by Peter Heller
He nodded.
“And this is what you’re going to tell your people.” He stared. “Listen: Tell them it ends here. Lamont stays dead. The secret about Chile”—he blinked—“just tell them: The secret about the coup stays secret. But—get this very clearly, please—if any harm at all comes to Lamont, or his daughter, Gabriela, or her son, or to me, or to Pete, or my Hank, the photos go to the press. New York Times, Washington Post, etc. It’s all set up, all it takes is the trigger. Otherwise it goes nowhere, everybody moves on. Got that?”
He nodded.
“You all have bigger things to worry about right now, is my guess. We better hope everyone lives long and natural lives. Now sit up. I’m not afraid of you anymore. They will surely kill you if you trigger the release of those pictures.” She leaned her rifle against a pine and knelt by the bleeding man and helped him sit up. She got behind him and undid the knot in the scarf and undoubled it and wound it expertly several times over the folded orange cap and his shoulder, and under his armpit, and snugged it very tight. He winced and flinched hard but did not cry out. “There. Better,” she said. She tugged the half-quart water bottle out of its sleeve on her belt. “Here.” He took it. She noticed his hands were scarred and very strong. Who knew what they had wrought in the world. He tipped up the bottle and squirted half into his mouth. Nodded once.
“You need help getting to the clearing?” He shook his head. Slowly he got to his knees. She stepped to the tree and picked up her rifle. He reached over for his, which lay where he’d dropped it on the pine needles. “Uh-uh, Tanner,” Celine said, bringing her rifle up. His head came up fast, whether from the sound of his last name or the curt warning. “You’d better leave that. That stays. I’ve always wanted one of those. It’s an M24, isn’t it? .308.” On his knees he stared at her. He looked like a man who wasn’t sure if he were in a bad dream from which he’d soon wake.
“From now on be careful who you call ma’am,” she said. “Get going.”
She slung his rifle, which was surprisingly light. Kevlar stock. Lovely. And she watched William Tanner walk slowly through the trees, watched him unshuck his satellite phone and bring it to his ear.
TWENTY-SIX
Celine made it back to the trail. Pete was there, standing in the shade and looking shaken. She never thought of him as an old man. He was just a few years older than she was, after all, and he was game and had a lively mind and his body still bore the temper and memory of a high-school athlete and farmhand. But she thought as she came out of the trees that he looked old. Something a bit frightened and tentative hovered around him as he stood there in his bright orange hat. Well. Anyone at any age would’ve been frightened by getting shot at—by a SEAL sniper. The only thing that had saved their bacon was getting startled by an elk. See? she thought. Jumping with fright can have its upside.
Pa looked deeply thoughtful as he watched her come and he held his shotgun at port arms. “I can’t believe what just happened,” he said as she unslung the M24. It really was a gorgeous rifle.
“You can’t?” she said, catching her breath.
“You used your favorite Armani scarf as a bandage.”
Her head came around. He didn’t seem old anymore. He smiled.
“You saw that? You were watching?”
“Do you kind of fake the emphysema for effect?” he said. “Or sympathy?” Pete’s expressions fell into no categories of common usage. “I’m also getting the feeling again that you’ve had special training in a part of your life I know absolutely nothing about. Not yet.” Yes, he wore a half smile, and yes, he seemed deeply amused, an amusement touched strongly with irony, and yes, his eyes were loving and tolerant, also bemused, even concerned. Maybe even a little confused. Well, one just had to let Pete be Pete.
“You had my back,” she said. “You were right there. And you were so stealthy the trained professionals didn’t notice. Wow.” She stood on her toes and straightened his cap. “Let’s go visit Paul Lamont. It’s a long shot, I know, but I keep being reassured.” She tucked some loose hair behind her ear. “Hank’s wondrous hat, damn. I just gave it away. Just a sec, my beret’s on the front seat.” She squeezed his arm and picked up the old and trusty lever-action hunting rifle.
