"There's a chance his involvement is peripheral. Maybe he's unaware of the assassinations."
"Unaware? He's the former director of operations of DCI. Has he ever not been aware of anything in the entire world? He's an all-knowing intelligence demigod."
"He's good people."
"And, according to your many stories, he's an extraordinarily gifted agent handler, which is trade-speak for gifted manipulator and liar." Arkin had no response. Morrison shook his head. "I can't believe you kept that from me. You're conflicted—no, no, you're deluded. Deluded because you're so damned desperate for affirmation. You have daddy issues."
"Look, I'll grant you there's a possibility that some of my more irritating obsessive and perfectionist behaviors might be rooted in a subconscious desire to please my father, but—."
"Which is obviously no longer possible. So switch it off."
"That would be a neat trick. After that, maybe I'll command each beat of my heart with a conscious thought."
"You know what I mean." Morrison paused, fuming. "I have to find a gas station or somewhere to take a dump."
"Let's hope they still have 3.4-gallon flush toilets way out here."
"That'd be funny, except that I'm not very happy with you right now."
"Bill, I didn't want you to—"
"In fact, I'm thinking of a word that describes you perfectly. But I don't want to cuss, so I'll just give you clues. It's a word that starts with an 'a' and rhymes with asshole."
"If I could just talk to him. If there could be some sort of explanation for—"
"Explanation?"
"Before we. . . ." Arkin went quiet and closed his eyes.
Morrison gave him a sidelong look. "Damnation, Nate. You look like you shrank by a third just now, like someone just told you there's no such thing as Santa Claus. And you're pale. Is your blood sugar alright? Snap out of it, man. The finish line is in sight."
They found a gas station with a mini mart, and went inside—Arkin turning down the snack aisle as Morrison sought out the toilet. But when Morrison emerged five minutes later, Arkin was gone. Morrison stood by the car, scanning the area in all directions, but to no avail. He nodded as though he'd known all along that Arkin would pull some sort of idiotic kung fu movie, Jedi knight I-must-face-my-master-alone bullshit, and would ditch him. Could someone as rational as Arkin really still harbor hope that Sheffield would offer some explanation absolving himself of guilt, thereby preserving himself as the good and honorable father figure Arkin so desperately longed for? The innumerable, twisted variations of father/mentor-son/apprentice relationships would never cease to amaze him for their power to make reasonable people do incredibly stupid things. With tremendous force, he kicked a loose rock across the parking lot, then went back inside to buy himself a fresh pouch of chew.
THIRTY-FOUR
Over the years, a number of people who'd known that side of Arkin had commented that he had liquid nitrogen for blood—or something along those lines. Indeed, in past lives he'd jumped out of innumerable airplanes in total darkness, operated alone in hostile territories for weeks on end, and killed people in a half dozen different ways. Yet now, as he fumbled with his cellphone, trying to push the right numbers, he was disconcerted to find that his hands were trembling. Actually trembling.
Standing in the gravel roadside turnout where his last hitched ride had just dropped him off, he was attempting to dial the home number for a Professor David Tillman, who Arkin knew was actually Roland Sheffield. The one man he'd ever truly looked up to. The man whose affection and approval had stood in for that of his own father. His heart pounded in his ears as he tried for a third time, finally getting it right. After an infinite pause, it rang—once, twice, a third time. He got a generic voicemail greeting. "You have reached 541. . . ." Then came the message tone, and the subsequent silence as the system stood by to record Arkin's words. It took a second before he could speak.
"Rol—" Arkin cleared his throat. "Roland, it's me. It's Nate." He took a breath. Keep it simple. "I need to talk to you. Call me back." He left the number. Barely a minute later, his phone rang.
"Roland?"
"Oh, Nathaniel. My boy. Is it really you?"
He sounded tired. Almost feeble. And significantly older than Arkin remembered. But then, of course, he was. And feeble or not, hearing his voice sent a chill up Arkin's spine.
"It's really me." Now what?
To Arkin's relief, Sheffield took the lead. "I'm sorry, Nathaniel. I'm so sorry. You must think me quite a coward."
