by George Lazăr
And he had. A moment later the driver’s side door opened, and Folder’s hand tossed a white plastic bottle, half-filled with water, into the desert sky. It fell to earth as the truck accelerated toward the distant horizon.
Only the cacti and the dirty brown sand remained, glowing painfully in the Sun’s powerful light.
Chapter 20
Bolden had imagined it would be quiet in the desert, but he had been wrong. The prevailing sound was the wind, and any gust of it stirred the sand that covered him and everything around him. There were also the stones that crackled, heated by the Sun, and lizards that slithered, sounding a bit like the wind, only softer.
He learned all of this gradually, as the sun baked him to death.
He walked randomly for a while, until he started stumbling and collapsed face-down in the hot sand. It gave him a nasty burn and Bolden felt the need to waste some of his precious water to calm it momentarily. It did more harm than good because the water in the bottle was piping hot, like tea just taken off the stove.
He took off his shirt and improvised a kerchief to protect his head, but that too was a bad idea. Half an hour later, his skin was red like the shell of a boiled lobster, and four hours later, by the time the sun had begun to cool, his skin had started to peel off. He reached the illusory shelter of some rocks when the day was over, hungry, with his back an open wound. He hadn’t seen Fata Morgana or cool ponds filled with glowing fish yet, but it was just a matter of time now. He wished he hadn’t thrown away the empty bottle the colonel tossed to him, if only because there might be one final drop of water inside it.
The sun disappeared and night in the desert fell almost without warning, plunging him into terrible cold.
The dials of the Device he kept on his wrist caught his attention. Folder had forgotten to take it back, or perhaps he left it to him, as a sort of compensation, or as a final taunt. Its dials didn’t indicate imminent death, but given his situation, the notion that this might be good news was at best debatable.
Only terrible exhaustion let him doze off. He woke up after a few minutes, tortured by the chills, the cold, the hunger and, most of all, the thirst. He became absolutely convinced that he wasn’t going to see the light of day. At least the torment would stop.
Even so, deep down he wasn’t at all willing to give up life. He had been lucky that Folder was a scrupulous man and hadn’t shot him – although, according to the arguments he put forward, he should have done so without hesitation.
He remembered an old movie about the Second World War, something about Jews in German concentration camps. Some had survived by performing the vilest of tasks, such as carrying the dead bodies of other Jews they had led to their death, telling them the gas chambers were shower rooms. lied to as they led them to the gas chambers, telling them these were showers.
It was a terrible act, yes, but those Jews who had committed them were survivors, and they were respected as such. They had had a choice: to live, bearing what was unbearable for any human being, or to die; they had gone through hell to make it out and tell others what horrors people were capable of doing to each other.
As in a dream – at first he thought he was dreaming – he saw a light flickering somewhere up north. It was impossible to estimate the distance in the desert, but he rose and staggered toward it. It didn’t look like he was getting any closer, and at one point, it flickered and disappeared. Bolden fell on his knees, desperate and hopeless.
He thought about the surviving Jews again, but, most of all, about everything he had gone through to stay alive. Once again he found the strength to defy the ruthless natural or Godly law by which his life should have ended. He got back on his blistered feet and walked in the direction of the extinguished light, and when he couldn’t walk anymore, he crawled on his elbows and knees until he passed out, exhausted and dehydrated.
In the remaining two hours before daybreak, he felt life draining out of him. Only a tiny thread remained attached to his body.
***
Although he had woken up, he felt sure he was dreaming. His face was miraculously cooled; so was his back, and someone was dripping cold water on his lips, from a white plastic cup. He tried to grab the cup and drink it right away, but he only managed to knock it from the hands of the person who was holding it. His palms had been wrapped in white bandages and he realized that they didn’t hurt anymore.
“Well, everything is all right,” he heard the melodious voice of a man that sounded almost otherworldly. “You’ll be able to drink to your heart’s desire, but now we must give you water with moderation, otherwise it can hurt you.”
Once again the cup approached his dry lips and only with an immense effort of will did he not grab it away.
“You were lucky. Sometimes I spend a night in the desert. I found you a few steps away from my fire. I have put some ointment on your skin, and now that you are awake we will leave at once,” the voice said. “I’ve already notified the dispensary. They’ll be waiting for us.”
The man helped him get in the car and fastened his seatbelt. They started driving through the desert; Bolden felt every mound and rock the car went over, but didn’t care. He fell asleep almost immediately, but not before taking a look at the Device on his wrist; he sighed, relieved. The pointers hadn’t moved.
They set him up comfortably in one of the two beds at the local infirmary. A nurse changed his bandages and cleaned him with a wet sponge. Bolden offered no details about how he had ended up in the middle of the desert, claiming he had amnesia. The sheriff came, but Bolden pretended to be asleep until he heard him say he was going to come back the following day. Bolden ate a bowl of chicken soup and asked for another. He slept.
