Mikhail reached into the well and brought out a Kolnokov automatic pistol. He checked the clip, reached back into the well and produced a second clip, which he put into the pocket of his coat.
He slammed the car door and walked to the front door. He listened against it, heard nothing, stepped back to kick it in.
It opened on its own. Mikhail immediately slid to the side, cocked gun before him. He heard nothing. He waited a long time, then edged around, taking in larger and larger portions of the front inside hallway with his eyes. It was seemingly empty.
“Comrade Borodin?” he called into the hallway. Someone moved out beyond the hallway; the house was damnably dark inside.
“Comrade?”
No answer.
In a quick, almost catlike movement, Mikhail was inside the house.
And falling.
Somewhere above him, he heard the front door close. He began to scream. Darkness below him turned into great height. He felt the air of the upper atmosphere rushing past him, throwing him downward toward the farm-checkered, colored landscape thousands of feet below. He heard the prop-roar of a plane; just droning away into the distance toward the horizon was the trainer he had been pushed out of. He remembered this scene; he was making his first jump, had been scared, and the instructor, a brash fellow his own age who would be killed a month later on a routine jump of his own, had called him a coward and shoved him through the opening, laughing down to him that he would either use his parachute or die not using it.
During that first jump, he had screamed, flailing around in the air. The ground had gotten closer; he had seen farm implements and had had a sudden horrible vision of himself hitting a tractor, smashed to atoms, flesh against metal. Desperately, he had reached for the rip cord, and it had been there. Now it wasn't. There was no cord, no straps, no parachute or backup. There was only the drab long coat he had been wearing a moment before.
Up high in the air, dropping, Mikhail screamed. The earth, pastel patches resolving into rows of wheat, a rising trail of dust becoming a ponderous yellow tractor, rose up toward him. Desperately, Mikhail began to beat himself with his fists, trying to wake up.
The ground rushed up like a sucking breath, and this time Mikhail hit the tractor.
21. EAST
Let him go, Jan.
Jan took his hands from the neck of the Russian driver, Mikhail. The body lay still as ice, the back of the head, where Jan had smashed it repeatedly against the floor, clotted with blood.
Pick up your gun, Jan. Put it away.
He did as she told him, removing the barrel of the pistol from Viktor Borodin's bloody, ruined mouth, idly wiping it on his pants and putting it in his pocket.
Jan, 1 have other work for you.
She told him what she wanted.
He tried to think through the humming sound, to put one rational thought next to another. It was difficult. She was so close to him now, the promise of her so all-abiding, that he could think of little else. He barely remembered coming to this house, owning another life before her. Had he had a mother once? Friends? He recalled names—Tadeusz, Jozef but they were little more than words. He remembered an underground place, pain—but all of these vague images broke up and floated away from one another on the sea in his mind that was Bridget. His mind had her; when his body possessed her, he knew that he would cease to exist, and gladly so, because she was all that he knew.
They're bad, also. They want to hurt you, to separate us.
His face contorted in effort. He saw two faces, the boy, the man in the wheelchair, felt an odd kinship that defied his muddled examination. “No. They're not like these. I can't.”
Jan.
He looked up for her, at the top of the stairs. He heard, through the hum, Ray laugh behind his closed door. Ricky, who had gone to his room after the death of the girl, hadn't even appeared when the Russians arrived.
Jan. Here. It's finally time.
He saw her briefly, beckoning to him from the open doorway in the corner between the north and west bedrooms.
Come, Jan.
He mounted the stairs to the second floor and stood before the narrow, curving staircase.
I'm waiting. I've waited so long.
He began to climb.
His head filled with thoughts of her. They came complete, as if he were already with her. He felt the heat of her flesh beneath him, her pulling intensity, her unfocused eyes staring into his face as her mouth, lost in need, made little urgent noises and said, roughly, “Yes, Jan, yes ...”
He reeled, sat down on the steps. Their hardness brought him back to himself. He felt wood beneath his hand, not her flesh.
He blinked into the dim stairwell. The walls were very close.