"I—no. I don't know what I think."
"No. I suppose not. But I'm astonished! Utterly astonished! How on Earth did you find me?" A pause. "How is our dear Hannah?"
"Not good. She's not good." Don't get distracted. "I would really like to catch up."
"Yes. Yes, of course. An explanation is the least I owe you."
"Are you willing to meet me?"
"Nathaniel, it would be my absolute privilege."
"I'm actually at a cabin just north of Florence, out here on the coast."
"You're in Oregon? Ha! What serendipity. What on Earth are you doing all the way out here at the edge of the continent? Something for work? I'm guessing it isn't for a beach vacation like in the old days."
Sheffield promised to head to the cabin, estimating that he could get there by 10:30 p.m. Arkin gave him the address and hung up, perplexed by Sheffield's convincing kindness, sincerity, and ostensible ignorance of Arkin's state of affairs. Could the man possibly not be the assassin's puppet master after all? Could his fax number being on the machine on Granville Island actually be a consequence of something innocuous? Was Sheffield truly the good man Arkin always thought he was? He'd soon find out.
THIRTY-FIVE
Arkin crouched in the bushes and trees a few yards off the path that led down to the vacant beach cabin he'd picked from a list on a vacation rentals web site and then broken into. The cabin itself was perched on a bluff overlooking the Pacific, just south of Heceta Head. Remote, but convenient enough for his purposes. And there were plenty of escape routes—with good cover provided by the dense coastal forest all around—in case it turned out he'd miscalculated.
He'd been waiting there in the dark roughly six hours, having gotten situated at the earliest time he figured Sheffield could possibly have gotten there. He had the small gun he'd snatched from the Prius stuck in the back of the belt of his pants, its cold steel pressed against his skin, concealed by his shirt.
Just as he began to contemplate urinating again, a distant crunch of the gravel of the path sent a shot of adrenaline into his system. His senses went sharp. His heart began to pound. Before long, the silhouette of a lone figure appeared to his left, slowly, cautiously, making its way toward the cabin. No flashlight. As the silhouette drew near, Arkin could see that it was that of a man—a man of Sheffield's size and shape. He blinked his eyes, then blinked again, straining to see the details of the man's face. But it wasn't necessary. The stride alone told him all he needed to know. It was Sheffield. He'd had grown his hair long and wore a heavy moustache and beard, no doubt to make himself harder to recognize. But it was him, without a doubt.
Arkin's impulse, his yearning to run and embrace his old mentor, to ask him what happened, to demand an explanation, nearly got the better of him. But he managed to stay in control, and began to follow Sheffield down the trail with as much stealth as he could manage. He'd closed the gap to about 10 yards by the time Sheffield knocked on the cabin door.
"I'm behind you, Roland."
Sheffield spun around. And there he was, half-illuminated by the bare, low-wattage light bulb over the porch. "Nathaniel? Ha! My boy! You haven't lost your touch."
Arkin stood near enough that Sheffield could see him, but was careful to keep himself in shadow in case Sheffield had come armed or brought along a chaperone—like Andrej Petrović. "The door is open. Step inside but stay where I can see you. Leave the interior lights off and keep your back to me as
I follow you in."
"Nathaniel, I—"
"Do it now."
*****
They sat facing each other in the cabin's pair of old plaid chairs, next to a cold cast iron stove. A single candle on the coffee table between them provided the only light.
"This is surreal," Arkin said. "I don't know where to begin."
"Why don't you tell me how you've been?"
"How I've been?" Arkin shook his head. "How could you do that to us?"
Sheffield's head leaned to one side, his sad face betraying confusion at Arkin's question. "Do you mean—"
"How could you let Hannah and me think you'd died? You were like a father. . . ."
"And you and Hannah were family to me. I am so, so sorry."
"I need you to do better than that."
"I was not myself."
"Which self? Never mind. Why did you leave, Roland? Why the staged death? I'll hand it to you, it was a convincing job. Your car going off the road and into the mouth of that creek. The feigned heart-wrenching despondency leading up to it, leaving questions about the possibility of suicide."
