Walter Cole got back to me the next morning. I was still asleep when he called. I had faxed him the list of the numbers called from Eddie Tager’s cell phone and asked him to see what he could do with them. If he had no luck, there were others I could turn to, this time outside the law. I just thought Walter could get the information more quickly than I could.
“You know that tampering with mail is a federal crime?” he said.
“I didn’t tamper. I mistakenly assumed that it was addressed to me.”
“Well, that’s good enough for me. Anyone can make a mistake. I have to tell you, though: I’m running out of favors I can call in. I think this is it.”
“You’ve done enough, and more. Don’t sweat it.”
“You want me to fax this to you?”
“Later. For now, just read me the names. Take them from around 1 A.M. on the date I marked. That’s about the time Alice was picked up on the streets.” Someone must have contacted Tager to tell him to bail Alice, and I was hoping that he had called that person back once he was done.
He read me the list of names, but I didn’t recognize any of them. Most of them were men. Two were women.
“Give me the women’s names again.”
“Gale Friedman and Hope Zahn.”
“The second one, was that a business or personal number?”
“It’s a cell. The bills go to a box number on the Upper West Side, registered with a private company named Robson Realty. Robson was part of the Ambassade group, the same one that was looking after the apartment development in Williamsburg. Seems like Tager called her twice: once at 4:04 A.M., and once at 4:35 A.M. There were no more calls from his cell until the next afternoon, and her number doesn’t show up again.”
Hope Zahn. I pictured Sekula in his pristine anteroom, asking his coldly beautiful secretary not to disturb him—No calls, please, Hope—while he sized me up. Sekula’s days were numbered.
“Is that any help?” asked Walter.
“You just confirmed something for me. Can you fax that info to my room?”
I had a personal fax machine on the desk in the corner. I gave him the number again.
“I also checked the cell phone number that G-Mack gave us,” said Walter. “The phone belonged to a Point junkie named Lucius Cope. Cope vanished three weeks ago.”
“If they had his phone, then he’s dead.”
“So, what now?”
“I have to go home. After that, it all depends.”
“On what?”
“The kindness of strangers, I guess. Or maybe kindness isn’t the right word . . .”
∗ ∗ ∗
I headed out for coffee and called Sekula’s office along the way. A woman answered the phone, but I could tell that it wasn’t Sekula’s usual secretary. This girl was so chirpy she belonged in an aviary.
“Hello, could I speak to Hope Zahn, please?”
“Uh, I’m afraid she’s out of the office for a few days. Could I take a message?”
“How about Mr. Sekula?”
“He’s also unavailable.”
“When do you expect them back?”
“I’m sorry,” said the secretary, “but may I ask who’s calling?”
“Tell Hope that Eddie Tager called. It’s in connection with Alice Temple.”
At the very least, if Zahn or Sekula checked back with the office, it would give them something to think about.
“Does she have your number?”
“She’d like to think so,” I said, then thanked her for her time and hung up.
∗ ∗ ∗
Sandy Crane was a little concerned about her husband, which meant that the week was turning into a real collection of firsts for her: the first promise of money in a while; the first mutual joy she and her husband had experienced since Larry had finally succumbed to senescence; and now concern for her husband’s well-being, albeit tinged by a considerable degree of self-interest. He hadn’t yet returned from his visit to his old war buddy, but he occasionally spent nights away from home, so it wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary. Usually, though, his absences coincided with horse races in Florida, and rarely now did he embark upon a journey with the sense of purpose he had shown the day before. Sandy knew that her husband liked to gamble. It worried her some, but so long as he kept it within reason, she wasn’t going to raise a fuss. If she started complaining about his spending, then he might in turn decide to curb her excesses, and Sandy had few enough luxuries in her life as things stood.
Sandy wouldn’t have put it past the old fart to try to cut her out of the deal entirely, though her fears were allayed slightly by the knowledge that Larry needed her. He was aged and weak, and he had no friends. Even if that stuck-up sonofabitch Hall agreed to play ball, Larry would need her by his side to make sure that he wasn’t taken for a ride. She was still a little surprised that Larry hadn’t called the night before, but he was like that. Perhaps he’d found a bar where he could bitch and moan for the night or, if Hall was willing to cooperate, where he could get himself a mild drunk on to celebrate. Even now, he was probably sleeping it off in a motel room between trips to the john to empty his bladder. Larry would be back, one way or another.