They followed the track for twenty-five minutes and came to the edge of a clearing. The clearing was tall faded wheatgrass and rabbitbrush and sage. A light wind rippled through the grass and in the warming early afternoon they could smell the sagebrush. Also woodsmoke. No sounds but the breeze and the pulse of crickets. A copse of blue spruce and lodgepole pines protected a small cabin and behind the cabin was a small green lake. Green as his true love’s eyes. And beyond the lake, west, was the stone and ice ridge of Many Glacier rising out of the trees. There, northwest, was the mesa-topped monadnock of Chief Mountain. It dominated the horizon. They knew from the map that there, too, was the Canadian border. A good spot for a fugitive if ever there was one—if he was in good shape he could find a game trail and trot across the border in a few hours, all in the cover of deep woods. Someone must be home—a thread of pale smoke rose from a stovepipe in the roof.
Celine murmured, “Goose Lake. Sounds like a bird. But one step past it. A crafty SOB.” Pete nodded. “Happy hunting,” she said. And they stepped out of the deep shade of the trees.
They split up and walked over the open ground just the way two old hunters would: Walked slowly, careful not to twist an ankle, stopping every few steps to sniff the air and scan for elk or deer. And walking on. With their guns and orange vests and apparent age they could be nothing else. They had covered almost half of the two hundred yard meadow when they saw the cabin door open and a man stepped onto the porch and he was studying them with large military binoculars. They stopped and watched him, too. Then Celine raised her arm like a squadron leader and the two continued forward slowly. And the man stepped back into the darkened doorway and came out again holding a rifle. Each step in the sequence was done without haste and in silence. Also without haste the man raised the scoped rifle and leveled it at them. Well. Seemed like a day for getting shot at. Must be how every deer and elk in the county will feel in a month.
They stopped, glanced at each other, Celine frowned and nodded and they stepped forward. Celine waved at the man: an elderly hunter from away encountering an ornery native, trying to be polite. No shot, so they stepped forward again. They continued walking. The man, evidently, would let them live, and walk, until they got within hailing range.
And—just then Celine heard the thwop of a distant chopper. More like a stuttered pressure wave coming through the nearly still air. A beating of pressure in the ears and then the true drumming of the blades and they saw the man’s rifle come up to the sky over their heads as he scoped the new threat and they both turned and saw the black Robinson 66 coming fast and low over the ridge and trees. Maybe two miles from them, less, it came around hard in a clockwise bank and hovered. Right over the swampy meadow. Loud now, even at that distance. The bird rocked on air just over the treetops, and then it settled down out of sight and the throbbing dropped an octave; a few seconds later they heard another roar, the ramping up, and the chopper was over the trees and rising. William Tanner did not take long to load. The helicopter had barely cleared the tallest spruce when it tipped and banked and the tail rose and it accelerated straight toward the ridge and maybe Helena. Celine hoped so. Helena and not some black site, the man needed medical attention. She hoped he wouldn’t get demoted because he’d gotten bested by a silver fox.
They turned back to the cabin. The barrel of the rifle and the scope above it were aimed straight at Celine. Well, she carried the .308.
They walked on. What else could they do? When they were less than thirty yards the man took his left hand from the forearm and raised it: Far enough. He looked through the scope, his face half obscured, but she could see a taut sunburned cheek, a gray stubble on chin, a dark eyebrow, shaggy hair—light brown going to gray. A blue Oxford shirt, untucked, patch
ed, stained. Loose khakis, also stained with sap and oil, hems and pockets frayed. No hat.
“That’s it,” the man called. “There.” His voice was resonant but cracked, sonorous, the voice of a man who could probably sing—maybe a mountain tenor—but who hadn’t spoken in a long while.
“Lay the guns on the ground,” he called.
“Beg your pardon,” Celine objected.
At the sound of her voice the man flinched. He looked up over his scope and blinked and she saw that his eyes were a deep brown. Not hazel, not black. Large, still shiny, impressionable. The eyes of a man who took in the world as image—image sufficient unto itself and mysterious, and in a constant state of composition.
