The Professor of Immortality

by Eileen Pollack

  “On my own?” she says. “Where will Zach be?”

  “Sorry, ma’am. My orders are to bring your son to our observation post. We need him to positively ID the cabin. And we want him close by in case the situation goes south and we need to communicate with the UNSUB.”

  She can’t come? They’re taking Zach and leaving her here, in the middle of nowhere? With nothing to do? Powerless to influence the outcome of events, to protect Thaddy, or her son?

  “Don’t worry,” Zach says. “Thaddy’s cabin isn’t far.”

  Maxine looks up at him. The nick on his cheek is no longer bleeding. The bright red spot has darkened and scabbed over.

  “It’s okay. Really.” Zach’s hug is unexpectedly fierce, as if he is planning to run off, or to warn or rescue Thaddy, and he might never see her again.

  She walks them out to the parking lot and watches the Bronco disappear down Stemple Pass Road. Other than running after it, she has no idea what to do. Back inside, she wheels her overnight bag down the log-lined corridor. Her room is decorated with a designer spread and pillow shams that might have come from Pottery Barn and an artsy wilderness photo above the headboard. She washes her face and brushes her teeth but can’t force herself to stay put. Out behind the hotel, Adirondack chairs line a stream. She sits watching the firs sway, the light filtering through the clouds. A mother duck and her fledglings waddle along the shore, then slip into the current, where Maxine hopes they will evade whoever might otherwise turn them into an unlimited banquet.

  She has been up since three-thirty a.m., Ann Arbor time, but now, in Montana, it is barely five in the afternoon. What do they expect her to do, grab an early dinner and spend the rest of the night watching TV? No one ordered her to remain at the hotel. If she goes for a walk, what are the chances she will run into Thaddy? Would he even recognize her? What would happen if he did? What would she say? I’m sorry I didn’t pay more attention to your misery? The FBI has your cabin staked out, get away while you can?

  She walks the length of Main Street, all the way back to the public library, which is shut tight for the night. The antiques shop is also closed, as are the hardware store and vintage clothing shop. She is so jumpy she doubts she could eat. Instead of heading into the restaurant or back to the hotel, she turns down Stemple Pass Road. The trees are nothing like the birches, aspens, maple, and spruce her father taught her to identify on their long walks in the Adirondacks. Still, the scent of damp bark and the musk of fungus remind her of the forest that surrounded her in her childhood. A woodpecker beats out a code so insistent she nearly turns back. A pair of crows swoop down and walk beside her like black-clad FBI agents with their hands behind their backs, their beady eyes monitoring her every move. Zach said Thaddy hunts, so she knows these woods are populated by deer and bear, maybe elk or moose. Every snap or whistle in the leaves causes her heart to lose a beat. At any moment, Thaddy might go pedaling past her on his bike.

  She reaches a turn-off where Stemple Pass Road continues in one direction and a narrower road cuts to her left. She stands like Dorothy in Oz, waiting for some helpful scarecrow to advise her. She cocks her ear, listens. If, as the agent said, “the situation goes south,” will she hear the gunshots?

  Darkness sets in. Reluctantly, she begins the long walk back. The muddy slush in the parking lot outside the restaurant is a puzzle of intersecting tire tracks. Inside, the red leather seats go nicely with the green-topped tables. A few diners—a middle-aged man in a baseball cap, another in a white Stetson—seem to be locals, but a dozen men and women—a few at this table, a few more at another—seem as out-of-place as she does. The agent who drove them to Lincoln clued Maxine in that the agents from San Francisco are passing themselves off as modern-day prospectors, rock climbers, photographers, Hollywood functionaries scouting locations for a film. Given that the prospectors, sportsmen, and Hollywood types who live here are secondhand versions of the originals, the agents are triply inauthentic.

  “Hi, honey.” The waitress is Maxine’s age, with a graying braid and a T-shirt that shows a logger with a phallic chainsaw rising from his crotch. “I’m Debbie. You all on your lonesome tonight? Or is your hubby in the gents?”

  When Maxine admits she is on her own, the waitress hands her an oversize menu with a bronco on the front. Maxine is too queasy for the steak or Cowboy Burger but doesn’t want to ask for the “Oriental Salad,” so she orders the quesadilla.