He woke early, as the painkillers wore off and the pain from his burns returned. He got up to ask for help, but the dispensary didn’t have overnight medical staff. Serious cases were sent to the hospital in Pathrump, which is where he would have gone if the doctor had seen him earlier in the day. The tiny town of Horring (population 216) typically only received doctor’s visits twice a week.
He looked for his clothes and found them eventually; they were dirty and crumpled and had been thrown near a garbage container. He pulled his pants on over the shorts someone had given him, and tied on his now-shabby shoes.
Eventually he found the door to the street, and breathed in the cool air of dawn in the desert.
The silence of the morning was broken by the engine of a car that pulled over in front of a small branch of the National Bank, right across from the dispensary. A man got out of the car, threw a long, inquisitive look at Bolden and then raised the metal shutters, disabled the alarm and opened the branch office.
Bolden crossed the street, limping, and entered the building, which turned out to look more like a general store than a bank. It was clear that the man at the counter knew who he was.
“Hello, sir,” he said. “It’s not open yet. I came a little earlier. I have some work to do. You know, perhaps you shouldn’t have left the dispensary.”
Small news travels fast in small towns..
“You were really lucky, sir, that Brad happened to be around. Sometimes he wanders for a whole week without anyone knowing where he is. He says he catches bugs and gathers plants, but I think that he really likes the desert. Do you want a cup of coffee?” he asked politely. “I just made it. I’m Martin. I am in charge of this bank, but I also keep the store here,” he pointed to the rest of the room where there were shelves with all sorts of merchandise.
He stretched out his hand and Bolden shook it. He accepted a cup of strong, fragrant coffee.
“Listen, Martin, do you have a computer around here? I have some work to do. I will pay, of course. And Id like you to open a bank account for me, here, right now. Can you do that?”
The man blinked.
“The computer for customers is right over there, but an account? Sure. But in what name? I heard you had amnesia.”
“You pick a name for me,” Bolden
said as he settled in front of the computer.
Then things happened so quickly that Martin, used to the slow rhythm of his town, almost felt dizzy. Later on, in the evening, he told the curiosity-mongers gathered at the bar, for the hundredth time, what had happened in those few minutes he had to deal with the mysterious stranger. The subject of the unknown rich man much exceeded the subject of the Los Angeles catastrophe in the level of interest it stirred. Despite the fact that no one had ever seen a real one, the town’s unanimous opinion was that the stranger was a drug dealer, left to die in the desert by partners he had probably cheated.
The accounts tended to differ greatly according to the number of beers Martin had had.
Basically, things happened like this: the stranger connected to the Internet and worked intently for a while, accessing accounts with passwords he alone knew. He asked whether Brad, the man who found him, had an account and then transferred him $100,000.
He asked Martin, how much cash he had in the safe, and replied that the safe had a little more than $50,000. He covered his mouth with his hand, quite worried, when he realized that that information shouldn’t have been disclosed at all.
But instead of taking out a gun, the man asked for a pen wrote a check, withdrawing from his own account the exact amount of cash in the bank’s strongbox. Martin took the check, his hand trembling, he verified it by phone and then, to make sure, he faxed it to the regional branch where there was always an account officer on duty. After receiving confirmation, he cashed it.
The stranger bought a cheap bag made of brick-red oilcloth in which he shoved all the money. He also bought some clothes – a pair of blue duck pants, a checkered shirt, like those worn by farmers, and a pair of sports shoes. He changed in the fitting room and threw his old clothes in the garbage bin. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, thanked Martin, said goodbye and left the store. Martin came after him and stood in the doorway, watching him leave; he still couldn’t believe he had witnessed such a thing.
He watched the stranger, who didn’t even turn his head once, walk straight to the gas station.
From here, the story was told by the kid on duty at the gas station. When the stranger walked in he was half asleep, but he bolted to his feet when the stranger announced that he’d come to buy a car. He chose one from the group that locals had left there in the vain hope of finding a buyer. The stranger didn’t haggle, paid with cash straight out of his bag, asked for a fill-up and borrowed a map on his way out.
The legend of a very wealthy stranger, found in the desert, remained behind him. As for the wealth of the stranger found in the desert, even the wildest version of the story couldn’t come close.
Chapter 21
The following weeks were extremely agitated in America. The entire nation – the whole planet, in fact – was horrified by the magnitude of the catastrophe in California. The news had been fully exploited by the media. The Americans were experts in sucking everything there was to get out of such novelty. They had started a war with the Muslims – two, according to some – only so that they could broadcast it live on TV, or to get their hands on some gas.
This time, the catastrophe far exceeded the wildest imagination.
The death toll figures varied greatly and were only based on estimates; no one believed an exact count could ever be made. Millions of people were killed. Millions of other people were missing, which, given the situation, meant they could be put down on the death list as well.
Bolden took advantage of the general confusion and took refuge in a place he had secretly bought, in Colorado, far away from the sea and in an area with no seismic activity. He retrieved one of the fake identities he had stashed there as a contingency. Ironically, the shoot-out in Paris had convince him of that value. He had learned to open secret bank accounts and had obtained the necessary documents to live and travel clandestinely.
