by Jon Land
They reached the Maine Turnpike not long after noon. Lisa, who was sitting beside Kimberlain, was already calmer and more composed.
“Tell me more about where we’re going,” she requested.
“Fully furnished cabin nobody knows about in the wilds of Androscoggin County. I built it myself.”
“But it won’t be you who plays watchdog for me.”
“No,” Kimberlain told her. “Somebody just as good.”
“That man from the island—you know who he is, don’t you?”
Kimberlain didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“I want to know. I want to know everything you do about him.”
“I’ll tell you, but later. You have a right to know.”
She smiled. “I was expecting an argument.”
“Just being practical. It helps to understand what you’re up against, who your enemy is.”
“Spoken in the present tense. You think he’ll be back, don’t you?”
“If he can find you, he’ll be back.”
She almost chuckled at the flatness of his statement. “I’m not used to being around such honesty. Business world, remember?”
“I didn’t pull any punches in Atlanta, and it wouldn’t be fair for me to start pulling punches now, either.”
She squeezed her eyes closed and held them that way briefly. “I didn’t treat you very well at first. It’s just that, well, I understood what you had come for, and I couldn’t accept it.”
“I came to help you.”
“That’s the point. See, the thing of it is, all my life I’ve never wanted to admit to anyone that I couldn’t do everything for myself. That’s why I don’t have any maids or chauffeurs. Manage a five-hundred-million-dollar corporation during the day and go home to do the dishes. It was always me, just me, and that got magnified even more when my father died. Now all of a sudden the only reason I’m alive and hope to stay that way is because somebody else stepped into my life out of nowhere.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being dependent, so long as you pick and choose your spots.”
“And who are you dependent on, Jared?”
“Lots of people,” he responded immediately. “Most of them have plenty in common with you. They’ve been screwed around, and somehow they learn I’m out there and that I can help them. I’m dependent on them because they’re my only shot at making up for the damage I did to the world during a period of my life I’d prefer to forget.”
“So that’s what I am to you,” she said softly.
“That,” he returned, “and more.”
The cabin was located on a dirt road that ran off Route 121. The car bobbed and weaved, straining its shocks until they seemed useless. The cabin appeared as a dark splotch amidst the dwindling foliage, built to meld with the landscape in a way that made it hard to spot even when looking directly at it.
“Place comes complete with a forty-thousand-BTU generator, and the heat comes courtesy of a wood stove,” Kimberlain said as he led Lisa toward the front door.
The air inside the cabin was musty, full of the smells of disuse. They kept their coats on while the Ferryman tended to the wood stove, loading and lighting it.
“When was the last time you were here?” Lisa asked.
“Two years ago, maybe two and a half.”
Kimberlain filled the generator with gasoline and got it started after only a brief struggle, while Lisa put away the groceries they had purchased on the way up. By 3 P.M. the fireplace and wood stove were both going and the temperature had risen enough for them to take off their coats. Peet would be arriving by five, and Kimberlain found himself eager to be out of this place he’d built to forget the pain of the Caretaker years and get back on the trail of the truth behind what was going on. At the same time, though, he was not so eager to take his leave of Lisa Eiseman. They settled down in front of the fire to warm themselves before going about the task of clearing the dust away.
She made him tell her about Quail and about how he had come to know him. The answers led to more questions about his years with The Caretakers and the scars left behind. Everything he told her had been told before, but never all to one person in a single sitting.
Their sharing should have remained merely verbal, of course; he hadn’t expected or planned anything different, but he felt it start when their shoulders pressed together and he took her hand. He turned to find her staring up at him, and they kissed, wrapping their arms around each other. Lisa knew then that they would make love, knew she would enjoy it, but she wanted desperately to make it enjoyable for him as well. So in bed she teased and made him put off the final act of lovemaking in an attempt to be yet something else he would see himself having to overcome. She knew she had to appeal to this side of him if there was ever to be mutual desire, and the ploy worked beyond her wildest expectations. He returned her passion with even more of his own. Physically his capabilities were incredible. To give him the pleasure he needed, she had to reach deep inside herself for parts she didn’t know existed. And at the same time she could feel him put all of himself into every motion, all of his vast being and power. His focus was singular. Anything he undertook he could only excel at. There was room for nothing else. Yet similarly she could feel deep down his discomfort with the motions, his virtual embarrassment that appeared in the pauses that came through their joining.
