Sole Survivor (26 page)

Then he thought of the bonfire around which the cultists had been standing last night on the beach, where he had disposed of the McDonald’s bag that contained the Kleenex damp with Charlie Delmann’s blood. And the lithe dancers in bathing suits around another bonfire. A third fire and the gathering of surfers inside the totemic ring of their upended boards. And still another fire, around which sat a dozen enthralled listeners as a stocky man with a broad charismatic face and a mane of white hair narrated a ghost story in a reverberant voice.

This man. The storyteller.

Joe had no doubt that they were one and the same.

He also knew there was no chance whatsoever that he had crossed this man’s path on the beach last night and again here sheerly by chance. All is intimately interwoven in this most conspiratorial of all worlds.

They must have been conducting surveillance on him for weeks or months, waiting for Rose to contact him, when he had finally become aware of them on Santa Monica Beach, Saturday morning. During that time they had learned all his haunts, which were not numerous: the apartment, a couple of coffee shops, the cemetery, and a few favorite beaches where he went to learn indifference from the sea.

After he had disabled Wallace Blick, invaded their van, and then fled the cemetery, they had lost him. He had found the transponder on his car and thrown it into the passing gardener’s truck, and they had lost him. They’d almost caught up with him again at the
Post,
but he’d slipped away minutes ahead of them.

So they had staked out his apartment, the coffee shops, the beaches—waiting for him to show up somewhere. The group being entertained by the ghost story had been ordinary civilians, but the storyteller who had insinuated himself into their gathering was not in the least ordinary.

They had picked Joe up once more the past night on the beach. He knew the correct surveillance jargon: They had
reacquired
him on the beach. Followed him to the convenience store from which he had telephoned Mario Oliveri in Denver and Barbara in Colorado Springs. Followed him to his motel.

They could have killed him there. Quietly. While he slept or after waking him with a gun to his head. They could have made it look like a drug overdose—or like suicide.

In the heat of the moment, they had been eager to shoot him down at the cemetery, but they were no longer in a hurry to see him dead. Because maybe, just maybe, he would lead them again to Rose Marie Tucker.

Evidently they weren’t aware that he had been at the Delmann house, among other places, during the hours when they had lost contact with him. If they knew he’d seen what had happened to the Delmanns and to Lisa—even though he could not understand it—they probably would terminate him. Take no chances. Terminate him “with extreme prejudice,” as their kind phrased it.

During the night, they had placed another tracking device on his car. In the hour before dawn, they followed him to LAX, always at a distance where they were in no danger of being spotted. Then to Denver and perhaps beyond.

Jesus.

What had frightened the deer in the woods?

Joe felt stupid and careless, although he knew that he was not either. He couldn’t expect to be as good at this game as they were; he’d never played it before, but they played it every day.

He was getting better, though. He was getting better.

Farther up the aisle, the storyteller reached the exit door and disappeared into the debarkation umbilical.

Joe was afraid of losing his stalker, but it was imperative that they continue to believe that he was unaware of them.

Barbara Christman was in terrible danger. First thing, he had to find a phone and warn her.

Faking patience and boredom, he shuffled forward with the other passengers. In the umbilical, which was much wider than the aisle in the airplane, he finally slipped past them without appearing to be alarmed or in a hurry. He didn’t realize that he was holding his breath until he exhaled hard with relief when he spotted his quarry ahead of him.

The huge terminal was busy. At the gates, the ranks of chairs were filled with passengers waiting to catch a late-afternoon flight in the fast-fading hours of the weekend. Chattering, laughing, arguing, brooding in silence, shuffling-striding-strolling-limping-ambling, arriving passengers poured out of other gates and along the concourse. There were singles, couples, entire families, blacks and whites and Asians and Latinos and four towering Samoan men, all with black porkpie hats, beautiful sloe-eyed women, willow graceful in their turquoise or ruby or sapphire saris, others in chadors and others in jeans, men in business suits, men in shorts and bright polo shirts, four young Hasidic Jews arguing (but joyfully) over the most mystical of all documents (a Los Angeles freeway map), uniformed soldiers, giggling children and shrieking children and two placid octogenarians in wheelchairs, a pair of tall Arab princes in akals and kaffiyehs and flowing djellabas, preceded by fierce bodyguards and trailed by retinues, beacon-red tourists drifting homeward on the astringent fumes of medicated sunburn lotion, pale tourists arriving with the dampish smell of cloudy country clinging to them—and, like a white boat strangely serene in a typhoon, the man in the Panama hat, sailing imperiously through the polygenic sea.

As far as Joe was concerned, they might all be stage dressing, every one of them an agent of Teknologik or of institutions unknown, all watching him surreptitiously, snapping photographs of him with trick cameras concealed in their purses and attaché cases and tote bags, all conferring by hidden microphones as to whether he should be permitted to proceed or be gunned down on the spot.

He had never before felt so alone in a crowd.

Dreading what might happen—might even now
be
happening—to Barbara, he tried to keep the storyteller in sight while also searching for a telephone.

