Skywatcher

by Winona Kent

  Charlotte seemed to be considering the proposition. She observed Giselle steadily, a look of determination upon her face.

  “All right,” she decided, at last, unfolding her legs. She still didn’t appear to entirely trust her. “Can I have my I. D. back, please?”

  “Certainly.” Giselle held it out, and Charlotte, sliding off the box, returned the wallet to her knapsack.

  “Have a good trip home.”

  “Thank you,” Charlotte replied.

  “Granville!” Robin screamed. “Granville! Not Oak!”

  “Oh,” said his father. It was too late to change his trajectory now; the Jag was three car-lengths behind him. One lane over, and slightly behind the Russian car, was the Buick. “There weren’t any street signs. I thought it was Granville.”

  Biting his bottom lip, Robin clung to the backseat of the Chevette and stared out of the window at his pursuers. There was only one Russian agent—a woman—and she had a gun. Robin could just barely see her face, shadowed light and dark by the passing streetlights. He ducked his head, in case she was overcome by the sudden urge to shoot. “Hang a left at Broadway!”

  “Coming up?”

  How the hell had his father managed to stay employed all these years? “Yes—coming up! Coming up! Don’t you guys study stuff like this in spy school? Don’t you have to memorize major escape routes?”

  “Paris.” Evan shrugged. “London—New York—I could spirit us out of East Berlin, no problem.”

  The Chevette whined through fourth gear as Evan floored the accelerator across the intersection.

  “That was Broadway, wasn’t it?” he said.

  Robin pressed his nose to the window. “Oh, my God,” he groaned.

  Oak was descending sharply. The condominiums on either side of the car flew by, oddly angled, anchored to the slope like cogwheel trains on Swiss mountain tracks.

  “That was Broadway,” he confirmed.

  With withering anticipation, Evan recognized the blocked-off area at the bottom of the hill where, earlier in the week, the stunt involving George Castelluco, the stolen Ford, and the unbelievably inconvenient multilevel transport truck had been set up. Too late, he spotted the yellow barricades and the ominous flashing beacons. They hadn’t dismantled it. The bloody fools had shot the sequence and left everything in place, including the crumpled Ford, which had been towed back to the road and left unceremoniously parked outside somebody’s front gate.

  Stopping the Chevette was out of the question: given his angle of descent and the speed at which he was traveling, it would take a matter of blocks, not feet. Behind him, sparks spewed out of the Jaguar’s brakes, and thick black smoke billowed from the wheel wells of the Buick. An ungodly screech echoed through the neighborhood.

  “Robin,” Evan said, gripping the steering wheel with both hands. “Did you ever see Bullitt?”

  There was no time for an answer. The Chevette mounted the back of the transport truck, aided considerably by Evan, who had concluded that if he was utterly unable to stop the wretched thing, the next best solution was to floor the accelerator, and pray. The car roared neatly along the length of the truck and took to the air, benefiting from the ramp that had been installed behind the cab for precisely that purpose. Its wheels spun over West Sixth at a height of twenty feet. It cleared the fence and the railway tracks, buzzed a parking lot full of cars and a children’s playground, and landed solidly on the roof of a two-story town-house complex that bore a striking resemblance to the place where Ian and Jennifer lived.

  For a brief moment, in the backseat, Robin had experienced true weightlessness. Not even the rides at the PNE could rival the sensation of floating, unrestrained, arms, legs, feet, hands, stomach not counting for anything in the great antigravitational scheme of things. But just as his brain was beginning to receive messages from his middle ear that this was not the best way to avoid motion sickness, and just as the same urgent report was starting to gurgle up from his stomach, the Chevette thudded to an abrupt stop, and Robin’s head smashed into the roof. He crashed to the floor, unconscious.

  In the front, Evan’s seat belt had prevented him from flying out through the windshield, but the sudden landing had snapped his neck against the headrest, sending a spasmodic jolt up and down his spinal column. The seat belt slashed into his rib cage, an insult to an already painful preexisting injury.

