Breathless. Part 26

The noise in the attic came and went, came and went. Sometimes it was a crawling sound, like someone shuffling from eave to eave on hands and knees. At other times, someone softly rapped out rhythms on a ceiling beam.

Henry walked through the house, back and forth, gazing at the ceiling, tracking the sounds. Wondering.

Standing in the bedroom closet, staring at the attic trapdoor, listening to the rapping, rapping, rapping on the back of that panel, which was bolted from below, he began to think of the sound as being more precise than mere rhythm. This was measured rhythm divided into stanzas. This was meter meter, as if some poet living in the garret above was composing new lines and rapping out the meter as he wrote.

When this thought fully flowered in his mind, Henry decided not to listen to the rapping anymore. He returned to the kitchen to continue preparing his lunch.

Later, as he ate, he wondered what the secret retreats were like where the senator and the other power elites would hide out when the social order had been purposefully pushed into collapse. He supposed they would be far more comfortable and better-provisioned quarters than any Henry could arrange for himself.

Of the many hundreds of billions of dollars that had gone out the treasury door, not all had been wastefully spent. Fully a third of it had been cleverly and secretly transferred into the accounts of those who had devised this strategy for the remaking of the world, which included numerous politicians but also many private-sector entrepreneurs.

The senator and those with whom he ran had panicked just once, when an investigative journalist with the Post Post reported that seventy billion of funds were gone and unaccounted for from just one package of the economic stimulus. But the public seemed indifferent. And considering that the reported that seventy billion of funds were gone and unaccounted for from just one package of the economic stimulus. But the public seemed indifferent. And considering that the Post's Post's number was woefully short of the true figure, the reporter's sources could not be inside the circle of the conspiracy. number was woefully short of the true figure, the reporter's sources could not be inside the circle of the conspiracy.

It was during that crisis-that-never-was that Henry decided not to throw in with the senator but to make his own preparations. Now, as he listened to the rapping in the attic, to the rapping that he was not listening to not listening to, he wondered if he had made a serious mistake when he had come west to become his brother.

Fifty-eight.

For the first time in memory, Tom Bigger slept deeply and peacefully. The trouble began when he woke.

Usually, dreams poured from a reservoir of venom and flooded sleep. In the murk of sunken cities and drowned countryside, he moved ceaselessly, going nowhere and seeking nothing, but going and seeking with quiet desperation nonetheless. Out of submerged streets, down from fathomless hills, along lonely airless roads came half-seen figures to menace him. In perpetual flight, he breathed water with increasing panic, until he woke and breathed air. Awake and sometimes while asleep, he suspected that every one of those who menaced him was only a shrouded aspect of himself.

At 4:15 Monday afternoon, after a uniquely dreamless sleep, Tom woke, and the real world felt as airless as his usual dreams. A suffocating need oppressed him. In this condition, he found relief only and always in one thing: spirits of the bottled kind.

Having been unable to still his restless mind, which had circled incessantly around the memory of the incident on the bluff above the sea, Tom had stretched out on the bed with no expectation of sleep, still wearing his clothes. Now he sat up, stood, moved toward the motel-room door, hoping that fresh air might relieve his sense of suffocation.

One step short of the door, he turned from it and went to his backpack. The previous night, from a bridge, he threw an unsampled pint of tequila into a dry creek. Five pints remained in his supply.

He extracted a stuffsack from the backpack, a bottle from the sack. The gla.s.s was smooth in his rough hands, smooth and cool.

The journey ahead and the task at its end required commitment, focus, sobriety. He had spent his life fleeing from all three.

Smooth and cool.

Considering that he was forty-eight, still alive, and not in jail, an argument might be mounted that he had fared better than some who made more responsible decisions than he did. Fundamental change at his age might bring the opposite of what he desired; he might be trading failure and sorrow not not for hope and peace, but for worse misery and despair. for hope and peace, but for worse misery and despair.

One incident, one moment of recognition in decades of barren existence, did not justify a revolution of the mind and heart. At the time, his head and stomach turning in spirals of vertigo, he had been vomiting into a barrel, not a situation in which his perceptions or his judgment were necessarily reliable.

The pint bottle of tequila felt smooth, cool, full of power, full of promise, the power of forgetfulness, the promise of death by incremental self-destruction. The power of the tequila pa.s.sed through the gla.s.s container and into his clutching fingers, causing his hand to shake, then his arm, then his entire body. The tremors shivered cold sweat from his palms, and he gripped the suddenly slippery bottle with both hands.