Sandy sipped a double vodka—another first, this time of day—and thought some more about what she might do with the money: new clothes, for a start, and a car that didn’t smell of old man stink. She also liked the idea of a younger guy, one with a firm body and a motor that purred instead of sputtering like the failing engines of the men who currently serviced her occasional needs. She wouldn’t object to paying by the hour for him, either. That way, there was nothing he could refuse to do for her.
The doorbell rang, and she spilled a little of her vodka in her rush to rise from her chair. Larry had a key, so it couldn’t be Larry. But suppose something had happened to him? Maybe that bastard Hall had allowed his conscience to get the better of him and confessed all to the cops. If that was the case, then Sandy Crane would plead dumber than the special kids in the little bus that passed by her house every morning, the spooky-faced people inside waving at her like they thought she gave a rat’s ass about them when they really just creeped her out worse than snakes and spiders.
A man and a woman stood at the door. They were well dressed: the man in a gray suit, the woman in a blue jacket and skirt. Even Sandy had to admit that the woman was a looker: long dark hair, pale features, tight body. The man carried a briefcase in his hand, and the woman a brown leather satchel over her right shoulder.
“Mrs. Crane?” said the man. “My name is Sekula. I’m an attorney from New York. This is my assistant, Miss Zahn. Your husband contacted our firm yesterday. He said he had an item in which we might be interested.”
Sandy didn’t know whether to curse her husband’s name or applaud his foresight. It depended on how things worked out for them, she supposed. The old fool was so anxious to ensure a sale that he’d contacted the people who’d sent the letter before he even had his hands on both the box and the paper it had once contained. She could almost picture him, a sly grin on his face as he convinced himself that he was playing these big-city folk like they were violins, except he wasn’t that smart. He’d given too much away, or raised their expectations so high that they were now at her door. Sandy wondered if he’d told them about Mark Hall, but immediately decided that he hadn’t. If they knew about Hall, then they would be standing on his doorstep, not her own.
“My husband isn’t here right now,” she said. “I’m expecting him back any moment.”
The smile on Sekula’s face didn’t falter.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind if we waited for him. We really are anxious to secure the item as soon as possible, and with the minimum of fuss and attention.”
Sandy shifted uneasily on her feet.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sure you people are okay and all, but I don’t really like letting strangers into my house.”
The smile seemingly etched on Sekula’s face was starting to creep her out like the smiles of the kids on the bus. There was something blank about it. Even shit-for-brains Hall managed to inject a little humanity into his hammy grins when he was trying to sell some deadbeat an automobile.
“I understand,” said Sekula. “I wonder if this might convince you of our good intentions?”
He leaned his briefcase against the wall, snapped the locks, and opened it so that Sandy could see the contents: a small stack of dead presidents lined up like little Mount Rushmores in green.
“Just a token of our goodwill,” said Sekula.
Sandy felt herself grow moist.
“I think I can make an exception,” she said. “Just this once.”
The funny thing about it was that Sekula didn’t want to harm the woman. That was how they had remained hidden for so long, when others had been hunted down. They did not hurt people unless it was absolutely necessary, or they had not until Sekula’s investigations had added a degree of urgency to their quest. The subsequent recruitment by Brightwell of the odious Garcia had marked the beginning of the next phase, and an escalation in violence.
Sekula was a longtime Believer. He was recruited to the cause shortly after his graduation from law school. The recruitment had been subtle, and gradual, drawing on his already prodigious legal skills to track suspicious sales and to ascertain ownership and origins wherever necessary, gradually progressing to more detailed explorations of the shadowy, secret lives that so many people concealed from those around them. He viewed this as a fascinating endeavor, even as he came to understand that he was being used to target the individuals for their exploitation rather than to assist in any prosecution, public or private. The information gathered by Sekula was utilized against them, and his employers amassed influence, knowledge, and wealth as a consequence, but Sekula quickly discovered that he was untroubled by this realization. He was a lawyer, after all, and had he entered the arena of criminal law, he would surely have found himself defending what most ordinary people would regard as the indefensible. By comparison, the work in which he was engaged was initially morally compromised in only the faintest of ways. He had grown wealthy as a result, wealthier than most of his peers who worked twice as hard as he, and he had gained other rewards too, Hope Zahn among them. He had been directed to employ her, and he had done so willingly. Since then, she had proved invaluable to him, both personally, professionally, and, it had to be admitted, sexually. If Sekula had a weakness, it was women, but Ms. Zahn fed his every sexual appetite, and some others that he didn’t even know were there until she discovered them for him.
