by Thomas Perry
He kept walking, unable to resist swinging farther to the left to meet the road sooner, and then he was there, stepping-onto the pavement. He felt the luxury as he walked along on the pavement toward the east. Now there was nothing to trip him, no irregularities or loose stones to turn his ankles. He walked steadily and made better time, always listening for the sound of an engine.
At five thirty in the morning another set of headlights illuminated the road ahead. A car was about to overtake him.
He was starving and parched, and he knew that if he didn’t get help he would be dead by midafternoon. He stepped into the middle of the highway and waited. He watched the headlights grow nearer and brighter, and when the car was close enough to see him he waved his arms.
The car slowed to twenty miles an hour as the driver looked him over. When the car reached him, it stopped.
Spencer leaned over to look into the car. The man behind the windshield was dark, with a short beard and close-cropped hair, about thirty-five years old. He was a little bit chubby, certainly not a laborer.
The passenger window whirred down. The man said in Arabic: “What are you doing out here?”
“My car got wrecked,” Spencer said. “I lost control and it ran off the road and crashed. Praise Allah I’m alive. I thank you so much for stopping.” He bowed deeply.
“If I take you to the next village, what will you give me?”
“I’ll buy gasoline, and if you’d like me to, I’ll drive your car so you can rest,” said Spencer. “If you’re going all the way to Tobruk, I would give you two hundred and fifty dinar to take me with you.”
“Did you say two fifty?”
“Yes. Two fifty.”
“All right. Get in.”
“On this side or the driver’s?”
“That side. If you crashed your car, I don’t want you driving mine.”
Spencer got in beside the man and felt his legs release their tension in the soft cushion of the seat while the man accelerated, moving along the road toward Tobruk.
They drove for a few miles, and then the man said to Spencer:
“You must be rich, huh?”
“No, not really,” Spencer said.
“You must be. You smashed your car and you walked away from it, as though it meant nothing to you.”
Spencer looked at him. “I’m sad that my car was wrecked, but I’m very happy that I could walk away from it without dying or having a serious injury. Now I’m even happier that a kind and good man was the one to come along the road at night and pick me up.”
The man nodded and drove on.
Spencer distrusted and disliked this man. The driver knew that Spencer had been walking through wilderness all night, but he had not offered him a drink of water or even asked about his health. But Spencer needed him to stay alive, so he was determined to keep him friendly.
Spencer decided that the best thing he could do was to lean back and appear to fall asleep, so he wouldn’t risk irritating or alienating him. He leaned against the door, his eyes closed, and he began to breathe slowly and deeply. The way he kept it up was to count. He would count to sixty slowly and call it a minute, and then count the next sixty and call that two minutes. He got to nine minutes and started the tenth, when he awoke in full sunlight, startled.
The car was stopped off the road. The driver was touching him, feeling his pockets for his wallet.
Spencer stiffened and started to sit up, but the man held a knife in his free hand, and it hovered above Spencer’s chest, where he could see it. The knife was about four inches long with a symmetrical blade like a boot knife.
“Where’s the money?” the man asked.
“What’s the knife for?” said Spencer. “I’m planning to pay you.”
“I’m taking the money you promised me. It’s my money now.”
Spencer wondered where they were, and how long he had been sleeping, but he had no idea. He said, “I’m going to pay you the two fifty as soon as we get to Tobruk. That’s where it is. Most of the money I had with me got burned in my car.”
“You didn’t say the car burned. You’ve been lying to me. I’m taking you nowhere.” The man raised the hand that held the knife.
Spencer’s left hand batted the man’s forearm to the side while his right moved to the pistol in his belt. He grasped the pistol through his loose shirt, twisted his torso, and fired through the cloth.
The heat burned Spencer’s belly as the round tore through Spencer’s shirt and into the man’s chest. Spencer opened the car door, rolled out onto the gravel shoulder, crouched, and pulled the gun out from under his shirt.
The man was not moving. He had been kneeling on the driver’s seat above Spencer while he frisked him, but now he had collapsed facedown onto the passenger seat that Spencer had vacated.
Spencer held the gun on him, stepped closer, and poked him hard. He didn’t move.
Spencer pried the knife out of the driver’s grip, used his left hand to grasp the driver’s wrist, and pulled. The man offered no resistance, and there was no sign of consciousness, so Spencer dragged him across the passenger seat and out onto the shoulder of the road. He touched the man’s carotid artery and he felt no pulse.
Spencer closed the passenger door and looked around. He stuck the pistol back in his belt and dragged the body off the road into the field of weeds beyond. The land was bleak, another series of low hills and fields, but no sign of people or buildings. The driver had chosen a deserted place to rob and murder him.
He knelt beside the body and searched it. The wallet had only six dinars in it. There was also a driver’s license, but the picture didn’t look much like the body at Spencer’s feet. He took the six dinars, but put the wallet back in the man’s pocket.
He went back to the car, removed the keys from the ignition, and opened the trunk. There was no suitcase, no extra clothes. There were only a few rags, a spare tire, and an unopened one-gallon plastic bottle of water.