  “What you in town for?” The waitress takes back the menu.

  Maxine panics.

  “Just passing through?”

  “Yes,” Maxine says. She remembers there is a university in Missoula. “I flew into Helena. And I’m giving a lecture in Missoula.” As if the only place she can be safe is a university.

  “Oh, sure,” the waitress says. “I could tell you weren’t the hunting type. But when you get back on the road, you keep your eyes open for deer. They just love to jump in front of your car and kill you both.”

  After Maxine has stretched out the meal by ordering the strawberry-rhubarb pie and tea, she goes back to her room and switches on the television. The biggest manhunt in Montana history is going on a few miles down the road and the local station—albeit from Helena—doesn’t know a thing about it. She watches a show about fishing, an infomercial for some hair restoration product, a late-night talk show from Manhattan. Every time she hears footsteps she prays Zach will come in. How could she allow them to take her son? Is he spending the night at the observation post? Are they testing Zach? Making him prove he isn’t in cahoots with Thaddy?

  She keeps the television on all night. Paces. Maintains a vigil at the window in case any of the agents staying at the hotel rush out to their Broncos and Explorers. At six a.m., when Zach hasn’t come back, she changes into clean underwear, brushes her teeth, goes down to the lobby, grabs a banana from a bowl, fills a Styrofoam cup with cold coffee from the day before, and heads back out. She doesn’t want to get in anyone’s way. But she knows—she absolutely knows—her son is planning to do something stupid, and she is damned if she is going to sit around her hotel room while he gets injured or killed. Or ends up in prison for helping a serial killer escape a stakeout. She doesn’t care how far along Stemple Pass Road she needs to walk. She can’t stand being so cut off from Zach. Or Thaddy. Her husband died on another continent; she found out from a stranger’s phone call. She has spent far too many hours staring at computer screens. Answering email. Updating her blog. So much of her life transpires online, via mathematical models and simulations. Just the other day, Alphred Kisbye barged into her office and demanded she put on the virtual-reality headset he had gotten in the mail from some company in California. “Just try it!” Alphred goaded her. “You’ll swear you’re really flying!” But the goggles made Maxine so sick she nearly vomited.

  This time, when she gets to the intersection, she continues down the road she’s on. The sun must be rising, but here in the woods you can barely tell. Birds she can’t identify call to each other like neighbors gossiping about who got drunk at the bar the night before, who had sex with whom. The road is frozen in some spots, muddy in others. She steps across a cattle guard. She has forgotten to bring gloves and needs to draw her hands into the parka’s sleeves. The scent of someone’s wood fire soothes her. No wonder Thaddy loves living here. Who wouldn’t be angry at anyone who disturbed this beauty, this peace, with the roar of a snowmobile, a military jet, a chainsaw?

  She has no idea where along the creek his cabin might be, but she is going to get as close as she can. Without makeup, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, she doesn’t look all that different from the waitress last night. If anyone sees her, she is less likely to arouse suspicion than the agents.

  An engine growls behind her. She keeps walking, but the vehicle slows.

  “You! Hey! Hey!” The voice is low but insistent. Special Agent Burdock leans from the driver’s s
eat of a black Explorer. “Didn’t anyone tell you not to leave the hotel?”

  She shakes her head. She is not about to sit by the river counting ducks while her son gets shot trying to protect his friend.

  “Turn around,” Burdock orders. “Go back to the hotel. Right now.”

  “You’re going there,” she says. “Take me with you.”

  “I can’t do that. We have twenty agents crammed in a shack above Rapaczynski’s cabin. We’ve got motion detectors and listening devices hanging from every tree. We’ve got SWAT teams dug in all around the perimeter. The plan is for Shauntz to go in with a local ranger Rapaczynski knows and trusts. The ranger is going to yell to him to come out so they can ask him a question about the boundary of his property. If the plan goes right, they’ll grab him before he shoots anyone or destroys evidence by blowing the place up. It’s not the place for you to be.”

  She has the nagging sensation there’s something she ought to tell Burdock. Some reason this scheme won’t work. Something to do with the Conrad novel. But the word “boundary” reminds her of something Thaddy told her about his dissertation. What did he say, she could never understand the topic? She probably couldn’t. But neither could these government agents who are planning to violate Thaddy’s boundaries.