Although he needed a drink, a long one, he intended instead to empty the bottle into the bathroom sink.

He stood no more than six steps from the bathroom door. The sink lay one or two steps beyond that threshold. Eight steps. During the previous night, he walked mile after mile. Now eight steps seemed to be a greater distance than he traveled from his cave to this room.

Except for the shakes, Tom Bigger couldn't move. He trembled so violently that his teeth chattered and each exhalation stuttered from him, but he could not uproot either of his feet.

He must have been in a brief fugue when he twisted the cap off the bottle, for he had no memory of cracking the seal. Suddenly the cap lay on the floor between his feet, and with the mouth of the bottle to his nose, he inhaled the fumes of death in life.

Another fugue-how long?-and somehow the familiar taste was in his mouth, and the fragrant toxin dripped from his chin. Held in both hands, the bottle revealed the weakness of his will, for the level of the tequila was an inch lower than before.

Inch by inch, he would lose the future, the world, the hope that he had so recently allowed himself, and he knew what he must do. He must slam the bottle against his face, slam it and slam it until it shattered, puncturing and slashing his face, perhaps this time bleeding so much, so fast, he would be done with life at last.

But he was a coward, gutless, not energized by self-hatred but paralyzed by it.

The motel-room door opened, and with the flood of daylight came screaming. Screaming and sobbing simultaneously, the most wretched and despairing cries that Tom had ever heard.

In the sunlight, on the threshold, stood the seventy-something man in the cardigan, the front-desk clerk who had told him to enjoy his stay. Beyond the man stood an old woman with a cell phone in her hand.

Neither of them was screaming or sobbing, and then Tom realized that he he was the source of these terrible lamentations, a howling siren of anguish and grief and self-loathing. was the source of these terrible lamentations, a howling siren of anguish and grief and self-loathing.

Tom tried to warn off the desk clerk, for fear his rage would at last turn outward. In another fugue he might smash the bottle against that kindly face and slash the old man's jugular with a shard of gla.s.s.

Indeed, another fugue took him. But the next thing he knew, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, no longer clutching the pint of tequila.

The old man held the bottle, twisting shut the cap. He set it on the dresser.

No screaming anymore. Just the sobbing.

The old man returned to Tom and put a hand on his shoulder. "I've never been in your place, son. But maybe if we talk about it, I can help you find a way back from where you are."

Fifty-nine.

Paul Jardine wanted two hours for the debriefing, but after five minutes, Grady said, "This is bogus. I'll give you half an hour. Keep it tight, get it done. If half an hour isn't enough, bring charges against me, and I'll fight for full disclosure in an open court."

When Jardine began reciting the statutes under which a citizen could be prosecuted for failure to cooperate in a national-security matter after being granted immunity, Grady closed his left eye and slightly squinted his right, as if sighting a target. He whispered, "CheyTac M200," the name of the favored sniper rifle in the services.

Jardine understood. For a moment he considered Grady's skills and reputation. The deputy director proceeded with less arrogance, in a more succinct style of interrogation.

When they were done, Grady took two bottles of beer from the refrigerator and joined Cammy-and a subdued Merlin-on the front porch. She sat in one of the rockers, watching four more scientists disembarking from yet another executive helicopter at the end of Cracker's Drive.

"Thanks," she said, taking a beer. "Done already?"

He sat in another rocker. "People think power makes them big, but it brings out their inner bratty child and makes them small."

"You ever been to Michigan?" she asked.

"Yes. And that sure did interest him."

"What do you think's happening in Michigan?"

"Something. We knew this was bigger than Puzzle and Riddle."

After a silence, she said, "You told me you were in the army. You've never said much more."

"Joined up when I was eighteen, after my mom died of cancer. I thought there must be something better than these mountains."

"Some reason you don't want to talk about it?"

"No. Except it makes me bitter. I don't like being bitter."

"Can you really target someone at a thousand yards, like Jardine said?"

"Much farther. All the way out to twenty-five hundred yards. The rifle comes with various sighting aids. With the CheyTac, you use a .408-caliber, 419- or 305-grain round. One of those tends to do the job."

"Where was this?"

"Mostly Afghanistan. Some Iraq. Terrorists, ma.s.s murderers. They don't even know they're spotted. Scope them out, take them down. As far as war goes, it's about as humane as it gets. Snipers don't cause collateral damage among civilians."

"It's a long way from that to making furniture," she said.

"It's a long way from that to anything."

"Where's the bitterness come in?"

"My best friend. Marcus Pipp. He was on my sniper team. The other side has snipers, too. They look for us looking for them. Marcus took one in the neck. It didn't need to happen."

