clearing. A rustic bathroom with a phone stuck on the wall, surrounded by redwoods so tall and close that there was still no sun.
Lord stopped a few feet from the telephone.
Cracking open the window, he smel
led bark and needles decaying. He did not get out.
There was no sound. Through the windshield, he searched the grove for a glimpse of someone. Within five feet they became too dense to see.
Lord forced himself not to stare at his watch.
Let his instructions be simple, he thought, let Moore’s people tap in to them. Let this be over quickly.
His eyes moved from windshield to mirror; the silence chafed his nerves for minutes he did not count. Finally, reluctantly, he looked at the time.
Two minutes after four.
When the telephone rang, it echoed in the trees.
Lord was still.
It rang twice more before he left the car open behind him, keys in his hand, Phoenix a sixth sense on the back of his neck. He could not make himself move faster.
The phone kept ringing.
As he reached it, Lord turned his back to the wall, facing the woods and the trees. His mouth was dry as he picked up the phone.
“Lord,” he answered.
A tape clicked on.
“This is a recorded message,” the slurred voice said, “sent by cordless telephone, sixty feet from where you stand.…”
Shock running through him, Lord touched the transmitter.
“Your death is that close. If someone had followed, by transmitter or otherwise, you would not have reached the telephone. But I do not wish to meet you here, or give instructions that might be overheard by wiretap.”
As Phoenix paused, Lord felt the last words on his skin.
“Twenty paces beyond the redwood scarred by lightning, I have placed a cassette recorder with a tape. You will play it without moving.”
By instinct, Lord held the telephone further from his ear, listening for a second voice.
He was still listening when he heard the dial tone.
Panicky, his eyes swept the trees for scars or a glimpse of something moving. Saw nothing but a hundred trunks as the telephone started beeping.
Lord put it down, trying to collect himself.
From left to right, he began to search each tree, peripheral vision straining.
Straight across the clearing was a redwood with a black scar in its bark.
Walking slowly toward it, Lord imagined Phoenix laughing.
Behind there was nothing but grove. Twenty paces, wondering if he watched.
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