And when, after a number of years, Sekula was informed of the true nature of their quest, he could barely work up the energy to be even slightly surprised. He wondered, sometimes, if this was an indication of the extent to which he had been corrupted, or whether it was always in his nature, and his employers had recognized it long before he himself had. In fact, it had been Sekula’s idea to target the veterans, inspired by his discovery of the details of a sale conducted through an intermediary in Switzerland shortly after the end of the Second World War. The sale had passed unnoticed amid the flurry of deals in the aftermath of the war, when looted items changed hands at a frightening rate, their previous owners, in many cases, reduced to a coating of ash on the trees of Eastern Europe. It was only when Sekula gained copies of the records of the auction house from a disgruntled employee aware of the lawyer’s willingness to pay moderately well for such information that the entry was revealed to him. Sekula was grateful to the Swiss for their scrupulous attention to detail, which meant that even deals of dubious origin were all recorded and accounted for. In many ways, he reflected, the Swiss had more in common with the Nazis in their desire to document their wrongdoings than they might like to admit.
The entry was straightforward, detailing the sale of a fourteenth-century jeweled monstrance to a private collector based in Helsinki. Included was a careful description of the item, sufficient to indicate to Sekula that it was part of the trove stolen from Fontfroide; the final sale price agreed; the house’s commission; and the balance to be forwarded to the seller. The nominal seller was a private dealer named Jacques Gaud, based in Paris. Sekula carefully followed the paper trail back to Gaud, then pounced. Gaud’s family had since built up their grandfather’s business and now enjoyed a considerable reputation in the trade. Sekula, by examining the records of the Swiss auction house, had found at least a dozen further transactions instigated by Gaud that could charitably be described as suspicious. He cross-checked the items in question against his own list of treasures looted or “disappeared” during the war, and came up with enough evidence to brand Gaud as a profiteer from the misery of others, and to effectively destroy the reputation of his descendants’ business as well as placing them at risk of ruinous criminal and civil actions. Following discreet approaches, and assurances from Sekula that the information he had obtained would go no further, the house of Gaud et Frères discreetly released to him copies of all the paperwork relating to the sale of the Fontfroide treasures.
It was there that the trail ran out, for the payment made through Gaud to the actual seller (following a deduction by Gaud for his assistance that was excessive to the point of extortion) was in the form of cash. The only clue that the current owners of the business were able to offer as to the identity of the men in question was that Gaud had indicated they were American soldiers. This was hardly surprising to Sekula, as the Allies were just as capable of looting as the Nazis, but he was aware of the twin massacres at Narbonne and Fontfroide. It was possible that survivors of the former might in turn have been involved in the latter, although the Americans were not present in the area in significant numbers by that phase of the war. Nevertheless, Sekula had identified a possible connection between the killing of a platoon of American GIs by SS raiders, and the SS raiders’ deaths, in turn, at Fontfroide. Through contacts in the Veterans Administration and the VFW, he discovered the identities of the surviving soldiers based in the region at the time, as well as the addresses of those others who had lost relatives in the encounter. He then sent out over a thousand letters seeking general information on wartime souvenirs that might be of interest to collectors, and a handful containing more specific information relating to the missing Fontfroide trove. If he was wrong, then there was always the chance that the letters might still elicit some useful information. If he was right, they would serve to cover his tracks. The target-specific letters detailed the rewards to be gained for the sale of unusual items deriving from the Second World War, including material not itself directly related to the conflict, with particular emphasis on manuscripts. It contained repeated assurances that all responses would be handled in the strictest confidence. The real bait was the entry from the auction catalog issued by the House of Stern, with its photograph of a battered silver box. Sekula could only hope that whoever had taken it had held on to both the box and its contents.
Then, late the previous morning, a man had called and described to Sekula what could only be a fragment of the map and the box in which it was contained. The caller was old, and tried to retain his anonymity, but he had given himself away from the moment that he used his home phone to dial New York. Now here they were, one day later, seated with an ugly drunk in polyester pants spotted with spilled vodka, watching as she got progressively more intoxicated.
“He’ll be home soon,” she repeatedly reassured the visitors, slurring her words. “I can’t imagine where he’s gotten to.”
Sandy asked them to show her the money again, and Sekula obliged. She ran a pudgy finger over the faces on the notes and giggled to herself.
“Wait until he sees all this,” she said. “The old fart will shit himself.”
“Perhaps, while we’re waiting, we might take a look at the item,” Sekula suggested.
Sandy tapped her nose with the side of her finger.
