Los Angeles
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the burly black-clad man standing at the velvet ropes in front of the ultra-hip nightclub on Sunset Boulevard near Larrabee Street. He combined the functions of doorman and bouncer. “There’s a private party tonight.”
The Cobra Room was the most exclusive club in L.A., and it was his job to ensure that it stayed so. Its main habitués were celebrities and the very rich. The presence of gawkers, hangers-on, and wannabes could quickly make the environment uncomfortable for the clientele. The hulking doorman spent most of the evening repeating, with firm politeness, variations on the standard formula: a private function, no admittance. Only people who won the approval of his discerning gaze would be allowed in, whisked past the crowds of failed supplicants, and they were very much the exception.
“I’m sorry, miss,” the man said. “Private function tonight. Can’t let you in.” And: “I’m sorry, sir. Private party. No admissions.”
“But I’m meeting a friend,” the would-be entrants pleaded, as if this ploy wasn’t trotted out dozens of times each evening.
A brisk headshake. “I’m sorry. No exceptions.”
A bleached blonde with a low-cut dress and knockoff Jimmy Choos dug through a tiny black purse, trying to get in with a tip. “Thank you, no, ma’am,” the doorman preempted her. The hair was obviously a do-it-yourself job; a good salon would have produced more natural-looking results. “You need to move along.”
The man who called himself Mr. Jones observed the activities at the Cobra Room door for half an hour, from the tinted glass of a town car parked on the other side of the street and further down the block. Mr. Smith, his companion, had already prepared the ground for him. He glanced at his watch. He was wearing black thin-wale corduroys, a ribbed cotton sweater from Helmut Lang, a silk zippered jacket, vintage black sneakers. The costume—typical of the dressed-down yet lavishly expensive garb of L.A.’s glitterati—would not do the trick by itself, but it would not count against him. He had the driver drive around the block and pull up just in front of the Cobra Room. Then he donned a pair of Oakleys and walked casually toward the door.
The doorman’s wide-spaced eyes missed little, but this was clearly a tough call. Suddenly, the blonde darted over to Mr. Jones.
“Omigod, you’re Trevor Avery!” she squeaked. “I’ve got to tell my girlfriends. We just love you.” She started to grip the man in the Helmut Lang sweater, clasping his arms in squealing excitement. “Stay here for a sec! Please, oh, please!”
“Ma’am,” the doorman said in a warning tone.
“Don’t you watch Venice Beach?” she asked the doorman, referring to a television show popular among teenagers.
“No, I don’t,” the doorman said sternly.
“Please, couldn’t you take a picture of us together with my cell-phone cam? That would be soooo awesome!”
Mr. Jones turned to the doorman. “Hate when this happens,” he muttered.
“Step right in, sir,” the burly man said, unhooking the velvet rope from a brass stanchion and smiling at his new guest. The decision had become easy. “You, ma’am”—a stare that would freeze meat—“need to move along. Now. Like I said, it’s a private function.”
The blonde sullenly retreated, opening her little purse and no doubt fingering the hundred-dollar bill that Mr. Smith had slipped her.
Mr. Jones was in. As soon as his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting inside, he saw the L.A. developer Eli Little at one of the black vinyl booths. His white hair gleamed under the blood-red track lights. With him was a young film director who had just won a Sundance prize, an old-school studio exec, a big-time music mogul, and an actress who had her own HBO series. The rumors that connected the developer to organized crime made him only more alluring to Hollywood folk, who were fascinated by anything that savored of the dark side.
Mr. Jones looked genial as he crossed the small lounge space to get a better look at his target. The developer, who was usually protected by a veritable cordon of security, was expansive in his gestures, relaxed, and very comfortable, like a fish in its own aquarium.
He had no idea that a shark had just entered the tank.
Lower Manhattan, New York
Andrea Bancroft sat at the diner sipping at the third cup of the dishwater-weak coffee that was grudgingly sloshed from the Pyrex carafe. She kept her eyes peeled on the sidewalk. Aside from the diner’s signage—the swooping Greengrove Diner logo; an open plastic-laminated menu taped to one side of the door—it was easy to see through the plate glass. This wasn’t a place she would have selected for privacy, but Belknap had his own ways.
