ANGELES BLANCA; AQUA AZUL AIRPORT
Thursday, January 24; 10:42 P.M.
“Things here aren’t what some people say they are.”
“There’s no need for you to wait around, Raul,” John said, frowning slightly as the memory of Swarzwalder’s words continued to distract him. “My bags are checked and I’m perfectly capable of getting on an airplane all by myself. Why don’t you go to the hotel and get some sleep?”
Raul, his body sacked by fatigue and tension, was leaning forward in one of the airport lounge’s hard, molded-plastic chairs, resting his forearms on his knees. When Raul glanced sideways, John could see that the Sierran’s eyes were bloodshot from exhaustion and the strain of driving for many hours; as night had fallen, they’d discovered that their car had only one dim headlight. On at least a half dozen occasions John had been certain they would have an accident. However, Raul had gotten them safely to the airport. The Sierratour guide had booked him on a delayed flight rescheduled to leave at one in the morning for Toronto, where he would connect with a Pan Am flight to New York. He would be home by midmorning.
“I will wait with you,” Raul said thickly. “You do not speak Spanish. You may need help if there is a further delay.”
“All the airline personnel speak some English. I won’t need any help.”
“Still, I will wait.”
“Suit yourself. I’m going to get some coffee. What about you?”
Raul shook his head sullenly. John rose, purchased a cup of weak, tepid coffee from a gurgling vending machine, then walked across the deserted lounge to a high, wide bank of windows that looked out over a line of buses and food-vendors’ trucks parked on the macadam one story below. Their images reflected in the polished glass, three soldiers leaned against the walls of the lounge, dozing, their spectral shapes floating somewhere out in the night.
“Things here aren’t …”
John had lost track of the number of times he’d relived the confrontation in the Sierras Negras Hotel, but his memory seemed to be clearing with the passage of time, and he now began to review it all once again.
David Swarzwalder certainly hadn’t been what he’d claimed to be, John thought. However, John was no longer convinced that the big man had been what Alexandra and Peters thought him to be, either.
Raul had told him that there were three other singles on the tour besides himself and Swarzwalder, and John continued to ponder the question of why Swarzwalder had lied to him on the plane and told him they were the only two. What had he wanted? Had Swarzwalder already approached the others and been turned down? Not enough time; they’d just boarded the plane. Swarzwalder seemed to have specifically wanted to room with him.
In order to be close to him? Why?
Could Swarzwalder have known about the dragons? Even if he had, John thought, that would not explain Swarzwalder’s apparent desire to share a room with the husband of one of them. Quite the contrary; logic would seem to dictate that an assassin keep as low a profile as possible throughout the week, and he would certainly go out of his way not to attract the attention of the two people who were hunting him.
Could it have merely been a coincidence that Swarzwalder had asked to share a room? Again, Swarzwalder had lied to him about the other singles.
Why had Swarzwalder saved his life?
John finished his coffee, returned to the machine, and bought another.
He made an effort to recall the exact sequence of events that had occurred after he had burst into the dragons’ room. Before, everything had seemed to race through his consciousness in milky fast-motion. Now he concentrated on slowing things down, separating the entire sequence into its separate components, clearing away the haze and putting the events into sharp focus.
Swarzwalder had been standing over Peters’ suitcase, holding one of Alexandra’s barrettes in his left hand. Swarzwalder had spun around, hesitated, then dropped the barrette on the bed and attacked him.
The man had been incredibly quick and powerful, John thought. Before he’d had time to think or react, Swarzwalder had knocked him down with a hammer blow to his heart. Then Swarzwalder had leaped on top of him and pressed a knee into his chest; the man’s hand had been raised, the knuckle of his middle finger extended in preparation for a killing blow to his throat …
But the blow had not come. Remembering back, the image etched clearly in his mind, it seemed to John that Swarzwalder’s fist had remained cocked, quivering with pent-up force over his throat, for a very long time. Then the other man’s eyes had changed, softened, as death had left them.
For some reason, Swarzwalder had decided not to kill him. Why? What possible alternative had been left to Swarzwalder, the assassin?
“Let them send you home.”
