Paige sipped from her water glass, already half-empty. Van Klees was happy to see her drinking the water so quickly. Dry mouths meant nervous mouths. Put a beautiful woman off balance and you had her.
“But it’s not like catching a bus and crossing town,” she said. “We’re meeting for lunch and both of us flew hundreds of miles to get here.”
“I must respectfully disagree.” Van Klees briefly placed a hand across the table to pat hers. He left his hand on hers, warm and soft, just long enough for her to realize he had interest in her on a level beyond friendship. “Hundreds of executives commute across the country on a daily level. An airplane is no different from a bus to them. Once you make a shift and think of distance in terms of time, not miles, you’ll understand the corporate mind-set.”
She hadn’t flinched at his touch. Good. Pigeons were pigeons, Van Klees thought, regardless of their feathering.
“Take my route, for example. Dallas to D.C. – a couple of hours. D.C. to New York – under an hour. New York to Chicago – a couple of hours. If I start early and encounter no flight delays, I can touch down for business in three major cities and still make it back to New York for a late supper. If I switch from commercial airlines to my own Lear jet – and I’m to the point where it might be a necessity – I could commute to five major centers in a day.”
He pretended to be warming to his subject, a male peacock preening. “Not only that, Paige, my business class seat on the airplane becomes my office. Laptop computer, telephone in front of me, and no incoming calls – I can do more in an hour on the plane than l can in three hours at my New York office. Fact is, I spend so little time in New York, my secretaries only recognize me by my voice. I have to walk in talking to them on my cellular phone, or they don’t let me into my office.”
She smiled appreciatively.
Unspoken – and Van Klees had done it deliberately – was the implication that a man had to be important, and his business profitable, to spend a thousand dollars a day on airfare.
“The real luxury,” he finished, “is being able to spend a few relaxing hours here in a situation like this. I only wish we didn’t have such a trying subject.”
She opened her mouth to speak.
He raised a forefinger first. Off balance, she should feel control from him. It made it all easier. “Why don’t we order first?”
She chose broiled salmon. He ordered the chef’s special salad.
“Not hungry?” she teased. “Another date earlier?”
“Only so you would look that much better by comparison.”
He waited for her laughter to end, then took control again.
“Tell me about the robbery,” he said. “From the beginning.”
She explained how two men – one very fat and the other short with mutilated ears – had jumped her from a nearby car as she was parking in broad daylight at her motel. Van Klees nodded sympathy where appropriate and made sounds of disbelief on cue.
They were interrupted by the delivery of the meal.
“Right in the motel parking lot,” he repeated as the waiter departed. “Crazy, what this world is coming to. They just bowled you over and made the snatch. Your purse, everything?”
“And a package,” she said. “That’s what I wanted to tell you about. It was a package from Darby.”
Van Klees put his fork down and stared at her. This was so much fun, acting out his role as he listened to her side of the robbery. Zwaan, too, might appreciate similarities and differences between the victim’s report and operative’s report.
“Darby? You mean your husband. It was a package to you from
him?”
Van Klees thought he definitely deserved an Oscar. He could have told her, after all, that the package contained a far too precise assessment of the Institute, and far too few – meaning none – of the backup computer disks. If anything was worrisome, it was that the disks had not yet been found.
She nodded. “It’s difficult to talk about, but you should know Darby was running scared.”
The spineless, unappreciative fool, Van Klees thought. He should have known better than to defy Zwaan. The real shame is that he died too quickly.
“Scared?” Van Klees said, instead of speaking his thoughts, adding a precisely measured dose of concern to his voice.
“Very scared, John,” Paige said. She lowered her head. “The package explained why.”
Her statement hit him like a dagger thrust bouncing off his ribs. She couldn’t have known unless she’d opened the package. But he’d been given assurances otherwise.
He reacted by calmly picking up his salad fork. “You read through the package?”
