The Ferryman Institute (32 page)

“Splendid,” Cartwright said, finally turning his attention to Charlie. In contrast to the buoyant tone of his voice, Cartwright's face seemed . . . off. It appeared a little worn at the edges, far from its usual picture of serenity. “So then, Charles, where should we begin?”

Ah, yes—the million-dollar question. What to ask first? If questions were ammo, Charlie was sitting on a stockpile large enough to outfit a platoon. However, with Alice present, Charlie was beginning to think a somewhat guarded approach might be warranted. Actually, what if Cartwright knew Charlie would take a more restrained line of questioning with her listening in? What if Cartwright's inclusion of Alice was a deliberate ploy to subtly manipulate the context of the conversation? The man knew Charlie well enough, that was for sure. Unfortunately, Charlie didn't feel qualified to say the same. They'd been together for centuries, and yet Charlie knew practically nothing about the man. Well, that wasn't entirely true. He knew
things
about Cartwright: his favorite city (London, specifically the northern end), his favorite tea (Earl Grey), the number of times he'd read
Moby-Dick
(forty-eight, not counting his latest read-through)—he just didn't feel like he
knew
Cartwright.

And that, quite neatly, summed up Charlie's problem: his distrust in Cartwright was beginning to snowball. Every thought Charlie had about the man now cast long shadows in his mind.

Like a chess player assessing various moves, Charlie remained a statue of composure, contemplating his next play with deliberate care. Finally, he shifted away from the wall, careful to keep a moderate distance from his companion. Gathering his courage, Charlie hoped he knew what the hell he was doing.

“Are you aware of the accusations Inspector Javrouche made against you earlier tonight?” Alice's intent expression told Charlie
he should tread carefully when it came to detailing the various transgressions of the night lest he have to explain his own.

Cartwright sipped his tea with delicate precision. “I am,” he said before setting the cup on the table. He offered nothing more.

“Are they true?”

Cartwright was not the type of man to hesitate. So when the curl of his lip dipped in the slightest bit of indecision, Charlie braced himself.

Cartwright took a deep breath. “I'm afraid I cannot say.”

Put diplomatically, that wasn't the response Charlie had been expecting. Put more colloquially, it was bullshit. The fact Cartwright was avoiding a question that should have had an easy answer instantly left Charlie jumping to conclusions.

“I don't understand,” Charlie said. “Why not?”

“That, too, I cannot say. There will come a time when I can explain everything, but it cannot be now. Forgive me, old friend.”

Old friend.
It was, in a way, a surprisingly fitting turn of phrase. The last hopeful holdouts in Charlie's brain—the ones that continued to believe that Cartwright was Cartwright, that this was all some hilarious misunderstanding—were quietly dropping their weapons and hoisting the white flag of surrender. The walls had been breached. The city was lost.

“I fully understand that there is very little I can presently say that will earn your complete trust again. No words could possibly express how deeply sorry I am. This is, in no small part, my fault.” He sighed. “The comedy of it all is that we are quickly running out of time, and now I must ask you to blindly trust me. I will not begrudge any decision you make to ignore me, but I beg of you to please listen to what I have to say. I swear on my honor that I have been as open with you as I can be—perhaps even more so—but your next steps are crucial.”

The paranoia raced through Charlie's head, the errant snowball picking up speed down the hill. How about all the times over the years that Cartwright had said things in passing that were just a touch too . . . convenient. Subtle things—little cues that Cartwright seemed to spring on Charlie after a rough case or the like. Charlie had always chalked it up to his being an easy read, but what if that wasn't actually the case? How did Cartwright know those things, then? Or did it just seem that way? Was Charlie trying to find a pattern that wasn't there? Which was it? Why wasn't Cartwright answering the question? What was he hiding?

Who the hell was William Henry Taylor Cartwright?

“You're doing that look again. The
someone just ran over my cat
one.”

Charlie looked up in surprise at Alice, who was staring right back at him. There was an air of disappointment in the way she gazed across at him. She held her cup in front of her face with both hands, obscuring her features aside from those piercing eyes. He hadn't been expecting her to say anything, and given the expression on Cartwright's face, neither had he.

“Look, Charlie, I'm no life guru. In fact, I'm probably the shittiest person to take advice from on this side of the Mississippi. However, I'd like to remind you that you told me Cartwright was the only person in a long time you've considered a trusted friend. If at the end of this crazy little adventure, you lose out, wouldn't you rather it be because you believed in the guy who's always been there for you instead of doubting him the one time he's asking for a little faith?”

A singular thought simmered in his head:
Who the hell does she think she is?
What did she know about the Ferryman Institute? About friends? About Cartwright? About him? Nothing. She was just another cocksure, arrogant kid, not having spent even thirty
years on this planet yet convinced she knew it all. Didn't she realize that if he chose wrong here, it would be
her
head on the block?

Then Alice set her cup down and said: “I trusted you—
trust
you. I'd say it's worked out okay so far. Well, except for that time you saw me naked.” Alice finally broke the eye contact she'd been sharing with Charlie and looked over at Cartwright. “Take a chance. Worst come to worst, we end up getting captured and experimented on or vivisected or something. And if you think about it, that really only matters to me, seeing as I'm the only normal one of you weirdos, and I'm fine with it.” A short smile crept across her lips before she nodded in Cartwright's direction. “That, and he kind of reminds me of Gandalf, and Gandalf is
awesome
.”