"Then why did it?"

"This grandstanding senator back home holds up a photo of dead women and children in an Afghan village. Marcus-he's in the picture with his rifle. Senator is so sure we kill for the thrill of it, he doesn't even try to get his facts straight. He names Marcus for the press, demands a court-martial. The Taliban killed those people, and all we did was find the bodies."

"Surely Marcus wasn't court-martialed."

"No. Army set the senator straight, though he never apologized. Marcus saw his photo on the Internet, newspaper stories with captions all but calling him a baby-killer. It upset him."

"But it wasn't true."

"You had to know Marcus. Sounds funny-he was like my mom in some ways. It wasn't he never lied-he couldn't couldn't lie. And the army mattered to him. He believed in the use of righteous force. He knew what the world would be like without it. The lie wasn't just about him, it was about the lie. And the army mattered to him. He believed in the use of righteous force. He knew what the world would be like without it. The lie wasn't just about him, it was about the army army, about this country and its people. The injustice ate at him, distracted him. You can't be distracted on a sniper team. Your focus is your fate. I saw how he was. I thought he'd get over it. I should have done a lot more to get him centered again. I didn't, he was careless, and he died two feet from me."

"You can't blame yourself."

"If we aren't here for one another, why are we here?"

Beyond the porch, the bureaucrats and the armed agents of the Department of High Anxiety bustled this way and that through their inflated settlement, saving the nation from the threat of wonder and joy.

Lying beside Grady's chair, the wolfhound raised his n.o.ble head occasionally to watch one pa.s.sing individual or another. None of them inspired him to wag his tail.

After a while, Cammy said, "What're we going to do about Puzzle and Riddle?"

"Stay focused. Be ready to act when the opportunity arises."

"What if the opportunity doesn't arise?"

"It always does, if you stay focused."

Sixty.

Having changed from shoes to slippers but still in cardigan and red bow tie, Josef Yurashalmi shuffled around the table, finishing the place settings with white linen napkins precisely folded to display the single, small embroidered bouquet of colorful flowers on each.

Hannah, Josef's wife, was busy testing the tenderness of the vegetables in a soup pot on the stove. Tom had first seen her outside his motel room, holding a cell phone, on which she had been ready to call an ambulance or the police.

The couple owned the motel and lived in a tidy apartment that const.i.tuted the small second floor above the office. There was a dining room, but Josef said, "The older I get-and n.o.body's getting older faster than me-the more I prefer cozy. The kitchen table is cozier."

Moving through their quarters and then sitting at the table as the elderly couple prepared dinner, Tom felt clumsy in build, awkward in motion, gauche, and out of place. He was bewildered to be there, unable to explain to himself why he had not taken up his backpack and fled. Josef and Hannah were together a force of nature, a wind both gentle yet powerful enough to sweep him to the place they wished him to be.

Although he had washed his face and hands in their guest bath, Tom felt grimy compared to their meticulously clean apartment. He had combed his unruly hair as best he could with his fingers, and b.u.t.toned the collar of his denim shirt.

Hannah filled bowls with beef noodle soup, and Josef put them on the table. Potatoes, carrots, and lima beans enriched the soup. Tom had eaten nothing as tasty as this in many years.

The second course was a slice of a molded gelatin salad full of finely chopped carrots and celery. Tom expected not to like it, but he did.

Fried fish patties followed, made from flaked halibut, mashed potatoes, eggs, and minced onions. On the side were succotash and sweet-and-sour beets.

Tom Bigger had not eaten home cooking like this in longer than thirty years. Considering that he drank more calories than he ate every day, he was surprised that his shrunken stomach suddenly had the capacity for everything that was put before him.

Josef and Hannah did most of the talking, or so it seemed to Tom, yet more surprising than the capacity of his stomach was the fact that he told them where he was going and what he hoped to do when he got there. He never revealed himself to people-until now.

He didn't tell them about the incident on the bluff above the sea or about the coyotes. Those things were his to keep until he proved that he could make the journey and complete the task.

Over dessert-lemon-cream pie-Josef offered to drive Tom to his destination after dinner. Tom gratefully declined six different ways. In spite of his failure to accept the favor of a ride, his hosts began to talk about the best route and estimated driving time-two hours-as though Josef and Tom would be leaving shortly.

When Tom expressed concern about Hannah being alone, the couple explained that the evening-shift clerk, Francisco, now manned the front desk downstairs. And in an emergency, Rebecca, their daughter, and her family lived only fifteen minutes away.