Gideon (25 page)

That was when Harry shit himself.

The noise and the smell filled the small plane, and Harry was certain he saw Rigney sneer. He was humiliated. And livid. It was the humiliation that finally overpowered his terror, because it was at that moment he began to focus. And to act.

Okay
, some inner voice seemed to say.
Single-engine procedure. Lower the nose to build up airspeed. You can’t dip below sixty-five
.

They were down to eighty knots. Seventy-five …

Harry gripped the controls and lowered the nose of the airplane. They must have fallen five thousand feet, maybe six. They were down to seventy-two knots per hour.

Check the oil pressure so you can feather the prop
.

The oil pressure held steady. He twisted the angle of the remaining working propeller so that the leading edge was facing forward and aft, into the wind. The drag on the plane immediately eased. The speed had dipped to seventy. Now it began to climb, back up to seventy-five, then eighty …

They pulled out of their spin. And they stopped falling. They were going to make it.

They were going to make it!

Harry threw his head back and laughed. He looked at Rigney, whose expression had never changed. His arms were still folded across his chest. He hadn’t even worked up a sweat. He was just staring over at Harry, looking at him curiously.

Harry was suddenly aware that the front of his pants was stained and wet. He hadn’t just shit in his pants, he’d pissed all over himself, too. His hands were sweating, his stomach was cramping now. But the plane was steady and was turned around, heading back toward the airport. They had goddamn made it!

When he’d landed expertly on the runway and the plane screeched to a halt, Rigney turned to Harry. He still said nothing. Just gazed into Harry’s eyes.

Harry knew that once again the pilot was looking into his very being, and he wanted to scream. It took him a long time to return the pilot’s gaze. When he did, all he could say was, “Please stop looking at me.”

“You did better than I thought you would,” Rigney said. “You acted like a man. You’ll pass your test.”

“Thank you,” Harry mumbled.

“Don’t thank me,” Rigney said. “Just don’t ever come back here again. I don’t want to see you ever again. Don’t take any more lessons, don’t hang around the airport, don’t follow me down the street.”

“I—” But Harry didn’t get another word out because Rigney slapped him, hard, across the mouth. Harry’s cheek turned red and he felt a trickle of blood seep between two of his top front teeth.

“I’ve seen you following me. I know when you’re their. I know you’re outside my house.”

“Please,” Harry started to say, “I can explain …” But Rigney’s hand flew forward again, ant his slap was even harder. It rocked Harry’s head back, and for a moment he saw only darkness.

“Do your solo,” Rigney told him. “Do what I taught you. Make me proud. But know that if I ever see you in the bushes, if I ever catch you watching me again, I’ll kill you.”

Harry didn’t bother to answer back. He unbuckled his seat belt, stepped unsteadily out of the plane, and walked away, never looking back at Rigney. The next day he showed up for his first solo flight. Nothing went wrong; the solo was as smooth as it could be.

Harry Wagner knew he would never be afraid of flying again.

The next time Harry felt fear was two years later. It was his first sexual experience.

The woman was twenty-seven, several years older than he was. She was divorced, with a four-year-old son. Her name was Helen and she had exquisite legs, long and muscular, and tiny breasts, almost nonexistent. Her hair was brown and thick, her skin was a little rough and slightly too pale, and he could smell her sweet shampoo when she stood next to him. They met at a party. Harry wasn’t invited to many parties—even then he was a loner, separate from most of the other students—but he’d gone to this one. He wasn’t sure why; maybe he’d been lonely, maybe he’d been looking for someone like Helen. And there she was. She said she’d come with a date but that he’d gotten drunk with his buddies and had disappeared. Harry thought she was lying, using that as an excuse to get rid of him, but he said that he wasn’t trying to steal her from her date. He just thought they could talk. She smiled and nodded and looked pleased that she’d met someone with manners, so they talked quietly in a corner. And they drank. And soon Harry began to realize that she was staring hungrily at his muscular arms, at the lean V-shape of his body from shoulders to waist. He felt a gnawing in the pit of his stomach. He felt panic. He decided that this woman wanted him. He wanted her, too, and was surprised at how much he wanted her, but he didn’t know if he could perform. He never had before. Harry felt himself begin to tremble, felt his throat constrict. He got drunk for the first time in his life that night, until he worked up the nerve to ask if he could go home with her. He had pictured in his mind exactly how it would be. She would nod and take his hand and lead him home to her apartment. But that wasn’t how it was. When he asked if he could take her home, when he managed to get the words out, she looked at him curiously and said no. He was mortified, desperately embarrassed, and he apologized profusely. She laughed and said that she wasn’t offended, she was flattered, but that he still couldn’t come home with her. She had a son, she said, and she didn’t bring men home to her apartment. Besides, they had just met. She said that perhaps they could go to dinner sometime, really get to know each other, but Harry knew that she was only feeling sorry for him. He knew that she didn’t want to really get to know him better. She wanted him to leave.

