Critical Space (51 page)

She didn't reply, just took my arm again, and we continued to follow Miata around the marsh. By the time we reached the fence at the house, it was dusk, and my watch said it was just before six o'clock. We went back inside the house, upstairs, and Alena took the
Sparbuch
card from her go-bag, which she was keeping beside her bed. I went to place it, and it was full night when I returned in another twenty minutes, my feet and legs freezing from the cold water and the cold air.

I removed my wet shoes and socks and pants and threw them all in the dryer, then headed upstairs and put on my last pair of jeans. Alena was still in her room, but Natalie had now joined her.

"Where's the PDW?" I asked them.

"In the Audi," Natalie said.

"I need it."

Natalie looked at Alena, and when Alena didn't object, got to her feet, saying, "I'll get it."

"Good."

"He will need a vest," Alena said. "Get him a vest, too."

We waited in silence for her to return. Miata sat by the bed, and Alena scratched him idly behind the ears.

"Why did you name him Miata?" I asked suddenly.

She stroked the back of his neck. "I couldn't think of anything better."

"Yeah, but Miata?"

"He was the last dog. I'd shot him, but he was still alive, and as I was leaving he watched me and that was when I picked him up. I put him in my car, drove away, and when it was safe, I tried to stop the bleeding. I couldn't. It was night, and I went to an emergency animal hospital, and I said that he was my dog and that someone had shot him. They asked me his name, and the first thing I thought of was the name of the car I'd been driving. So I said his name was Miata."

"My parents named me Atticus because they liked the book," I said.

"What book?"

"To Kill a Mockingbird.
You don't know it?"

"No."

"You'd like it."

"I'll get a copy."

She stopped stroking Miata and sighed. The dog sighed, too. "Atticus -- I never wanted it this way."

I said nothing.

"Don't hesitate," she cautioned me. "When you have him, you must not hesitate. If you hesitate, you will die."

"I won't hesitate."

She seemed to want to say something more, but Natalie returned then, carrying the PDW and a Kevlar vest, and she handed both to me.

"I want you to move her," I told Natalie. "Tell Dan it doesn't have to be anyplace fancy, but it needs to be away from here."

"We've already got a location lined up near Cold Spring," Natalie said.

"I'll call you when I'm done, meet you there."

"If you can," Natalie said.

At ten minutes to nine I turned on the cellular phone and went into the backyard, taking a seat in one of the deck chairs around the covered pool. In the kitchen, Natalie and Dan stood talking at the stove, both of them watching me through the sliding glass doors. I could see the lights on in Alena's room, too, but not her silhouette. The guard's room was dark, and I knew he was in the chair once more, the I.R. goggles in place, scanning the trees. According to Natalie, the guards were all former Russian military, and two of them were even
spesnaz,
like Dan.

I put my head back against the chair and stared up at the sky, at the faint shapes of high clouds moving quickly in the wind. It was cold and going to get colder, and what few stars I could see flickered as if someone was playing with a galactic dimmer switch.

By my watch, it was two past nine when the phone rang.

"You're late," I said.

"Your watch is fast," Oxford said. "But then again, you are, too. I was going to hit Erika Wyatt this afternoon, but you robbed me of that."

"And more," I agreed. "How's the eye?"

He chuckled in my ear. "No, we're not going to banter. You know what I want, and you know what I'll do to get it. I underestimated you, and that was my mistake, but you pushed it. You know how hard it is to replace a good banker?"

"Junot covered for you as best he could."

"Is that why you killed him? Because he wouldn't give you all of my money?"

The clouds were growing farther apart and more stars were appearing. "He was alive when I left him."

"I'm sure he was," Oxford said. "But he was dead when the cops got there. That's the trouble with blows to the head, they're unpredictable."

"You want your money, I've got it. I'll give it back to you, tonight, but in exchange you let this whole thing go. It's over."

"Of course it's over, you fucking amateur. It was over the second those limp-dicks at the Company pulled my plug. You give me my money and we'll leave it at that. But if you don't, if you fuck with me, if I find that you've ripped me off, I'll kill every fucking person you've ever loved. And you know I can do it."