“Hunting season isn’t for a few weeks, last time I checked.” The voice again. Cracked and even now charming, that frayed resonance charismatic men often carry. “What the hell was that?” He motioned the barrel toward the horizon, where the chopper had vanished.
Celine set down her rifle and dusted her hands together. “We’re from New York,” she said, as if that explained it. “And we’ve come to see where the Princess of Ice Mountain might want to live with her father, the King.”
Paul Lamont reeled back. He lowered the gun and let it fall against the logs of the wall and his hands went to either side of his head. He stood rooted to the porch.
“Celine Watkins,” she called. “My husband Pete. We come straight from your daughter, Gabriela.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Lamont made coffee. He had not had a visitor in twenty-three years so his social graces were rusty: He pulled out a pine chair for Celine at the rough table. The only chair, she noticed. The cabin was log, one room, neat, the plank floor swept, and two jackets—a canvas Carhartt zip-up and a Gore-Tex raincoat—hung on hooks by the door. Shirts and pants and wool sweaters, all old and patched or faded, were folded in wooden egg crates against one wall. A single bed against another wall, under a four-pane window on a side hinge. On the sill of the window, two books. She could read the spines: Poems of the Masters translated by Red Pine, The Great Fires by Jack Gilbert.
She counted two Aladdin kerosene lamps, and candles stuck to saucers on the windowsills. A very old sheet-metal sheepherder’s woodstove in the northwest corner. Two cast-iron frying pans hung on nails in the wall above the stove, and two stainless cook pots. An orange-bodied STIHL chain saw rested on the floor by the front door. Lamont knocked the handle of the woodstove and let the door swing open. He tossed in a couple of chunks of firewood and latched it and ladled water from a five-gallon plastic pickle bucket into the smallest pot and spooned in a pile of coffee grounds from a red tin of Folgers and set it on the stove. Cowboy coffee. He didn’t look at them. “Just a sec,” he said without meeting their eyes and went out the door. He carried in a pine stump, tall enough to sit on; thudded it down on the floor. Went back out for another. “There. Please.” He motioned to Pete.
He concentrated on the coffee and did not say another word. Celine watched him. His whole life must have been boiling up in his mind, his heart, just as the coffee would in a couple of minutes—boil and rise, and the crust of grounds would crack open and the water would bubble through.
When it did boil, he knocked the pot twice with a spoon and sprinkled in eggshell from a bowl. Must be a chicken coop out back. In no hurry, he let the grains settle. A steel sink stood against the back wall. Upside down against the rim of the sink was a chipped coffee cup with a pink Disney World castle. Something about it made Celine wince. He turned it over. On a plank shelf were three jelly jars. He brought two down. Poured the coffee and handed Celine the palace mug. “You,” she said. “I’ll take the jar.” He nodded. Brought down a glass sugar bowl from the same shelf. One spoon.
He sat on the stump. Celine studied him. The tautness in his cheeks was ascetic. He ate lean, lived lean, clearly kept his thoughts lean. An acolyte to past mistakes. His lips were cracked with sun and they quivered just a little as he stirred a heaping spoonful of sugar into his coffee. His one indulgence, she guessed. He was still very handsome. His eyelashes were long, his eyes clear if a little bloodshot, his graying sandy hair down over his collar, which hung loosely and revealed a welted scar running from his left ear to his collarbone. She reminded herself that she did not like this man. He was weak, and he had abandoned his only daughter horribly—and twice. She thought again of the tiny girl standing on a stepstool meant to help children brush their teeth—standing on it and cooking her own dinner in her own apartment, alone.
Celine sipped the piping hot dark coffee and said, “How did you die?”
He told them. But first he looked at them steadily, first Pete, then Celine, and said, “The chopper took off. So you must have settled something.”
“We did,” Celine said. “I promised them that you would stay dead. I told them that the photographs you took of Peña de la Cruz would stay buried.”
Lamont started, flinched so hard that he spilled his coffee. He put the mug down, stared at her.
“How else do you think we’re all still sitting here?” she said. “And not being buried by the lake?”
He nodded slowly.
“You took pictures in the palace that afternoon, of the body.”
He stared, nodded.