"It wasn't an act. The truth is that I was suicidal. Utterly and truly despondent after Claudia died. I suppose the price you pay for being an atheist is that eventually you have to confront death without any sort of candy-coating nonsense about eternal life. And that makes it all the harder to live with. At any rate, I couldn't stay there. I couldn't live in that house, sleep in that bed, walk those quiet and lonely halls, without Claudia. I had to go."
"But why not just move to a new home? Or retire? Why a staged disappearance? Why put your friends through hell like you did? We were devastated."
"Everything about my old life was a reminder of the past. I couldn't take it. I had to have a clean break."
"I don't understand."
"And I sincerely hope you never do. I hope you never know how that feels."
Arkin held his breath for a moment, rattled at the thought that he probably would know how it felt—soon. He wondered whether Sheffield was being sincere or trying to throw him off balance. "This is almost certainly insane, but I'm going to give you the benefit—just. . . . What's the extent of your involvement with the group?"
"Group?"
"Don't play me for a fool. There are too many connections for it to all be coincidental."
Sheffield held his hands out, his palms up, pleading. "Come on. You'll have to give me more to go on than that. What group? What involvement?"
"Roland."
"Look, Nathaniel, I can't refute anything unless you tell me what you think you know."
"What is Bluefields Data Dynamics?"
"What does that have to do with—"
"What is it?"
"My limited liability company."
"For what?"
"I moonlight. The University of Oregon doesn't pay adjuncts all that well, so I do some contract data analysis work. Same software packages we used at DCI and DIA. Most of it is for the Army."
"What about Seastar Aquaculture?" Sheffield looked blank. "In Vancouver, British Columbia. Granville Island, to be precise."
"You mean Sapere Aude? They're on Granville Island."
"Call it what you want. They dispatch that Balkan psycho to assassinate your quote-unquote future Hitlers and bin Ladens, don't they? That star chamberesque idea you were oh-so-subtly pushing on me all those years ago. Blinded by my affection, or maybe my need for affection, I never connected the dots. What a fool I've been."
"Steady, Nathaniel. You're mistaken. I don't know why or how, but you've made an error somewhere. I give you my word. Sapere Aude is a peaceful group. It's just a think tank."
"A think tank?"
"They promote academic discussion and disseminate materials pertaining to terror management theory. They send draft articles to me all the time. I edit them and prep them for their newsletters. That's all."
"Newsletters."
"Just newsletters. Scholarly articles. News of upcoming meetings and lectures. Requests for donations. All the usual paraphernalia of a nonprofit interest group."
"And what about Montserrat?"
"Montserrat? The island?"
"You don't know of a connection between the office in Vancouver and someone on Montserrat?"
Sheffield shrugged. "Maybe Sapere Aude has another editor. It's an international group."
At that, Arkin nearly questioned him about Valparaiso, but managed to hold back—his instincts telling him to play that card another day.
*****
Atop a promontory that poked out of the coastal forest and towered over the beach, Morrison was on his belly, observing the surroundings of the old, cedar-shingled cabin—watching for any movement, any heat signatures—though his thermographic scope. From his position high up on the rock, he had a commanding view of the area. To his left, his SR-25 sniper rifle, with a full 10-round magazine, sat ready on its bipod. A stiff, salty breeze was blowing in off the ocean. The sound of crashing Pacific surf roared up from the darkness to his right and below.
He knew Arkin was in the cabin. He'd watched him emerge from the back door and conduct a quick reconnoiter of the surrounding area—probably looking for firing positions, paths of approach, and, possibly for himself, paths of escape. Then he'd watched him slip off into the woods before, hours later, returning with somebody else. Now two glowing human heat signatures were visible through the wall of the cabin. You sneaky son of a bitch, Morrison thought. Try to ditch me while I'm taking a crap. And now I'm starving, and probably going to get rained on, all to chase down and cover your stupid, ungrateful ass.