He took the mat that covered the spare tire in the well, put it over the passenger seat to cover the blood, and used some of the water and the rags to clean off the blood that had spattered his face when he’d shot the man. Then he got into the car and drove. As he drove he drank. He was not sure where he was, but the clock on the dashboard told him it was nearly ten o’clock in the morning.
The man’s wallet had not contained enough money to buy much gas. The first thing he had said was to ask Spencer what he would give him for a ride. And the photograph on the license did not belong to him.
Spencer was almost certainly driving a stolen car, and judging from the way the driver had already had the knife in his hand when he’d started searching him for money, the true owner of the car was probably dead. Spencer glanced at the gas gauge. There was a quarter of a tank of gas. What was that, fifty miles?
Spencer had eleven dinars. The wallet had held another six. If there was gas available for sale to civilians, he might still reach Tobruk. He kept driving. Every mile down the road was a mile he would not have to walk.
An hour later he could see he was approaching a city. And then, to his left, the sea appeared. Derna. It had to be Derna. Soon there were a few buildings. He began to see the word Derna in Arabic script. A Derna hotel, a Derna construction company, a Derna restaurant. The one thing he didn’t see was a Derna gasoline station.
He was wary about stopping. He was running very low on gas now, but the car could tie him to at least the killing he’d done, and probably the one he hadn’t. He passed an apartment building that had been bombed out, one wall gone and the rooms and staircases on that side opened like a child’s dollhouse. He knew that Derna had been taken by the Islamic State forces for a time and then won back.
The city seemed to have recovered from the fighting, and there were no sounds of gunfire, but this was not a place where he wanted to be stranded. It would be very difficult to get out if he were stopped.
He remembered that Derna was about seventy miles from Tobruk, so
he decided to keep going. He drove along at a reasonable speed that he thought might stretch his gasoline supply and not attract attention from soldiers. He passed a checkpoint on the opposite side of the road with soldiers stopping and inspecting cars and trucks coming into town from the other direction.
A mile farther on he saw three armed soldiers walking along the highway. He pulled over to the side of the road near them and called out in Arabic: “Do you need a ride?”
The three men trotted to join him. Two got in the back and the other sat in the passenger seat. The man beside him said, “Thank you for your kind invitation.”
“It’s the least I could do. How far are you going?”
The soldier said, “Four kilometers straight ahead. It’s a long walk, and it feels good to ride.”
Spencer nodded sagely. He was familiar with the feeling. Then, only about a mile on, they reached another checkpoint on his side of the highway. Spencer pulled over at the checkpoint and a soldier started toward his car, but when he saw the three soldiers he opened the barrier and waved the car through.
In another few minutes the man beside Spencer said, “Leave us by the road up there. We don’t need to have the lieutenant know we didn’t walk all the way. He might think of more work for us to do.”
Spencer pulled over and said, “Allah protect you.”
The three soldiers went on their way. Spencer managed to drive forty miles farther before the engine coughed and then ran out of gas. He kept his foot off the brake and coasted a hundred feet before the momentum was used up. He got the rags out of the trunk, wiped the surfaces he had touched, and left the car unlocked with the keys in it.
He looked at his watch. He was reaching the end of his second day, and he still had about thirty miles to go. Before this time tomorrow the Canadians would receive their supply flight and be off without him. He began to walk.
Spencer walked about five miles before he reached a farming village a distance from the south side of the highway. He could see melons and some green vegetables growing on acre-size plots all the way into the village. It looked like a place where he could buy a melon and some water.
As he came into the village, he saw a young man about twenty-one or twenty-two years old. He was riding a new bicycle up and down in front of his house, apparently testing the adjustment of the chain and the gears and giving the bicycle its first lubrication. The bicycle had thick, knobby tires like a mountain bike, and it had a couple of big baskets mounted on the sides of the rear wheels so he could carry a load without affecting his steering. Spencer guessed he probably used it to deliver melons to a market stall.
Spencer stopped and stood nearby with his arms folded, watching the young man riding. He said in Arabic: “That is an excellent new bicycle.”
“Thank you,” the young man said.
“May I ask what happened to your old bicycle?”
The young man looked puzzled. “How did you know there is one?”
“Because you’re a skilled rider. This is not your first one.”
“The first one is old. It belonged to my uncle for years and years before it went to me. I still have it, but I think I’ll save it for the parts.”
“I only wonder …” Spencer trailed off.
“What?” said the young man.
“Well, the new bicycle is very good quality. If it ever needs a part, it won’t happen soon. And no bicycle ever needs every part replaced. Meanwhile, the old one is just taking up space in your house and rusting. The rubber parts are getting hard and brittle. It’s worth something, and that value is going to waste.”
“What do you suggest?”
“If you could show it to me, I might consider making an offer.”
At four forty-five on the afternoon of the third day of Alan Spencer’s absence, the people at the Tobruk Airport saw a figure on a bicycle pedaling along the road toward the cargo terminal.