So he left.

An hour later Helen left the party, too. Her apartment was not far; she walked the distance quickly, if a bit unsteadily after having had so much to drink. When she got home, she tried to unlock her front door, missed the lock with her key on the first attempt, chuckled aloud to herself, then used both hands to get the key into the slot. It took about five minutes for the baby-sitter to leave, cash still clutched in her hand. Helen was only inside the apartment alone for a few seconds before the doorbell rang. When she opened the door, Harry was certain she was quite surprised to see him standing there.

His closed hand went up so quickly she didn’t have time to dodge the hard punch to the side of her cheek. She was knocked back so hard that she didn’t utter a sound. He forced her to the ground and banged her head quickly against the wood floor. Not
too
hard, just hard enough. He wanted her conscious. He wanted her to be able to enjoy this experience.

He ripped off her skirt, tore her blouse in half. Grabbed her panties in his fist and yanked them free. She started to speak, but when she saw the look in his eyes, she stopped. She just closed her mouth and nodded. He climbed on top of her, placing his lips against hers, kissed her long and hard, forcing his tongue inside her mouth, bit her on the neck, then on the shoulder. When it was time, he didn’t have to say anything; she took his penis in her hands and guided it inside her.

Harry performed. Quite well, in fact. He could tell by her passionate moans during the act, by her thrashing legs, by the way she lay so still afterward, never even bothering to cover her bare breasts.

He lay on the floor there with her for several hours. When it was near dawn and time to go, when he saw her glance toward a back bedroom, knowing that her young son might emerge sometime soon, Harry Wagner leaned down to her and whispered in her ear. When she didn’t respond, he grabbed the back of her hair and pulled, hard. he leaned forward and whispered to her again. He could see the confusion in her eyes as well as the fear. He yanked harder on her. “I just told you something,” he said. “Now don’t you have something to say to me in return?”

She nodded. A quick, terse motion. She understood. He felt relieved. And happy.

“Well, say it, then,” he prompted.

“I love you, too,” she whispered.

After that night with Helen, Harry Wagner knew something about himself as a man. His knowledge was irrevocable and strangely satisfying. And he was no longer afraid.

In the years since, Harry Wagner had risen to the top of his profession. He had endured great pain, physical and mental, and even risked death on a regular basis. He had suffered loneliness and abandonment and even humiliation.

But deep down, there had been no more fear in his life. Not even a twinge. Until now, standing in the living room of his small, comfortable, ranch-style suburban house. And this fear was the most overwhelming of his life.

Harry, above all, feared the loss of control. His ex-wife, Allison, had screamed at him, that messy day she’d gone away. “Jesus, Harry,” she’d cried. “You want to control what I do, what I think, when I fucking breathe!” He had slapped her, hard, knowing what was coming. He didn’t want to hear it, but she spit it at him anyway. “You’re a fucking animal! You can’t even control yourself! You can’t even control your—”

That’s when he hit her again. Harder, knocked her down. It was surprising how much pleasure it gave him. He had never really derived pleasure from hitting women. Then she left, gone for good, so he could never hit her again.

It had been several days since he’d realized that she was right, he had indeed lost control of his own life. They had taken it away, used his weakness to exploit and manipulate him, to blackmail him. It seemed impossible that he could be blackmailed. The word itself brought about a feeling of revulsion and contempt. But there it was: He was being blackmailed. He had thought this through, examined every angle, sifted through every bit of minutiae trying to find a solution. It was what he was good at. It was what he
did
—find solutions. But he had never been in a situation like this before. He had never come up against this kind of strength.

The first thing he had to do was face the reality of this particular predicament. Pretense, false comfort, was of no value to him now. He needed logic, facts, if he was to have any hope of surviving. They had what they needed to destroy the life he’d so carefully built, and he knew they’d have no qualms about such destruction. The reality was that they had him by the balls and not only were they squeezing, they were letting him know that they could squeeze a hell of a lot harder whenever they wanted.