She was rattled; there was no way to hide it. She was entering another world. A world of ruses and snares, a world where guns were casually drawn and casually fired. A world where life was cheap and truths were costly. She noticed that she was clutching her coffee cup with a white-knuckled grip. Keep it together, she urged herself. Keep it together. It was Belknap’s world, and he knew how to function there. But it was not her world.
Or was it?
Uncertainty and fear battered at her like ocean waves against a pier. Could she trust Belknap? Could she afford not to? She remembered the way he had inserted himself between her and the gunman, rescuing her with his actions and his words. Yet he was the one they were after—and why was that? His answers had been maddeningly vague, but amounted to the claim that he had been set up. Which was what suspects always maintained. She had no reason to believe him. But for some reason, she did.
And what about Paul Bancroft? Could the foundation really be involved with the kidnapping that Belknap was obsessed with? Paul had assured her that the Theta Group’s sole purpose was to do good. And for some reason she believed him, too.
“I’m surprised you showed up.” Belknap’s voice.
She turned around, and saw that he had slipped into the banquette next to her. “You mean, after all the fun times we had together?” Her words were sarcastic, but her heart wasn’t in it.
“Something like that.” He shrugged. “How long have you been nursing that cuppa joe?”
“Nursing? I’d say the coffee was definitely beyond resuscitation.” She took another sip. “I didn’t see you come in.”
Belknap head-pointed toward the back, the employees-only door. “I’m hoping nobody else did, either.” His tone was impassive, almost smug, and yet Andrea could tell that he was keyed up; his eyes darted around the place, swept across the sidewalk outside, roamed across the other table and banquettes inside. God sees the little sparrow fall: The words of the old spiritual came to her. She had an idea that he would see the little sparrow fall, too.
“What happened at the hotel—I’m sorry, I can’t even wrap my mind around it.” She wanted to add, Thank God you’re all right, but held back. She did not know why.
“The hotel reservations were under a certified field name,” Belknap said in his low, gruff voice. He was wearing a knit polo shirt, olive-green, and she could see the outlines of his heavy muscles beneath the fabric. “A field legend. Protects you from your enemies who come from the outside world. It doesn’t protect you from your enemies inside the agency. This was an official Consular Operations retrieval team.”
Another sip of the hot, flavorless fluid. “That guy in the back of the hotel. I really thought he’d shoot me. People like that…” She shook her head.
“A special-access-program operative. S.A.P. is way beyond the usual security classifications. S.A.P. means nothing leaks beyond the immediate players. With some S.A.P.s, there could be five or six people in the entire government who know about it.”
“This includes the president?”
“Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.”
“So those are the kinds of trigger-happy brutes you’re up against. I guess I’m starting to have some sympathy for you.”
Belknap shook his head. “Maybe you shouldn’t. You saw some S.A.P. brutes in action, and you were appalled.”
“Damn right,” she put in sharply.
“Whereas the fact is I’m one of them myself. Just not right now.”
“But—”
“It’s best that you know exactly what I am. I’ve done what they were doing. I could have been any one of them.”
“Which raises an obvious question. If your own colleagues don’t trust you, why the hell should I?”
“I never said they didn’t trust me.” His slate eyes appeared almost guileless. “Their job was to hogtie me and put me into a cage. That doesn’t mean they’ve decided I’m untrustworthy. For all they know, maybe it’s because I’m too trustworthy. They’re not the ones who make the decisions. They’re the ones who carry out the decisions. I’ve got no hard feelings toward them. Like I say, I’ve been them. Only difference is, I’d probably have done the tracking solo. Possibly the capture, too. And I’ve have done it right.”
“Tracking?”
“It’s what I do, Andrea. I find people. Usually people who don’t want to be found.”
“You good at it?”
“Probably the best,” he said. There was nothing boastful about the way he said it. He could have been reporting his height or date of birth.
“Your colleagues share that assessment.”
He nodded. “They call me the Hound. Like I say, it’s what I do.”
A wave of cheap drugstore fragrance announced the arrival of the waitress. Strawberry-haired and slender, except for her pointing, melon-heavy breasts; the shirt of her uniform was open to the third button. “What would you like?” she asked him.
“Benny in the back?”
“Yup.”
“Ask him to make the thing he does with the French toast stuffed with mascarpone,” Belknap said.