  Burdock opens his door. She never learns what he intends to do because a blast shocks them both. Her knees buckle. Her ears buzz. She begins to faint.

  Then she catches herself. Opens the back door of the Explorer and half falls, half throws herself inside.

  “Get out!” Burdock shouts. “Get the fuck out!”

  But she doesn’t get out. Whatever she has been afraid might happen has already happened. But there still might be time to prevent something worse.

  Burdock curses, guns the motor. Maxine lurches and nearly falls from the open door, then manages to grab the handle and pull it shut. Burdock accelerates down the dirt road, then up a gravel driveway, brakes in front of a cabin—surely it isn’t Thaddy’s?—parks, gets out, and runs. Maxine jumps out and follows—around the back of the cabin, then down a hill. She slips on some damp leaves, staggers forward, keeps running. Agents swarm from every direction. A mushroom cloud of white smoke rises above the gulley. Gasping for air, she nearly chokes on the smell of gunpowder and some nauseating stench she can’t identify.

  “Zach?” she screams. “Zach! Zach! Zach, where are you!” She turns full circle but doesn’t see him. She has lost everything. Everything. An agent lumbers past and she grabs his arm. “Do you know where my son is? My son! Is he all right?” The agent stares at her, shakes her off, rushes toward the cloud of smoke. Maxine keeps screaming Zach’s name, but no one hears or sees her. It’s like the night Zach was born. She was lying there, drugged, an oxygen mask clamped to her face, demanding to know if her baby was all right. “Is it a girl?” she kept shouting. “Is it a boy?” When no one answered, she was terrified something had gone wrong. How could they not tell if her baby was a boy or a girl? But the truth was, nobody even heard her.

  “Zach!” she screams again, and finally, just as she decides Thaddy has blown both of them to pieces, there he comes, up from the creek, in the direction opposite the one all the other men are running. His face is covered with soot. The canvas parka he is wearing is stained with blood and shreds of debris whose origins she doesn’t want to think about. She hesitates, then throws her arms around him.

  “Sweetheart! Are you all right? Are you okay?” She will never let him go. Never let him run off again. She may not be able to comfort Thaddy, but she can comfort her son.

  “Go back,” Zach says. He takes her by her elbows and tries to hustle her up the hill. “You do not want to see this.”

  But she does want to see. She cranes around her son’s broad, jacketed shoulder. The smoke has cleared enough so she can make out a small, neat wooden structure with a pipe for a chimney, like something a child might build on his parents’ living room floor. A chain-link fence encloses a plot that appears to be Thaddy’s garden. A group of agents, some in padded vests, others in FBI windbreakers—out here, the agents apparently aren’t afraid to advertise whom they work for—block the site of the explosion.

  “Who?” she asks Zach. “What happened?”

  “I was up there.” He points to the cabin. “I had binoculars. None of them knew what Thaddy looked like. All they had were these old photos, so I was supposed to make sure they had the right guy.” The smoke makes him cough. “The ranger, and that guy from Detroit, Shauntz? They both went down there. They were going to persuade Thaddy to come out on his own. But then I heard the snipers talking. They were going to get a shot at Thaddy as soon as he stepped outside. I couldn’t stand there and watch that happen.”

  She starts to protest.

  “I know. But I figured if I went down there I could get Thaddy to come out peacefully, so he wouldn’t get shot. So I left. They weren’t going to shoot me in the back. At least, I hoped they weren’t.

  “But Thaddy already had come outside. He was walking toward Shauntz. But then he saw me. He knew it was me, Mom. I could see his face. He must have figured out I brought them. He shook his head. But I think he was telling me not to come any closer. He motioned like I should stop? Then he held out his arms and ran. At Shauntz. He threw his arms around him. And then they just … they both blew up.” Zach puts his sooty palm to his forehead. “Nobody could have survived that.” He doubles over. “All Thaddy needed to do was wait another second and I’d be dead, too.”

  She imagines Thaddy wrapping his arms around Shauntz. Thaddy and Shauntz erupting in a blast of bone and blood. She has to keep reminding herself that her son is right here beside her. Her son is still alive. As to Thaddy and Shauntz, she can’t bear to imagine what just happened.