“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” she asked him at the end after they had moved back into the living area to be warmed by the fire.
“Since before I built this cabin.” He thought for a moment. “Long before. I don’t know, it just didn’t seem important to me anymore. After The Caretakers, little did.”
“Sex?”
“And love. Each person only has so much passion to go around, and it can be channeled to only so many different places. Maybe it’s like a reservoir. When it’s gone, it’s gone. It can come back, but it doesn’t always. After what happened to my parents, all of my passion went into The Caretakers and what they represented. And after The Caretakers, it went into the paybacks.”
“You’re using what you call passion as an excuse to avoid love. But it’s not really love you’re talking about, it’s dependence, need. I know how it feels, because it’s in me, too. There’s always been a reason not to get involved, something else to do. Excuses, rationales. I always thought that by giving myself up to someone else I’d be weaker somehow, and I couldn’t allow that, couldn’t expose myself to that kind of vulnerability.”
“In my business, vulnerability can get you killed.”
“I wouldn’t have thought the same could be said for my business, but … Just hold me, all right?”
Kimberlain did.
A car grinding down the dirt road announced Peet’s arrival, and by then Kimberlain had dressed and was ready to meet him. It felt incredibly awkward to look at the giant as an ally, much less a sorely needed one. By force of habit he kept his distance, a fact Peet noted with the slightest of smiles.
He had told Lisa exactly who Peet was and what he had done, and much to his surprise she nonetheless took to him from the start, utterly enthralled by his calm and charming demeanor. Peet still possessed the capacity for violence, but it seemed tempered by his ability to control it and this reaffirmed Kimberlain’s decision to utilize his unique skills. Yes, he was leaving Lisa Eiseman in the hands of a man who had used them to kill seventeen people before he was caught. The hands might have been the same, but the man wasn’t, just as the Ferryman wasn’t the same person who had served with The Caretakers. If he could change, then why not Peet?
The sun was setting when Kimberlain zippered his jacket and walked outside to his car. Nearby, Peet was effortlessly chopping wood. Before moving on to the next log the giant swiped at it with his hand and tore off a section of bark.
“I would never do this to a still standing tree, Ferryman,” he told him. “All that happens on the surface affects that which lies deep down.”
“I assume there’s a point to that.”
“Be careful of what transpired between you and the woman before I arrived.”
Kimberlain didn’t bother trying to hide his shock. “Does it show that much?”
“To me it does. My concern is that its impression on your surface may have ramifications that run deeper.”
“It wasn’t something I planned,” he said defensively.
“And therein lies the problem, Ferryman. Everything happens moment by moment, but each moment must be undertaken with an awareness of what will follow after. When all this is over, I must return to The Locks. You must return me. I know and accept that, yet here today we stand free as allies. Not that I will be any less free back in my cell, since freedom is a state of mind and not of being. The point is that moments create their own definition, and the woman you will see after this one will be a different person indeed. The Locks is my prison. But everyone has his own cell, which he must sooner or later return to or risk living in a state of limbo for eternity. I’m worried that you’re starting to stray too far from yours.”
“I’m keeping it in sight, Peet.”
“Keep it in mind as well, Ferryman, for your own good.”
Chapter 22
“EVENING, CAPTAIN,” KIMBERLAIN SAID to the shape huddled in the doorway of Petrossian’s, which occupied the ground floor of an ornate Beaux Arts building on Seventh Avenue and 58th Street. The exclusive restaurant had been officially closed for an hour, but since it was Zeus’s favorite New York establishment, he had obviously arranged to borrow the premises for the meeting.