“And next to the body, an American, a government official. Important enough then, but now very high up. Very.”
He didn’t move. Not a twitch. The absolute lack of motion spoke volumes.
“We’ve had good—” She stopped. “Well. We’ve had long lives. Full. I don’t mind, really. But I was thinking of Gabriela.” He nodded. “And her son.” Another flinch. Poor man. He started to speak and she held up a hand. “We’ll get to that. Good,” she said and took another sip. “Good coffee.” She took a deep breath. “Salvador Allende did not commit suicide, did he?” She sipped. “Nor did poor Peña de la Cruz. They would not worry about a crackpot adventure photographer who had been drinking too much vodka and maté—sorry—railing about the CIA killing a minister of finance. Who would believe him? Not I. Who cared that much, after all, anymore? Water under the bridge. Sadly. But. Photographs would be a different story. A picture, like the others I assume you’ve got, of an American, in a suit, a very important American standing with a gun over the dead body of a member of the cabinet, that would be a different story. That would rock the world and rewrite history at just the wrong time. This time, this critical time, when the States are swimming in international sympathy and clearly trying to pull together a coalition. Very bad timing. So I told them that if an ounce of harm came to any of the three of us, or Gabriela, or your grandson, or my family, that it would trigger the release of the photographs to the press. I mentioned The New York Times, The Washington Post.”
Lamont stared at her.
“Old poker player.” Celine smiled. “We’ve found one of the pictures, and wherever the rest of those photographs are, you’d better set that up. We can help you.”
So they drank coffee. Through the afternoon and into the dusk. No one was in a hurry. He lit the lamps and scrambled up eggs in olive oil—he did have a chicken coop—and they ate them with strips of elk jerky, the best dried meat Celine had ever had. He made another pot of coffee and they drank more after supper. Celine told him everything she knew of Gabriela’s life, and of her son, who was now eight. Lamont listened like a man who was half dead from thirst, half dead and now drinking cold spring water. It was like pouring water into the pot of a dried and yellowing geranium, they could see the firmness coming back to limbs, the color. He said very little. What could he say, Celine thought. After everything. He had made his choices. Hard ones.
He told them how he’d died, how he’d studied and carved bear tracks out of wood and picked a night of coming storm, and cut his own wrists for blood. He knew it didn’t have to be perfect, because he knew the agency would want him dead and would go to great lengths to put him there, at least in the official records. He did not speak of the bigger decisions except to say
, “Gabriela needed a life. Needed out from under the Woman. Needed to inherit. I needed out of the work. With them. They knew I had the photographs and they knew my personality—that I was impulsive and rash and maybe, ah…”
“Self-destructive?” prompted Celine helpfully.
He nodded. “Right. That if they even tried to threaten me with say, Gabriela, I would blow it all open. So if they couldn’t find me after I disappeared, maybe they didn’t try all that hard. Probably relieved to have it all go quiet. But then—”
“Then we traipsed through the ashes. Made everybody sneeze.”
He almost smiled. His face, Celine thought now, had been chiseled by sadness. Now it nearly smiled. She wondered if the muscles even knew how anymore.
Celine set down her fork and said, “You had a beautiful family and you screwed it up and caused immense pain.” His eyelashes fluttered and he looked down at his plate. “Especially to your daughter. You made bad choices and you were weak. You suffered terribly when Amana died.” His hand touched his own cheek, reflex, as if to make sure he was still living. “I get that. But many many people suffer terribly and go on to live lives of grace. You know, I am terribly fond of Gabriela. She’s an extraordinary young woman. She’s made a good life despite losing her mother, despite the wrecking ball she had for a father. I think she is going to want to come to see you. Soon. I think you ought to get another chair and another coffee cup.”
The man turned on his stump away from them, to face the little window. He leaned forward. His elbows went to his knees and his hands went to his face. Celine let him be. Finally, she said, “Will you walk us to our truck now? We’re exhausted and it’s getting truly dark. We could use a guide.”
She could see him nod. “Of course,” he said huskily. “Of course.”
Epilogue