FOUR

PALE FIRE

13

The public telephone, one in a cluster of four, was not in a booth, but the wings of a sound shield provided a small measure of privacy.

As he entered Barbara’s Colorado Springs number on the keypad, Joe ground his teeth together as though he could bite off the noise of the crowded terminal and chew it into a silence that would allow him to concentrate. He needed to think through what he would say to her, but he had neither the time nor the solitude to craft the ideal speech, and he was afraid of committing a blunder that would pitch her deeper into trouble.

Even if her phone had not been tapped the previous evening, it was surely being monitored now, following his visit to her. His task was to warn her of the danger while simultaneously convincing the eavesdroppers that she had never broken the pledge of silence that would keep her and Denny safe.

As the telephone began to ring in Colorado, Joe glanced toward the storyteller, who had taken up a position farther along—and on the opposite side of—the concourse. He was standing outside the entrance to an airport newsstand and gift shop, nervously adjusting his Panama hat, and conversing with a Hispanic man in tan chinos, a green madras shirt, and a Dodgers cap.

Through the screen of passing travelers, Joe pretended not to watch the two men while they pretended, less convincingly, not to watch him. They were less circumspect than they should have been, because they were overconfident. Although they might give him credit for being industrious and clever, they thought that he was basically a jerk civilian in fast-running water way over his head.

He was exactly what they thought him to be, of course, but he hoped he was also more than they believed. A man driven by paternal love—and therefore dangerous. A man with a passion for justice that was alien to their world of situational ethics, in which the only morals were the morals of convenience.

Barbara answered the phone on the fifth ring, just as Joe was beginning to despair.

“It’s me, Joe Carpenter,” he said.

“I was just—”

Before Barbara could say anything that might reveal the extent of the revelations she’d made to him, Joe said, “Listen, I wanted to thank you again for taking me to the crash site. It wasn’t easy, but it was something I had to do, had to see, if I was ever going to have any peace. I’m sorry if I badgered you about what
really
happened to that airplane. I was a little crazy, I guess. A couple of odd things have happened lately, and I just let my imagination run wild. You were right when you said most of the time things are exactly what they appear to be. It’s just hard to accept that you can lose your family to anything as stupid as an accident, mechanical failure, human error, whatever. You feel like it just
has
to be a lot more significant than an accident because…well, because
they
were so significant to you. You know? You think there have to be villains somewhere, that it can’t be just fate, because
God
wouldn’t allow this to happen. But you started me thinking when you said the only place there’s always villains is in the movies. If I’m going to get over this, I’m going to have to accept that these things just happen, that no one’s to blame. Life is risk, right? God
does
let innocent people die, lets children die. It’s that simple.”

Joe was tense, waiting to hear what she would say, whether she had understood the urgent message that he was striving to convey so indirectly.

After a brief hesitation, Barbara said, “I hope you find peace, Joe, I really do. It took a lot of guts for you to go out there, right to the impact site. And it takes guts to face the fact that there’s no one to blame in the end. As long as you’re stuck in the idea that there’s someone who’s guilty of something, someone who’s got to be brought to justice…well, then you’re full of vengeance, and you’re not healing.”

She understood.

Joe closed his eyes and tried to gather his unraveled nerves into a tight bundle again.

He said, “It’s just…we live in such weird times. It’s easy to believe in vast conspiracies.”

“Easier than facing hard truths. Your real argument isn’t with the pilots or the maintenance crew. It isn’t with the air-traffic controllers or with the people who built the airplane. Your real argument’s with God.”

“Which I can’t win,” he said, opening his eyes.

In front of the newsstand, the storyteller and the Dodgers fan finished their conversation. The storyteller departed.

“We’re not supposed to understand why,” Barbara said. “We just have to have faith that there’s a reason. If you can learn to accept that, then you really might find peace. You’re a very nice man, Joe. You don’t deserve to be in such torment. I’ll be praying for you.”

“Thanks, Barbara. Thanks for everything.”

“Good luck, Joe.”

He almost wished her good luck as well, but those two words might be a tip-off to whoever was listening.

Instead, he said, “Good-bye.”

Still hummingbird tense, he hung up.

Simply by going to Colorado and knocking on Barbara’s door, he had put her, her son, and her son’s entire family in terrible jeopardy—although he’d had no way of knowing this would be the consequence of his visit. Anything might happen to her now—or nothing—and Joe felt a chill of blame coil around his heart.

On the other hand, by going to Colorado, he had learned that Nina was miraculously alive. He was willing to take the moral responsibility for a hundred deaths in return for the mere hope of seeing her again.

He was aware of how monstrous it was to regard the life of his daughter as more precious than the lives of any hundred strangers—two hundred, a thousand. He didn’t care. He would kill to save her, if that was the extreme to which he was driven. Kill anyone who got in his way. Any number.

Wasn’t it the human dilemma to dream of being part of the larger community but, in the face of everlasting death, always to operate on personal and family imperatives? And he was, after all, too human.