"The money for our lives."

"That's the deal. I'll honor it if you do. But I want it tonight, I want this over with tonight."

"You and me both," I agreed. "You in Manhattan?"

"I'm in the city, yeah."

"You're going to come out to New Jersey," I said. "Take the GW to Route Four. Four to Seventeen North. Seventeen North to the Allendale exit. Take Allendale Avenue to Franklin Turnpike, make a right, and about half a mile down the road on your right is the entrance to the Allendale Nature Preserve. It's unmarked, there's no sign, but if you watch for it, you'll spot the turn. Get out of your car and walk to the path, and ahead of you, through the brush, you'll see an old house. The card to access the account is in the house."

"I'll need the PIN, too, asshole," Oxford said.

"You'll get the PIN. While you're in the house, I'll leave a piece of paper with the appropriate code on it under your wiper. You arrive at three-thirty, you leave at three thirty-five. If you're late or early, if I see anything I don't like, you get the card but you don't get the code. Understand?"

"You verify my arrival, then you'll leave the code?"

"That's what I'm saying."

"How do I know you won't just cap me when I come back to the car?"

"How do I know you'll honor the agreement?"

"Because I'm a professional, that's why."

"Then that'll be your assurance as well as mine," I said. "Three-thirty, no earlier, and remember, my watch said you were two minutes late in calling."

Then I hung up, switched the phone off, and stared at the stars, wondering if Laurent Junot had been buried alone or by the side of his dead wife and child. I wondered where Scott's funeral would be held, and if I would attend it, if I could attend it.

I wondered what it meant that, despite my best intentions, I had become a murderer.

Alena wouldn't look at me when I loaded her into Natalie's Audi, didn't say a word at all when I closed the door and watched them pull away from the house, Miata peering at me from the back window as Natalie followed Dan in his Kompressor and the other guards in their minivan. Alena's silence didn't change how I felt. I understood more than ever that there was nothing she could say; I understood more than ever why she was the way she was.

Back in the bedroom I stripped out of my clothes and took a long, hot shower, then used a scissors to cut off most of my mustache and beard. I went through two blades shaving off the rest of the hair, and when I saw myself in the mirror, I looked like someone I had known long ago and then fallen out of touch with, someone from summer camp and childhood.

I dressed again and put the vest on beneath my jacket, making certain the straps were snug and that the Kevlar wouldn't creep up my chest if I had to run or crawl or jump. I stuffed the rest of my things in my bag and took it out to the rental car that had been left behind for me, stowed everything in the trunk. Then I put the SIG in a jacket pocket, the PDW under my arm, and closed up the house, shutting off the lights and locking all the doors. When the owners returned from Bermuda, there'd be no sign that we were ever there.

By my watch it was six minutes to twelve when I crossed the fence back into the preserve, and there was no sign of life anywhere as I walked. Naked branches scraped against each other in the wind, and the water whispered around the reeds, but I didn't hear any animals, and even the traffic from the road was intermittent and distant. Diffused light came from distant streetlamps in the surrounding neighborhoods, reflected on the clouds.

When I passed the stand where I'd first surveyed the area, I swung out the stock on the PDW, dropped the handgrip from beneath the barrel, and flipped the selector to its three-round-burst setting. I settled the weapon against my shoulder, and moved on, slow and staying low, and I took twenty-three minutes to follow the path around to where I could see the house. I stopped and listened hard for almost five minutes more, and heard only traffic and wind and water, and I decided that he hadn't arrived yet. I didn't think he would have; it was the PIN code that had hobbled him -- whatever he might have wanted to pull, he had to get the code from me, and that meant he had to play my game until I gave it up. After that, all bets were off.

The PDW isn't a long-range weapon, and that meant I would have to be fairly close to do it. If I'd been less ashamed of myself, I'd have asked Natalie to get me one of her rifles, and I'd have taken position in one of the bird-watching stands; but to do that would have been to admit to everything, and somehow I lacked the courage, and I realized something else, then: that murder is cowardice, no matter what anyone says.