  The Chevette, whose wheel rims had embedded themselves wholly in the flat roof of the town house, rolled forward a few inches, and then, with a sigh, died.

  “Interesting,” Evan said. Inside his leather gloves, his knuckles were white. He feared the consequences of attempting to move his head. He looked into the rearview mirror, which had been pushed askew by the impact. Only his son’s running shoes were visible, his feet thrown up onto the backseat like those of a teenager, lolling on the floor, talking on the telephone. “Robin?”

  There was no answer. Evan assessed his own injuries, not daring to hazard a guess concerning his son’s condition. He really wasn’t feeling very well. Somewhere, a very long way off, there were voices…sirens…help coming…

  Perhaps, he thought, things would be best off now left to other people. Perhaps…it would be best…if he simply…closed…his…eyes…

  Chapter Fourteen

  Later

  “How is Anthony?” Giselle inquired. She’d abandoned her robe in a broom closet. It was a hindrance; it got in the way of her legs and it was hot. She could hardly walk in it, let alone work.

  The same idea had occurred to Ian, and he’d left his robe hanging over a stall door in one of the washrooms attached to the community center.

  “Anthony’ll be lucky if he can remember what happened to him this week, never mind this evening,” he replied. He was sitting on the top step of a flight that led down into a very dark cellar, two levels beneath the community hall. Above, the din from the party was barely audible. “When I left him, he was trying to tell me all about the Daleks. I think he thought he was in the middle of an episode of Doctor Who.”

  Giselle shook her head. “Poor Anthony. That man—Hamelin—he is a positive barbarian. Conscience exercises.”

  “I was there,” Ian reminded her.

  “Do you suppose he knew it was you underneath that hood?”

  “I think he did toward the end—when I was taking him back to his room. He started kissing my hand.”

  Giselle laughed.

  “How many of the pills did you give him?”

  “Ten. And I left him the bottle.” He thought for a moment. “Did you manage to persuade Hamelin to let that girl go?”

  “Her name is Charlotte.” She checked behind her, then took out her gun, examining it, removing the clip. “I went to give her the good news—to return her identification—and she refused to leave.”

  Ian raised an eyebrow.

  “She seems to have attached herself to your brother. She didn’t want to go home without him.”

  “Jealous?” he said, teasing.

  Giselle looked at him. “Anthony and I have a very honest relationship between us, Ian. It is wide open. We have no commitment, on either side. He is free to pursue whoever he wants.”

  “Or whatever,” his brother mused.

  “Is Jennifer jealous when we are sent out together on assignments?”

  Ian considered the black pit at the bottom of the stairs. Her question had raised a rather sticky issue. “I haven’t exactly got round to telling Jennifer about this spying business yet,” he said, somewhat sheepishly.

  “Ian! How long is it you have been working for the department?”

  “Seven years.”

  “And you’ve known Jennifer how long?”

  “Two,” he shrugged.

  “And you haven’t exactly got around to telling her yet? How could you possibly keep this a secret?”

  Ian’s eyebrows took a ferocious turn—a mannerism he’d picked up from his father many years earlier. “Because I’m better at keeping things qu
iet than you are,” he replied, pointedly. “Anyway, considering how my mother reacted when my dad told her, I don’t really think I want to. I’m liable to be out one housemate in a matter of days.”

  “She might surprise you,” Giselle said.

  Ian shook his head. “No,” he said, letting his breath out. “Jennifer likes to play it safe. Jennifer likes security. And money, and memberships in sailing clubs, and men who have jobs that will one day lead to upper-level management.”

  “Jennifer sounds to me like a losing proposition,” Giselle remarked, sparing no honesty.

  Ian didn’t answer.

  “Does your father know you are with this department?”

  “Has for years,” Ian nodded. “And I think my mother has her suspicions, too.” He smiled to himself, briefly. “She’s a little too familiar with all the signs.”