The man wore Libyan clothes and he was dirty and ragged, but when he saw the row of Canadians standing by their trucks watching him, he waved at them and began to pedal harder, standing up on the pedals and pumping to build up speed like a racer at the end of a long course. He bumped up over the edge of the concrete pavement at the entrance and coasted to a stop in front of them.
“I’m sorry if I’m late,” he said. “The distances here can be deceiving.”
38
Julian Carson walked behind the visiting team locker room and along the hallway to the small concrete room. As he stepped to the steel door it opened and Waters and Harper came out, wheeling the room’s safe, which was strapped to a two-wheeled dolly. Harper held the door while Waters pulled back on the handle of the dolly and steered it out into the hallway.
Mr. Ross, Mr. Bailey, and Mr. Prentiss came out after them. Julian noticed that once again, Mr. Prentiss held his hard-sided briefcase.
Mr. Ross acknowledged him first. “Hello, Mr. Carson. You’re right on time.”
The hairs on Julian’s arms rose. He had been trying to delay the manhunt by taking as long as possible with the old man’s file. Had he kept up the tactic too long? This would have to be the moment. “I think I know where to find the old man.”
Mr. Ross stopped. “Really?”
“Yes. He was in Vietnam in 1972 working with a platoon of ARVN rangers in the central highlands when the Easter Campaign began. He got his Silver Star because he was out alone on a scouting mission when the North Vietnamese regulars were moving in to massacre his men. He engaged the enemy by himself to sound the alarm and saved his men. They all got away alive because of him.”
“Good for him,” said Mr. Ross. “So?”
“Some of those ARVN soldiers are sure to still be alive. Any of those men or their families would be glad to hide Michael Isaac Kohler. And there will be a record in this country of who they all were. Military intelligence probably has it. All we have to do is pay each one a visit.”
“Interesting,” said Mr. Ross. “But this show is over. Time to fold up our tents and go.”
“What? Why?”
“Our guy is dead.”
“The old man?” said Julian. His mouth felt dry. He had known it was almost certainly going to end that way, but he had hoped that this time, this once, it would not.
“Not him. Faris Hamzah. His enemies assassinated him right in his house when his bodyguards weren’t looking. There’s nothing to be gained by going after the old man anymore. If he’s in Vietnam, then xin chuc mung to him. He’s not our problem. Or yours.”
“I suppose not,” said Julian.
On his way back to his office, he decided he would write an obituary for the Chicago Tribune. It would announce the death of Faris Hamzah, and it would be the last thing he placed in the paper with the initials J. H.
39
“Mom!” There was silence. Then: “Mom!”
Dr. Emily Coleman closed her eyes. It had been a long day and she was at the kitchen island cutting up vegetables that she knew the boys would only pick at and pretend to eat.
“There’s a car in the driveway.”
“Who is it?” she called back.
“I can’t tell. It’s a big black car with weird plates.”
“What do you mean, weird?”
“White.”
She stopped moving and listened, begging God or the universe that he wouldn’t say “US government.”
“White with a big mountain on it,” he said. “Washington.”
She set down the knife, wiped her hands on a dish towel, and went into the living room. It occurred to her that Carol and Dave weren’t barking, but she didn’t dare draw the obvious conclusion from that. She could barely breathe.
She stepped to the door and opened it. There he was. He looked fine—tanned and in shape.
“Hi, Doc,” he said. “I thought I’d come by and pick up my dogs.”
He got the word “dogs” out, but barely, before the two black beasts shot through the doorway, whirled, and leapt around him like dancers, and th
en the two grandsons arrived and hugged him at about belt height, making it difficult for him to take a step inside and hug his daughter.
40
Bill Armitage walked along the beach, staring out at Puget Sound. He loved taking this walk in the morning, and he’d been doing it nearly every day at six for over a month. He always scanned the Sound for the sight of black dorsal fins, hoping to spot a pod of killer whales. It hadn’t happened yet, but he was pretty sure it would. He was a patient man, he was very watchful, and he knew the ways of predators. They appeared after you got tired of looking.
He liked to start at the parking lot of Fort Casey State Park. As soon as he got there, he would get out of the car and go to the back door, open it, and let Carol and Dave jump out and run around a little, then scout ahead of him as he made his way to the beach. After a few minutes they would get used to the salt air laced with the strong smells of seaweed and washed-up sea creatures and fall in with him, orbiting him as he walked.
Armitage liked to go at least as far as the old Admiralty Head Lighthouse before they turned and made their way back. At low tide he could easily pick out his own straight, steady footprints and the meandering, circling, zigzagging prints of the two big black dogs. A few hours from now, the prints would all be washed away by the rising tide as though nobody had ever been here.
He wore two leather leashes around his neck, and he felt them swinging as he walked. He almost never needed to use them, because he and the dogs were usually alone on the beach in the early morning. He knew that in time he and the dogs would use up this walk and move on to others, taking each for a month or two before they were satisfied that they knew it. Whidbey Island had a great many possible walks, and if those were ever used up the world held others.
THE END