Bloodless

by Douglas Preston

  He stopped, as if expecting another protest from Coldmoon. When none came, he glanced at Constance. Then he continued.

  “Events in universes parallel to ours don’t always change that dramatically. Physicists believe the universes most like ours are those which run closest to us in the quantum stream of time. According to brane theory, these universes are layered next to each other, like membranes, in higher dimensional space. So close that they sometimes touch, and thus open a window or portal between the two.

  “Our elderly engineer managed, using the principles I’ve just described, to create a machine that could open that window and peer through it into another universe, very close to ours, except running at a slightly different timeline. The machine doesn’t see into our future. It’s looking into a universe almost identical to ours, one minute ahead.”

  “This is crazy,” said Coldmoon.

  “I assure you this is well-established physics that many, if not most, physicists believe in.”

  “So what good is it to look one minute in the future?” Coldmoon asked.

  “It makes all the difference, as you shall see.”

  Coldmoon fell silent, and Pendergast went on. “So: Our elderly scientist built a prototype machine. That extra minute of predictive time would be enough to warn a pilot of catastrophic events. Lightning, extreme turbulence, engine failure. However, the engineer was tired of being laughed at by his colleagues. He needed to make a dramatic demonstration of its power, one that anyone could appreciate. That would be stock trading on Wall Street. It would display where a stock price would be, one minute ahead. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the value of such a device.

  “The old man confided in Alicia Rime. He told her he was going to bring his device—which was small enough to fit into a briefcase—to the Seattle headquarters, where he could demonstrate it to the CEO and board of Boeing at a retreat the weekend after Thanksgiving.

  “Rime thought it was a crime for Boeing to get a device like that, especially after the way she, and the engineer, had been treated by them. She tried to convince the engineer to keep the machine for himself and not give it to Boeing. She suggested the two of them could quit their jobs and use the machine to make money. But he was adamant: it belonged to Boeing, he had developed it on their time, and so forth. They had a bitter falling-out. She’d come to hate Boeing and—though she had no rights to it—saw the machine as her ticket out. But her elderly acquaintance never gave her the opportunity to examine the device or even get a look at the plans, and by now they were estranged. And he kept the device, and plans, in his safe at all times, or on his person.

  “She knew he was planning to take a flight from Portland to Seattle: Northwest Orient 305, carrying the briefcase with the device. She also knew the type of jet that flew that route was a Boeing 727-100. This is a critical pivot in our story, because she had an intimate knowledge of that aircraft as well. For example, its three engines were mounted unusually high on the rear fuselage. It was able to fly at a lower altitude and lower speed without stalling than any other commercial jet. But particularly important, and virtually unique to the 727-100, was the airplane’s aft airstair, and the ability of this stair to be lowered during flight—from a control in the rear that nobody in the cockpit could override. This ability was so secret that it was even kept from many of the crews that flew commercial flights. However, it was not a secret to the engineers at Boeing.

  “The board retreat in Seattle was scheduled for November twenty-seventh, 1971—the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The previous Tuesday, Rime contrived to have an altercation with her manager over credit he’d taken for some of her blueprints. As a result, she was told to clear out her desk by the end of the day, which she did, and left. Nobody ever saw her again as Alicia Rime…except the farmer-cum-doctor we met in the backwoods of Washington.”

  “How in the world have you figured all this out?” Coldmoon asked.

  “The four questions, as you shall see.” Pendergast shifted in his chair, leaning on his elbows and looking at Coldmoon. “Still thinking of going back to bed now, partner?”

  51

  GANNON FINISHED SETTING UP the lighting and positioning her two camera operators in opposite corners of the mausoleum, where they wouldn’t accidentally film each other. As she looked around, she felt a certain thrill. The interior couldn’t have been better if a Hollywood set designer had created it. The two side walls were lined with marble crypts, each with a door carved with a name and dates, and various short epitaphs in Latin or English. Some doors had been shattered by vandals or age. Several crypts even had bones spilling out of them, and an actual human skull sat on the floor, staring upward, its jaw agape as if in a frozen scream. A skeletal arm hung out of another crypt, with shreds of tendons adhering to the bone, dressed in a decayed sleeve of silk and lace. A gold ring decorated a bony finger. It was a director’s dream. But at the same time it made her uneasy, thinking that these remains had once been people, that this was not just the plaster and paint of a movie set. Why wasn’t there somebody taking care of old vaults like this, before they deteriorated into such a frightful state?

