by Craig Thomas
Mclntyre, his breath somehow lost or disregarded, stood over the fax machine as if he might bully or interrogate it. Slowly, like oil seeping out of the instrument, Gant's features, in three-quarter profile, emerged.
"Got it?"
"Sure." Mclntyre grinned.
"It's him. When was this?"
This evening early. Sky Harbor airport. He got off a shuttle from Miami International."
' Where is he?" Mclntyre breathed.
"I checked the surveillance at Vance Aircraft. Vance's daughter and the chief research engineer, Blakey, both arrived less than an hour ago out of the blue. He must be there, mustn't he?"
"Maybe but why? Why come back? What does he want with his ex-wife?"
Gant must hate her like he hated May.
"OK tighten up surveillance. I'm coming by the office right away. Get yourself ready to take a trip and get a Bureau flight organised to Phoenix by the time I arrive." It was difficult to catch his breath, as if he had been running hard. The Ethiopian pipe and the African drumming seemed like his breathing, his heartbeat.
"Warn those hicks in Phoenix what they're dealing with no one leaves Vance Aircraft without being arrested!"
"Sir—" Mclntyre put the phone down on Chris's eager compliance and excitement, the latter like a theft of his own feelings. He whirled as if in triumph towards the studio's tall windows, glanced up at the glass roof. He had Gant he watched his hand close into a fist, fascinated. The guy had walked into a surveillance net like a four-year-old. Beautiful-He hurried into the bedroom and dragged the always packed suitcase from the back of the wardrobe. His sober suits hung to attention above his row of shoes. The wardrobe, despite all he could do, still smelt of May's perfume, which she had lavished on her clothes as well as herself.
He closed the studio windows on the street noises and locked them. He turned to the door and remembered Fraser. He hesitated for a moment, then picked up the telephone.
It wouldn't do any harm to take the guy along. He could be useful… there was a fix in, Fraser had offered him a brighter future. Maybe they could work something out. Meanwhile, why upset the guy…?
Out of the warm spread of the lights, he could look up through the glass roof of Blakey's office suite and see big stars hanging in the desert night. He felt no impatience. Blakey had put the snapshot through the computer, scanning its creased surface, and had then begun the process of blowing it up in sections. Mapmaking. There was a curious, angering sensation that lingered as the elements of Strickland's large, pale features grew, inflated, became more inscrutable. His one hand, resting on the rail of the jetty, was now the size of a baseball mitt, his shoulders huge, the brand name of his windcheater large as a neon sign above a diner.
Gant listened to the computer keyboard responding to Blakey's fingers like a small, excited bird; to the hum of machinery, the occasional purring regurgitations of the printer and photocopier. In a few more minutes, there'd be a composite enlargement, big as a map, to spread on a worktable and examine. The process of discovering where the picture had been taken was in the hands of machines, and that satisfied him.
The mountains behind Strickland were volcanic in origin, and there were three of them. From the shadows, the angle of the sun and Strickland's squint, the time of year was spring and the mountains stretched away north of the small lake into which the jetty thrust like a stick. There were pine trees in the background, on the slopes and around the tiny cuticle of shoreline that could be seen. Northern hemisphere or New Zealand not quite anywhere in the world, but you could still take your choice of the two hemispheres, outside the tropics… Gant still felt that Strickland had come home, that it was a snapshot taken in America.
The main computer at Vance Aircraft had produced, at Blakey's instructions, a relief map of the area in the background of the photograph, then a section outline of the landscape. There was a vague, newsreel-like familiarity about the rise and fall of the volcanic land, the lake, but nothing more concrete. The map and the section lay on the large table on whose edge he was perched, waiting.
"His clothing doesn't look new," Blakey called out without looking up from the huge image he was assembling delicately on the plate of the colour photocopier.
"Like he's worn it a lot. Maybe he wasn't a tourist at the time the picture was taken."
He seemed not to expect any reply. There was a high vapour trail at the edge of the sky in the snapshot. From its altitude, it was a civilian flight, Gant estimated. But then, most wilderness areas in the world were overflown by charter flights, red eyes shuttle services.