Van Klees was so grateful to himself that he had bothered to keep in touch with this woman. Little did she know her life depended on her next few words.
“No,” she said, “definitely not. I was only able to read his letter explaining the package. It hurt too much in the lawyer’s office to read more.”
She stared across the restaurant and thought out loud. “I’ve been trying to tell myself it was only a purse snatching. That maybe the thieves thought a sealed envelope might have something valuable in it.”
“It wasn’t open?” Van Klees needed to confirm that the woman hadn’t browsed through its contents somewhere between the lawyer’s and the moment of theft.
“The lawyer insisted on resealing it,” Paige told him. “I was going to open it again when I found the courage.”
“What did the letter say that gave you such fear?”
“Darby warned it was too terrible for him to live with, that it would be my decision to pass the information on to the FBI or the media.”
“Nothing else? No other clues?”
“He just referred to something called the Institute. That’s it. Nothing else. How can that be a clue?”
Little pigeon, you just saved your life.
Van Klees reached a hand across the table and, this time, left it on hers. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Perhaps we should save this discussion for another day.”
She rubbed her face. “John, I’ve got too many questions, and I don’t know who might be able to help me.”
“I’m here,” he said. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “Any time you want, I’m here. Trust me.”
***
Slater had private speculations about humans and God. At one time people had been selfless in their consciousness, not focused on their own greedy needs and, in that state of innocence, were open to His presence all the time. Then had come the snake and the apple – whether Eden was a symbol or reality, Ellis never argued because it was pointless to battle either side without proof, and how it had happened was irrelevant to the much more important fact that sometime, somewhere, humans as a species had chosen their own path, leading them to camp beneath clouds that hid their view of the divine love constantly shining above.
Prayer, Slater thought, was one way to attempt to push away the cloud, but how often was prayer just another series of requests, as if it’d be convenient for God to step in and help further with whatever selfish interests clouded His presence in the first place.
Slater hoped God listened and understood the gratitude and quiet joys taken whenever one of the species marveled at the beauty of His world.
Like now.
Here was the light of the sun, rising over California, strong behind the distant sharp edges of the San Bernardino range, and the entire valley spread in front, rich with folded land softly green. The sky, pale where it met the sun, deepened to cloudless pure blue, scrubbed clean by the wind above the stillness of the vast valley.
Slater stood in damp grass at the edge of the road, filling his lungs with the cool air and the peace all of this brought him, stretching wakefulness into his cramped body.
Interstate 15, several miles below and at this hour not too clogged with traffic, was a postcard ribbon he could trace with his eyes as it rose and fell the length of the valley.
It had been s
ixteen hours of hard driving to reach this point, and nearly worth it, simply to suspend himself from reality in this moment of lifting his eyes to look beyond himself for a tantalizing brief and vague sense of eternity.
Then came tapping from the window.
Slater grinned at the faces of three boys pressed against the fogged glass of the truck.
He wasn’t the only one who needed to stretch after a few hours of uncomfortable sleep.
***
It had been too weird, the afternoon before, facing down the big sheriff from Los Alamos. Slater understood most of the tension he’d felt was a result of what he’d been hiding from the sheriff as they spoke.
But there’d been more.
Slater couldn’t swear it, but something in the big man had become more menacing at the end of their conversation, and somehow the arrival of Josh Burns and his booming voice had been like cavalry cresting the hill.
And if the gut feeling hadn’t been enough, there had been Ben Austad’s urgency greeting Slater as he stepped into the house after watching both vehicles finally depart.
“Get the boys out of there,” Austad told Slater over the conference phone. No hello again, no what happened to keep you out of the house, no guess what the boys have been telling me. But a pleading, forceful, and alarmed order.
“Get them out of the house?”
“Out of there. The mountains. Move them anywhere in the country. But get them out of there. Put them in a car, cover them with blankets, and move. Don’t stop.”
“What did they tell you?” Slater asked.