In the silence that followed, Charlie tried and failed to come up with anything even approaching an adequate response. The Ferryman bore a certain pride in the small number of times he'd been caught speechless throughout his extended life. It paid tribute to his quick wit, a facet of himself he probably cared a little too much about. Yet, what she'd said was so audacious, so ridiculous, and so unexpected that the sheer outrageousness of it had short-circuited Charlie's accumulating anger and left him with a clear head. Saying that also took real courage, and, strange though it was to admit, he was proud she hadn't held back. With the dangerous red filter removed from his consciousness, he heard her words objectively for the first time, recognizing them to be something he was absolutely not expecting: sound advice.

Charlie trusted Cartwright implicitly, had for decades. Things were a little screwed up right now, but maybe there was a reason for it. The man had brought Charlie into the world of Ferrymen and had thus far shepherded him through it. Even if things had taken the proverbial wrong turn at Albuquerque, Cartwright was remarkably still there, still pledging his help. If the man had spent
two hundred and fifty years pretending to be a friend just to set Charlie up, then fine. In a sense, Charlie was willing to concede defeat to something as monstrous as that.

“I'm listening,” he said. “Just keep in mind that if this is some weirdly elaborate ruse involving tea or something like that, we're leaving.”

There was a disconcerting moment where Charlie became convinced that Cartwright was going to cry. He didn't, but Charlie could've sworn he came pretty damn close.

“Thank you,” Cartwright said. “I presently find myself at a loss for words. Thank you. Both of you.”

He took a moment to recompose himself—a sip of tea, a check of his watch—before he spoke again. “Well, the show must go on, as they say.” He cleared his throat. “Correct me if I am wrong, but I assume your current plan of action is to find the president and make an appeal on behalf of Ms. Spiegel and yourself?”

Charlie scratched the back of his head. “I'm not sure I'd call it a plan, necessarily . . .”

“I thought as much. You cannot. Inspector Javrouche has detention units tactically positioned around the tunnel's perimeter. It's a rather daunting boundary, if I do say so, and I would think it nigh impossible to infiltrate undetected. It is also why I redirected the both of you to this room—if you continued to follow the tunnel walkway, in all probability, you would have been surrounded and apprehended.”

Oh
, Charlie thought.

“Here.” Cartwright produced a key ring with two ordinary-looking silver keys and tossed them underhand to Charlie. “At the end of the passageway behind me you will find a door. Beyond it, the city of New York outside of Javrouche's established boundary. Those keys will give you access to a small apartment, 58 West
Thirty-Sixth Street, the fourth floor. The location is a . . . holdover from an earlier era, but it will keep you safe. You will find further instructions there.”

Charlie stared at the keys in his hand, wondering just what exactly he was getting himself into. Even so, he said, “I think we can handle that.”

“I have the utmost faith you will.” Cartwright once again glanced at his watch. “Regrettably, I fear that time is once more against me. Other urgent matters hang in the balance. The best laid plans, as they say.” Cartwright stood, prompting Alice to do the same, and walked the pair to the entrance of the long, underlit passage. “This is where we must part ways, my friends. I sincerely believe you are out of harm's way now, but it would not be the first time I've been dreadfully wrong this rather trying day.” He turned to Alice. “And remember, my dear:
All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.
” With his hand drawn across his waist, he bowed slightly. “Be safe, and Godspeed.”

Alice's eyes lit up like a child meeting Santa Claus for the first time. “Wait, did you just quote Gandalf?” She spun in Charlie's direction. “He's not actually Gandalf . . . right?”

Despite it all, Charlie couldn't help but laugh. His intuition told him that this was all wrong, that he was walking into a disaster. He rarely ignored such a strong signal, but his options at that point were limited. Maybe that's why he laughed—maybe he knew that the end was around the corner, and so he laughed just because he still could.

“I don't know,” Charlie said. “I honestly don't know.”

A
lice was no stranger to physical activity—she was a born-and-raised soccer stud—but the stress of the night, the lack of food in her stomach, and the uphill angle of the past half mile had her feeling more than casually woozy. They'd been walking for about twenty minutes, maybe longer, but having left her cell phone in the Jeep, she couldn't say for sure.

The walk itself was uneventful, no bad thing given the chase they'd just been through. The passage was easy enough, the floor smooth with lights strung along the ceiling at regular intervals. The walls were slightly cramped but not close enough to make claustrophobia an issue. Though she'd exchanged a few snatches of conversation with Charlie, he'd spent the majority of their hike silently distracted. Alice would ask him questions, but he didn't seem to notice until she repeated herself. Clearly, the man had a penchant for getting lost in his own head.

“I think I see the exit up ahead,” she said, voice raised just above a whisper. She hated how it echoed off the walls, even if she preferred it to the dull resonance created by their footsteps.

“Looks like it,” Charlie replied bluntly. He didn't seem to mind having his voice bouncing all over the place.

As the echoes gently faded, the conversation again lapsed back into silence. What made this particular silence nearly unbearable, however, was the question Alice desperately wanted to ask to break it. She suspected good taste dictated it be left unsaid, yet with nothing to distract her, her mind kept wandering back to it. Finally, she cracked.

“Why did you save me?” she blurted out. “And I don't mean just the first time, I mean . . . everything. Why are you doing this?”

In hindsight, it wasn't the most tactful way of asking the question, but the fact remained that she wanted to know. Why go through all the trouble? Why not just leave her be in her room? Honestly—and this wasn't her depression talking—what difference did it make to the world whether she had a pulse or not? Lord knew that the world could use one less deadbeat writer.