  Giselle clicked on a high-powered miniature flashlight. She aimed it down the stairs. The beam lit up a number of wooden crates, all stamped in bold red lettering.

  “I think that might be what we have been looking for,” she speculated.

  Ian lifted a small Adidas bag from the step below, getting to his feet as Giselle handed him the torch.

  “I’ll see you later,” she promised. “After I wire the dishes. Anthony’s room?”

  “Anthony’s room,” Ian confirmed, starting down the stairs.

  Robin opened his eyes. He was in profound pain: his skull felt as though it had been split open, like a coconut some South Sea islander had taken a machete to. He raised both of his hands and felt his head all over, making absolutely certain it was still in one piece, and not oozing its soft, pulpy gray matter onto the pillow. The exploration yielded some very tender bumps near the top, but no cracks. No blood. Relieved, he tucked his hands back between his knees and turned his thoughts instead to where he was, and why, and what had happened to him this time.

  He was in a room. Fair enough. Over the past few days he’d woken up in an assortment of them—none his own. Berringer’s place. The hospital. The suite they’d given him at the hotel. Why should this be any more familiar to him than those had been?

  It was quite a Spartan affair—plain walls, wooden floor. Smelled new. There was a chair and a chest of drawers, a window and a bed. The bed was important, because he was on it. Or rather, in it. Someone had very thoughtfully removed all his clothing and covered him up with a sheet and a blanket.

  No wonder I never have anything decent to wear, he thought. I’m losing the contents of my wardrobe at an average rate of five items a week. He raised his head, to see whether his new cords and sweater were anywhere convenient. Nope. Not a sign of them. He lay back again.

  Figures.

  On the other side of the room there was a door. Robin studied it with interest, wondering where it led, and whether or not it was locked. If it wasn’t locked, what would be the consequences of his getting up and opening it, and tiptoeing outside?

  He rolled onto his back.

  Over the past seven days, he thought, I have been followed, kidnapped, beaten, confined to a ward full of refugees from Dawn of the Dead, pursued to the point of collapse, and subjected to the worst single motor-vehicle accident of my life.

  He couldn’t resist another sideways glance at the door.

  I have been entrusted with the details concerning the fate of the known universe. I’ve put my neck on the line and produced maps so that spies could break into Vancouver’s top rock radio station and wreak havoc upon its entire sales department.

  The door didn’t look locked.

  I’ve battered poor Rolf into another dimension of consciousness. Berringer and Grosch are still after me, propelled by the most pitiful state of misguided ignorance I’ve ever encountered. The KGB wants to make me a citizen of the Gulag Archipelago.

  I would be a fool, he thought, to leave this bed.

  He stared at the door again. The last thing he could remember was the chase down Oak Street…hitting the truck…flying over West Sixth with his stomach up around his teeth…coming in to land…

  He sat up, abruptly. Where was Evan?

  God, he had to find Evan.

  Crawling out of the bed, he wrapped the top blanket around himself, Indian-style, and made one final search of the room for his clothes. Nothing in the chest of drawers, nothing in the closet.

  Except that.

  Curiously, he examined the rough, dyed-yellow robe that dangled by its hood from a hook inside the closet door. Am I a prisoner in a monastery? he wondered. Am I going to be forced to plant cabbages and make Benedictine?

  Well, the robe was more practical than the blanket, anyway. Tentatively, he tried the door. It wasn’t locked.

  I know I’m going to regret this, he thought, as he peeked outside.

  The last thing Charlotte had on her mind was going home. True, she had the spare set of keys to Anthony’s car. True, she had her wallet back, and she was last seen heading in the direction of the huge paved parking lot on the periphery of the commune. But the keys were merely for the purpose of gaining entry to the Mini; there was only one thing she really wanted from the car.

  And there it was, still wrapped in its scrap of sleeping bag, safe and sound underneath the front seat. Squatting on the sill, the door slightly ajar, Charlotte examined the gun by the light of the dim yellow ceiling lamp.