As he thought about exactly what he would say to Arkin to maximize the jackass's sense of guilt, the image in his thermographic scope flickered. He ignored it. But less than a minute later, it happened again. What the hell? He'd recharged the batteries a day earlier. Still, he turned a dial to see his battery status and was enraged to see it down near zero. Damn shit battery. He switched back over to observe mode, hoping for the best, when movement and the glow of a distant heat signature caught his eye. Someone was approaching the cabin from the other side. Someone with a long gun. The man was skirting the area, probably looking for a place where he could see in though the picture window on the side that faced the ocean. That would be tricky—as there wasn't much land between the cabin and a steep drop-off to the beach many feet below—but not impossible. There was one outcropping of rock that appeared to offer the remote possibility of a suitable firing position. Judas H. Priest. I hope Nate saw that too. Just then, his scope clicked off. He went from watching the glowing orange and yellow image of the man to looking at a dead black screen. Damn! Morrison shoved the scope aside and grabbed his night vision binoculars. But by the time he got them turned on and lined up, the man was nowhere to be seen—probably crouched in the rocks somewhere, or concealed in the scrub brush. Morrison stared and stared, focusing on the rock outcropping that he guessed the man had been making for. It was no use.
Resigned, knowing there wasn't a moment to lose, he silently rose to his feet and began his approach—at a dangerous but necessary speed—toward the last known location of the gunman, hoping the man's attention would be focused on the cabin.
*****
Arkin stared at Sheffield long and hard, watching his eyes. There was, at least, a veneer of what looked like sincere perplexity. But then again, Sheffield was notorious for being hard to read, and legendary for his ability to put on false fronts.
"Could I trouble you for a glass of water?" Sheffield asked. "It was a steep walk down from where I had to park. And I don't know if you noticed, but I'm getting up there in years."
Arkin rose and crossed the great room to the kitchen sink, all the while watching Sheffield out of the corner of his eye. Filling a glass at the slow-flowing tap, he turned to see a long-familiar expression on Sheffield's face, intimating concern, esteem, and affection all at once. Glancing out the large picture window in front of the sink and kitchen counter,
he was distracted by the view—or rather, the lack thereof. The total blackness. Though he couldn't see it, he knew he was looking out over the Pacific. The vast, dark ocean—often dangerous, entirely uncaring. "So," he said, still staring out the window. "Let me see if I have it straight. After holding one of the most powerful positions in the intelligence business worldwide, after dropping off the face of the earth and assuming a false identity, you're now a contract data analyst and volunteer newsletter editor for a peaceful little think tank."
"And adjunct professor of sociology."
"And you are honestly unaware of the group's dirty work. You had nothing to do with the shooting of John Pratt."
"I don't know who that is. Cross my heart, Nathaniel."
"You aren't a knowing member of a group that dispatches a psycho killer artist from Vancouver to assassinate rising fundamentalists and hatemongers, like the self-proclaimed Reverend Allan Charles Egan, Hassan al Nefud, and so on, or innocent bystanders like John Pratt."
"No," Sheffield said, startling Arkin by having crossed the room to stand within a few feet of him.
"Even though an assassination campaign of that shade would dovetail with your long-held position on the killing of your future Hitlers and bin Ladens. Even though the mechanism of your disappearance practically mirrored that of Father Collin Bryant."
Sheffield shrugged again.
"And you had nothing to do with my being sent to Indonesia all those years ago. It wasn't a setup. It wasn't a way to trump up an excuse for my banishment to Durango. You had nothing to do with it, even though you were DCI director of operations, seated at the right hand of the god of intelligence. The fact that I was pulled from the Priest case just as I was finally closing in—the timing of my banishment—was complete coincidence. The reassignment of the case to a green rookie. The disappearance of the files. The shooting of John Pratt just before he could give me the Vancouver location." Arkin's eyes widened with realization. "And the operation against Raylan McGill–the night Killick and I watched him take his wife apart—you didn't walk away from your radio while Killick begged me to shoot as some sort of test to see if I'd cross the Rubicon, take on your principles, accept your beliefs," he said, handing over the glass of water, watching Sheffield for the slightest hints of intent to attack. There were none.
The Shadow Priest: Omnibus Edition: Two Complete Novels Page 30