Her voice said, “Come to me now, Jan.”
He looked up. There she was. She was no vision, no mirage, this time. She was real.
“Bridget . . .” he said, his voice choked with wonder.
“Yes, Jan. It's me.”
She was wearing a stark white satin robe, which contrasted sharply with the red of her hair. She let it drop from her shoulders. Her body was as he had remembered it, but real flesh. He saw the perfect mole on her right shoulder, and felt if he ran his finger down from her neck he would feel its bump beneath his touch.
“Come.” She smiled. She turned and ascended the stairs ahead of him.
The curve of her buttocks, the heart-shaped roundness of their bottoms, the tuft of red hair visible below—he witnessed all of this, and his erection was instantaneous and overwhelming.
She was real.
At the top of the stairway Bridget opened a door.
He followed her into the same attic he had seen at the inn in Kolno. A round window of red glass suffused the room with rosy red light.
There was a mattress on the floor, made up in sheets with a quilt coverlet. Jan passed Bridget's robe coming into the room. He bent to pick it up.
“I don't need it, Jan.”
She was there, real, in front of him. He felt her heat before he looked at her, felt the hairs all over his body rise. His erection was painfully hard.
She pressed herself to him, full flesh, and pulled at his belt.
“Now, Jan.” She rubbed one leg up around him, pulled his face down to her mouth.
She worked his belt free and slid her hand into his trousers behind his underpants. “Yes,” she laughed. She brought him kneeling to the bed. She pawed at the rest of his clothes, pulling his undershirt over his head. She pushed his trousers off, removed his shoes, his socks. Holding his face in her hands, kissing him, she moved him back on the bed against the pillows and straddled him.
She traced her tongue down his chest. Jan could feel himself building, the weeks of fantasy, the promises she had made, the desperate yearnings. He was like a new machine, rising to explosion. “Not yet, Jan.” She rose above him, opened herself and took him inside her.
It was like Jan had dreamed; better. She was real. Her flesh was to him like his own. As he touched, explored her long, hard nipples with his hands, the hard flat flesh of her belly, her face, her hair, her mouth, it was as if he had always known her.
“No, Jan. Not yet.”
She drew him deep into her. The pressure mounted. Jan held it back, crying out.
“Now, Jan.”
He came. Her muffled, grunting cries mingled with his shouts of release. He arched higher; she went with him, holding him fast, pushing and draining him simultaneously. A river of hate and hurt and need flowed out of him. His orgasm went on. He was hers, completely. All that had been him roared out of him into her.
And then, suddenly, it was over.
He pulled her down to him, enfolded her in his arms. He felt her quick breath, her heated heart. Her flesh was real. She owned him. She was no vision.
“Are you happy, Jan?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” he sobbed, unable to cope with his feelings. “Oh, yes, yes.”
“I love you, Jan.”
&
nbsp; “Yes.”
“We're going to be together forever.”
He squeezed her tighter, saw his happy new world through a shimmer of tears.
“Do you really love me, Jan?”
“Yes..
“Do you need anyone else in the world, anything else in the world?”
''No . . .”
She looked up at him, love and adoration suffusing her face. “There is something you must do for me, Jan . . . .”
22. THE ASSISTANT
Invincible.
Gary Gaimes threw his hands over his mouth to stifle his laughter. All he felt like doing was laughing, because it had all turned out to be true.
He was invincible. Just as she had said, just as he had hoped, in the midst of all his doubts and fears. Whatever else she had done to him, whatever else she would have to pay for, she had been right about that.
Invincible. A blurt of laughter came up his throat. He was not quick enough to stifle it before it broke out of his hands. In-vin-ci-ble. He saw the stupid cop's face as he put the tray down and was met by an upthrust of sharp steel, his fishlike gasping as Gary pulled him to the floor of the cell, sitting astride his neck to keep the blood off the uniform, holding one hand over the cop's mouth while he finished him off. Twenty seconds. It had taken him twenty seconds to push the spoon handle back through the cop's eye into his brain while the breath pushed out of him under Gary's fingers in one long begging gasp.