“Oh, that’s fantastic,” the waitress shrilled. “I’ve had that. I’ll ask him, okay?”
“You do that,” Belknap told her, winking. “We’ll have two.” Then he spoke to her in a low voice. Andrea couldn’t make it all out—something about a guy he was trying to avoid, about how she could do him a solid.
“I’ll keep an eye out,” she returned in a low voice, and winked. Her tongue was coral-pink in the corner of her mouth, like a sugar rosebud on a cupcake.
“You have a gift for making friends,” Andrea said, surprised that she sounded slightly nettled when she spoke. She couldn’t have been jealous, could she?
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Belknap said. His eyes seemed to linger on the waitress, but when he turned to her, he was all business. For some reason, Andrea felt disappointed. Quietly she relayed her experiences of the previous day. The muscled operative listened without expression. Only when she told him about the phone call to Dubai did he lift an eyebrow.
“So what’s your explanation?” Andrea asked. “What’s to say you’re not full of shit?”
“A trunk-line redirect. If they’ve got access to the ISDN computers, it would take all of thirty seconds. How much time elapsed between when you gave them the number and when you placed the call?”
“Longer than that,” Andrea allowed. “Christ, I don’t know what to think. It isn’t as if I have any better reasons for believing your story.”
“It happens to be true.”
“So you say.” She looked down, peering into her coffee cup as if it contained secrets. “And what he told me about my mother—it’s perfectly possible. More plausible than the alternatives, rationally speaking. What haunts me is, what if he’s right, and all I’m doing is shadowboxing with figments of my own imagination? I don’t even know what I’m doing here with you.”
Belknap nodded. “You shouldn’t be. Rationally speaking.”
“Then you agree.”
“You’ve been given good, solid, well-crafted explanations. Why not take them at face value? Believe everything they told you and live a long, happy life. Buy that loft in Tribeca you told me about. You ought to be talking to an interior designer right now, talking about swatches and samples. Instead you’re talking to me.” He leaned forward. “Why do you think that is?”
Andrea felt a prickling on her face. Her mouth was dry.
“Because,” Belknap pressed, “you didn’t believe him.”
She took a sip from her glass of ice water, and the sip turned into a long gulp. The glass was empty when she put it down.
“There’s something we’ve got in common. A second sense for when things only seem to add up. They gave you a sound, orderly explanation. But somehow it didn’t wash with you. You’re not sure what’s wrong with it. You’re just sure that something is.”
“Please don’t pretend you know me.”
“I’m just saying. A lot of true things are unreasonable. You know this. Someone tried to give you a logical explanation of what had been preying on your mind. And the fact is that, on some intuitive level, you’re still not convinced. Because otherwise you wouldn’t be here, drinking the worst coffee in lower Manhattan.”
“Maybe,” she replied shakily. “Or maybe I was feeling grateful.”
“You know better than that. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have needed rescuing in the first place.”
Andrea studied Belknap’s face, tried to imagine how he would look to her if they were meeting for the first time. She would see someone who was ruggedly handsome, strapping, and, yes, intimidating. His dense, heavy muscles weren’t the kind produced by a health-club membership; they weren’t toned, they were knotted, muscles for work, not for display. And there was something else about him, too: the willed control of someone who could, if he chose, go out of control. A brute? Yes, in some sense. But more than a brute. There was something forceful about his very personality.
“How come every time I try to think well of you,” she said after a while, “you try to set me straight?”
“There’s a lake, and its waters are very deep and very dark. And your boat is very small. And you’re told that the only things in the lake are nice little fish. But one some level, you don’t believe this. You think there’s something big and scary down there.”
“A lake,” Andrea mused. “Like Inver Brass. So what do you think? Has Paul Bancroft somehow reconstituted Inver Brass? Is he Genesis?”
“What do you think?”
“I wonder.”
“Look, you’ve got to assume that everything he’s told you is a lie.”
“Except I don’t,” Andrea said. “It would be overly obvious, in a way, and Paul Bancroft isn’t an obvious man. I think a lot of what he’s told me is truthful. Truthful, maybe, in ways we’re not fully capable of grasping.”
“You’re talking about a flesh-and-blood human being, not some sort of Greek god,” Belknap snapped.
