Gideon's Corpse

by Douglas Preston

  God, it felt good to be back.

  An hour later, he was opening the oven, checking the progress of his braised artichokes à la provençale, when he heard a vehicle approach. Looking out the kitchen window, he saw Stone Fordyce behind the wheel of a shabby FBI Crown Vic. In response, he threw half a stick of butter into a chafing dish and began heating it on the stove.

  Fordyce stepped inside, glanced around. “This is what I call rustic charm.” He glanced over into the alcove. “What’s that, computer stuff?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a hell of a lot of equipment to run off solar power.”

  “I’ve got some serious battery storage.”

  Fordyce moved into the living room, tossed his jacket on a chair. “That’s some road up here. I almost scraped off my muffler.”

  “Discourages visitors.” Gideon nodded toward the kitchen table. “Bottle of Brunello open—help yourself.” He had wondered if the wine would be thrown away on the FBI agent, but decided to try anyway.

  “God knows I need it.” Fordyce poured himself a generous bumper, took a sip. “Something smells good.”

  “Good? This is going to be the best meal you’ve ever eaten.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “I’m sick of eating airport and hotel food. Usually I only eat one meal a day, prepared by myself.”

  The agent took another sip of wine, eased himself down on the leather sofa. “So—find out anything?”

  They had returned to Santa Fe directly from the crash site instead of continuing to the writing center. It had seemed more important to figure out who’d sabotaged the plane—if in fact it had been sabotaged. To save time, they had divvied up this day’s investigative duties.

  “Sure did.” The butter foam was subsiding in the chafing dish, and he carefully transferred the rognons de veau—rinsed and peeled of their fat—from the butcher’s paper into the dish. “I looked into that Cobre Canyon allegation. Hiked up the canyon. You won’t believe what I found.”

  Fordyce rocked forward. “What?” he asked eagerly.

  “A pile of rocks, some seashells, a prayer rug, a ritual ablution bowl, and a small natural spring.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It’s a shrine. Members of the mosque go out there to pray. No evidence of bomb making or anything other than praying.”

  Fordyce grimaced.

  “And I looked into why our friend the imam left the Catholic Church. Years ago, he was abused by a priest. All hushed up, there was some kind of payment involved. Nothing public. His family signed a nondisclosure agreement.”

  “That’s what he wanted us to find out. But couldn’t tell us.”

  “Exactly. And I was also able to get a make on those two guys you videotaped at the mosque. Get this: one of them has a commercial pilot’s license, used to fly for Pan Am.”

  Fordyce put down his glass. “No shit. Well, that ties in with what I found about our accident today.”

  “Lay it on me.”

  “I saw the preliminary report of the NTSB investigators. This was put on a fast track. There’s no doubt about it—the plane was sabotaged. Somebody—maybe your friend the pilot—added jet fuel to the avgas in our Cessna.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That Cessna runs on one hundred low-lead. It needs an octane rating of one hundred to function. Adding jet fuel lowered the octane. As a result, the mixture basically burned through both pistons, one after the other.” Fordyce took another sip of wine. “A misfueled engine can start and stop normally—up until the moment it burns up. The thing is, avgas is light blue in color. Jet fuel is clear, sometimes straw-colored. When I did that inspection, the color did look a bit off—too light—but it was still blue, so I thought we were okay. This was very deliberate, done by someone who knew exactly what he was doing.”

  There was a brief silence as the implications of this sank in.

  “So what time did you finish your investigations?” Fordyce asked.

  “Twelve thirty. One, maybe.”

  “Then where the hell were you all afternoon? I tried your cell phone like half a dozen times. You turned it off.”

  The dark feeling welled up again, suddenly. He hadn’t planned to tell Fordyce anything at all, but nevertheless heard himself saying: “I had to have some tests done.”

  “Tests? What kind of tests.”

  “The personal kind.”