“Yo, Ferryman.”
Kimberlain noticed that the captain was wearing just a denim vest over his shirt. “Bit nippy to be sitting outside.”
“Wasn’t about to go in there without you, boss.”
“Then you’re out of excuses.”
They walked up a small flight of steps, which brought them to a large wood bar flanked by a deli cabinet filled with an assortment of chilled fresh and smoked fish. To the right of the bar lay the small dining area, fifteen tables at most. Seated at one, out of view from the street, were Zeus, his ever-present wordless hulks, and David Kamanski.
“Ah, Ferryman. On time as always,” the blind man said. On the table before him sat a sterling silver tray that featured three different kinds of caviar. He packed another spoonful onto a triangle of toast lifted from a warmer that prevented sogginess and slowly raised it to his mouth, prolonging the motion. His lips were already smacking together in anticipated satisfaction. “Now look at me, forgetting my manners. Can I offer you some?”
“Maybe later.”
Zeus finished chewing and then clapped his hands happily together. “Look at us, together again. Truly a joy! Old times rekindled. Truly!”
David Kamanski sloshed the ice about in his water glass.
“Nervous, Hermes?” the blind man taunted. “I elect to hold our meeting at one of the city’s finest establishments so that we might enjoy a fine meal, and you arrive with the apparent conviction that the food on your plate has been poisoned and you will die from a single taste. As if you thought I was displeased with you for abandoning the network when you did. Not to worry. I was displeased with you well before that.” Zeus went back to his caviar and toast points. “Where shall we start, Ferryman?” he said between mouthfuls.
“Where Mendelson’s last words pointed us—Jason Benbasset.”
“Then we start at a dead end,” Kamanski said.
From his spot at the far end of the table, Captain Seven snickered.
“I don’t think so,” Kimberlain argued. “Three years ago Jason Benbasset appeared to be killed by terrorists. Their act turned all the good he had accomplished into a travesty. Now, in the last year, we’ve been faced with more than a dozen murders of leading industrialists all possessing a connection to the military community Benbasset blamed for the world’s problems. You know how I feel about coincidence.”
“Revenge killings?” Zeus said.
Kimberlain nodded. “Assume Jason Benbasset didn’t die in that explosion. Assume he somehow survived, but his family was wiped out. What then?”
“He’d thirst for vengeance, in all likelihood,” Zeus said.
“On whom?” Kimberlain asked Kamanski.
“The killers, of course.”
The Ferryman shook his head. “Your field of focus is too narrow, Hermes. Benbasset would have looked at them as creatures of their environment, of civilization as it currently stands. So his vengeance would likely be much broader based. He blamed a militaristic form of thinking for much of the world’s problems, so why not go after those he viewed as perpetuating that kind of thinking, people like Jordan Lime and Lisa Eiseman whose discoveries threatened to compound the problems.”
“Yes,” echoed Zeus. “Geometric thinking. I like it, Ferryman.”
“Pure conjecture,” said Kamanski, and Captain Seven snickered again.
“There’s more,” Kimberlain told him. “I had a conversation with Dominick Torelli earlier this evening. It seems that about a year after the attack on Benbasset, Torelli and several others in similar positions were approached about fielding an army of sorts. The links were tenuous, but they led back to Benbasset Industries.”
“Which proves little at best,” persisted Kamanski.
“You’re not thinking ahead. You’re not thinking at all. For a variety of reasons, Torelli and the others were unable or unwilling to meet the requirements specified. Benbasset was forced to go elsewhere: to a group willing to do anything if the price is right.”
“The Hashi!” Zeus exclaimed.
Kimberlain nodded. “They were behind the bizarre killings you called me in on, David, but my guess is they were just filling out the specifications Benbasset gave them. Mendelson made the water cannon for them, and when he found out through us how it had been used, he became a potential liability. But the Hashi knew about the contact, just as they knew I’d be coming, so they didn’t eliminate him until I arrived on the scene, because, of course, I was supposed to die too.”
