Jumper

by Steven Gould

  “Aren’t there planes that could have gotten you there?”

  “Sure. Supersonic fighter jets don’t usually carry passengers, though. I don’t blame them for being curious. If I could hitch rides on military jets, I must be hot shit indeed.” I paused. “The long and the short of it is that I ended up panicking. I jumped away from them in front of five witnesses.”

  “Ack. That wasn’t very subtle.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. They wouldn’t let me call my lawyer. I was afraid they were going to start on me with the thumbscrews and needles.”

  Millie made a sour face. “Well, it happened. It’s all very well for you. You can jump away at the slightest hint of danger. What happens when they start in on me?”

  “I hope that you won’t have that problem. But I really don’t know. Now that they have some idea of what I can do, they’ll start that military bullshit that developed capacity equals intent.”

  She put her hand on top of mine, where it rested on her thigh. “What do you mean? Are you afraid they’ll think you’ll rob every bank in the country?”

  I shook my head. “They don’t know about that. Hopefully they won’t draw a connection. What has probably occurred to them is much worse.

  “I could kill or kidnap the president. I could steal nuclear warheads and put them in our major cities. I could smuggle vast quantities of drugs into the country avoiding any possibility of interdiction. I could jump into secure facilities, steal documents, and sell them to the Chinese. Just as bad, they could want me to do all those things for our side. You get the idea?”

  “You wouldn’t do anything like that, Davy.”

  She didn’t make it a question. She said it with absolute confidence. I almost cried. I shifted over, placing my face against her leg. She ran her fingers through my hair.

  “I’m sorry, Millie.”

  “It’s not your fault. I’m not sure if it’s anyone’s fault. But it sure complicates things, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think we should do?”

  “I don’t know. I could jump you away from all of this. I could put a shower and bathroom in at my cliff dwelling and we could travel across Europe and the Middle East.”

  “Tempting, but hardly possible. I have sixteen hours of classes this semester.”

  I worked my hand over her leg until the fingertips were tracing up the inner seam of her jeans.

  “Stop that! You want me to have a wreck?” She moved my hand off her leg. “What am I supposed to do?”

  I shifted. “If you want to live a normal life, you’ll have to give the impression that our relationship is over. If they were bugging your phone last night, that’s out, but if they didn’t, we might stand a chance.”

  Millie passed a slow-moving truck. I scrunched against the door so the truck driver wouldn’t see me from his higher vantage point.

  “I don’t think they bugged the phone last night when you called.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I walked my dad’s dog last night, twice. Once right after you called and once before I went to bed. The street was empty the first time, but there was a van parked down the block the second time with its engine running and a guy was standing on the corner at the other end of the block. Nobody stands on the corner in that neighborhood. Not at night when it’s twelve degrees out.”

  From my position on the floor, the view out the windows was strange, consisting of the tops of trees and an occasional slice of billboard or exit sign. Also, a couple of times I saw a helicopter, high overhead, moving north.

  I kept my eyes on Millie’s face to avoid getting carsick. “So you’re saying they arrived after I called. Hmmm. Well, more and more, it sounds like you should play it cool. Do your parents know about us?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t like to tell them about my love life. They have, well, opinions. I keep it vague.”

  “What about your roommate?”

  “No. I didn’t tell her. If I told her anything, I’d tell her all of it, and I didn’t think she’d believe me. Besides, she thinks you’re too young for me.”

  I laughed. “Right now I feel very young. There seems to be a helicopter following us as well, so if the cars disappear, don’t bet that you aren’t still being watched.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Look for yourself. It’s way off to the west right now, but it’s been up there an awful long time. I’ll stay with you all the way to Wichita, so I can get a fix on your mother’s house. I wish I could see the room you’re staying in. About the only time I’ll be able to see you is when you’re supposed to be asleep. If you go out for a walk and disappear, it won’t convince them you’re not still seeing me.”

  She nodded. “I’ll park in the garage. You fix on that. This afternoon we’re going over to my sister’s for Christmas dinner. The spare room is at the back of the house. I’ll leave my suitcase on the bed so you know which one it is.”

  “What time?”

  “We have to be there by four.”

  “Okay. I’m going to jump to the backseat and stretch out. I didn’t sleep very well last night.”

  She put her fingers to her mouth, kissed the first two fingertips, and pressed them against my mouth. “I know what you mean. Sleep well.”

  Millie woke me when we entered her mother’s subdivision. I transferred back to the floor of the front seat and said, “Is your escort still with you?”

  “Yeah. When we got into the city, both cars closed back in. I’m starting to get mad, Davy.”

  I swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not mad at you. Don’t apologize. It’s their arms-race mentality that’s pissing me off. Here we are.”

  She pulled into the driveway almost violently, the car rocking as it came to a stop. I crouched lower. She jumped out of the car and I heard the sound of the garage door rattling open. Then she was back in the car and pulling forward.

  “Stay down. Mom will have heard the door. I’ll distract her and you can get your jump site.”

  She got out of the car just as an interior door opened. I heard a woman say, “Right on time! How are you, honey?”