  Zach tries to tug her up the hill. But she sees Burdock staggering toward them, so diminished, so pale, he seems thirty years older than the man who tried to strong-arm her into his Explorer.

  She touches his sleeve. “Is Agent Shauntz …”

  He looks at her as if he has no idea who she is.

  “The Professor,” Maxine says. “He’s a character in the Conrad novel. I should have made a bigger point of explaining. The Professor goes around with a detonator in his coat pocket. It’s attached to a bomb, and if the police get anywhere near him, if they threaten to apprehend him, he plans to blow everyone up.”

  For a long time, Burdock remains silent. Then he says, “Shauntz read that book. He read everything on that list you gave him. In just those few days. That’s how smart he was. They didn’t need him out here. They could have handled the stakeout without him. He insisted on coming. He had to be here.

  “So, yeah. Maybe you should have made a bigger deal about the Professor thing. But he read that book. He would have known.” He bends. Puts his hands on his knees. Huffs some air. Turns and looks over his shoulder at the other agents, who are still gathered around the carnage. “I don’t mean what I’m about to say. And I will deny that I ever said it. But I wish to hell you hadn’t shown up. I wish you had kept your mouth shut. I wish that son of a bitch had kept living in that cabin, sending out his bombs, and anyone else got hurt, but not my boss.”

  … Spends an Eternity in Hell

  In the airport in Salt Lake City—they are traveling on their own, the agent with the bowl-cut hair having handed them tickets and dropped them off in Helena—they sit awaiting their connecting flight. On the giant TV screen, Brian Williams announces the FBI has reason to believe their agents have apprehended the serial killer known as the Technobomber. In the process, the suspect blew himself up. One agent has been killed and a government employee injured. The newscaster describes events Maxine witnessed earlier in the day, which makes the carnage seem like the premonition of a tragedy she ought to have been able to prevent.

  She was six when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald live on TV. Her mother
snapped off the set, but Maxine kept asking, “Was that real? Did that one man just shoot that other man? Right on TV?” It seemed impossible that in a crowded police station no adult had been able to prevent that one man from killing that other man. Every time Maxine saw the replay she felt like shouting to warn the younger, smaller man what the older man in the hat was about to do. Or reaching into the television set and grabbing the gun from Jack Ruby’s hand. Only now does she understand that most disasters do, in fact, unfold in slow motion, and even as you watch you feel powerless to prevent them.

  Several of their fellow travelers look up from their phones. A few drift closer to the giant TV. Maxine squirms, as if she and Zach might be recognized as accomplices on the run.

  On the screen, Brian Williams explains that the FBI has identified the now-deceased suspect as one Thaddeus Rapaczynski, a native of Oakbrook, Illinois, and the news team has dug up a yearbook portrait of Thaddy as an impossibly clean-cut, square-jawed, sixteen-year-old high-school graduate. Then the camera zooms in on the one-story brick bungalow in which Thaddy was raised by his working-class parents. Then the building at Berkeley where, as an assistant professor, the suspect taught mathematics. No mention is made of Michigan. No mention of Maxine or Zach. But the newscaster identifies Supervisory Special Agent Roland Shauntz as the agent the bomber took with him in his final destructive act. The photo shows a much younger and surprisingly less attractive version of Shauntz—he was one of those men who roughen and become manlier as they age.

  Zach hasn’t spoken since they left Lincoln. He left behind his coat. They haven’t had time to shower, although Maxine cleaned herself up in the airport restroom. She wants to chastise Zach for having been foolish enough to put himself in harm’s way to save Thaddy, who after all turned out to be a terrorist. But wouldn’t she have been tempted to do the same?

  Their flight is called. For the next three hours, they remain oblivious to any news. They are both so exhausted, so stunned, they say little to each other, mulling their private thoughts. Back in Detroit, they take a taxi to Ann Arbor. Zach goes up to shower and sleep. She ought to go up with him. Instead, she switches on the television, settles on the sofa, and dozes off. When she wakes, a morning news program is broadcasting shadowy footage of the crime scene. The FBI suspects that the cabin has been booby-trapped. The reporter gestures here and there, re-creating an encounter he wasn’t there to witness.