Joe left the public telephones and followed the concourse toward the exit. As he reached the head of the escalators, he contrived to glance back.

The Dodgers fan followed at a discreet distance, well disguised by the ordinariness of his dress and demeanor. He wove himself into the crowd so skillfully that he was no more evident than any single thread in a coat of many colors.

Down the escalator and through the lower floor of the terminal, Joe did not look back again. Either the Dodgers fan would be there or he would have handed Joe over to another agent, as the storyteller had done.

Given their formidable resources, they would have a substantial contingent of operatives at the airport. He could never escape them here.

He had exactly an hour until he had to meet Demi, who he hoped would take him to Rose Tucker. If he didn’t make the rendezvous in time, he had no way to reestablish contact with the woman.

His wristwatch seemed to be ticking as loudly as a grandfather clock.

Tortured faces melted into the mutant forms of strange animals and nightmare landscapes in the Rorschach stains on the walls of the vast, drab concrete parking structure. Engine noise from cars in other aisles, on other levels, echoed like a Grendel grumble through these man-made caverns.

His Honda was where he’d left it.

Although most of the vehicles in the garage were cars, three vans—none white—an old Volkswagen minibus with curtained windows, and a pickup truck with a camper shell were parked near enough to him to serve as surveillance posts. He didn’t give any of them a second look.

He opened the car trunk, and using his body to block the view of any onlooker, he quickly checked the spare-tire well for the money. He had taken two thousand to Colorado, but he had left the bulk of his funds in the Honda. He was afraid the bank’s manila envelope with the brass clasp would be gone, but it was where he’d left it.

He slipped the envelope under the waistband of his jeans. He considered taking the small suitcase as well, but if he transferred it to the front seat, the people watching him would not be suckered by the little drama he had planned for them.

In the driver’s seat, he took the envelope out of his waistband, opened it, and tucked the packets of hundred-dollar bills in the various pockets of his corduroy jacket. He folded the empty envelope and put it in the console box.

When he backed out of the parking space and drove away, none of the suspect vehicles followed him immediately. They didn’t need to be quick. Hidden somewhere on the Honda, another transponder was sending the surveillance team a signal that made constant visual contact unnecessary.

He drove down three levels to the exit. Departing vehicles were lined up at the cashiers’ booths.

As he inched forward, he repeatedly checked his rearview mirror. Just as he reached the cashier, he saw the pickup with the camper shell pull into line six cars behind him.

Driving away from the airport, he held his speed slightly below the legal limit and made no effort to beat traffic lights as they turned yellow ahead of him. He didn’t want to put too much distance between himself and his pursuers.

Preferring surface streets rather than the freeways, he headed toward the west side of the city. Block by block through a seedy commercial district, he searched for a setup that would serve his purposes.

The summer day was warm and clear, and the sunshine was diffused in matching parabolic rainbow arcs across the dirty windshield. The soapy washer spray and the wipers cleared the glass somewhat but not sufficiently.

Squinting through the glare, Joe almost failed to give the used-car dealership due consideration. Gem Fittich Auto Sales. Sunday was a car-shopping day, and the lot was open, though perhaps not for long. Realizing that this was precisely what he needed, he pulled to the right-hand curb and stopped half a block past the place.

He was in front of a transmission-repair shop. The business was housed in a badly maintained stucco and corrugated-steel building that appeared to have been blown
together
by a capricious tornado, using parts of several other structures that it had previously torn asunder. Fortunately, the shop was closed; he didn’t want any good-Samaritan mechanics coming to his rescue.

He shut off the engine and got out of the Honda.

The pickup with the camper shell was not yet within sight on the street behind him.

He hurried to the front of the car and opened the hood.

The Honda was of no use to him anymore. This time they would have concealed the transponder so well that he would need hours to find it. He couldn’t drive it to Westwood and lead them to Rose, but he couldn’t simply abandon it, either, because then they would know that he was onto them.

He needed to disable the Honda in such a fashion that it would appear to be not sabotage but genuine mechanical failure. Eventually the people following him would open the hood, and if they spotted missing spark plugs or a disconnected distributor cap, they would know that they had been tricked.

Then Barbara Christman would be in deeper trouble than ever. They would realize that Joe had recognized the storyteller on the airplane, that he knew they’d been following him in Colorado—and that everything he’d said to Barbara on the phone had been designed to warn her and to convince them that she had not told him anything important when, in fact, she had told him everything.

He carefully unplugged the ignition control module but left it sitting loosely in its case. A casual inspection would not reveal that it was disengaged. Even if later they searched until they found the problem, they were more likely to assume that the ICM had worked loose on its own rather than that Joe had fiddled with it. At least they would be left with the element of doubt, affording Barbara some protection.

The pickup with the camper shell drove past him.

He didn’t look directly at the truck but recognized it from the corner of his eye.

For a minute or two he pretended to study various things in the engine compartment. Poking this. Wiggling that. Scratching his head.

Leaving the hood up, he got behind the wheel again and tried to start the Honda, but of course he had no luck.