“You don’t know him.”
“Don’t be so sure. I’ve spent twenty-five years hunting down all kinds of assholes. When you get down to brass tacks, they’re pretty similar.”
Andrea shook her head. “He’s not like anybody you’ve ever known. You need to start with that.”
“Spare me. I bet he puts his trousers on one leg at a time.”
“Oh, real subtle, Todd,” she said, with an odd surge of bitterness. Andrea felt herself flushing; she realized it was the first time she had called him by his first name. She wondered whether he had picked up on it, too. “Paul Bancroft is the most brilliant man either one of us is ever likely to meet. When he was at the Institute for Advanced Study, he used to chat with world-historical figures—Kurt Gödel, Robert Oppenheimer, Freeman Dyson, even Albert Einstein, for God’s sakes—and they talked to him as one of them. They spoke as equals.” She paused, but only to take a breath. “Maybe you find it comforting to reduce other men down to your own level, but you really don’t know how ridiculous you sound when you talk about Paul Bancroft like that.” She was surprised at how heatedly she spoke. Maybe she was still hoping that Bancroft would be vindicated—that her fears and suspicions would prove to be misplaced. But if they weren’t, and if Belknap made the mistake of underestimating Paul Bancroft, he was already lost.
“Calm the hell down,” Belknap said. “Whose side are you on, anyhow? It sounds like the Great Brain has gotten to you. He must know what buttons to push.”
“Screw you,” Andrea said. “Did you take in anything I told you about the Theta Group?”
“I took it all in, and it gave me the creeps, okay? Find that comforting?”
“Inasmuch as it suggests you’re in at least distant contact with reality, yes.”
Belknap’s countenance darkened. “You’re describing some mastermind with more money than Scrooge McDuck and some wacko visionary plan for the betterment of mankind. People like that usually do more damage that people who set out to do wrong.”
Andrea nodded slowly, relenting. In truth, it was Dr. Bancroft’s very utopianism that chilled her most. What Belknap said, in his crude way, wasn’t far from the mark. The grand theory, the big idea: They became motive forces of history. For the sake of a paper utopia, thousands of Peruvians had been slaughtered by Sendero Luminoso; millions had perished on the killing fields of Cambodia. Idealism had killed as many as hatred. “I’m not sure what he wouldn’t do if he thought the ends justify it,” she said.
“Exactly,” said Belknap. “My bet is he’s crossed a line, probably did it a long time ago. He’s rigging the race, he’s stuffing the ballot boxes of human destiny. And, just like you say, he’d do anything, anything at all, that his theories tell him might be justified.”
“But I still don’t think he’s Genesis.”
“You have no grounds for saying that.”
“You think I’m wrong?”
“No,” he said, his eyes roaming the street outside. “I think you’re right. I also think he’s part of the picture somehow. There’s some kind of connection here—friend or foe, collaborator or nemesis or something else entirely. But there is a connection. Probably a complex web of connections. And one way or another, Jared Rinehart got tangled in that web. Maybe your mother, too.”
Andrea shuddered. “But if my cousin isn’t Genesis, who is?”
Belknap’s gaze swept across their surroundings again. “When I was in Washington, a friend of mine told me a few things about Genesis,” he said slowly. “They think he may be an Estonian. A mogul, the kind of gangster who became a billionaire when the state industries were privatized. More than that, he’s someone who seized control of a hefty chunk of the Soviet arsenal. We’re talking about a major-league arms dealer.”
“An arms dealer?” That sounded wrong to her. She worried that Belknap was, once again, reducing the adversary to his own level.
“We’re talking about the kind of person who has tentacles across the world. A person with a truly global reach, and global ambition, okay? This is a business that crosses national borders as easily as the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea. Who would be better placed? That’s our Genesis.”
“And the Theta Group? Maybe you should ask your friend about how the Theta Group might fit into this.”
Belknap reacted as if he had been slapped. “I can’t.” Breathing hard, he explained, “She was killed in front of me.”
“Oh, my God,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
“There’s somebody else who’s going to be sorry one day.” Belknap’s voice was arctic.
“Genesis.”
