The Traveler fr-1

by John Twelve Hawks

  “Step back. Move him over there,” Boone told them. “Careful. Don’t get blood on your shoes.” He pulled out some plastic restraining straps and fastened Thorn’s wrists and legs together. When he was done, he stepped back and studied the crippled Harlequin. Thorn was defeated, but he looked as proud and arrogant as ever.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Thorn. I’m Nathan Boone. I just missed you two years ago in Pakistan. It got dark very quickly, didn’t it?”

  “I don’t talk to Tabula mercenaries,” Thorn said quietly. Boone had heard the Harlequin’s voice on recordings from phone taps. The real thing was deeper, more intimidating.

  Boone looked around the room. “I like your apartment, Thorn. I really do. It’s clean and simple. Tasteful colors. Instead of cluttering up the place with junk, you’ve gone for the minimalist look.”

  “If you wish to kill me, do your job. Don’t waste my time with useless conversation.”

  Boone motioned to Loutka and the Serb. The two men dragged the Magyar’s body out to the living room.

  “The long war is over. The Travelers have vanished and the Harlequins have been defeated. I could kill you right now, but I need your help to finish my job.”

  “I won’t betray anyone.”

  “Cooperate and we’ll let Maya live a normal life. If not, then she’ll have a very unpleasant death. My mercenaries spent two days raping that Chinese Harlequin when we captured her in Pakistan. They liked the fact that she struggled and fought back. I guess the local women just give up in a similar situation.”

  Thorn stayed silent, and Boone wondered if he was considering the offer. Did he love his daughter? Were Harlequins capable of such an emotion? Thorn’s arm muscles tensed as he tried to rip apart the restraining straps. He gave up and slumped back into the wheelchair.

  Boone switched on his headset and spoke into the microphone. “Mr. Harkness, please come upstairs with your materials. The area is secure.”

  The Serb and Loutka pulled Thorn out of the wheelchair, carried him into the bedroom, and dumped him on the floor. Harkness appeared a few minutes later, struggling with the unwieldy carrying case. He was an older Englishman who rarely spoke, but Boone found it difficult to sit beside him in a restaurant. There was something about the man’s yellow teeth and pale complexion that suggested death and decay.

  “I know what you Harlequins dream about. A Proud Death. Isn’t that the expression? I could arrange that for you-a death that was noble and that gave some dignity to the end of your life. But you’d have to give me something in return. Tell me how to find your two friends, Linden and Mother Blessing. If you refuse, there’s a more humiliating alternative…”

  Harkness placed the carrying case in front of the bedroom doorway. There were airholes on top, covered with a thick wire mesh. Claws scratched the metal floor of the case and Boone heard a raspy breathing sound.

  He took the razor out of his pocket. “While you Harlequins were trapped in your medieval dreams, the Brethren have gained a new source of knowledge. They’ve overcome the challenges of genetic engineering.”

  Boone cut into the skin beneath the Harlequin’s eyes. The creature inside the case could smell Thorn’s blood. It made an odd laughing sound, then banged against the side panel and tore at the wire mesh with its claws.

  “This animal has been genetically designed to be aggressive and fearless. It’s compelled to attack without thought for its own survival. This won’t be a Proud Death. You’ll be eaten like a piece of meat.”

  Lieutenant Loutka left the hallway and went back to the living room. The Serb looked curious and frightened. He stood a few feet behind Harkness in the doorway.

  “Last chance. Give me one fact. Acknowledge our victory.”

  Thorn rolled into a new position and stared at the carrying case. Boone realized that the Harlequin would fight when the creature attacked, trying to crush it with his body.

  “Think anything you wish,” he said slowly, “but this is a Proud Death.”

  Boone went back to the doorway and drew his gun. He would have to kill the animal after it finished with Thorn. The laughing sound stopped and the creature assumed the silence of a hunter, waiting. Boone nodded to Harkness. The old man straddled the case and slowly pulled the panel upward.