  Millie shut the driver’s door behind her and went forward, out of sight. Her muffled voice said, “Hi, Mom. God, it’s cold in here. Did you make any Christmas cocoa this year?”

  “Of course. Do you want a cup?”

  “I’d love a cup. I’ll shut the garage and get my stuff, if you’ll put the water on.”

  “Coming right up.” I heard the inside door shut. Millie moved past the driver’s window and then the garage darkened noticeably as she pulled down the door.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said, climbing out of the car and stretching. Millie came to me and we kissed.

  “Go on,” she said, pushing me away. “You can get into the house between four and about seven. My sister’s kids will have driven Mom crazy by then.”

  I looked around, memorizing the corner by her car. “I’ll jump into your room at midnight, okay? Don’t talk to me when I do. They might bug the house while you’re out.”

  A look of outrage passed over her face. “And we’re supposed to let them?”

  I shrugged. “It hardly seems fair.”

  “Well, I can always call the police. In fact, that sounds like an excellent idea. When I next see them following, I’m going to call the cops. Two lone women followed by four men in a car is certainly suspicious. It will be interesting to see what happens.” She hugged me. “Midnight.”

  “Yeah,” I said, kissing her. Then I jumped.

  Except for a jump back to Wichita at 4:15, I spent the afternoon napping and thinking. I wished Millie would jump away with me. I kept wondering if she was with her sister’s family or had been taken away by the NSA agents.

  But if I watched her, ready to rescue her, I took a chance of being seen. That would endanger her far more. It occurred to me that if I were seen elsewhere, far away, the
heat might go off of her.

  Dr. Perston-Smythe wasn’t in his office. Unfortunately, his filing cabinets were locked and I didn’t know how to break into them, much less have a desire to do so. The entire building was quiet, locked up for the holiday. On a list in the reception area I found his home phone number and address.

  I took a cab.

  His house was on M Street NW, a town house shoe-horned in between other town houses. Before approaching the door I looked for people seated in parked cars or standing in doorways. There didn’t seem to be anybody.

  A woman came to the door, about Perston-Smythe’s age, say forty, dressed in a green turtleneck and a red tartan skirt—very Christmaslike. She had silver hair and a lightly lined face.

  “Is Dr. Perston-Smythe home?”

  She looked slightly annoyed but damped it quickly. “Certainly. Come in out of the cold while I fetch him. Who shall I say is calling?”

  “David Rice,” I said.

  She nodded. My name, apparently, meant nothing to her. She guided me into a parlor immediately off the front hall. There was a fireplace with an electric heater on the hearth. I stood with my back to it, facing the door.

  Perston-Smythe took a couple of minutes to come to the room. I imagined he phoned somebody, first, before coming to talk to me. The instructions from the phone were probably “Stall him. We’ll be right there.” When he did come through the door his right hand was in the pocket of his tweed jacket.

  “I’m surprised you would come here,” he said.

  I shrugged. “Well, I didn’t get what I wanted when I visited you yesterday. I was hoping I could today.”

  He blinked. There was sweat on his forehead and he wiped at it carefully with his left hand.

  “I was hoping, in particular, if you knew where Rashid Matar was likely to have gone. He left Algeria the day before yesterday, on a private yacht. It was named the Hadj, out of Oman.”

  He licked his lips.

  I took a step sideways, to a chair, and he flinched and took half a step backward. I sat down slowly, with exaggerated care. “Look at it this way. If you tell me, it might keep me here longer, long enough for them to come. Who knows, maybe even long enough to capture me.”

  “I can’t help you,” he said. “The NSA is already on the lookout for the boat, but they have no idea of its destination. For all we know, it’s a red herring. We don’t know for sure that Matar is on the boat. He could have gone to ground in preparation for his next hijacking.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket suddenly, a small automatic gripped tightly in his fist. “Don’t move an inch,” he said.

  I didn’t like the dark round spot at the end of the barrel, the one pointed at me. It made me shiver. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I just got home. I spent most of the night on a polygraph machine and the rest of the time under drug-induced hypnosis. You don’t think I’ll shoot?”

  I jumped to the hallway behind him and said, “Shoot at what?”

  He jerked around, struggling to swing the pistol around. I jumped back to the chair. He looked around wildly, saw me sitting back in the recliner, my knees crossed, my fingers steepled together.

  “Do you really think Matar will hijack another plane?”

  His breathing came in short, sharp gasps and he held the gun with knuckle-whitening tightness. If he shot me, I wondered where I would jump to, to try and survive the wound. It occurred to me that if I was going to have dealings with the NSA I’d better acquire a jump site at a major trauma center emergency room.

  “Yes, Matar didn’t accomplish what he set out to do with the last hijacking,” Perston-Smythe said. He pointed the pistol at the floor between us. His breathing was slowing. “How do you do that?”

  “Bertol rays,” I said. “Energy of a type humans have never seen before.” I wondered if he’d recognize the overused “Star Trek” line. I might as well have said, “Beam me up, Scotty.”

  They came in the door then, not bothering with the doorbell, not even bothering with doorknob. I winced as the jamb splintered.