A fractional nod. “Maybe the Theta Group has been trying to bring him down. Maybe they want to join forces. Who the hell knows? One way or the other, I’m going to hunt the bastard down. Because he’ll know where Jared Rinehart is. Sooner rather than later, I’m going to get my hands around the neck of this monster, and I’m going to squeeze, and if I don’t like what I hear, I’m going to wring his neck like a chicken’s.” He held his beefy hands before him, his fingers bent at the knuckles.
“A velociraptor’s, maybe.”
“Doesn’t matter. Every vertebrate’s got a neck.”
“Estonia’s a long way away,” she said.
“Genesis is a globetrotter. Like the Bancroft Foundation itself. Makes them natural allies. Or adversaries.”
“You think Genesis has confederates inside the foundation?”
“I think it’s likely. I’ll have a better idea when I get back from Estonia.”
“You’ll let me know, right?”
“Fair’s fair,” he said. “Meanwhile, stay the hell away from any on-the-lam operatives you come across. We’re nothing but trouble.”
“So I’ve noticed. But I’m going to be doing some digging of my own. See, I talked to a friend of mine who works for the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance.”
“And this is someone who has friends?”
“The foundation is chartered in New York, so I figured that paperwork had to be filed with this department.”
Belknap craned his head once more, evidently peering for anything out of the ordinary. Had he noticed something? “And?” he prompted.
“I didn’t strike gold or anything. But he said that there would be decades’ worth of paperwork in storage.”
“In storage where?”
“It’s all in an iron-mountain facility in Rosendale, New York,” Andrea said.
“So what? Fake papers get filed all the time.”
“No question. It’s different, though, when you’re dealing with private filings that are audited closely. These will be authentic records, and they’ll have to be truthful, at least up to a point. They won’t contain the whole truth, obviously. But there may be enough solid data points here to start with.”
The waitress brought two plates. The special French toast he had ordered. “Sorry for the delay,” she said. “Benny went across the street to get some mascarpone. He didn’t want to let you down.”
“Benny has never let me down,” said Belknap.
“She thinks you’re a cop, doesn’t she?” Andrea asked after the waitress left.
“She thinks I’m some kind of cop, she’s not sure which. A federal investigator, maybe. I’ve always kept it vague. Point is, they like cops over here.”
“Because they don’t have anything to hide.”
“Or because they do.”
“So Doug is going to help me get access to this place in Rosendale.”
“Ooh, paperwork.”
“Somewhere in the past of this foundation, there’s got to be a chink. A giveaway. A clue. Some weakness that can be exploited. Something. There’s always something.”
“Yes, in books and in movies. In real life, there’s often nothing. Hate to be the one to break it to you. Stories are one thing. Life’s another.”
Andrea shook her head. “I think we live by stories. We organize our lives around stories. You ask me who I am, I tell you a story. But stories change. I told myself one story about my mother. When that story started to fall apart, I started to fall apart. You have a story about Jared Rinehart, about all he’s done for you—and that story makes it imperative that you rescue him even at the cost of your own life. There’s no experience outside of narrative.”
“You ever think you spent too many years in the classroom?” Belknap looked at her with amusement. “I owe my life to Jared Rinehart. And that’s that. Don’t try to complicate it any more than that.” He gave her a stern look. “Try the French toast.”
“Why? I didn’t order it. This is such typical male behavior. Imposing dominance through food.” She blinked. “Christ, I am turning into a college-town shrew.”
Suddenly he stiffened. “Time to go.”
“Says who?” Andrea demanded. Then she caught the expression on his face and felt chilled.
“FedEx guy across the street.” Belknap spoke through gritted teeth. “Making a delivery.”
“So?”
“Wrong time of day. FedEx doesn’t make deliveries at four o’clock.” He put cash on the table and stood up. “Follow me.”
Belknap gave the waitress a broad wink, then strode through a swinging door, past the kitchen, and out the back, a small paved area where a stack of recyclable bottles was awaiting pickup. A little beyond was a narrow alleyway. They squeezed past a Dumpster and made their way to an adjacent street. At the end of the block, Belknap craned his head around. Then, seemingly reassured, he bent down and keyed open the door of a dark-green Mercury. “Get in,” he said.
Moments later they had turned the corner and, after a few more turns, blended in with the traffic on West Street.
“Your car was parked at a fire hydrant,” Andrea said finally.
“I know.”