“Old hat,” muttered Kamanski.
“Trouble is I didn’t die,” the Ferryman continued, “and their assassin let slip a clue to the next stage of the plan.”
“A million will die in front of fifty million,” Zeus intoned, “using the missing C-12 explosives. On what, though? Where will they die? And when? The only clue in our possession is Mendelson’s penned-in-blood note your mystery woman made off with: ‘719, 720, 721 PS.’ My people tell me it’s mumbo-jumbo, something he didn’t have time to complete before he died.”
Captain Seven laughed, and all eyes except Zeus’s turned toward him. “Your people got shit for brains, pal. Tell ’em to light up some lava bed smoke. Clear their minds real good.”
“What is this man trying to say, Ferryman?” Zeus said.
“I’ll tell ya what I’m saying,” the captain replied before Kimberlain could break in. “The ‘PS’ stands for Penn Station. And ‘719, 720, 721’ must be public storage lockers this doctor dude was trying to call your attention to. All you had to do was ask.”
“I arranged for the bomb squad to raid the three lockers in question,” Zeus told Kimberlain the next morning. They had met by the blind man’s suggestion on the 86th-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building. Construction had closed it down temporarily but had ceased on Sunday. The outer promenade was torn up, with brand-new long-range viewfinders ready to be cemented tight.
The wind whipped through Zeus’s surprisingly thick hair as he spoke. “Hermes will be delivering the findings to us up here. He’s good at delivering things.”
Kimberlain smiled at that. The old man loved manipulating, always had. Subtly, without notice or fanfare, Zeus was in control again. The old man returned his eyes, still encased in sunglasses, to the lenses of the viewfinder leaned up against the low wall in front of him. There was a click that Kimberlain knew signaled the end of the time a quarter had bought him, and one of Zeus’s bodyguards came forward and in
serted another.
“I was enjoying the view, Ferryman,” Zeus said and swung toward him.
“I can see that.”
“But I can’t, can I? Blind since birth.”
“So you tell me.”
“But the mind has its own eyes, Ferryman. It can sketch any sight requested of it. Would you like to know what I do when I come up here?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “I press my eyes against the lenses and have one of my men describe a sight or a building pictured beyond. I can see it in my mind, and I imagine I can see it through the lens as well. It’s probably the same for you when you’re inside the head of a madman you’re pursuing. Your mind forms impressions based on available data, forms them so well that you know who or what you’re facing before you even see, much less confront, him.”
“It’s important for you to understand that,” Kimberlain said in what had started out as a question.
“You would have expected any different?”
“But it comes down to control again, doesn’t it? If you can grasp how I work, then you’re in a better position to exert your control.”
Zeus turned away almost sadly. “I won’t deny that that’s so, but it’s inadvertent. I didn’t ask to meet up here for that reason. I have just shared something with you I have shared with no other man besides my guards. I wanted to make you a part of it because, goddamn it, I like you, and I want you to like me again.” He paused. “During your final months with The Caretakers, I allowed the wrong people to provide my impressions. Yes, the form sketched was mine entirely and thus the responsibility mine to bear. But it is a picture I gravely regret now and realize how wrong I was in framing.”
Kimberlain did find himself liking the old man and didn’t bother resisting it. “There’s more, Zeus.”
The blind man nodded and tried not to look any more vulnerable than he had already. “The C-12 was my responsibility. A man can survive either by duty or by ideals, but disgrace strips away both.” His dead eyes bored into Kimberlain’s from behind the ever-present sunglasses. “If those explosives are employed as part of this master plan you believe is underway, then I will have nothing. You are the only man who can help me, Jared. It’s why I came to you to begin with. It’s why I wanted you to meet me up here this morning. So you’d understand. You do understand, don’t you?”