  The central area of the crypt was open, and it led to a broad doorway in the rear. The doors that had once hung there had been made of wood. They had evidently rotted and then been smashed and torn off their hinges by vandals, pieces scattered about. Beyond, a staircase led down to a second level, with walls of cut stone blocks and a vaulted stone ceiling, prickled with tiny stalactites of lime, some dripping water. In the reflected lights, she could see more crypts down there, also smashed up by vandals. She shuddered.

  Pulling her gaze from the doorway, she turned to Gregor. “Move the fogger over there,” she said. Gregor, a big muscled guy she truly hated, did everything she asked, at least—but only reluctantly and with grudging slowness. Sure enough, with a scowl, he picked up the fog machine. “Where, exactly, do you want it?” he asked in a tone of aggrievement, as if her request had been too vague for him to follow.

  “Right in that corner, where it’s out of sight,” she said. She had never been on a set that didn’t have at least one asshole. She never allowed herself to be provoked, even by sexist jerks. This set had more than its share of pricks, but it was balanced by the fun of being in Savannah and the efficiency of Betts and the talent of Moller, both of whom knew exactly what they were doing—fakery or not.

  “Gregor,” she said, “set a Lume Cube up against that back wall, low, about three feet off the ground.”

  Wordlessly he carried the light over, hooked it to a cable, and turned it on. Gannon eyed it critically. It cast light from below, which gave everything a creepy Lon Chaney look: effective if not overdone.

  Betts had been going over Moller’s moves in the next scene. Now, with cameras rolling, Moller came in through the mausoleum door—there was a background spot behind him, raking through the mist—his silver dowsing rod twitching.

  “Evil,” he pronounced in a stentorian tone. Then: “There is great evil here…”

  His voice dropped to a near whisper at the final words. Once again: effective. She glanced over; her camera operators were nailing it, as usual.

  “One, do a slow pan of the crypts,” she murmured into the headset.

  Craig did the pan, lingering on the skeleton’s arm and the skull on the floor. Beautiful.

  “Two, close-up on face.”

  Pavel zoomed his Steadicam in on Moller’s face, which was twitching, the eyes wide and staring. The wand continued to tremble, and then, slowly, began to point downward—toward the doorway and descending stairs.

  “Down,” said Moller in a tremulous whisper. “Down.”

  52

  OVER THE LAST SEVERAL minutes of Pendergast’s recitation, as the pieces came together in his mind with what he had read about D. B. Cooper, Coldmoon had grown both more fascinated—and more incredulous.

  “So you’re saying this Alicia Rime is D. B. Cooper,” Coldmoon said. “The skyjack
er who was never found, whose crime was never solved.”

  “Bravo!” Pendergast turned to his ward. “Shall we fortify the man with a wee dram of Lagavulin?”

  “Why not?”

  Coldmoon noticed that, beyond a lack of emotion, Constance seemed to be projecting an unusual iciness—toward him and Pendergast both. He gratefully took the generous measure of scotch Pendergast handed him. Pendergast then poured a glass for Constance and one for himself.

  Pendergast shifted once again, making himself more comfortable. “Perhaps you can pick up the thread now, Agent Coldmoon, and tell us where it leads.”

  Coldmoon was tempted to decline, feeling slightly patronized. But the story was so outrageous and intriguing, and the pieces were starting to come together so quickly, that he couldn’t help himself. “Okay, let’s see. Rime got herself fired from Boeing so her later disappearance wouldn’t cause suspicion. She booked a seat on the same flight, disguised as a man, so the old scientist wouldn’t recognize her. And to throw off the later investigation. She used the name Dan Cooper.”

  “Correct,” Pendergast said. “In those days, it was easy to book a flight in a fake name.”