“You want to know, you call me when you’ve put three hundred miles between you and the mountains. Just leave. If you have people who won’t understand, call back home later and make your excuses then. But go. You’ve got to go.”
Gone was the assured calm. Austad’s fear was more powerful, coming from a man Slater guessed rarely felt or showed fear.
“All right,” Slater said. “How do I convince them to go with me? I can’t even talk to them.”
For a moment, Austad didn’t reply.
Slater looked at the boys. Each still in the ridiculous attire they’d been wearing when captured. He didn’t dare move them like that. Even if he could convince them he was a friend.
“I’ll talk to them,” Austad said. “I’ll talk them through it as you untie the rope.”
“Will they believe you?” Slater asked. “To them, you’re just a voice from thin air.”
More silence.
The boys seemed more subdued, less wary as they returned Slater’s studying gaze.
“You’ll have to prove to them you don’t mean them harm,” Austad said. “Any ideas?”
Slater hesitated. “Yeah,” Slater said, his voice slow. “Ask them what it would take to trust me.”
Austad spoke a brief Hurry of Latin.
The boys in turn looked at each other. Then at Slater.
The middle boy answered Austad in a longer Hurry.
Another silence.
More exchanged Latin.
“Yes?” Slater asked in the next silence.
“They want to meet me,” Austad said. “And now that you’ve got me in this, I want to meet them. I’ve explained the only way it will happen is through you.”
“I can drive to Los Angeles,” Slater said.
“Good,” Austad said. “Now convince them you’re a friend. Show them a bit of trust too.”
“Sure. How?”
“Gut them loose and give them each a knife.”
***
Slater waited an hour past dawn to call Ben Austad. By then, they were well into the heavy four-lane traffic and urban sprawl of outlying Los Angeles. Around them, the seamless spread of commercial buildings, apartments, and truck stops and fast-food restaurants.
“Hello, Ben.” Slater said. “We’re on 10 just reaching Pomona.”
“That’s good time.”
“I caught a catnap a couple hours past Vegas,” Slater said. “Other than that, we only stopped for clothes for the boys and for fuel.”
“How are they?”
Slater grinned. “At this moment, faces pressed to the windows, absolutely in awe. Imagine you haven’t even seen a television before. Now picture your first impression of Los Angeles.”
Austad laughed. “I was thirty-five when I First arrived. It was bad enough then.”
“Did you dive under a blanket the first time a semi passed you on the freeway?”
“They didn’t!”
“Yep. Though it didn’t take them long to peek out again.”
“Can I talk to one?”
“Sure.”
Slater handed the phone back between the bucket seats. The middle kid tool< it, shyly. In the rearview mirror, Slater saw the kid hesitate, then slowly place the phone to his ear in imitation of Slater.
The kid’s eyes widened as he listened to Austad. He tried a few tentative words, discovered Austad could hear him in return. It didn’t take much longer until the kid had adapted completely to the conversation and had lost all fear of the plastic miracle pressed to his head.
Slater switched lanes to stay in the flow of traffic and hid another grin. At the very least, he’d enjoyed watching the kids during the entire drive from Seven Springs, even if he was nervous about the knife each had taken into the backseat.
They’d left within fifteen minutes of ending the phone conversation with Austad. Slater didn’t have much to pack – jeans, a couple of shirts, toiletries, and his laptop computer. The 4 x 4 had been mostly full of fuel, and with a blanket to cover the boys in back, they’d driven away without ceremony. Their only delay was a brief stop to leave the puppies with Josh Burns, where Slater, having first made sure the kids were well hidden, had mumbled something about having to go out of town unexpectedly.