“How did you know it wouldn’t be ticketed or towed?”
“You didn’t notice the ticket book on the dashboard. But someone who worked for the city would have. Means it’s a cop car. You leave it alone.”
“This is a cop car?”
“No, and it’s not a real ticket book, either. But it always does the trick.” He glanced at her. “You holding up okay?”
“I’m fine. Stop asking me that.”
“Whoa. Why don’t you save the ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ thing for some other occasion? I get it. You are strong. You are invincible. You are woman.”
“Okay, I’m scared out of my wits. How the hell did your buddies—?”
“Not my buddies, I don’t think. Yours.”
“What?”
“Didn’t have the hallmarks of a Cons Ops dragnet. Looked more like a stand-and-survey deal. My guys would have used a U.S. Postal Service truck, and there’d be more than one.”
“So what are you saying?”
“My guess is, after your visit to One Terrapin, your colleagues have decided to keep an eye on you. Nonviolent monitoring. Keep tabs on an uncertain situation.”
“I was careful,” she protested. “I had an eye out. I don’t know how they could have tracked me here.”
“They’re professionals. You’re not.”
Andrea blushed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just live and learn. Or, more to the point, learn and live. You want to get to Rosendale, right?”
“I was going to overnight at a hotel nearby.”
“I’ll take you there.”
“It’s a two-hour drive,” she warned.
He shrugged. “The car has a radio,” he said.
But they never turned it on as they motored over the Major Deegan Expressway north and onto Interstate 87. The car was as anonymous a model as he could get his hands on; nobody was following them, he assured her, and nobody had any reason to anticipate their movements, she told herself.
“We could have been killed yesterday,” she said as he adjusted his rearview mirror for what seemed the tenth time. “It’s stupid, but I can’t get it out of my head. We could have died.”
“You don’t say,” he returned heavily.
Andrea stared at him, again trying to make sense of the man. He was all coiled muscle and rage, a visage that conveyed shades of frustration and anger, thick fingers, thickened nails—hands that had experienced a great deal of punishment, and surely had meted out no little punishment as well. He seemed hopelessly crude and unsubtle, and yet…there was also an acuity of perception here, an acuity that had so far eluded her. He was rawboned, coarse, blunt, and yet wily. What did they call him—the Hound, wasn’t that it? She could see it. He had a certain canine ferocity.
“So something like this happens—a close call, a near miss, the grim reaper flashing his scythe—and you think, what, ‘Yes, I like the way I lived my life.’ Or you think something else?”
Belknap turned to face her. “I don’t think.”
“You don’t.”
“That’s right. Top operative’s secret to success. Don’t think too much.”
Andrea fell silent. He wasn’t auditioning for the Algonquin Round Table after all. She stole another look, noticed how the fabric of his shirt stretched around the bicep of his upper arms, how the hand that lightly grasped the steering wheel seemed at once battered and powerful. She wondered, idly, what he would have made of Brent Farley. The musclebound operative might have earned Brent’s flared-nostril contempt, but then he could probably have reduced Brent to jelly by clasping his hand too hard. She smiled at the thought.
“What?” he prompted.
“Nothing,” she said a beat too quickly.
What did he make of her? Some spoiled Connecticut lady in over her head? Some overgrown grad student only recently out of Birkenstocks?
“You know,” she said, a few minutes later, “I’m not really a Bancroft.”
“You explained.”
“My mother—she wanted to protect me from all that. She’d been hurt, didn’t want me to get hurt. But there was part of being a Bancroft that she really valued. That’s what I never understood. That foundation meant something to her. I wish we could have talked about it.”
Belknap nodded but said nothing.
She was thinking out loud, and she doubted he was even taking it in, but neither did he seem to mind. Anyway, it was marginally better than talking to herself. “Paul said he loved her. ‘In a way,’ he said. But I think he did. She was beautiful, but not the porcelain-doll kind of beautiful. She was a live wire. Irreverent. Funny. High-spirited. And troubled.”
“The drinking.”
“But I really thought she put it behind her. It started with Reynolds. But a year or so after they got divorced, she made a pledge. And that was that. I never saw her with a drink after that. Then again, there was a lot I never knew about her. So much I wish I could ask her.” She felt her eyes grow moist, tried to blink it away.