  “It was Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Once in the air, he—I mean, she—showed a stewardess an attaché case containing a phony bomb, then a note demanding two hundred thousand dollars. The idea was to make it look like a straightforward hijacking, to divert attention from what she was really after. She asked for two full sets of civilian parachutes, primary and reserve.”

  Pendergast nodded. “That was to make sure the authorities didn’t sabotage the chutes—and asking for a second chute implied she might take a hostage along.”

  “Right. So when the plane landed in Seattle, she collected a ransom of two hundred thousand dollars and the parachutes and ordered everyone off the flight. But she didn’t allow them to get their hand luggage.”

  “Precisely,” said Pendergast.

  “Let’s see…” Coldmoon thought back to the files he’d read. “Cooper demanded the pilot take her to Mexico City, with a refueling stop in Reno. That would route the plane over a vast, remote forested landscape at night. She ordered everyone into the cockpit, where they couldn’t see what she was doing. Then she opened the luggage compartments and took the briefcase she wanted.”

  “Yes,” said Pendergast. “And it was noted later that many of the overhead luggage bins had been opened and their contents scattered, with items missing. She no doubt lowered the aft stairs and tossed some luggage out, again to confuse things and cover up her real target.”

  “Right. So she took the briefcase and jumped.” Coldmoon shook his head. “Imagine jumping into a storm at night like that. Woman or man—doing that took serious stones.”

  Pendergast sipped the Lagavulin. “The D. B. Cooper case was one of the longest unsolved cases in FBI history. It wasn’t closed until a few years ago, in fact, with no solution. Various landing areas were suggested, countless suspects developed, questioned, and abandoned. Endless computer and physical simulations were run, taking into account different surface velocities, wind speeds, altitudes—but none ever turned up a body or the money. Years later, a rotten packet of that ransom money was found in a sandbar in the Columbia River. That led many to believe he was dead.”

  He looked at Coldmoon. “If you were in Cooper’s shoes…what would you have done after jumping off that plane?”

  Coldmoon considered this for a moment. “The ransom money couldn’t have been spent. That’s what tripped up the Lindbergh kidnappers. He, I mean she, would have known the FBI microfilmed or marked all the bills before giving them to her. So she tossed the money into the wind, to make it look like she’d died in the fall.” He paused. “Next, I would have free-fallen as long as I dared, so their calculations of where I landed—along with the dusting of money—would throw off any searchers. And less chance of anyone spotting the chute.”

  Pendergast spoke as Coldmoon took another sip of his Lagavulin. “That’s exactly what happened—with one exception. Something went wrong with the chute, and she sustained a violent impact.”

  “But she didn’t die,” Coldmoon said. “Obviously. Because Dr. Quincy saved her life.”

  “Precisely,” Pendergast said. “And now, for this final part of the story, we should turn to Constance. Because she got it straight from the source.”

  “That interview,” Constance said after a brief pause, “was probably the final exchange I will ever have with Felicity Frost.”

  “You mean Alicia Rime,” said Coldmoon. “Alias D. B. Cooper.”

  Pendergast nodded. “That was the first question I had Constance ask Frost: Are you D. B. Cooper? As I’d hoped, it threw her so off guard that it was easier to get answers to the other three questions. Constance?”

  She spoke quietly but quickly, as if dealing with something she wished to be rid of as fast as possible. “Miss Frost—Alicia—knew a great deal about avionics. She knew that the hijacking would precipitate a massive manhunt. The time of her jump and the location of the plane would not be known for certain, in the days before GPS. She jumped out into a moonless, stormy night, landing somewhere in the vast forests of southern Washington and northern Oregon, a huge and almost impossible area to search. The air force jets that had been scrambled to follow the 727 didn’t see her jump.

  “She told me she opened the main chute and began to dump the money, but the money got caught in the canopy, deflating it. She cut that chute free and deployed the reserve. And this was her one mistake: she hadn’t noticed that the reserve was a training chute, not meant for actual use. Normally, such chutes are loosely stitched closed. This was something she’d never thought to check on. And now, she was rapidly approaching the ground without a deployed parachute.