On the east side of the rotting house was a small peninsula, and from its edge at the closest point, the door of the building was only ten yards away. I crept along the brush, hearing branches crack and break around me, and at the edge, lay down on my belly with a view of the building. The ground was cold and wet from the rain, and the smell of the earth and the wet and decomposing leaves was strong. Lying there felt like penance.

I listened to my watch tick and waited, felt the moisture of the earth seep into my clothes and body, felt myself growing colder and calmer. An earthworm, disturbed by my presence, made its way over my hand, and I felt its progress and didn't move. It seemed to know what it was doing, and after a while it buried itself again, unconcerned by my intrusion.

The first sound of his car reached me at three twenty-eight, and my watch had just marked three-thirty when I heard the engine die and a door open and shut. I lost the sound of him as he crossed from the car into the preserve, caught his steps again as he fought his way through the underbrush. The branches cracked and broke as he came, and he stopped abruptly, realizing the noise he was making, realizing, too, that he didn't have an alternative. The wood of the house creaked as he stepped onto the porch, and though his shoes no longer made a sound, the building betrayed his position with every move he made.

The water bounced what bare light there was back into the air, and when he came around the corner for the door, I could see him, though it wasn't easy. He had worn black in an attempt to make himself less visible, and had even covered the bandage on his face with ink or paint to keep the white gauze from becoming a target. With both hands he held a gun, and when he turned I confirmed it was a machine pistol, a Beretta. I had expected as much; he'd compensate for his new lack of depth perception with firepower, rejecting finesse in favor of volume.

When he reached the door he hesitated, then crouched along the hinge side. He took nearly a minute to open the door, and when he finally had it free of its swollen frame, he gave it a hard shove and pulled back, out of the line of sight. After five seconds of silence he peered into the darkness, leading with the gun, and then, satisfied I wasn't inside, he lowered the weapon and reached his free hand into his pocket. When it came out again, a thin beam of light shone into the house. He moved it methodically across the floors and walls, quickly but completely checking for tripwires or other booby traps. Then the light stopped moving, and I knew he'd seen the card.

He rose and stepped inside, and the house groaned with his entry, and the marsh sloshed against the foundation. Ripples rode out on the surface of the water.

I brought the PDW up to my shoulder, and put the sights on the doorway of the house, where his head would appear. My pulse raced against my temples, and the feeling made me think of Junot again, of his bone cracking with my blow, and blood filling the space between his brain and his skull, of pressure building until the organ began to collapse beneath the weight of it all.

He was standing in the doorway again, and I didn't know how he'd gotten there. With both hands on the Beretta, he swung it in a steady arc, searching the shore on either side, and I saw his head in my sights and I tried to put the pressure on the trigger. I thought of Scott and of Chris, thinking that would make it easier, but it didn't.

Something gave me away, some sense that he was in my sights or some noise I didn't know I'd made, but something alerted him. He turned and the Beretta found me, and I still couldn't pull the trigger, and then his left knee blew out and the gunshot followed it across the dark water.

Oxford wobbled, the Beretta dipping, and he looked to find my muzzle flash and I saw his hip rip open, and wood behind him splintered and flew apart, and he twisted with the force of the shot and collapsed onto his remaining knee, the Beretta bouncing out of his hands and into the water. He opened his mouth to scream and there was another flash and the back of his head came open, and the report echoed again.

He dropped to his side and rolled off the slope of the porch, into the water.

I found my feet and started running, following the path back to the bird-watching stand, the PDW in my hands. I came around the bend and saw Natalie by the ladder, and she didn't look at me as she helped Alena down from the platform. There was no sign of the rifle, and I guess it had already gone into the water, and I said nothing as Natalie guided Alena back to the path, handed her the cane once more.

I dropped the PDW and she hobbled forward and I caught her before she fell. Her arms went around me, her hands open and strong on my back, and her voice was thick and wet, choked with the tears that I hadn't seen in her eyes.