“All in good time,” she said. “Larry will get it for you, even if he has to beat it out of the old fuck.”
Sekula felt Miss Zahn tense beside him. For the first time, his unthreatening façade began to fragment.
“Do you mean that the item is not actually your husband’s to sell?” he asked, carefully.
Sandy Crane tried to retrieve her mistake, but it was too late.
“No, it’s his to sell, but you see there’s this other fella and, well, he has a say in it too. But he’ll agree. Larry will make him agree.”
“Who is he, Mrs. Crane?” said Sekula.
Sandy shook her head. If she told him, he’d go away and talk to Hall himself, and he’d take all that lovely money with him. She’d said too much already. It was time to clam up.
“He’ll be back soon,” she said firmly. “Believe me, it’s all taken care of.”
Sekula stood. It should have been easy. The money would have been handed over, the manuscript would have come into their possession, and they would simply have left. If Brightwell subsequently decided to kill the seller, then that was his call to make. He should have guessed that it would never be so simple.
Sekula wasn’t good at this part. That was why Miss Zahn was with him. Miss Zahn was very good at it, very good indeed. She was already on her feet, removing her jacket and unbuttoning her blouse while Sandy Crane watched, her mouth hanging open as she made vague sounds of incomprehension. It was only when Miss Zahn undid the last button and slipped the blouse from her body that the Crane woman at last began to understand.
Sekula thought the tattoos upon his lover’s body were fascinating, even if he found it almost impossible to imagine the pain that their creation must have caused her. Apart from her face and hands, her skin was entirely obscured by illustrations, the monstrous, distorted faces blending into one another so it was almost impossible to identify individual beings among them. Yet it was the eyes that were the most disturbing aspect, even for Sekula. There were so many of them, large and small, encompassing every imaginable color, like oval wounds upon her body. Now, as she advanced toward Sandy Crane, they seemed to alter, the pupils expanding and contracting, the eyes rotating in their sockets, exploring this new unfamiliar place, with the drunken woman now cowering before them.
But it was probably no more than a trick of the light.
Sekula stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind him. He went into the dining room across the hall and sat down in an armchair. It gave him a clear view of the driveway and the street beyond. He tried to find a magazine to read, but all he could see were copies of Reader’s Digest and some supermarket tabloids. He heard Mrs. Crane say something in the room beyond, then her voice became muffled. Seconds later, Sekula grimaced as she started screaming against the gag.
∗ ∗ ∗
The FBI’s New York field division had moved location so often in its history that it should have been staffed by Gypsies. In 1910, when it first opened, it was located in the old post office building, a site now occupied by City Hall Park. Since then, it had opened up shop at various points on Park Row; in the SubTreasury Building at Wall and Nassau; at Grand Central Terminal; in the U.S. Courthouse at Foley Square; on Broadway; and in the former Lincoln Warehouse at East Sixty-ninth, before finally making a home at the Jacob Javits Federal Building, down near Foley Square again.
I called the FBI shortly before eleven and asked to be put through to Special Agent Philip Bosworth, the man who had visited Neddo to inquire about his knowledge of Sedlec and the Believers. I got bounced around before ending up with the OSM’s department, or what used to be the chief clerk’s office before everybody got a shiny new title. The office service manager and his staff were responsible for noninvestigative matters. A man who identified himself as Grantley asked me my name and business. I gave him my license number and told him I was trying to get in touch with Special Agent Bosworth regarding a missing person investigation.
“Special Agent Bosworth is no longer with this office,” said Grantley.
“Well, can you tell me where I can find him?”
“No.”
“Can I give you my number and maybe you could pass it on to him?”
“No.”
“Can you help me in any way at all?”
“I don’t think so.”
I thanked him. I wasn’t sure for what, but it seemed the polite thing to do.
Edgar Ross was still one of the special agents in charge at the New York division. Unlike SACs in most of the other field offices, the SAC wasn’t the final authority in New York. Ross answered to the assistant director in charge, a pretty good guy named Wilmots, but Ross still had a whole family of hungry assistant SACs under his command and was therefore the most influential law enforcement official I knew. Our paths had crossed during the pursuit of the man who had killed Susan and Jennifer, and I think Ross felt he owed me a little slack as a result of what had occurred. I even suspected that he had a grudging affection for me, but maybe that was the result of my watching too many TV cop shows in which gruff lieutenants secretly harbored homoerotic fantasies about the mavericks under their command. I didn’t think Ross’s feelings about me went quite that far, but then he was a difficult man to read sometimes. One never knew.