  The rognons had stiffened in the butter and were turning slightly brown; Gideon carefully transferred them onto a plate he’d been warming on the stovetop. Fordyce stared at the plate, a frown coming over his features.

  “What in hell are those—?”

  “Kidneys. Just give me a minute or two to prepare the reduction.” Gideon added shallots, bouillon, spices, and a generous pour of the red wine to the chafing dish.

  “Not eating those,” Fordyce said.

  “They’re not even lamb kidneys—only veal. And Frank, my butcher in town, had beef marrow on hand—that’s why we’re eating à la Bordelaise instead of flambés.” Gideon corrected the seasoning of the reduction, then carefully cut the kidneys into crosswise slices—done perfectly, a lovely pink at the center—mixed them in the chafing dish with the sauce, folded in the beef marrow, and then arranged them on two plates along with the braised artichokes from the oven.

  “Bring the wine,” he said, carrying the plates into the living area beyond the kitchen.

  Fordyce followed reluctantly. “I’m telling you, ain’t eating it. I don’t do offal.”

  Gideon put the plates down on a low table before the leather sofa.

  Fordyce took a seat on the sofa, stared sourly at his plate.

  “Try it.”

  The agent lifted his knife and fork, poised them, hesitated.

  “Go ahead. Be a man. If you don’t like it, I’ll get you a bag of Doritos from the kitchen.”

  He gingerly cut off a tiny piece with his fork, and tasted it suspiciously.

  Gideon took a bite himself. Perfect. He wondered how anyone could resist.

  “Guess it won’t kill me,” Fordyce said, placing a larger piece in his mouth.

  For several minutes, the men ate in silence. Then Fordyce spoke again. “It seems funny, somehow, to be sitting out here, in the woods, eating dinner and drinking wine—which is excellent, by the way—when just yesterday we walked away from a plane crash. I feel like I’ve been, somehow, renewed.”

  This reminded Gideon of his diagnosis. And how he had spent his afternoon.

  “How about you. Feel reborn?”

  “No,” said Gideon.

  Fordyce paused, looked at him. “Hey—you all right?”

  Gideon took a big gulp of wine. He realized he was drinking too quickly. Did he really want the conversation to go in this direction?

  “Look, you want to talk about it? I mean, that was one hell of a scare.”

  Gideon shook his head, put down his glass. He had an overwhelming urge to talk about it.

  “That’s not the problem,” he finally said. “I’m over that.”

  “So what is it?”

  “It’s that…every morning, first thing—I remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  For a moment, Gideon did not reply. He didn’t know why he’d said that. But no, that wasn’t true: he’d said it for the same reason he’d invited Fordyce up to the cabin. Whether it was their shared investigation, or their mutual admiration for Thelonious Monk, or simply surviving yesterday’s crash—he’d begun to look upon Stone Fordyce as a friend. Maybe—save, more or less, old Tom O’Brien back in New York—his only friend.

  “I’ve been told I have a terminal illness,” he said. “Every morning, I have about a minute or two of peace—and then I remember. That’s why I don’t feel reborn, renewed, whatever.”

  Fordyce stopped eating and looked at him. “You’re shitting me.”

  Gideon shook his head.

  “What is it? Cancer?”

  “Someth
ing known as an AVM: a tangle of arteries and veins in the brain. Statistically, they say I’ve got around a year to live, give or take.”

  “There’s no cure?”

  “It’s inoperable. Someday it’s just going to…pop.”

  Fordyce sat back. “Jesus.”

  “That’s where I was this afternoon. Getting another medical opinion. You see, I have reasons to doubt the first diagnosis. So I had an MRI.”

  “When will you get the results?”

  “Three days.” He paused. “You’re the first person I’ve told this to. Didn’t mean to lay a burden on you—it’s just that…Jesus, I guess I had to tell someone. Blame it on the wine.”

  For a brief moment, Fordyce just looked at him. Gideon recognized the look: the man was wondering if he was being bullshitted or not. And then deciding he was not.