They had left him with only two options.

He could go on as he had been, doing what they wanted, when they wanted. He could do the dirty work and be a glorified messenger boy. In his head, he played that option out as dispassionately as possible. It did not come to a happy conclusion.

Harry understood that once the decision had been made to use Gideon, the stakes had gotten extraordinarily high. The game had risen to a new and extreme level. The bottom line was that the winner could not afford to leave the other players around once the game was over. They could not risk someone talking. Or thinking. Harry knew that he might last a little longer, as long as he was useful. But ultimately his usefulness would come to an end. And when that happened, well … he didn’t think they’d put a lot of stock in his loyalty. The editor, Maggie Peterson, had been loyal, as loyal as he’d been. Her loyalty had gotten her skull crushed. Ignorance was no help, either. The two women he’d killed down South had been innocent bystanders, murdered only to make a statement. The girl found in the apartment upstairs from Carl, also innocent. A nobody who hadn’t even known she’d become a player in the game. Harry could hardly claim ignorance, in any case. He’d known what was happening, all right. Okay, not every detail perhaps, but he could connect the dots. He understood the level of power at which this game was being played. He understood that at this level, human life was unimportant. Even his.

He didn’t know how many others had been killed along the way. He assumed there were several. He did know that Carl Granville had somehow managed to survive. At least until now. But he didn’t have a prayer. The kid was dead meat. It was a miracle he’d lasted this long.

Well, it was too bad. He’d gotten to like Carl. But he’d done what he could for him. Harry didn’t have time to worry about such things. He’d made his move. He had shown them that they were dealing with a player. Someone who knew the rules. And knew how to get around them.

In twenty-four hours Harry was going to disappear.

That was option number two, and it was the only one that made sense. If he stayed, they’d kill him. In the long run, that was a certainty. In the meantime, in the immediate here and now, his prospects weren’t very pleasant either: servitude, obeisance. No, thank you. Been there, done that.

He had one key advantage, of course. He had been invisible to them for so long, they tended to underestimate him. He had stood nearby, as unimportant to them as a guard dog. But he had listened. He had learned. He understood the way they thought, the devious way they plotted.
One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious
. Chateaubriand had said that. Harry smiled, knowing he had improved on it. He was not superior because he saw the world as odious. He was superior because he saw the odiousness before anyone else. And so he was prepared.

That’s what he’d been doing for some weeks now. Preparing.

It surprised and depressed him a little just how easy it was to erase his life.

The furniture in the house had been sold in bulk to a company that rented out furniture for offices, parties, and unfurnished apartments. Taking cash in exchange for a greater discount, he’d managed to clear a little under ten thousand dollars for everything in the house. It had been arranged that all services for the house—phone, gas, electric, garbage pickup, newspaper—would be severed starting tomorrow, and everything had been paid in full. The house itself, he was just leaving. It was a rental, gotten through a company that specialized in relocating government workers, and it wasn’t worth the risk to try to get back the tree months’ advance rent he’d had to put down for security. Better to eat the loss. Besides, it was peanuts. At least now it was. Comparatively.

He did own a small two-bedroom condominium nearby, just a couple of hundred yards from the water. He’d bought it long ago and had paid off the mortgage. Since he owned it free and clear, he was able to price it low, and it sold almost as soon as it came on the market. He cleared a hundred and fifteen thousand dollars—an all-cash transaction. He had thought about rolling over his income savings plan into another tax-protected account. But he decided, after several days of agonizing, that he couldn’t risk tipping them off that he might be leaving his job. He hated to leave the money behind, but he couldn’t afford to be greedy. Too often greed was the downfall of men looking to move from one life to another. Along with the sale of his stocks, bonds, and all other assets, he’d wire-transferred $147,000 to the Waverly Bank in the Cayman Islands. All local bank accounts under his own name were now closed. All charge accounts, closed. Because only birth certificates were checked, not death certificates, he’d gone to a nearby graveyard and appropriated the name of a dead baby found on a headstone—and as a result he had a new Social Security number and passport. He also had brand-new American Express, Visa, and MasterCard Accounts, each listed under a separate and different name. In each of those names, he now had checking accounts set up through the bank in the Cayman Islands and accessible through a check-writing and financial-planing program installed in his computer. The final item on his economic checklist: Alimony checks were stopped. if he was disappearing, he might as well get in a final “fuck you” to Allison.