The clothing's American—"
"You can buy American in any part of the world," he replied to Blakey's observation.
"Yeah."
"Anything in writing? On the jetty, one of those huts or lodges or whatever they are?"
"Another few minutes…"
He sensed Barbara close beside him and turned to her. Her tiredness looked just as strained, less to do with the hour than with the defeat of dreams, the loss of Alan.
"You OK?"
She nodded.
"You?"
"It's going to come out right this, I mean. I feel it. Every picture tells a story and this one will tell us where Strickland lives."
Barbara seemed to dislike her eagerness.
"Is it dangerous I mean, how dangerous is it?" she asked huskily.
"Some. Maybe a lot. Strickland has killed plenty of people. He's been perfecting his talents for a long time."
"Could you, I mean, when you find him, can he be persuaded to talk? To tell you the truth?"
Gant shrugged. The machines continued to hum and chirp. Blakey was murmuring a tune as he concentrated.
"I can only ask the guy." He made as if to smile, but Barbara shuddered. He touched her arm, which jumped but she did not move away.
"I have to find him first."
The truth won't bring Alan or the company back to life." Her features arranged themselves into the now habitual grim planes that somehow sullenly refused to catch and reflect the warmth of the room's lights.
She was toying with a glass of whisky but not drinking it. Then, throwing her dark hair away from her face with her hand, she stared at him. She expected demanded? as she had so many times before, something she already doubted he could give.
"But it will save your career?" He realised there was no unkindness in the question.
"Maybe. That's not important. It will save Alan's reputation. It's the truth, that's all."
He was aware his gaze was bitter as he added: "Strickland killed innocent bystanders on the airplanes. He was hired to do that by big business." The contempt of his tone was venomous, embracing.
"For dollars and pounds and Dmarks." He studied his hands as he spoke.
The things I did, the things I was ordered to do…" He sighed.
"Well, they weren't for the dollar at least, they weren't supposed to be. There seemed to be some point in it." He looked up. I'll find him… then whoever hired him."
Her hand brushed his, then the moment was broken by Blakey's voice.
"You guys want to come see the Incredible Hulk?"
Barbara followed Gant to the long worktable where Blakey was smoothing the huge, photocopied enlargement of the snapshot, as if it was cloth-of-gold. The computer's jigsaw blowups had been made whole again. The creases in the original were like sword cuts across Strickland's body and the sky. Barbara hovered at a slight distance, as if threatened by the man in the photograph.
"He doesn't quite look the part," Blakey offered.
"He never did." Gant leaned forward over the photocopy the size of an airplane blueprint. His fingers traced, as if longingly, the faint vapour trail in the sky, the volcanic peaks retreating northwards, then the dark mass of pines and individual trees.
Blakey's blunt forefinger tapped at some point near Strickland's temple, against the brown squareness of a wooden building perhaps a hunting lodge, a rural motel.
"See?" Gant p
eered. It wasn't a place name, not even that of a person. On a shingle hung on the eaves of a verandah was the word TACKLE in capitals. Above it was a blurred sign. BUD LITE.
"Here, too," Blakey offered, his hands moving. On the corner of the building, which looked out over the lake from the shore end of the jetty, was a notice. All the print was illegible, even at that magnification, except for two headlining words. FISHING LICENCES.
"Back in the USA," Gant murmured.
"Got to be the Pacific North-West, somewhere Washington state, Oregon, northern California…"
"Can we narrow it down?"
Barbara's breath was warm against his cheek as she leaned between them to look, somehow emboldened by the identification of the place. It wasn't foreign, unknown which made Strickland less dangerous, less impervious.
Blakey, by way of response, collected the relief map and the section from the other table and placed them over the enlarged snapshot.
Three mountains in a kind of line, south to north," he muttered. This has to be a National Park or Wilderness Area, I guess. Give me time to run through the atlas on CD-ROM, see if I can pick out some likely locations. It could also be Canada I'd better check." He looked up at Gant, smiling.