Driving west from Seven Springs, beyond the settlement on the portion of road so primitive it was closed in winter, they’d faced another dozen miles of deep gravel and sand to escape the Nacimento Mountains and reach the desert flats. Each of the few times Slater had earlier driven that stretch of road, he’d taken forty-five minutes to wind through the hills and out to pavement. On this trip, he’d slammed the truck into four-wheel drive and pushed hard enough to get to the desert in twenty minutes. From there, he’d driven to Gallup on the western edge of New Mexico, taking two-lane blacktop and keeping a constant watch in his rearview mirror. Traffic was scarce, and the sight of any vehicle filled him with adrenaline. Austad’s fear had been that convincing.
To the boys out from under the blanket, however, the wide-open desert Hats brought amazement. So did open windows. Slater had lowered his window on the driver’s side and the rushing wind had given the boys their first clue of how fast they traveled, setting them buzzing and laughing for at least fifteen miles.
They hadn’t any chance of seeing their first city, Gallup, because Slater had made them understand they had to remain beneath the blanket again.
In Gallup, Slater had stopped at a sports store to buy sweatpants, T-shirts, and running shoes. At a service station, he’d loaded up on soda and chocolate bars. And they’d hit the road again, taking interstate 40 west toward Flagstaff, Kingman, and Barstow.
The kids changed as he drove.
Not once did Slater see the knives they carried as talismans. After a while, he forgot about their two-edged weapons of trust, and eventually he forgot, too, to worry about vehicles approaching from behind. The cactus and sand and red-rock buttes flashed past, and he settled into the rhythm of the highway’s hum.
The land rose again on the approach to the cool, high pines of Flagstaff, but this time, safely away from Seven Springs, the boys had remained perched on the backseat instead of beneath the blanket, staring out the windows, pointing and talking at each new sight.
For grins, Slater had plugged in an Eagles CD, snapped his Fingers, and sung along with “Tequila Sunrise.” He wasn’t sure what had astounded them more, the music or his voice. They’d reached
for the CD case, passing it between themselves and speculating in hushed voices as they examined it from all angles.
Sunset then dusk had hit, and Slater drove on through the night. Robbed of new sights, the boys had fallen asleep, not even waking during fuel stops or when Slater Finally exited the interstate to find a safe spot to nap on the shoulder of a secondary road.
As Slater now watched them talking to Austad, he decided they’d obviously slept much better than he had. The animation in their faces as they drove into Los Angeles was contagious, and Slater again found himself taking joy in their reactions to a new world.
He maneuvered smoothly through the freeway traffic as each kid passed the phone to another, learning quickly how to speak to Austad.
He’d almost reached the shadows of downtown Los Angeles sky-scrapers when the third kid passed the phone back to him.
“Slater, again,” he said.
“We’ve got plenty to talk about,” Austad told him. “I’ve called in sick to give us the rest of the clay.”
“Good,” Slater said. “It’s not like I don’t have any questions.”
“I commend your patience. Where are you now?”
Slater squinted to read a sign. “Santa Monica Freeway. Vermont Avenue exit.”
“Another hour, then, at this time of day. You’ve still got my directions?"
“Yep.”
“Good,” Austad told him. “I’ll have a tape recorder ready. What they’ve got to say is incredible.”
As Slater cradled the phone into place, he glanced into the rearview mirror and froze.
The kid in the middle had pulled his knife and was reaching into the front between the bucket seats.
Slater stopped breathing, almost swerved to the shoulder.
The kid tossed the knife onto the floor of the passenger side, grinned, and patted Slater’s shoulder.
Before they’d reached the next exit, two other knives had joined the first.
***
Waiting for the return of Slater Ellis reminded Del of Vietnam. Long hours of cramped muscles. Patience that stretched nerves thin. Here, however, beneath the low sweeping branches of a spruce tree, looking down on the house from the hill nearby, it was better and worse. Worse because Del carried sixty pounds more than he had during Nam, and his body was far too accustomed to soft mattresses and midnight raids to the refrigerator. Better because the air wasn’t wet and rotten and clinging like a hot, dirty rag, and he’d hadn’t breathed each breath wondering if Charlie would slip in from the dark like snakes dropping silently from trees.
Double Helix Page 17