  “She had the presence of mind to slash the stitching away and free the training chute. Luckily, she carried a knife and the chute had a functioning ripcord. The chute opened successfully, but she was still moving at a high speed when she hit the water.”

  “Water?” Coldmoon asked.

  “Yes. She landed just upriver of Walupt Creek falls. The current carried her over the falls and into Walupt Lake—near Berry Patch. Roused by the cold water, she managed to swim to shore, despite the fractured leg. She passed out on the pebble beach. And that’s where she was discovered in the morning by a young farmer. The briefcase she had stolen was still strapped to her body with parachute line.”

  “And that young farmer was Zephraim Quincy,” Coldmoon said.

  Constance nodded. “That morning, he hadn’t yet heard about the skyjacking. He was living alone in the house. His father was in an assisted-care facility with a serious head injury, from which he would eventually die. Quincy was struggling to keep the farm going. Alicia didn’t tell him anything at first, except she categorically refused to be taken to the hospital. He carried her back to his clinic and was able to reduce her fracture, splint and plaster her leg. The paper that morning didn’t carry the news of the hijacking—it had happened too late the prior evening. So he cared for her that day, evening, and night. That, by the way, is why he never showed up at the traditional Berry Patch Thanksgiving dinner. The next morning, when the paper landed on his porch, he saw the headline and the sketch of D. B. Cooper above the fold. He realized that the woman he rescued, oddly wearing male clothing, must be Cooper.

  “Five minutes later, when he walked into his clinic, he was carrying the newspaper. As he began to dress her wounds, he mentioned that he had alerted the sheriff and asked if there was anything she wanted to tell him before he arrived. She then told him everything—or almost everything. She especially emphasized that she hadn’t hurt anyone and that the bomb was a fake. She begged and pleaded with him not to turn her in, to call off the sheriff.

  “By this time, I suspect the young farmer was already in love—a case of love at first sight. He was moved by her plea. He hadn’t really called the sheriff—that was just a test to see her reaction. So he kept h
er there in the farmhouse, caring for her and nursing her back to health. She, in turn, fell in love with him. For a few months they were happy, in their farm tucked away in the wilderness, like Tristan and Isolde in the forest of Morrois. No one knew she was there. But, of course, it was too good to be true, and for obvious reasons it couldn’t last. The searches were getting closer and FBI agents visited Quincy’s farm several times. D. B. Cooper was now on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list and over two hundred agents were working the case. She couldn’t hide forever.

  “By spring, Alicia was well enough to travel. She knew that if she didn’t leave Quincy then, she never would. So she wrote him a note of thanks, planning to place it on the kitchen table early one morning and avoid a difficult scene. To her surprise, however, Quincy already suspected her plans: he’d awoken before sunrise and prepared her not only breakfast but a backpack full of supplies—enough to get her out of the state and beyond any danger of being apprehended. He gave her what little cash he had. He also tucked into that backpack their favorite book, inscribed to her. She had already researched a way to get a new identity and she knew exactly what to do. After leaving the farm, she headed for a large cemetery not far away—in Puyallup—and found a grave of a girl with her approximate birthdate. She assumed that identity.”

  “It’s clear that Quincy loved her daring and courage,” said Pendergast. “He even admired the fact she was a rebel, an outlaw, as evidenced by the inscription: ‘that great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order.’”

  “How did you get her to tell you all this?” Coldmoon asked.

  “It was Aloysius’s second question that really broke her down, got her talking. Did you hijack the plane in order to steal the suitcase with the device? She responded in the affirmative.”

  She let this sink in a moment before continuing. “Now under the new name of Felicity Frost, she traveled to the Midwest. The year was 1972. At some point after leaving the farm, she managed to get the scientist’s machine working. Her plan—in the short term, at least—was to make enough money to achieve independence. The future could wait. Using the device, she learned how to focus it a minute into the future and began making modest spot trades on a variety of Big Board stocks. As she grew more proficient, she began trading in options and was able to make larger profits. And though she never grew greedy, within a year she’d earned enough to pay off the mortgage on Quincy’s farm, and to send funds to the University of Washington Medical School paying the rest of his tuition—anonymously, of course.”