The idiots outside the cell hadn't even looked at him.
Dinner time! Busy, busy. Cap low over his eyes, a nod and a wave here and there, and then out the back, around the alley to the street.
Gone.
Invincible. IN. VIN. CI. BLE. Into the subway, another twenty seconds in a tunnel (“Excuse me, sir, may I see your identification please?” Who's going to question a fucking NYC cop?), and the man had a nice suit, too short in the legs, but a briefcase and even a nice driving cap with a snap brim. He kept the cop shoes, more comfortable. Then onto the D train, Rob Peters (or so the junk in the man's wallet said) paying for the token.
To . . . here.
Invincible!
Gary laughed again, stifled it this time. Was that a sound? No, it wasn't.
His laughter came, and he held both hands over his mouth to stop it.
What would he do after he finished here?
What would he do after he finished with Bridget?
He laughed again. What could an invincible man not do in New York City—in the world?
See the world?
Rule the world?
A laugh he couldn't stop burst out. He felt like a little boy again, hiding while that man, all those men, that long succession of men, did it with his mother in the living room, with that fucking record on, “The Games People Play,” which she thought was funny, “My name being `Gaimes' and all,” (he thought of Meg fleetingly, 'Your name being Gary Gaimes and all.') clicking to the end on the fucking Victrola, then back again, clicking to the end—
He was grinding his hand into his other palm. He looked town, calmed. A little laughter escaped, he breathed back to easy—
A sound.
Yes, this time a sound. Finally. How many hours in the ark? Two? An invincible man (ha! The Invincible Man! Uncle Rains!) could wait as long as it took. He wished he had that black kid from the S.S. Eiderhorn here, he could start on him right now, finish with the tire iron what she had made him stop. He'd start with the little fucker—
Key in the lock. Definitely. He wanted to laugh again, kept his dignity. Have to do this right. Be quiet. Falconi would approve . . .
A light on somewhere out front. Things thrown down. The wish-wish sound of a pulled-off coat. The coat down, too. A disgusted sigh.
Footsteps on linoleum, lost to the rug. A cabinet. Glass against glass, he's got the scotch or bourbon, glass in the same hand. Then down on a table. Pour. Close bottle. Drink the drink.
Ah.
Wish the little black fucker were here—
Another light on. The bathroom. Shit. He could be in there for a half hour. No. Flush, he's out, into the kitchen. Open door (refrigerator?), close door, open door (microwave?), close door. Good. Out of the kitchen.
Another light. Open the bedroom door, another light. Gary could see the hand on the light switch, four inches from his own hand.
Falconi would like this.
“Hello,” Gary said, stabbing the screwdriver in his hand into the hand on the light switch, pinning it to the wall.
Brennan woke up groaning in the backseat of his car. It was night, and raining. He couldn't identify the pain at first; it enveloped him in a cloud, suffusing his consciousness; then, like a needle, it stabbed down into his right hand and stayed there, crying for attention. His hands were tied in front of him. He moved his left hand away from the wound as much as he could. The pain subsided slightly.
“Hurt?” Gary Gaimes grinned into the rearview mirror from the front seat.
“Yes,” Brennan said, between clenched teeth.
Gaimes's grin widened. He turned back to the road, increasing the radio volume. Charlie Parker playing “Misty.” The pain in Brennan's hand lowered to an angry throb. He leaned back into the seat. They were on the highway, two lanes. Looked like the Hutchinson or Taconic. A few off-ramp signs would tell him.
Not thirty seconds later, they passed a green sign for upstate New York (Taconic Parkway) and Gaimes turned sharply onto the off ramp and got off.
The night blackened. No street lights. No comforting mall spots, industrial parking lots. Through the window, and his hurting hand, Brennan could see falling rain.
“Where are we going?” Brennan said.
Gaimes laughed shortly, turned down Charlie Parker. “Wanted to meet her, didn't you?”
Gaimes turned the radio back up.