An earlier warning after the accident with the shaver—if it had really been an accident.
“You have any enemies, John?”
The wires in the electric razor had not looked frayed when he’d packed it, John thought. Had someone tried to kill him? Certainly not Swarzwalder, for it had been the big man who’d brought him back to life. Had Swarzwalder’s words been a warning? Of what? About whom? Had Swarzwalder been sending a warning about himself? Why would he do that?
Swarzwalder drowning …
Then Peters had arrived in the room, swooping down on Swarzwalder like some white-eyed angel of death wielding a scythe of leather and steel. The loop of leather had dropped around Swarzwalder’s neck and the big man had exploded backward in a blur of motion.
John did not remember getting to his feet. His next recollection was of standing, paralyzed by confusion and indecision, watching as Swarzwalder broke free. At that point, he had expected Swarzwalder to kill Peters and then come back after him. Swarzwalder had done neither. Instead, clutching at his broken throat, the big man had turned away from Peters. Toward him.
And pointed at the bed.
Swarzwalder floundering in the water: Swarzwalder, who didn’t usually rise particularly early, drowning in a dawn sea …
“Things here …”
Suddenly Alexandra had burst into the room. The radio had blared; Alexandra had attacked. He had tried to stop them and been knocked unconscious. He had regained consciousness to find Swarzwalder lying dead, his neck broken, a tiny rivulet of blood leaking into his shirt.
John shook his head. Why had Swarzwalder pointed at the bed? Or had he been pointing at the suitcase? Alexandra’s barrette? Why?
Barrette.
Alexandra had used her barrette to stab Swarzwalder.
At the time, John had simply assumed that Swarzwalder had searched Alexandra’s luggage first and for some reason kept the barrette. But why would the man do that? he wondered. Why pick up such an insignificant item in the first place, what’s more hang onto it?
The barrettes were from the past, John thought, and in that past he had never known Alexandra to carry an extra barrette with her. Why should she bring an extra barrette for a one-week trip to San Sierra?
Swarzwalder had been searching Peters’ suitcase, John thought, not Alexandra’s. Peters had been carrying the barrette in his suitcase.
There was something about the barrette.
Swarzwalder had been trying to warn him about Peters, John thought. Swarzwalder had been following him on that morning; the drowning had been staged. Swarzwalder had been trying all along to protect him from Peters.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Finway?”
John, dazed, slowly looked around to find Raul standing beside him. The gnomish Sierran had an anxious expression on his face. “What did you say?” John asked distantly.
“You dropped your coffee.”
John absently glanced down to see that the front of his slacks was stained with coffee; he had never even felt the warm liquid spill on him. He heard a rattling sound, his plastic cup rolling away.
“You know, amigo, I think I’d like to stay.”
“I don’t understand,” Raul said tightly.
John brushed casually at the stains on his slacks, then smiled broadly at the Sierran. Control, he thought. “Something just clicked inside my mind, Raul. What the hell; my marriage is finished, and I just realized that I don’t really give a damn. It’s a good feeling, let me tell you.”
“I’m sure it is, Mr. Finway, but—”
“I feel like celebrating. Come on, amigo, I’ll buy you a drink.”
Raul shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Finway. You can’t—”
“Hey Raul!” John said sharply. He struggled to keep smiling, to remain calm. “Why the hell shouldn’t I see Angeles Blanca too? I think I’ll stay and finish this tour just to show my wife I don’t give a damn what she does.”
Raul’s eyes went wide, and his pudgy hands clenched into fists. “You must get on the plane, Mr. Finway.”
“This is important to me, Raul,” John said, gripping the other man’s arms. “You saw what happened at Sierras Negras. I made an ass out of myself. I was humiliated. You’re a man; you can understand why I’d like to salvage a little dignity and self-respect. All I’m asking is that you let me finish the trip with the others. Let me leave San Sierra like a man.”
“You are not well, Mr. Finway. You don’t know what you want. You must go home and rest. You’ll be there in a few hours.” He paused, shrugged nervously. “Besides, how can I get your bags back?”
John stared intently at the other man for a long time as he concentrated on keeping his breathing even. “Have my bags sent on to New York,” he said at last. “I don’t need them.”