I called his office shortly after I was done with Grantley. I gave my name to Ross’s secretary and waited. When she came back on the line, she told me that Ross wasn’t available, but said she’d pass on the fact that I’d called. I thought about holding my breath while I waited for him to call back, but figured that I’d have blacked out long before that ever happened. From the brief delay in our exchange, though, I gathered that Ross was around but had tightened up since last we spoke. I was anxious to get back to Rachel and Sam, but I wanted to accumulate all the information that I could before I left the city. I felt I had no option but to take an expensive cab ride down to Federal Plaza.
The area was a peculiar clash of cultures: on the east side of Broadway there were the big federal buildings, surrounded by concrete barricades and adorned with weird rusting pieces of modern sculpture. On the other side, directly facing the might of the FBI, were storefronts that advertised cheap watches and caps while doing a profitable sideline in assisting with immigration applications, and discount clothing stores that offered suits for $59.99. I grabbed a coffee at a Dunkin’ Donuts, then settled down to wait for Ross. He was, if nothing else, a man of routine. He’d confessed as much to me, the last time we’d met. I knew that he liked to eat most days at Stark’s Veranda, at the corner of Broadway and Thomas, a government hangout that had been around since the end of the nineteenth century, and I just hoped that he hadn’t suddenly taken to lunching at his desk. By the time he eventually emerged from his office I’d been waiting two hours and my coffee was long since finished, but I felt a touch of satisfaction at my investigative skills when he headed for the Veranda, quickly followed by the pain of rejection when I saw the expression on his face as I fell into step beside him.
“No,” he said. “Get lost.”
“You don’t write, you don’t call,” I said. “We’re losing touch. What we have now just isn’t the same as it used to be.”
“I don’t want to be in touch with you. I want you to leave me alone.”
“Buy me lunch?”
“No. No! What part of ‘leave me alone’ don’t you understand?”
He stopped at the crosswalk. It was a mistake. He should have taken his chances with the traffic.
“I’m trying to trace one of your agents,” I said.
“Look, I’m not your personal go-to guy at the Bureau,” said Ross. “I’m a busy man. There are terrorists out there, drug dealers, mobsters. They all require my attention. They take up a lot of my time. The rest, I save for people I like: my family, my friends, and basically anyone who isn’t you.”
He scowled at the oncoming traffic. He might even have been tempted to draw his gun and wave it around threateningly in order to cross.
“Come on, I know you secretly like me,” I said. “You’ve probably got my name written on your pencil case. The agent’s name is Philip Bosworth. The OSM’s office told me he was no longer with the division. I’d just like to get in touch with him.”
I had to give him credit for trying to shake me off. I took my eye off him for just a second, and instantly he was skipping through oncoming traffic like a government-funded Frogger. I caught up with him, though.
“I was hoping you’d be killed,” he said, but secretly I knew he was impressed.
“You pretend you’re such a tough guy,” I said, “but I know you’re all warm and fuzzy inside. Look, I just need to ask Bosworth some questions, that’s all.”
“Why? Why is he important to you?”
“The thing in Williamsburg, the human remains in the warehouse? He may know something about the background of the people involved.”
“People? I heard there was one guy. He got shot. You shot him. You shoot a lot of people. You ought to stop.”
We were at the entrance to the Veranda. If I tried to follow Ross inside, the staff would have my ass on the sidewalk faster than you could say “deadbeat.” I could see him balancing the wisdom of stepping inside and trying to forget about me against the possibility that I might know something useful—that, and the likelihood that I would still be outside when he was done, and the whole thing would just start over again.
“Somebody set him up there, gave him a place to live and work,” I said. “He didn’t do it alone.”
“The cops said you were investigating a missing person case.”
“How’d you know that?”
“We get bulletins. I had someone call the Nine-Six when your name came up.”
“See, I knew you cared.”
“Caring is relative. Who was the girl they found?”
“Alice Temple. Friend of a friend.”
“You don’t have too many friends, and I have my suspicions about some of the ones you do have. You keep bad company.”
“Do I have to listen to the lecture before you help me?”
“You see, that’s why things are always so difficult with you. You don’t know when to stop. I’ve never met a guy who was so keen on mixing it up.”
“Bosworth,” I said. “Philip Bosworth.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Someone will get back to you, maybe. Don’t call me, okay? Just don’t call me.”
The Veranda’s door opened, and we stepped aside to let a gaggle of old women leave. As the last of them departed, Ross slipped inside the restaurant. I was left holding the door.
