s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

 That s okay, he answered softly.
Right there, he captured her. That was not his intention; it could not have
been. Miranda would never have guessed she herself was vulnerable. It just
happened.
She had grown weary. They all had. Their suicides and orgies and petty hatreds
were forms of surrender.
Each day they were giving up a little more, getting ready to seal themselves
away in her father s underground sanctuary and hide out until the plague was
finished ravishing the planet. No one believed in forever anymore. No one
spoke hope.
We need him.
 This isn t a missing persons bureau, she declared.
 I m not the pizza delivery boy, either, he said.
It was almost reckless, almost insolent. Almost. But there was no pride behind
the chutzpah. He was just here for his daughter.
 How do I know you won t betray me? We ve got no evidence this package of
artifacts even exists.
 There s those letters from the Smithsonian. He pointed helpfully with one
finger, and both hands came up, attached at the wrist.
 Pieces of paper. Miranda nudged at his forged blood book.  Fictions.
 You ll find a tree, he said.  Go forty feet north of mile marker 3.
 What are you talking about?
 Off Highway 502. It s all there. In saddlebags. They re not buried. Look up
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in the branches.
 You said they were buried.
 I lied. Again.
Miranda looked at the Captain, and his eyebrows were knit into a single black
V. He was taken off guard, too. As an afterthought, he took a notepad from his
pocket and started writing. He spoke into a cellphone.
Nathan Lee gave her a pleasant smile.  Now we ve got that out of the way.
The smile annoyed her. She wanted to scold him. What did he have to smile
about? He d left himself no chips. He d gained nothing, except to throw the
question of trust back on her. She d made no promises.
But now it was her in the position of betraying him. Then Miranda realized he
knew exactly what he was doing. She d made an issue of trust, so now he was
using it against her.
 I could wait until they confirm your& confession. She made her voice frosty.
 But I ll go ahead and check the registry. She slid the keyboard closer.
 It s only for Los Alamos, she warned.
 That s fine.
She spoke as she typed.  Grace Swift.
 Probably not, he said.
He was right.  Well, what then?
 There was a divorce. Miranda backspaced over the Swift. He craned to see her
screen, but the
Captain moved him back with a gesture.  Try Ochs, he said.
Miranda s fingers froze.  Not David Ochs, she blurted.
His eyes lit up. They positively burned. Then he made himself clement and mild
behind the clunky horn-rims again.  So he s made himself safe, he said.
She glanced at the Captain, confounded.  He has a wife and child? The
executioner had a family?
 A sister, Nathan Lee corrected her.  She remarried. She might have taken
another name. But start with
Ochs. Please.
What kind of charade was this? Clearly the man had followed Ochs here. He d
skillfully used documents
that were over a half year old to gain access to the Mesa, and maybe that was
all there was to it, one more opportunist trying to slide through the fence.
More ominously, Ochs may have summoned him, an ally, the last thing Los Alamos
needed. But why use her, why not go straight through Ochs? Cover? A
sting? On the other hand, he could be who he claimed to be, which verged on
nothing. There was only one sure way to find out.
 Captain, she said,  lock this man up.
* * *
O
CHS DID NOT COME
gently. He entered the monitor room loudly, eyes bulging with gangster
aggression.
His skull was mottled red with his indignation.  What is this all about? he
demanded.
 That s what I want to know, said Miranda.
 Take it up with Cavendish, whatever it is. He made a show of trying to
leave, but the Captain had sent two of his biggest men. They loomed at the
door.
 Sit, said the Captain.
Then Ochs caught sight of the television screen by Miranda s elbow. The
stranger was sitting on a metal bed in a stainless steel cell. A small noise
eked from Ochs s nostrils. The red blotches on his polished head drained pale.
 Swift, he whispered.  But he s dead.
Miranda felt a shock of happiness, wicked and relieved at the same time. Ochs
was afraid. And the stranger had been honest at least about his name.  We were
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discussing you, she said.
 What in God s name is he doing here?
 He brought the Smithsonian specimens that you said don t exist, she said.  I
wanted to hear your side of it.
 My side of what? said Ochs. The blood returned to his face. But his bluster
was gone.  He s a convicted murderer. A cannibal. Yes, it s true, in this day
and age. It all came out in his trial. He tried to kill me. They jailed him in
Kathmandu. You must have read about it.
The seamy, tabloid details rushed to her. This was that man? But she recalled,
even before the plague transcended it, doubting the story could be true in all
its parts. It had seemed too sordid, too fantastic to be real.
 He s hunting me, said Ochs.  He wants revenge.
 That s not what he told us, she managed to say. Ochs s fear was
so& delicious.
The precision-trimmed goatee twitched.  What did he tell you? Jerusalem, is
that it?
 Tell me, said Miranda.Jerusalem? This was like feeding quarters into a video
game. Ochs was practically playing himself.
 He was one of my students. An idiot, really. Every department has one, the
lost soul scraping for identity. I stuck him out in the desert where he
couldn t embarrass himself.
 Jerusalem, she repeated.
 He heard about the Golgotha find. He called me. The earthquake had just hit.
A quick buck, he said.
 You robbed the Golgotha site? Until this moment, she d never known it had
been robbed.
 What could I do? I went to stop him. He was married to my sister. I wasn t
trying to protect him, only my family. My department.
 That s not what he said. She didn t know what else to say. Feed the quarters
in.
 I didn t push him. He fell, Ochs snarled.  I was trying to catch him.
Was he talking about Jerusalem? The Captain knew more about it than she did.
 You left him, he said.
 In the mountains.
Ochs came closer to the screen. Nathan Lee could have been waiting for a bus
to arrive.  How did he get out? he muttered to himself.  He s here?
 He says he wants his daughter, said the Captain.
 She s not here.
 Where is she?
Miranda was grateful for the Captain s presence. He was driving to the heart
of the matter. They had found the saddlebags in the tree. Their part of the
bargain was to provide the man his daughter, or clues.
But Ochs was too clever, or frightened.
 He s dead, said Ochs.  Tell him that. We told her he died.
 Tell him yourself, said the Captain. It was all the leverage he had, a bully
threat.
 I m not going in there.
And that was the end of it. They couldn t force Ochs to speak. And Miranda
didn t have the nerve to throw Ochs into the same cell with his enemy. Slowly
Ochs emerged from his confusion. He began to comprehend their deception.
 Is that it? he said.  That s all you had? He bent and smeared his thumb [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]