Bolden was hoping that perhaps the new identity would give him a new life as well, that it could shield him from death. But, just as birds and animals disregarded the boundaries set up by men on earth, so his documents, no matter how well forged, couldn’t protect him from the inexorable.
His fortune was growing exponentially and he was still able to access it. No one had registered his death and no one had made inheritance claims. The Guardian Angel was waiting for things to calm down. His stockbrokers had made brilliant investments, and when the stock market opened again, after a one week break to mourn the passing of Southern California, the price for his stocks simply exploded. He took over the management of his transactions through the internet and multiplied his fortune even more. It seemed like everything he touched suddenly turned to gold. He skillfully sold more of his companies and started buying massive shares of the Space Elevator; the American state had put them on sale because it was desperately looking for liquidities to help what was left of California.
Two months had passed since he had escaped from the desert.
One morning, as he was about to access the New York Stock Exchange through his computer, Folder’s face appeared.
“You are a very special case, Mr. Bolden,” his former protector said.
“Hello, Folder,” Bolden replied. “What do you want?”
The colonel smiled sadly.
“I want you to choose death.”
“I’ve told you, I am not a killer. The Guardian Angel deals with saving lives…”
“You know what I think?” Bolden replied. “You are infected. You are infected by me. We’ve synchronized our existences. That is why you were the only one left around me. That’s why you didn’t kill me in the desert. If I die, you die too. Something called conscience tells you to kill me and at the same time it tells you to let me live. So what is that you want?”
Folder looked disconcerted. He brought his face closer to the video camera. The smile disappeared from his face.
“You endangering everyone, you know. The whole species. You’re thinking about your own survival, but we’re talking about human extinction. And there isn’t much time left.”
Bolden suddenly fell silent; he understood what Folder was after. He shut down his computer violently and then destroyed the internet connection. It was only a matter of time before they arrived at his door.
He ran to the garage and grabbed a gasoline canister. He doused his safe house and, on his way out the door, lit it on fire. By the time he’d backed the Buick he kept at the place down the driveway, the flames were fully engaged in the structure.
He was long gone before the fire-trucks – and two unmarked black helicopters – arrived.
So began a complicated game of hide-and-seek that ranged around the world. The Guardian Angel, once his protector, was now his assassin.
But Bolden was not helpless. He quickly turned his immense fortune into a weapon and a cloak. Wealth hid him, but it also let him strike out at his enemy.
The best defense is a good offense, he father always said. So Bolden set out to destroy their headquarters both known and suspected. He used his business contacts to start a whisper campaign to discredit the organization, and since Folder had been so scrupulous in acquiring media outlets, Bolden used that network of properties to produce stories that held the company up to breathless scrutiny.
Of course, The Guardian Angel fought back, following him and repeatedly discovering his whereabouts. No matter how well he wiped his trail, it was only a matter of time. The company had become even more powerful than he’d imagined. Its agents and their Devices were spread around the world, and no matter how rudimentary those devices were, the destructive potential he had acquired had grown so large that it was impossible to hide.
What he needed was a way to scramble that signal.
Chapter 22
Green Clean had been founded by Alois Bolden, Ian’s father. At first, the company was called Urbana Clean and had won, in somewhat questionable circumstances, the bid organized by the city of New York for a sanitation contract. It started by gathering garbage from
the streets. Then, by availing itself of the influence of a couple of ambitious politicians that old Bolden had supported, the company won other such bids in different large cities in America. The family business bloomed until the new pollution laws passed, and the elimination and processing of waste in urban centers became exceedingly expensive.
Of course, they had known well in advance about these proposed laws. Old Bolden believed that the same politicians who had helped him were going to postpone their adoption indefinitely, as they had done for years. But the pressure of the public opinion became too powerful, and the politicians abandoned him, one by one, shrugging their shoulders.
A few bad contracts he had signed and the refusal of a couple of municipalities to renegotiate the prices according to the new legal conditions led to the dramatic decline of profit and brought the company close to bankruptcy. Landfills had been banned in America, according to the European and Japanese model. The garbage had to be carefully sorted, and what couldn’t be recycled had to be compacted and stored in special conditions, to be used as fuel during winter.
That is how his father left him the company. Only that Alois Bolden had bought in advance enough shares of the Space Elevator so that he could obtain a seat on the Board of Directors. That had happened back when money was pouring in. Placing money in a high-risk investment that was going to be finalized in a decade, at the earliest, seemed like a good business to him.
It had taken twice as long as they had estimated until the Elevator turned, from a futuristic project into a complex machine. All this time, the Elevator’s shares steadily declined, and Alois Bolden’s investment seemed doomed. Once the mega-construction approached completion, however, the value of the shares owned by Green Clean increased tenfold. The seat obtained on the Board of Directors of the Elevator remained the most important thing.