  3

  By the time she reached the Charles Bridge, Maya realized that she was being followed. Thorn once said that eyes projected energy. If you were sensitive enough, you could feel the waves coming toward you. When Maya was growing up in London, her father occasionally hired street thieves to follow her home after school. She had to spot them and hit them with the steel ball bearings she carried in her book bag.

  It got darker after she crossed the bridge and turned left onto Saská Street. She decided to go to the Church of Our Lady Beneath the Chain; there was an unlit courtyard there with different ways to escape. Just keep walking, she told herself. Don’t look over your shoulder. Saská Street was narrow and crooked. The occasional streetlamp glowed with a dark yellow light. Maya passed an alleyway, doubled back, and stepped into its shadows. She crouched behind a trash dumpster and waited.

  Ten seconds passed. Twenty seconds. Then the little troll taxi driver who had taken her to the hotel came down the sidewalk. Never hesitate. Always react. As he passed the mouth of the alleyway, she pulled out the stiletto and came up behind him, holding his shoulder with her left hand and pressing the knife point against the nape of his neck.

  “Don’t move. Don’t run away.” Her voice was soft, almost seductive. “We’re going to step to the right now and I don’t want any trouble.”

  She pulled him around, dragged him into the shadows, and pushed him up against the dumpster. Now the blade was pointed at his Adam’s apple.

  “Tell me everything. No lies. And perhaps I won’t kill you. Do you understand?”

  Terrified, the troll nodded his head slightly.

  “Who hired you?”

  “An American.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know. He was a friend of Police Lieutenant Loutka.”

  “And what were your instructions?”

  “To follow you. That’s all. Pick you up with the taxi and follow you tonight.”

  “Is someone waiting for me at the hotel?”

  “I don’t know. I swear that’s true.” He started to whimper. “Please don’t hurt me.”

  Thorn would have stabbed him right away, but Maya decided that she wasn’t going to give in to that madness. If she murdered this foolish little man, then her own life would be destroyed.

  “I’m going to walk up the street and you’re going to go the other way, back to the bridge. Do you understand?”

  The troll nodded quickly. “Yes,” he whispered.

  “If I see you again, you’re dead.”

  Maya stepped back out onto the sidewalk and headed toward the church, then she remembered her father. Had the troll followed her all the way to Thorn’s apartment? How much did they know?

  She hurried back to the alleyway and heard the troll’s voice. Clutching a cell phone, he babbled to his master. As she stepped out of the shadows, he gasped and dropped the phone onto the cobblestones. Maya grabbed his hair, pulled him up straight, and inserted the point of the stiletto into his left ear.

  This was the instant when the blade could pause. Maya was aware of the choice she was making and the dark passageway that opened before her. Don’t do this, she thought. You still have a chance. But pride and anger pulled her forward.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “This is the last thing you will ever know. A Harlequin killed you.”

  He struggled with her, trying to break away, but she drove the knife down the ear canal and into his brain.

  ***

  MAYA LET GO of the taxi driver and he collapsed in front of her. Blood filled his mouth and trickled from his nose. His eyes were open and he looked surprised, as if someone had just told him unpleasant news.

  She wiped off the stil
etto and concealed the weapon beneath her sweater. Staying in the shadows, she dragged the dead man to the end of the alleyway and covered him with garbage bags taken from a dumpster. In the morning, someone would find the body and call the police.

  Don’t run, Maya told herself. Don’t show that you’re scared. She tried to look calm as she walked back across the river. When she reached Konviktská Street, she climbed a fire escape to the roof of the lingerie shop and jumped over the five-foot gap to Thorn’s building. No skylight or fire door. She’d have to find another way in.

  Maya jumped back to the next roof and went down the block of buildings until she discovered a rooftop clothesline stretched between two metal poles. She cut the clothesline with her knife, returned to her father’s building, and lashed the cord around a vent pipe. It was dark except for the glow of a single streetlight and a new moon that looked like a thin yellow line slashed in the sky.