"Hang loose just a little longer, Mitchell. I think we can put ourselves in this guy's back yard!"
"What if he was there on vacation, nothing more?" Barbara asked.
"Let's hope he wasn't."
"Does it seem like his sort of country? You said he had a house in France—"
"He did. That was out of the way, too, in the boondocks.
Strickland likes privacy."
He studied the enlargement once more. Blakey was already hunched over the computer keyboard, scrolling through the vivid images, the colours, contours, highways and mottled towns, of an atlas' computerised maps.
"I think he lives here, Barbara wherever here is."
"Where are we going, Ben?" she demanded.
The night air was cool on her cheeks after the heat, smoke and semi-darkness of the jazz club in a basement under a narrow row of shops. As they emerged from the quiet sidestreet on to the Boulevard
Anspach her patience, rubbed almost raw, vanished. Campbell looked at her as if stung.
"I — er… You didn't seem to be enjoying—" The jazz was fine, Ben. It was the company that was the problem." She positioned herself confrontation ally arms folded across her breasts, purse jutting like a flat weapon, feet planted squarely in the high-heeled shoes that were beginning to pinch. The care with which she had dressed for the reception seemed days earlier.
"Oh, that—" He assayed a grin that a streetlight made into a purpled rictus. His arms flapped in an approximated shrug, as if he had lost all orientation.
It was after one. He had collected her at the Amigo at seven-thirty to take her to the reception, during which he had whispered to her that they must talk, it was vitally important… dinner somewhere, after this? She had nodded vehemently, letting surprise and irritation form all her volition. She had excused herself from a group of colleagues intent on fleshpot-crawling and Campbell had taken her to a supper club, then the jazz cellar.
As they had left the reception together, she had seen David watching them, in company with Roussillon. Her anger had finally determined her. Campbell was the weak link, Campbell must aid her. Then nerve had failed her and she had drunk too much wine, as Campbell had, and they had both seemed to subside into a mutual gloom. The sense of her danger had been dulled. Now, the effects of the wine had gone as certainly as her patience.
"Where next, Ben? Somewhere preordained?" she challenged, her mouth dry with too much alcohol and too many cigarettes. She lit another and puffed angrily at it.
Then she refolded her arms belligerently.
"No…" he sighed. His eyes had seemed to throw back the denial more vehemently before he shrank into a kind of whining schoolboy slouch in front of her.
"What is it, Ben? Why did you ask me out for a date, for God's sake?"
"Don't be stupid!" he snapped, his hand waving her away from him. Cars passed, headlights washing over them and catching the gleam and sparkle of goods in grilled shop windows.
"Why do you have to always be so stupid?" It was the fearful rage of a parent who had recovered a child after hours of anguished absence. He moved closer, drink on his breath, his lips wet. His eyes were narrow, hateful.
"You're always right! You always have to be bloody right! Christ, you've really blown it this time, Marian, my God but you have!"
Candour seemed to momentarily exhaust him and he leaned against a darkened shop window like a sullen drunk. Behind the glass, weary fish swam slowly in a huge tank. Crayfish and bound-clawed lobsters, too.
Revolting and appropriate.
"What have I blown, Ben?" She felt a weakness move up her body.
Instinctively, she glanced around them. There were still a good number of pedestrians, a fair amount of traffic. The boulevard was alive with lights. Her hotel was a ten-minute walk away.
"What?"
"Everything, you stupid bitch!" His voice was a quiet scream.
"Everything… Why do you think I asked you to come to dinner? Because I fancied you?"
"I know the outfit's a bit creased and I'm showing every one of my thirty-eight years, Ben…" The forced humour vanished on her tongue.
"Why, then? Because you loathe me?"
"It's not you, it's the whole bloody thing, woman!"
"Whatthing?"
The traffic noises faded as she ground out her cigarette with the sole of her narrow black shoe. The fish continued to swim slowly, leadenly, the lobsters scrabbling at the bottom of the tank.