  “I’m really sorry,” Fordyce said. “I don’t know what to say. My God, that’s just awful.”

  “No need to say anything. In fact, I’d prefer it if you never mentioned it again. Anyway, it might all be horseshit. That’s what this afternoon’s tests will tell me.”

  “You’ll let me know when you find out?” Fordyce asked. “One way or another.”

  “I will.” He laughed awkwardly. “Great way to ruin a dinner party.” He grabbed the bottle, refilled both their glasses.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” said Fordyce, a bit too heartily, eating the last of his kidneys. “I like kidneys. At least cooked à la Gideon.”

  They continued eating, the talk moving along more superficial paths.

  At last, Gideon got up and put a Ben Webster CD on the stereo. “What’s our next move in the investigation?”

  “Sweat that pilot from the mosque.”

  Gideon nodded. “I’d like to go out to the movie ranch, check out Simon Blaine again.”

  “The writer? Oh yeah, no doubt he’s a real desperado. Then we should go back to those crazy fuckers out at the ranch and kick some more ass. All those satellite dishes and high-tech equipment make me nervous. Not to mention hearing old lady Chalker’s talk of a violent apocalypse.”

  “I’m not too keen on getting zapped again with a cattle prod.”

  “We go in with a SWAT team and haul Willis in by one testicle, along with those scumbags who assaulted us.”

  “Didn’t you guys learn anything from Waco?”

  “Better than wasting time with the writer.”

  “He’s got a cute daughter.”

  “Oh now I get it,” said Fordyce, with a laugh, pouring himself the last of the wine. “Investigating with your glands, I see.”

  “I’ll get us another,” said Gideon.

  A Miles Davis CD and a second bottle of wine later, Gideon and Fordyce lounged in the cabin’s living room. The sun had set, the evening had gotten chilly, and Gideon had started a fire, which crackled on the hearth, casting a firelight throughout the room.

  “Best offal I’ve ever eaten,” said Fordyce, raising his glass.

  Gideon drained his glass. Putting it back on the table with a sloppy motion, he realized he was more than half drunk. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Back in the plane, you kept muttering something about monkeys and pussy.”

  Fordyce laughed. “It’s an aviation mnemonic. Monkeys find pussy in the rain. It’s the checklist of things you have to do when an engine goes out: Mixture on rich, Fuel on, Pump, Ignition left and right, and so forth.”

  Gideon shook his head. “And here I thought it was the wisdom of the ages.”

  31

  STONE FORDYCE WOKE up to the theme song of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. He fumbled off his cell phone alarm with a curse and forced himself to sit up. He knew the pounding in his head was due to the wine, and he suspected the havoc in his stomach was from the damn kidneys he had eaten the night before.

  He glanced at the clock: five AM. He had a routine report scheduled for seven thirty AM New York time, five thirty New Mexico time. That gave him half an hour to get his brain in order.

  Ten minutes before the call, in the middle of shaving, his cell phone rang. With another curse, he wiped his hands and answered it.

  “Am I speaking to Special Agent Fordyce?” The cool voice of Dr. Myron Dart was on the other end of the line.

  “I’m sorry, I thought our conference call was for seven thirty,” said Fordyce, irritated, wiping the shaving cream off the unshaven side of his face.

  “The conference call has been canceled. Are you absolutely alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have some information for you that has just come to my attention. Information of a…very sensitive nature.”

  The Circle Y Movie Ranch was located north of Santa Fe, in the Piedra Lumbre basin, a ten-thousand-acre ranch bisected by Jasper Wash and surrounded by mesas and mountains receding to the horizon. It was a hot June day, the high desert air clear and deep. The Circle Y was the most famous of the many so-called movie ranches surrounding Santa Fe, a working cattle ranch that also hosted a number of Western-style movie sets used by Hollywood studios in the making of films and television shows.