  She tested the cord and made sure that it would hold. Carefully, she went over the low wall on the edge of the roof and lowered herself hand over hand to the second-floor window. Peering through the glass, she saw that the apartment was filled with grayish-white smoke. Maya pushed back from the building and kicked in the glass. Smoke poured out of the hole and was absorbed by the night. She kicked again and again, knocking out the sharp edges of glass still held by the window frame.

  Too much smoke, she thought. Careful or you’ll be trapped. She pushed back as far as possible, then swung through the hole. Smoke drifted up to the ceiling and flowed out of the shattered window; there were a few feet of clear space above the floor. Maya got down on her hands and knees. She crawled across the living room and found the Russian lying dead beside the glass coffee table. Gunshot. Chest wound. A pool of blood surrounded his upper body.

  “Father!” She stood up, staggered around the half wall, and found a pile of books and cushions burning in the middle of the dining-room table. Near the kitchen, she stumbled over another body: a big man with a knife in his throat.

  Had they captured her father? Was he a prisoner? She stepped over the big man and walked down a hallway to the next room. A bed and two lampshades were burning. Bloody handprints were smeared on the white walls.

  A man lay on his side near the bed. His face was turned away from her, but she recognized her father’s clothes and long hair. Smoke swirled around her body as she went down on her hands and knees and crawled toward him like a child. She was coughing. Crying. “Father!” she kept shouting. “Father!”

  And then she saw his face.

  4

  Gabriel Corrigan and his older brother, Michael, had grown up on the road, and they considered themselves to be expert concerning truck stops, tourist cabins, and roadside museums displaying dinosaur bones. During their long hours traveling, their mother sat between them in the backseat, reading books or telling stories. One of their favorite tales was about Edward V and his brother, the Duke of York, the two young princes locked in the Tower of London by Richard III. According to their mother, the princes were about to be smothered by one of Richard’s henchmen, but they found a secret passageway and swam across a moat to freedom. Disguised in rags and assisted by Merlin and Robin Hood, the brothers had adventures in fifteenth-century England.

  When they were boys, the Corrigan brothers pretended to be the lost princes at public parks and highway rest stops. But now that they were adults, Michael had a different view of the game. “I looked it up in a history book,” he said. “Richard III got away with it. Both princes were killed.”

  “What difference does that make?” Gabriel asked.

  “She lied, Gabe. It was just another fabrication. Mom told us all these stories when we were growing up, but she never told us the truth.”

  * * *

  GABRIEL ACCEPTED MICHAEL’S opinion: it was better to know all the facts. But sometimes he entertained himself with one of his mother’s stories. On Sunday, he left Los Angeles before dawn and rode his motorcycle through the darkness to the town of Hemet. He felt like a lost prince, alone and unrecognized, as he bought fuel at a discount gas station and ate breakfast at a small coffee shop. As he turned off the freeway, the sun emerged from the ground like a bright orange bubble. It broke free of gravity and floated up into the sky.

  * * *

  THE HEMET AIRPORT consisted of one asphalt runway with weeds pushing out of the cracks, a tie-down area for the planes, and a shabby collection of trailers and temporary buildings. The HALO office was in a double-wide trailer near the south end of the runway. Gabriel parked his bike near the entrance and unfastened the shock cords that held his gear.

  High-altitude jumps were expensive, and Gabriel had told Nick Clark, the HALO instructor, that he was rationing himself to one jump a month. Only twelve days had passed and now he was back again. When he entered the trailer, Nick grinned at him like a bookie greeting one of his steady customers.

  “Couldn’t stay away?”

  “I made some more money,” Gabriel said, “and I didn’t know where to spend it.” He handed Nick a wad of cash and went into the men’s room to put on thermal underwear and a jumpsuit.

  When Gabriel came out, a group of five Korean men had arrived. They wore matching green-and-white uniforms, and carried expensive gear along with laminated cards with useful English phrases. Nick announced that Gabriel was jumping with them, and the Koreans came over to shake the American’s hand and take his picture.

  “How many HALO jumps you make?” one of the men asked.

  “I don’t keep a logbook,” Gabriel said.