He gave her a stony gaze. “Sometimes the questions are more important than the answers.”
“Tell me something. Do you ever get scared?”
Another stony gaze.
“I’m serious.”
“All animals know fear,” Belknap said. “You see a mouse or chipmunk or a hog or a fox. Does it think? Beats me. Does it have self-consciousness? I’d guess not. Does it laugh? Doubt it. Can it feel joy? Who can say? But one thing you know. You know it experiences fear.”
“Yes.”
“Fear is like pain. Pain is productive if it tells you you’ve touched a hot burner or you’ve picked up a sharp object. On the other hand, if it’s a chronic condition, just feeding on itself, it’s not doing you any good. It’s just eroding your ability to function. Fear can save your life. Fear can also destroy your life.”
Andrea nodded slowly. “It’ll be the next exit,” she said after a while.
Three miles later, they approached the Clear Creek Inn, where she had made reservations for the evening. She felt a jolt of terror, blinked, and saw why. Standing in the parking lot, leaning against a car, was the unmistakable bulk of the nameless man from the Bancroft Foundation.
Christ, no! Her heart started to hammer, fear and outrage vying within her. They wanted to intimidate her, she realized, and the realization made her indignant.
“Keep driving,” she said in a level voice. She was scared, yes, but she was resolute, too. She would not be intimidated. Her mother deserved more. She deserved more, dammit.
He complied without a moment’s hesitation. Only after they had returned to the interstate did he give her a questioning look.
“I thought I saw someone I recognized.”
“Please don’t tell me you made reservations under your own name,” Belknap said in a rush.
“No, no—I used my mom’s maiden name instead.” She had a sinking feeling even as she said the words.
“Like that’s going to throw them a curve. And then you probably gave them your own credit card.”
“Oh my God. I didn’t even think.”
“Jesus Christ, woman,” Belknap said. “We’ve been through this. Would you use common sense?”
Andrea massaged her temples with her forefingers. “I’m in a car with someone who may well be a dangerous enemy of the state, someone the United States government is trying to apprehend. Exactly where does common sense come into this?”
“Don’t talk.” Belknap’s voice was like the growling of a double bass.
“And interrupt the patriarchal edict of silence? Never.”
“You want to pull over and have a consciousness-raising session? Be my guest. I’m sorry you’re stuck with me. I’m sure Simone de Beauvoir would be more your speed, but she doesn’t seem to be available.”
“Simone de Beauvoir?”
“She’s—”
“I know who she is. I’m just surprised you do.”
“When I’m not rereading the SIG-Sauer owner’s manual, you know…” He shrugged his bulky shoulders.
“Whatever. Listen, I just—oh, hell, I don’t know.”
“The one true thing you’ve said for some time.” He reached into his trouser band and pulled out an oblong object; she flinched, and he gave her another look. It was, she realized, a cell phone.
Todd Belknap dialed the Clear Creek Inn. “I’m calling for Ms. Parry,” he said, in a voice that sounded somehow servile, almost effeminate. “No, I realize she hasn’t checked in yet. She’s asked me to let you know that she’s been delayed, and won’t be arriving until quite late. Around one in the morning. Could you please hold the room? Yes? Thank you.” He clicked off.
She was going to ask him why, but hazily saw the wisdom in it: If there was someone stationed to look for her, it was better that the person remain in a place where she definitely wasn’t going to be.
“Listen and learn, okay?”
Andrea shook her head miserably. “I know I need to get used to this. But I wish to God I didn’t have to.”
The look Belknap shot her seemed almost pitying. Suddenly, the car slewed across a lane and Belknap took an exit, ending up at a slummy-looking roadside motel. He turned to her, and the halogen light outside the motel cast a harsh, raking light on his square jaw and blocky features, his deep chest and callused hands and a gaze that, most of the time, barely registered her existence except as a convenience, an instrument in his own investigation. “Here’s where you sleep tonight.”
“If I get fleas…”
“Fleas you can get rid of. Bullet holes, not so easily.”
He guided her to the long Formica counter, behind which an Indian man stood on a stool.
“Can I help you?” the man asked. There was more than a trace of Hindi in his voice.
“One night,” Belknap said.
“No problem.”