  As Gideon drove along the winding ranch road, the image of a Western town rose from the plains, with a steepled church at one end and a classic Boot Hill graveyard at the other. A dusty main street ran the length of it. Approached from behind, however, it began to look a little strange, until the buildings proved themselves to be mere façades, braced into position by slapdash two-by-four scaffolding. Just beyond the ersatz village ran Jasper Creek, an intermittent stream, now dry, winding along a narrow arroyo between shelves of rock, dotted here and there with ancient cottonwoods.

  It was a picture-perfect scene, everything painted gold in the early-morning sun, under sapphire skies. While the air was still cool, he could feel it was going to be a scorcher.

  Gideon parked in a dirt lot at one side of the town in an area roped off for vehicles. He strolled toward the set. The place was bustling, with camera booms, cherry pickers, and lights rising above the ferment of activity, punctuated with the blast of megaphoned commands and people running hither and yon.

  Most of the town had been roped off with plastic tape, and as Gideon approached the barrier a man with a clipboard intercepted him. “May I help you, sir?” he asked, blocking Gideon’s way.

  “I’m here to see Simon Blaine.”

  “Is he expecting you?”

  Gideon removed his ID. “I’m with the FBI.” He gave the man an ingratiating smile and, unable to stop himself, winked. I could get used to this, he thought.

  The man took the ID and scrutinized it for a long time before handing it back. “What’s it about?”

  “Can’t go into that.”

  “Mr. Blaine is occupied right now. Can you wait?”

  “We’re not going to have a problem here, are we?”

  “Uh, no, absolutely not. But…let me go see if he’s free.”

  The man bustled off. Gideon took the opportunity to duck under the tape and stroll into “town.” The long main street ran between a saloon, livery stables, a general store, what appeared to be a whorehouse, a blacksmith’s forge, and a sheriff’s office. A tumbleweed rolled past, and Gideon noted that it was a real tumbleweed that had been spray-painted a golden yellow, and that it was being pushed along by a wind-machine parked behind a false façade. More painted tumbleweeds were stacked in a wire basket next to the machine, being released by a worker, one by one, with shouted instructions to the wind-man as to exactly where the tumbleweeds were to go.

  A group of riders in Western garb came clip-clopping down the street on paint horses. The lead rider was Alida, her blond hair streaming behind her in the phony wind like a golden flame. She was dressed in full Western regalia: white shirt, leather vest, six-guns strapped on, woolly chaps, hat, boots—the works. She glanced his way, recognized him, and reined her horse to one side. With a frown she dismounted and came over, leading her horse by the reins.


  “What are you doing here?” she asked crossly.

  “Just checking in. Looking for your father.”

  “Please don’t tell me you’re still chasing that stupid lead.”

  “I’m afraid so,” he said pleasantly. “Nice horse. What’s his name?”

  She crossed her arms. “Sierra. My father is really busy.”

  “Can’t we do this in a nice, friendly way?”

  She recrossed her arms and gave an irritated sigh. “How long do you want with him?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  The man with the clipboard came back, his face creased with anxiety. “I’m very sorry, he just pushed his way in—”

  Alida turned to him with a radiant smile. “I’m taking care of it.” She turned back to Gideon, the smile vanishing as quickly as it came. “They’re about to shoot the final sequence of Moonrise and they’ve got a big pyro scene coming up. Can’t you wait until after that?”

  “Pyro scene?”

  “They’re going to blow up and burn the town. Or at least a good part of it. The pyrotechnics are almost ready to go.” She added after a moment, “You might enjoy it.”

  It would give him a little more time to hang around and ask her questions. If he could think of some. “How long will it take?”

  She glanced at her watch. “About an hour. Once the explosions and fire start, it goes fast. You can talk to my dad afterward.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough.” He glanced over her appraisingly. “You look like a star.”

  “I’m a stunt double.”

  “For anyone in particular?”

  “The female lead, Dolores Charmay. She’s playing Cattle Kate.”

  “Cattle Kate?”

  “The only woman in the history of the West hanged for cattle rustling.” Alida flashed him a brief smile.