  It was in six pieces. Racking her memory, Charlotte tried to recall just how Jarrod had slammed the various bits together to create a fully operational weapon in the heat of an ambush. There was the actual pistol, a little black item that looked as real as anything she had seen on television—replica or otherwise. She put it on the seat and picked up two more pieces that appeared to screw together and that resembled, when the attachment was complete, a long black tube with a muffler at either end. The silencer? Well, she knew where that went.

  The remaining pieces confounded her. There was a stock—for keeping the gun steady—and some sort of telescopic sight that hooked somehow into the top. There was also a clip for holding bullets. She discovered, after some experimenting, that this fit neatly into the bottom of the gun’s handle.

  Charlotte dropped the finished product into her knapsack and locked the door to the Mini again. It wasn’t a real gun—it couldn’t possibly fire—but nobody else besides Anthony knew that.

  If her friends back at the Blockbuster line could only see her now. This beat copping a look at Evan’s hairy chest any day.

  The building Robin had just explored, top to bottom, front to back, appeared to be some sort of dormitory. It was three stories high and contained a number of tiny private bedrooms, all furnished like the one he’d woken up in. The funny thing was, it was deserted. Not a soul in sight, upstairs or down. Where had everybody gone?

  Wishing his robe had come with a pair of warm, woolly socks—or sandals, at the very least—he climbed up to the top floor once again. At the end of the main hallway was an open window that overlooked a grassed-in square. Through it, from the outside, Robin could hear music, chanting, party noises. He rested his elbows on the ledge and studied the structure from which all the jubilation and celebration was emanating.

  If he was right about his surroundings, then this had to be New Dehra Dun. And those party animals across the way were the Shirda’s faithful followers. Ian was here somewhere—and so was Anthony.

  And Evan. If he was still alive.

  He stared at the square of grass below the window, scouring his memory, trying to recall what had happened after the accident. Had he woken up? Had he seen somebody—anything?

  He was confused. One moment, he was being pursued down Oak Street and careening over West Sixth. The next, he was entirely on his own, abandoned.

  Naked.

  He crossed his legs; his toes were freezing. What had happened to the maroon Jag, the blue Buick, the little gray Chevette?

  If this was Dehra Dun, then he wasn’t even in Canada anymore. He was in a foreign country—albeit, the United States, which wa
s as friendly a foreign country as anybody could hope to wake up in, considering he’d been born here. But somebody had obviously spirited him across the border without a lot of questions being asked about his unconscious state or lack of clothing, and that was what perturbed him more than anything concerning his national allegiance. How the hell had he got here?

  He tried the handle of the door closest to the window: it was open. He slipped inside, meaning to put himself in a slightly less conspicuous position, should Berringer or Grosch or the Russian woman take it upon themselves to continue the quest. He switched on the light and threw the dead bolt.

  Somebody was asleep on the bed. Evan?

  Anthony.

  He was sprawled on his back, looking very much like one already hung-over brother following a hard night of debauchery. His left leg was falling off the edge of the mattress; the other was out straight, the toe of his boot saluting the ceiling. His head was turned away from the door.

  “Hello,” Robin said, curiously.

  Anthony opened first his eyes, then his mouth. Robin waited for him to say something. When it became apparent that he wasn’t really going to—that he was only able to get as far as licking his lips and taking a breath—Robin dragged a chair over from the wall and plopped himself down.

  “Are you all right?” he inquired.

  Anthony managed a nod, then produced a little vial from the folds of the blanket beneath him. Robin studied the tablets with interest. No label. He flipped the cap off. No smell. He held one of them between his thumb and forefinger. Green.

  “Tree,” he said, importantly. “I have reason to suspect you’ve been drugged with a highly suspicious substance.”

  His brother answered with a contented smile, then his mouth fell open again, and Robin reached across and gently closed it. He’d been on the verge of beginning to drool, much like one of his grandfathers, who had no teeth and had to have all of his food put into the blender.