Startled, Gottfrey lets the bottle of chloroform slip from his left hand.
A man with a deep voice says, “Drop the Taser, too. Don’t mind doin’ my share of housework, but I don’t want to be moppin’ up your brains from this nice mahogany floor.”
Gottfrey drops the Taser.
“How many others,” the man asks.
“Other what?”
“Other pestilential specimens like you.”
“There’s only me,” Gottfrey replies, trying to imagine how the U.P. is going to get him past this reversal of fortunes and allow his inevitable triumph by the end of this act.
“Only you?” says the gunman. “Not damn likely.”
“I’m an iconic loner,” Gottfrey declares with some pride. “Like Dirty Harry or Shane.”
The gunman is silent for a moment but then says, “Loner, my ass. You’re a creature of the hive if ever there was one.”
23
THREE MINUTES AFTER LUTHER TILLMAN parked the black Suburban at the back of the fenced compound, Ferrante Escobar’s men had pulled off the forged federal license plates identifying it as Department of Justice ordnance. One minute after that, they’d moved the vehicle into the paint shop to strip it down and repaint it neither white nor black. Maybe Sahara Sand or Grecian Blue.
In anticipation of the rescue party’s success, Ferrante’s uncle, Enrique de Soto, had gifted Jane and her team with a bottle of Dom Pérignon, which all along had been chilling in the Tiffin Allegro’s refrigerator. There was a large bottle of root beer for Travis.
“Umm. Umm. I would prefer root beer, too,” said Cornell, who did not stand with them, but sat apart in a chair that was too small for him. “Root beer, please and thank you.”
A card from Ricky came with an offer to take back the Tiffin and the Suburban, for which Jane had paid $120,000 cash; he’d give her a $50,000 credit toward whatever future purchase she might make. He proposed an alternative deal in which she would receive $90,000 in credit instead of $50,000, but the terms were onerous.
Jane was and wasn’t in the mood for a brief celebration. She was inexpressibly grateful to have Travis safe with her. However, in truth, no one in her company would be safe for long; and she needed to decide on other arrangements for him.
Whether she felt like a celebration or not, she knew the value of one: the essential sense of camaraderie it generated, the hope that it inspired. They sipped the icy champagne from plastic cups, and Travis had his root beer, which he shared with Cornell, while the dogs drank water from a bowl and ate peanut-butter treats and repeatedly explored the motor home, wagging their tails and delighting in a banquet of smells that no human nose could detect.
Neither Jane nor Luther nor Bernie—nor probably Cornell—could shake the foreboding with which the events of the past few hours had left them. Their laughter was muted. What toasts they made were modest and too solemn for a celebration.
She loved these three men for their courage, their loyalty, their kindness, but she could not keep her eyes from Travis. If the sight of the boy filled her with gratitude, it also settled on her a sadness close to grief, because they would so soon need to part.
24
AFTER FLYING LUTHER TO PALM SPRINGS in his Learjet and then driving him to Ferrante Escobar’s place of business earlier that day, Leland Sacket had returned to Palm Springs in his rental car to wait for a call. Now he was once more en route to Indio. Before this day was done, he and Luther would fly back to the Sacket Home and School in Texas. Jolie Tillman waited there for her father, in the company of scores of orphans, wondering if she would soon be one of them.
Jane walked with Luther to the guardhouse near the entrance to Ferrante’s compound and explained why Travis would not, after all, be going to Texas with him.
“I hope to God these Techno Arcadian bastards don’t find you and Jolie there. I don’t think they will. I think the link between the Sackets and Nick’s family is too obscure for them to smell it out. But if they do … This is awful and selfish of me, Luther, but I’ve got to say it anyway. If they do smell out that connection and find you and Jolie there, they will inevitably find Travis. I’ve never met your Jolie, but I know I’d love her. And I love you. I can’t have all three of you in one place. I can’t lose all of you in one moment. Besides, there’s the issue of Cornell.”
He said, “I’ve been wondering about that.”
“It’s truly amazing how Travis has bonded with Cornell in such a short time. He’s going to be devastated if I send him somewhere different from where Cornell goes. He’s a strong little kid, but he isn’t stone. He’s lost so much. He can’t lose Cornell, too.”
“Maybe Cornell can’t handle losing him, either.”
She smiled. “I think you’re right.”
The early April afternoon began to submit to a sunset that gilded the fleecy clouds in the west, and a warm breeze issued out of the north, bearing on it something like the scent of orange blossoms.
“But, Jane, Cornell can’t take care of Travis long term.”
“No, he can’t. Anyway, soon they’re going to find his library for the end of the world, his bunker, and they’re going to know he harbored Travis, and after that he’ll be almost as wanted as I am. Do you realize how much they’ll torture him just by touching? Poor Cornell has no defenses against people like them.”
“But where … ?”
“Bernie had a talk with me. He says his daughter, Nasia, and her husband, Segev, have a big house on a double lot in Scottsdale. The property is very private. No one has to know there’s two new residents. Travis and Cornell will each have his own room. And Bernie says they love dogs, they have one of their own, so Duke and Queenie are welcome. Nasia and Segev—they’ve been wanting Bernie to give up driving from one end of the country to the other, and now he has even more reasons to stay in Scottsdale. They’ll like that.”
“But do they know what they’re getting into, who you are, the risks of taking in Travis and Cornell?”
“Bernie told them about the little adventure we had together a couple of weeks ago, the night I carjacked him—and the next day at Ricky de Soto’s place in Nogales. He didn’t know who I was then, but later he saw me on TV, and he put it all together. They know where he went today and why. He says they’re half expecting they might have … visitors.”
Luther stood amazed. “How extraordinary.”
“More than you know. Bernie was a child in Auschwitz. He lost his parents there.”
“My God.”
“He told me a little while ago. It’s a miracle he survived, thrived, became the sweet and optimistic man he is. He understands what totalitarianism is, from the right, from the left. He knows the evil of these Arcadians and knows this is war, there’s no retreating from it. He says not to take in Travis and Cornell would be to shame himself forever and soil the names of his mother and father. He says that Nasia and Segev feel the same and, if they didn’t, he couldn’t abide them, even though Nasia is his only child. If I can’t trust Bernie, then this is a world where no one can be trusted.”
Just then, Leland Sacket pulled up to the guardhouse in his rental car.
Jane felt as though everything was slipping away from her: all those she loved, the past, the future, the light of the day and all other light that it represented. She put her arms around Luther and held him very tight, and his arms were strong around her as they said their good-byes.
She waved at Leland Sacket and stood watching the two men drive away, stood watching the highway even after they were out of sight, stood watching as the gilded clouds grew as red as blood in the west, and then she walked back to the motor home before the night came all the way down.
25