I counted to five, waiting until just before he got out of sight.
“So,” I shouted, “I’ll call you, right?”
∗ ∗ ∗
Mark Hall couldn’t stop vomiting. Ever since he’d come home, his stomach had bubbled with acid, until eventually it just rebelled and began spewing out its contents. He had barely slept the night before, and now his head and body ached dully. He was just thankful that his wife was away; otherwise, she’d have been fussing over him, insisting that a doctor should be called. Instead, he was free to slump on the bathroom floor, his cheek flat against the cool of the toilet bowl, waiting for the next spasm to hit. He didn’t know how long he’d been there. All he knew was that whenever he thought of what he’d done to Larry, the smell of Crane’s last breath came back to him, like Larry’s ghost was breathing upon him from the beyond, and a fresh bout of puking would immediately commence.
It was strange. He had hated Crane for so long. Every time Hall saw him, it was as though he were watching an imp grinning at him from beyond the grave, a reminder of the judgment he must inevitably face for his sins. He had long hoped that Crane would simply crawl off and die, but as in wartime, Larry Crane had proved to be a tenacious survivor.
Mark Hall had killed his share of men during the war: some of them from far away, distant figures falling in the echo of a rifle shot, others up close and personal, so that their blood had spattered his skin and stained his uniform. None of those deaths had troubled him after the first, as the naive boy who had taken the bus to basic training was transformed into a man capable of ending the life of another. It was a just war, and had he not killed them, then they would surely have dispatched him. But he had believed his days of killing to be far behind him, and he had never envisioned himself taking a knife to an unarmed old man, even one as odious as Larry Crane. The shock of it, and the disgust that it engendered, had sucked the energy from him, and nothing could ever be the same again.
Hall heard the doorbell ring, but he didn’t get up to answer it. He couldn’t. He was too weak to stand and too ashamed to face anyone even if he could. He stayed on the floor, his eyes closed. He must have dozed off, because the next thing he remembered, the bathroom door was opening, and he was looking at two pairs of feet: a woman’s and a man’s. His eyes followed the woman’s legs over her skirt to her hands. Hall thought that he could see blood on them. He wondered if his own hands looked the same way to her.
“Who are you?” he said. He could barely speak. His voice sounded like the slow sweepings of a yard brush over dusty ground.
“We’ve come to talk about Larry Crane,” said Sekula. Hall tried to raise his head to look, but it hurt him to move.
“I haven’t seen him,” said Hall.
Sekula squatted before the old man. He had a clean, scrubbed face and good teeth. Hall didn’t like him one bit.
“What are you, police?” said Hall. “If you’re cops, show me some ID.”
“Why would you think we are police, Mr. Hall? Is there something you’d like to share with us? Have you been a bad boy?”
Hall dry-retched, the memory of Larry Crane’s death smell coming back to him.
“Mr. Hall, we’re in kind of a hurry,” said Sekula. “I think you know what we’ve come for.”
Dumb, greedy Larry Crane. Even in death he had found a way to ruin Mark Hall.
“It’s gone,” said Hall. “He took it with him.”
“Where?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“To hell with you. Get out of my house.”
Sekula rose and nodded to Miss Zahn. This time, he stayed in the room, just to make sure that she understood the urgency of the situation. It didn’t take long. The old man started talking as soon as the needle approached his eye, but Miss Zahn inserted it anyway, just to be sure that he wasn’t lying. By that time, Sekula had looked away. The stink of vomit was already getting to him.
When she was done, they took Hall, now blind in his left eye, and bundled him into the car, then drove him to where he had dumped the body of Larry Crane in a muddy hollow beside a filthy swamp. The box was cradled against Crane’s chest, where Hall had placed it before leaving his old war buddy to rot. After all, he figured that if Crane wanted it so badly, he should take it with him wherever he was going.
Carefully, Sekula removed the box from the old man’s grasp, and opened it. The fragment was inside, and undamaged. The box had been well designed, capable of protecting its contents from water, from snow, from anything that might damage the information it held.
“It’s intact,” said Sekula to the woman. “We’re so close now.”
Mark Hall, the Auto King, sat on the dirt in his old man pants, his left hand cupped to his gouged eye. When Miss Zahn took him by the hand and led him to the water, he did not struggle, not even when she forced him to kneel and held his head beneath the surface until he drowned. When he grew still, they dragged him to the hollow and laid him beside his former comrade, uniting the two old men in death as they had been united, however unwillingly, in life.