"The thing-!"
"What do they want you to do, Ben? When?"
"For Christ's sake, what will they do to me?" he murmured, seeming to catch sight of the captive shellfish for the first time. He rubbed his eyes and forehead furiously, as if he thought himself trapped in a dream. Perhaps he was.
"I wanted to say… couldn't—" He turned to face her, eyes gleaming, his handsome, assured features crumpled like a page torn from a priceless illuminated manuscript.
"I've kept you alive, you stupid bitch — alive!" He yelled it like an accusation. Then his hand covered his mouth as if he had been caught out.
Marian brushed slowly at the beaded jacket, feeling its roughness, then touched the pearls at her throat. She smoothed the hair at her temples; all as if anticipating being photographed.
"I see," she murmured.
A young couple passed, seemingly amused at their parody of some minor marital quarrel.
Campbell looked at her intently, as if he sought some kind of guidance.
His breathing was louder than the traffic. Changing lights turned his features from sickly green to shamed red. The masks he had discarded and replaced during the evening were all gone. His flesh was as white as bone as he moved his head.
"All right, Ben," she announced. Tell me what you're supposed to do for them, as far as I'm concerned."
"You don't think I wanted to, do you?"
"Probably not. But David owns you sorry, employs you, and this is just another of the favours you do for him. What, exactly, was it?"
"It doesn't matter… it's over now. It was supposed to be earlier."
"What do you mean, over?"
"I kept you off the streets, in company, away from dark places! Does that answer your question? I didn't do what I was supposed to do hours ago…" Again, the effort at something akin to truth seemed to exhaust him.
"I just oh, shit…"
Thank you whatever you did. Thanks for not being the Judas-goat, the one with the bell."
"I tried to warn you off before."
"I know."
Marian lit another cigarette and drew on it slowly. Traffic, pedestrians, the long street of shops beyond which jutted incongruous church spires. She felt sorry for Ben Campbell; for his weakness, his ambition, and his present violent fear. He had failed Dav
id.
"I can we get in the car, just drive?" he asked, as if he had become newly afraid of the open street, or of other people. His BMW was parked no more than a hundred yards away. He looked ill in the purpling light of the nearest streetlamp, as she must have done herself.
"Just drive for a bit…?"
"Yes," she nodded.
He walked like a quick marionette to the BMW and got in, slamming the door.
She got in beside him, fugging the interior with cigarette smoke and nerves almost immediately. He seemed to resent the intrusion of both.
He started the engine and pulled out with a squeal of tyres into the thin stream of vehicles, heading north.
Traffic lights were against them at the Boulevard Baudouin. Marian exhaled smoke that rolled back at her from the windscreen.
The misting of the screen was erased at once by the air-conditioning.
Her mind was clearing with much greater reluctance. Ben Campbell had colluded with David, then lost his nerve. Because of that, of him, she was alive, and for no other reason. The car moved away from the lights, across the intersection and along the Rue de Brabant, towards the port and the Laeken park.
The anger came back again, like a recurring bout of malaria, making her head ache, her body tense against her situation, against David. She had to do something, anything.
Traffic lights at the junction with the Avenue de la Reine. He had switched on his left indicator. He was heading for the park, it seemed, as if towards a wilderness where he might lose himself.
Suddenly, she flung open the passenger door. He turned a stunned face to her.
"I'm getting out now!" she snapped at him.
"David can find me for himself—"
"No, please-!"
The lights changed.
"I can't if you, Ben I have to watch out for myself! This could be a trick—"
"No!" he all but wailed, shaking his head. The first horns had started behind them, impatient even at that hour.
"Get in for God's sake, get in the car!" he bellowed, his features drained and desperate, pleading with her.
"Will you help me, Ben? Will you talk to me?"
His face was ashen, his eyes furtive, moving rapidly like those of a dreamer. The car horns were louder, like the sounds of threatening creatures in the dark. Ben Campbell was utterly unnerved. His lips were wet as he nodded.