  This answer was translated and everyone looked surprised. “Keep logbook,” the oldest man told him. “Then you know the number.”

  Nick told the Koreans to get ready, and the group began to run through a detailed checklist. “These guys are going for a high-altitude jump in each of the seven continents,” Nick whispered. “Bet it costs a lot of money. They’re wearing special spacesuits when they do it over Antarctica.”

  Gabriel liked the Koreans-they took the jump seriously-but he preferred to be alone when he ran through his gear check. The preparation itself was a pleasure, almost a form of meditation. He pulled on a flight suit over his clothes; inspected his thermal gloves, helmet, and flex goggles; then inspected the main and reserve chutes, the straps, and the cutaway handle. All these objects appeared quite ordinary on the ground, but they would be transformed when he stepped into the sky.

  The Koreans snapped a few more photographs and everyone squeezed into the plane. The men sat beside each other, two to a row, and attached their oxygen hoses to the aircraft console. Nick spoke to the pilot and the plane took off, beginning its slow ascent to thirty thousand feet. The oxygen masks made it difficult to speak and Gabriel was grateful for the end of conversation. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on breathing as the oxygen hissed softly in his mask.

  He hated gravity and the demands of his body. The movement of his lungs and the thump of his heart felt like the mechanical responses of a dull machine. Once he had tried to explain this to Michael, but it felt as if they were speaking different languages. “Nobody asked to be born, but we’re here anyway,” Michael said. “There’s only one question we need to answer: Are we standing at the bottom of the hill or up at the top?”

  “Maybe the hill isn’t important.”

  Michael looked amused. “We’re both going to be at the top,” he said. “That’s where I’m going and I’m taking you with me.”

  Past twenty thousand feet, frost crystals appeared on the inside of the plane. Gabriel opened his eyes as Nick pushed his way down the narrow aisle to the back of the plane and opened the door a few inches. As cold wind forced its way into the cabin, Gabriel began to get excited. This was it. The moment of release.

  Nick looked down, searching for the drop zone, as he talked to the pilot on the intercom. Finally he motioned for everyone to get ready, and the men pulled on their goggles and tightened their straps. Two or three minutes passed. Nick waved again and tapped
his mask. A small bailout bottle of oxygen was attached to each man’s left leg. Gabriel pulled his bottle’s regulator handle and his own mask popped slightly. After he detached himself from the oxygen console, he was ready to go.

  They were as high as Mount Everest and it was very cold. Perhaps the Koreans had considered pausing at the doorway and making a flashy jump, but Nick wanted them back in the safety zone before the oxygen was gone from their bottles. One by one, the Koreans stood up, shuffled over to the doorway, and fell out into the sky. Gabriel had taken the seat closest to the pilot so that he would be the last jumper. He moved slowly and pretended to be adjusting a parachute strap so that he would be completely alone during his descent. When he reached the door, he wasted a few more seconds giving Nick a thumbs-up, and then he was out of the plane and falling.

  Gabriel shifted his weight and flipped over onto his back so that he saw nothing but the space above him. The sky was dark blue, darker than anything you could see when standing on the ground. A midnight blue with a distant point of light. Venus. Goddess of Love. An exposed area on his cheek began to sting, but he ignored the pain and concentrated on the sky itself, the absolute purity of the world that surrounded him.

  On earth, two minutes was a commercial break on a television show, a half-mile crawl on a crowded freeway, a fragment of a popular love song. But falling through the air, each second expanded like a tiny sponge tossed into water. Gabriel passed through a layer of warm air, and then returned to the coldness. He was filled with thoughts, but not thinking. All the doubts and compromises of his life on earth had melted away.

  His wrist altimeter began to beep loudly. Once again, he shifted his weight and flipped over. He stared down at the dull brown Southern California landscape and a line of distant hills. As he came closer to the earth, he could see cars and tract houses and the yellowish haze of air pollution hanging over the freeway. Gabriel wanted to fall forever, but a quiet voice inside his brain commanded him to pull the handle.