“You must go. It’s been arranged.”
“We’ll compromise. My wife and Peters will be at the Coconut Club right now with the rest of the group. Zip me over there just long enough for me to tell Alexandra I don’t give a damn anymore. I promise you I’ll keep it private and won’t make a scene. All I want is five minutes—one minute!—alone with my wife. How about it?”
“No, Mr. Finway. Please sit down and try to relax.”
“You sit down and try to relax!” John snapped, abruptly stepping around Raul and heading for one of the three exits. “I paid for this trip, and no one’s officially told me that I’m being thrown out of the country. I’m goddamn well going back with the others. If you won’t take me, I’ll walk or hitch a ride.”
“Guard! Guard!”
John stopped walking as he saw the soldiers snap to attention, blocking off the exits.
Think! You’ve got to get out of here!
He wheeled and strode quickly back to Raul. He wrapped his fingers tightly around the Sierran’s upper arms and lifted the other man up on his toes. “Listen to me, you stupid little bastard,” John said through clenched teeth. “Rick Peters is planning to kill Manuel Salva and my wife. If you don’t let me out of here, he’s probably going to get away with it.”
Raul’s eyes seemed to swell in his head until they appeared like chocolate-brown balloons inflated with shock and panic. “You are a crazy man!” he blubbered. “Get away from me! Guard!”
John fought against the panic rising in him, clouding his mind. He could go quietly with the guards and try to get someone in authority to listen to him, but there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t be ignored; his story could easily fall through the cracks of a bureaucracy notorious for being filled with people who loathed making decisions or upsetting their superiors.
Even if the authorities did believe him and decide to go after Peters, it could easily be mishandled and Alexandra could die. If Peters didn’t kill her, the Sierrans might—if not by design, by accident. Alexandra would end up a hostage, and saving her life would not be high on the Sierran’s list of priorities. The Sierrans might decide that the easiest way to deal with the dragons was to shoot them both.
Once he went with the guards, the matter would be completely out of his hands; he would be totally dependent upon the Sierran authorities to save Alexandra’s life.
Suddenly, with absolute clarity, John understood that Alexandra would die if he could not get to her.
He could hear the guards’ footsteps directly behind him. There was only one way left to go, and John knew he did not have the time or the courage to consciously debate whether or not he could survive the attempt. The time for thinking was over, and he allowed the volatile fuel of residual panic to flow through him unchecked, launching him into an action his mind would call madness but which his heart, his love for his wife and children, demanded. He slammed his fist into Raul’s face, then sprinted toward the bank of windows.
Pieces of rational thought danced in the fire within him; it occurred to him that the glass would be heavily reinforced and that he would break his neck or cut his throat if he tried to go through it headfirst. As he ran he instinctively pulled the collar of his jacket up around his neck and hunched his shoulders. He leaped up on a chair to catapult himself the last few feet, somersaulting in the air at the last second so that his back absorbed the force of his impact with the glass.
It felt as though he were hitting a wall, but then the window exploded around him and he tumbled out into the hot night air amid a shower of glass. His forehead, hands, and right thigh suddenly burned with what felt like bee stings, but he had chosen his spot correctly; he tumbled through the air and landed hard on a metal surface that gave slightly under him as it emitted a loud bass-drum sound. Disoriented and out of breath, John reflexively threw his arms across his face to protect his eyes from the shards of glass raining on him, then rolled to his right. He fell off the top of the truck to the roof of the cab, then slid down the windshield and fender to the ground. He landed on the macadam and immediately started running.
He stumbled and fell, cushioning the shock with hands that were warm and slippery with blood. In an instant he was up and running again, racing directly away from the terminal building toward the field of darkness beyond a network of runways trimmed with tiny, bright lights.
There were sounds behind him like a multitude of popping champagne corks, and John realized that the guards were shooting at him with their automatic weapons. The macadam around him erupted in small, black puffs. His lungs burned, and he had lost feeling in his legs. He put his head down and pumped his arms as he ran across an alleyway of light. Then he was past the first runway. He tripped and rolled onto a dry, ragged carpet of grass as bullets whined in the night around him.