Brennan was filled with a mixture of elation and dread.
The Compass Cross. He's taking me to Bridget.
“Maybe she'll eat you for breakfast,” Gary Gaimes shouted, over the radio. He grinned in the rearview mirror. “Maybe I will.”
Gaimes looked at Brennan a couple of times in the rearview mirror. Brennan stared back at him blankly. Suddenly, Gaimes snapped off the radio.
“What's the matter, don't you believe I can do whatever I want?”
“No, I didn't say. . .” Brennan began in a soothing tone.
Gary gunned the engine. They were on a dark street somewhere, passing intermittent houses, a rolling road with a few turns. The car shot forward, hitting a bump that knocked the shocks badly. The car accelerated. A house went by, yellow dim lights back off the road. A pumpkin was on the porch, a cardboard skeleton's head in the window. They were doing forty-five, fifty, on a road that called for thirty, less when it rained.
Gaimes pushed the accelerator to the floor.
There were no cars ahead of them; they barely negotiated a gradual curve. Brennan could visualize the four nearly bald tires on the wheels of his Malibu, could see that jerk in the commercial holding his thumb and forefinger a quarter inch Tart and saying that that was all that stood between you and he road, could see himself checking through his wallet two weeks ago, thinking about buying new tires and saying screw it, I'll get through the winter on what I have. Gaimes took another turn, a left one, the car gliding like an ice skater across the road.
Gaimes, hooting in glee, twisted the wheel, barely keeping the car on the street. The tires squealed, caught roadway. Gaimes turned to laugh into Ted Brennan's face. “Want to see if it's true?”
There was a straight stretch of darkness. Gaimes roared into it. Suddenly, he turned the wheel hard to the right. The car slid, caught on the tarmac, turned sharply. Wet, heavy tree branches thwacked the side of the car. The trees parted.
They roared into a driveway.
Through the left side window Brennan saw the dark outline of a tall house. It looked like all the lights were on in it. They sped past. There was a hard bump as they left the drive. The tires threatened t
o sink in wet grass, but forward momentum carried them on.
“Let's see!” Gary Gaimes screamed.
Something large loomed ahead of them. The tires spun, caught on dirt. They shot ahead. The looming presence resolved into a line of white birch trees. They grew closer. The headlights stabbed a single tree and pulled them toward it.
“Want to—” Gary Gaimes shouted, but then they hit the birch as Brennan threw himself to the floor in the backseat. There was a crash, a grind of metal. A steaming sound. A grunting shout from Gary Gaimes.
Brennan rose up from the backseat. His tied hands made him move awkwardly. He felt rain on his face. To his right, the window had shattered. Driving rain pelted him. The front of the car had moved substantially toward the back.
Brennan wiped water from his eyes with his tied hands and tried to see into the front seat. The glove compartment had nearly met the passenger seat. The headlights had gone out; the engine had stalled with the loss of coolant. Red warning lights illumined the front driver's side.
He felt for Gary Gaimes, couldn't find him. He reached forward, found Gaimes's head slumped over the top of the steering wheel.
He put a hand to Gaimes's neck, searched for a pulse. It was there, strong.
Gaimes's head snapped up.
Brennan yanked his hand away as Gaimes began to yell. Gaimes tried to grab Brennan, then threw his hands toward the dashboard and tried to push the steering wheel away from his chest.
“GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKER, GET THIS OFF OF ME! I'M FUCKING INVINCIBLE! I'M INVINCIBLE!”
Gaimes beat madly at the steering column, breaking the top part of the wheel off with his hands. Brennan tried the handle of the door on the driver's side. The handle moved, but the door wouldn't open. He slid back across the seat and kicked at it.
“YOU FUCKER I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL GET OUT OF HERE AND KILL YOU!” Gaimes held the broken steering wheel behind his head and tried to hit Brennan with it. Ted kicked at the door harder. It wouldn't move. The steering wheel caught him a glancing blow on the side of the head. He pushed it away, shifting in the seat to try the door on the other side.
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