She understood why only Rubinstein would suit her now. Her destination was a place of such evil that perhaps even if she came back alive, she would come back changed, in some way diminished by the experience. Although she was a pianist of much less talent than Rubinstein, she was able to hear the pure joy with which he played, to feel the joy with which he embraced life, and she wanted to have as much of his music as she could in these last few hours before Tahoe, while she could still be so profoundly moved by it.
As the highway led steadily into higher elevations, the sky descended, and the sun receded so that its position could not be discerned behind the uniform gray shroud. A breeze rose, harrying shapes of dust and chaff across the road, stitching the air with dead pine needles.
An hour past Lone Pine, as they were approaching Bishop, an electronic highway sign advised that, due to weather conditions ahead, California Highway Patrol required that all vehicles bound for Mammoth Lakes and points north must apply tire chains.
She stopped at a service station and bought plastic chains and was third in line to have them installed.
Hendrickson had closed his eyes. He seemed to be sleeping. His lips moved as if he were forming words, but no sound escaped him.
After the chains were in place, she pulled the SUV aside but didn’t at once return to the highway. Before beginning the final long leg of the trip, she intended to place a quick call to Gavin and Jessica, which was when she learned that her burner phone had lost its charge.
In almost three months, she had only twice before become so overwhelmed by events that she’d forgotten to keep the cellphone charged. She felt derelict, though the sudden worry that overcame her was excessive, a superstitious response to a simple oversight. Travis would not be taken from her just because she had let the phone go dead. He was safe with Gavin and Jessie. He was happy and safe with his pony and the German shepherds.
The charging station was already plugged into the dashboard port, nestled in a cup holder. She fitted the cellphone to it. Depending on weather conditions, she would stop to make the call at either Mammoth Lakes or, farther on, at the tiny town of Lee Vining.
Rubinstein was playing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, op. 23, with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra.
Eyes still closed, Hendrickson whispered, “Heads inside heads, eyes inside eyes…”
18
From the restaurant, they return to Dubose’s room, where he sits at a small table by an ocean-view window to work on the laptop, while Jergen sits across from him, waiting to hear what idea has managed to fire from synapse to synapse in that bacon-fogged brain.
“Last night, both those chopper jockeys said the Land Rover was last seen heading what direction?”
“Southwest,” Jergen says.
“Southwest,” Dubose agrees. “Let’s have a look at Google Maps.”
Jergen doesn’t want to move his chair around the table and snug it up against Dubose in order to see the screen. He’d feel like a little boy watching Daddy do important things. He stares out at the sparkling Pacific and listens to his partner walk him through it.
This is how it progresses: First, Gavin Washington will know what unparalleled resources are available to his pursuers and will suspect he has little time to go to ground before every police car in the state will be on the lookout for a vintage white Land Rover with his plate number. So assume he has a set of forged plates and uses them. The vehicle still is what it is. He remains at risk. This Google map. Now that Google map. All right, if Washington doesn’t drastically change direction when out of sight of the helo crew, he powers through the wilds of the Cleveland National Forest, heading for the county line. He probably crosses over into San Diego County somewhere between De Luz and Fallbrook, no longer in the national forest but in a decidedly rural area. The first paved road he comes to is a county highway, S13, a two-lane blacktop. An offshoot of S13 connects with Interstate 15, but he’s going to avoid such a heavily patrolled major highway even in the quiet hours just after dawn. He’s going to stay as long as possible on tertiary roads, where he’s least likely to cross the path of a cop. He can stay on S13 past Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps facility that occupies a big piece of the coast, and then follow a series of county roads that can take him south and east to the international crossing at Tecate.
“He won’t try crossing at Tijuana,” says Dubose. “He’s just too hot for that.”
“All of Mexico is too hot for him,” Jergen says. “He and that legless bitch have guns, remember. They won’t risk going into Mexico with weapons and wind up being held for ransom by some corrupt Federales.”
“Exactly right,” Dubose says, as if he’s already thought of the gun problem.
So the fugitive’s options narrow down like this: First, he’s going to want to stay away from major population centers until he has a chance to repaint the Land Rover to make it match whatever color is specified on the forged registration, after which he will be less likely to draw police attention. Which means that he must have some relatively secluded location where this can be done. He will most likely go inland, into San Diego County’s least populated territory—and there’s a lot of it. He might make his way south on S13 and then switch to the first eastbound route, which is State Highway 76, a more significant road than S13, though still tertiary.
Because S13 follows the east perimeter of Camp Pendleton, there will be military-base security cameras at points along that length of the highway. Jergen fetches his laptop from his room, returns with it, and plugs it in. He slips into the NSA’s massive data trove through a back door with which Arcadians in the agency have provided him. He summons archived video from Pendleton’s S13 cameras during the early hours of this morning. He fast-forwards in search of a southbound vintage Land Rover.
Meanwhile, Dubose is considering State Highway 76, which passes through some lonely territory to the east. He soon finds two points of interest along that route.
19
The little blue stucco house was as humble inside as out. During the building of the bunker and associated structures, Cornell lived here, overseeing the Filipinos, whose language he’d learned. In addition to his talent for devising hugely popular apps, he had a talent for languages; he spoke six fluently. The living room, study, one of two bedrooms, and kitchen were furnished with discount-warehouse goods that were mismatched but serviceable.
“It sure is dusty,” Travis said as he followed Gavin and Jessie through the house, while the dogs explored on their own with the usual canine curiosity.
“He never comes here anymore,” Gavin said. “Every month, when I visit, I check the place, you know, make sure there aren’t plumbing problems, water leaks, confirm that all the appliances are working. But I never have time to do much housecleaning.”
“Or inclination,” Jessie said. She wiped a finger across a kitchen counter and held it up to reveal a beard of dust.
“We can have it tidy in no time,” Gavin said. “We’ll tie rags to the dogs’ tails. And this boy here—why, we can work him till he drops, while we sit on the porch with glasses of iced tea.”
“That’s bushwa, for sure,” Travis said.
20
Sequined with sunshine, the sea glimmers to shore in rhythmic waves and breaks on the alabaster beach in boas of sparkling foam, while on this side of the window, Carter Jergen fast-forwards through video of the county road along the eastern flank of Camp Pendleton, until he freezes an image in early light. “Got him! Right here it is, the same freakin’ Land Rover. I’ll be damned if it isn’t.”
“Of course it is,” Dubose says.
He doesn’t bother to look when Jergen turns the laptop toward him, as though his theory of Gavin Washington’s actions could not possibly be proven wrong, as though Jergen has been given make-work to keep him busy while Dubose does the heavy thinking.
“Meanwhile,” Dubose says, “I’ve been studying State Highway 76. If he’s got some private place, some rural hidey-hole, he’s headed for, that’s the route he’s most likely to take. You’ll find two cameras at the junction of 76 and County Highway 16, at the town of Pala.”