“Great,” said Belknap. He spoke in a rush. “The name’s Boldizsar Csikszentmihalyi. B-o-l-d-i-z-s-a-r. C-s-i-k-s-z-e-n-t-m-i-h-a-1-y-i.”
The clerk stopped writing after a few letters. “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite…”
Belknap gave him a reassuring grin. “Nobody ever does. It’s Hungarian, I’m afraid. Here, let me write it all out for you. Believe me, I’m used to it.”
Reluctantly the clerk ceded him the guest registry. With a flourish, Belknap wrote out the name. “Room forty-three?” He saw the key hanging on the key rack behind the clerk.
“That’s fine, but I can—”
“Not to worry,” Belknap said. “I used to manage a hotel myself.” Making a show of checking his wallet, he pretended to write the number of his driver’s license in the adjoining box. Barely lifting his pen from the paper, he filled out the time of arrival, the number of occupants, a credit card number. Then he returned the clipboard to the Indian man with a cheerful wink. “It’s the same everywhere.”
“I can see that,” said the clerk.
And we’ll be paying with cash. Eighty-nine plus the tax comes to 96.57, we’ll round to a hundred if you don’t mind.” He immediately leafed five twenty-dollar bills on the counter in front of the clerk. “Now, if you’ll pardon an unseemly rush, my good wife is bursting—she couldn’t bring herself to use the john at the gas station. So if you’ll get us a room key…”
“Oh, my goodness, right away.” The man handed him the key, and Andrea found herself miming the condition Belknap had described.
Moments later they were in a room, alone. The highway traffic sounded like a rainstorm, surging and ebbing. She could smell stale cigarette smoke in the room, the hair pomades of strangers, the chemical scent of cleaners.
“My hat would be off if I wore a hat,” Andrea said to Belknap. “You’re a bullshit artist of the first order.”
“A LeRoy Neiman rather than a Leonardo. I mean, let’s not exaggerate.”
“You’re a man of many surprises,” Andrea said, and took a deep breath. Now she could smell him, the liquid soap he had used on his hands and face at their last rest stop, the laundry detergent of his shirt, and somehow it lessened the bleak foreignness of the dimly lighted room.
“A pretty crappy place for an heiress, huh?”
“I keep forgetting,” she said dryly. But it was true.
“Best that you do,” Belknap said soberly. “For the time being. That money is a homing beacon. If the Theta security people have anything on the ball, they’ll know about any withdrawal you make, and they’ll know precisely where you were when you made it. It’s not like you’re using a numbered account in Liechtenstein. So until things are sorted out, consider it radioactive.”
“Root of all evil. Got it.”
“This isn’t a joke, Andrea.”
“I said I got it,” Andrea replied, a little testily. She didn’t meet his eyes. “So what now? Are you going to take a load off your battered feet? Linger a bit before hitting the road?” She knew it was irrational: Her association with him had put her into jeopardy, and yet she somehow felt safer when she was around him.
Belknap, however, took her invitation as mere sarcasm. “Is that what you’re afraid of?” The strapping operative shook his head. “No worries. I’m out of here.
That’s not what I meant, she thought. But what had she meant? Did she even know?
He stepped out of the door, then, before closing it, turned to her, his slate eyes intent. “You find something I need to know, you tell me soon as you can. I’ll do the same for you. Deal?”
“Deal,” Andrea echoed in a hollow voice. The door clicked shut and, through the window, she watched the man lope back to the car; they agreed that it would be safest for her to call for a taxicab in the morning. She somehow felt at a loss. He was, she realized, a dangerous man who brought trouble in his wake. And yet when she was around him, she had felt safer. Again, she fully appreciated that it made no sense, but that was how she felt.
The density of all that battered flesh, the scar tissue, the muscle that seemed almost to drop over his upper body like a poncho of hard flesh, the quick, alert eyes, vigilant to every menace. She still found herself choking on fear; he had somehow worked past it, was able to use fear. Or so she imagined. Tomorrow, though, she would be off to the archives, where the greatest risk was surely tedium. What else could befall her? Death by a thousand paper cuts?
Better get some sleep, she told herself. You have a long day tomorrow.
From her motel window, she watched the taillights of his car grow smaller and smaller as he drove off, until they were nothing more than pinpricks, and then nothing more than a memory.