  “Hope they buy you a new door,” I said, as the first man entered the room, a small submachine gun in his arms. Before he could shoulder Perston-Smythe aside, I jumped.

  The Stanville Library was closed for Christmas but that was probably for the best. I wondered how long it would be before I ended up with my picture in post offices. “Wanted, for National Security Violations.” Maybe they wouldn’t stoop that far. After all, public charges can be publicly defended.

  I used the index of the New York Times on microfilm to look up the airports where aircraft hijackings had originated and ended. I’d already been to two of the airports, Madrid and Algiers. There were several more, including two in Cyprus, where hijacking deaths had occurred. I wanted to go to Cyprus anyway, to see where Mom had died.

  It was slow work going through the index, finding the right spools, getting to the story, writing down the airport, and moving to the next film. By the time I was finished, it was five past midnight. I pocketed the list, put the spools carefully away, and jumped to the room in Wichita, Kansas, where Millie waited.

  She was there in a long flannel nightgown, lying awake in the bed, a small light on, the curtains drawn. My worries of the afternoon faded away and I sat on the edge of her bed and kissed her. She wrapped her arms around me and I picked her up and jumped to the cliff dwelling, by the bed. I set her down.

  “Cold,” she said. She scrambled under the covers.

  “I’ll start a fire. Tell me what happened today.”

  She began talking as I gathered kindling and wood.

  “They followed us to Sue’s, my sister’s, so I called the police and told them about the dark sedan with the four men that had followed my mother and myself across town and was parked outside on the street. They hit each end of the block with a car and boxed them in. Mother and I watched from the front yard.

  “Anyway, they just waved some identification in front of the deputies’ noses and they went away. I called the sheriff’s office again, afterwards, and they would hardly talk to me. Finally they said that the men were federal agents and they weren’t doing anything illegal. From his tone of voice, I think he thought I was some kind of criminal!”

  The wood seemed to have caught well, so I went back to the bed and undressed. “That must have been distressful.”

  “Pissed me off is what it did. My brother-in-law Mark does casework for the ACLU. He’s going to file an injunction against them as soon as the courthouse opens tomorrow morning.”

  “Good. Serves them right. And to think I was worried about you,” I said, sliding under the cool sheets to press against her warm body. I told her about my visit to Perston-Smythe and my research at the library.

  “So you’re going to interfere with his next hijacking?”

  “If I can,” I said.

  “I don’t like it. I’m afraid you’ll get killed.”

  The same thought had occurred to me. “I’m going to acquire a hospital jump site, first. With my ability to jump, I should be able to survive pretty serious damage, as long as I can jump to a trauma center as soon as I’m hurt.”

  “I don’t know. Why run the risk at all?”

  I thought about Mom again, those shocking milliseconds of video on the airport tarmac. “I want him, Millie. I want him to pay. I can’t not run the risk.”

  At five in the morning I jumped Millie back to Wichita, to sleep the rest of the morning and awake under the continued scrutiny of government agents. I jumped to London and bought a ticket to Cyprus via Rome, both hijack sites. I slept on the flight.

  At Rome I used the binoculars to pick a jump site through the window of the aircraft. Then I went to the lavatory, jumped off the plane and recorded the site with video, and jumped back aboard. In Cyprus, at the Nicosia airport, I repeated the process, except that I didn’t jump back aboard the aircraft. I also didn’t go through passport control or customs.

  I walked into the airport
terminal through doors that were locked from the other side. After all, the problem is usually to keep people from going the other way. Once inside I asked at the information desk about how to get to Larnaca Airport, at the south end of Cyprus.

  There was a bus, but there was also an overpriced shuttle flight leaving in the morning. I bought a ticket for the shuttle, gritting my teeth at the thought of another commuter flight, then jumped back to New York City for lunch and some more research.

  My problem was this: How was I going to know when there was a hijacking? I couldn’t depend on them all to be like the Kuwaiti Airliner hijacking that lasted twenty days. I had to know within hours so that I could get to the appropriate airport.

  In the end I contacted a news-monitoring service called Manhattan Media Monitoring.

  “Hijackings? Hmm. We already monitor that for some of the airlines and also a couple of insurance companies. Do you want copies of the print media or video of the broadcast coverage, or both?”

  “Video would be nice, but primarily I just want to be notified as soon as the news breaks.”

  “Phone or fax?”

  I realized I no longer had a phone. “I’m on the road constantly. Better if I call you once or twice a day.”

  We arranged payment then, several months in advance in traveler’s checks. This earned me some strange looks, but they didn’t say anything. I didn’t give them my real name.

  Cyprus is seven hours later than Wichita, Kansas. Consequently I only had two hours alone with Millie before I jumped to the Nicosia airport for my 9:00 A.M. shuttle.

  I picked her up at midnight and jumped her to the cliff dwelling.

  “I spent the day fighting government fascism, honey. How was your day?”

  “Huh,” I said, undressing. This time I’d started a fire an hour before picking her up, so the temperature was comfortable. I also bought a split of champagne complete with plastic bucket. Remembering my adventure with champagne bottles at Sue Kimmel’s party, I asked Millie to open it.