Four days after Whirlwind had pulled him off the street, on the evening of Monday, December 22, Michael was lying on his bed, his right forearm across his eyes, when his cell phone rang.
‘Yes?’
‘Revelation’ – the codename for Whirlwind’s ‘D-Day’ – minus two days, and it seemed that his heart had hardly stopped hammering since Thursday night, and this was all happening too damned fast.
He and Reaper had met twice since then. First on Saturday evening in a bar less than a half-mile from Michael’s room. Second time yesterday in a busy Starbucks – kids’ noise keeping their conversation private – where Reaper had bought him a ham-and-Swiss.
The man was tall and thin, his hair iron-gray, short and sparse, his eyes gray too, couched in wrinkles behind small oval spectacles. His nose was small and mottled, his mouth narrow, his face lined. He wore an old tailored topcoat and black wool scarf, and he walked with a black cane, and Michael thought he might have arthritis, had noticed flickers of discomfort, though the other man had not complained. His age was hard to determine, probably mid-sixties, and he appeared stoic and sane.
Despite the ‘mission’ he’d outlined on Saturday, which had sounded totally crazy to Michael and scared him half to death.
Now only four days since he’d jumped off that cliff, and no question he was being pulled headfirst into a major crime. If it actually came to pass, which, right now, Michael hoped it would not.
Two all-too-real items had been delivered by courier on Sunday morning before he’d left to meet Reaper – both seeming to confirm that, in criminal terms, Whirlwind was the real deal. A credit card and driver’s license, both in the name of Michael Rees (maybe a real person someplace, maybe deceased, he didn’t want to know) complete with signature and PIN to enable him to purchase anything he might need in the run-up to Revelation.
He’d already learned a good deal about the ‘mission’ in that bar. More than enough to ensure his close attention. More to follow on Sunday and, finally, at the chosen time.
During Revelation itself.
‘So,’ Reaper had said in Starbucks after outlining the plan. ‘What do you think?’
That he wanted out.
‘Are you saying I still have a choice?’
‘There are always choices.’
‘You’d let me walk away?’
‘Of course.’ The older man had smiled. ‘I’m not sure how far.’
A threat, plainly. No great surprise given how much Michael now knew.
He’d asked when he would meet with the team.
‘Probably not until D-Day.’
They’d had a brief conversation about justice.
Nearly forty years overdue.
Except there had to be better ways, had to be.
‘Why not just go to the cops?’ Michael had asked again.
Reaper had smiled. ‘First, if I went near the cops, that would be the end. Second, your cause is not the only one crucial to Whirlwind.’
‘What if I’d refused?’
‘You’d have missed out. The operation would still have gone ahead.’
‘I still don’t know what exactly is in this for you,’ Michael had said. ‘I’m taking it that yours is the other “cause” that’s crucial to Whirlwind?’
‘I won’t answer that yet,’ Reaper had said. ‘Other than to say that our causes – yours and mine – are much more closely linked than you could possibly imagine.’
Tantalizing as that answer had been, it had still not felt like enough to Michael, not nearly enough, leaving him with the certainty that he needed to get out, run, maybe catch a Greyhound someplace – just get lost.
Though the old loneliness and bleakness would travel with him.
And then, later, back in his shitty room, the sense of isolation had become so intense again, the grindingly relentless absence of motivation …
Whirlwind was dangling its promise of something.
Reaper had been totally straight with him about one thing.
‘It may all go wrong,’ he’d said. ‘Badly wrong.’
‘That seems like a given.’
Reaper had said nothing.
‘So a good chance of prison,’ Michael had said. ‘Or worse.’
The man called Reaper had smiled his thin smile.
‘Depends on your outlook,’ he’d said.
By Monday evening, two more things had arrived. A padded envelope containing keys and a note informing him that a gray Toyota Corolla was waiting for him around the corner, a bag in the trunk. A car, delivered by persons unknown – maybe in the team, maybe not.
Hell, this was no team, this was a gang, and he was a part of it now.
A criminal.
And nothing trivial.
Hard to believe he’d come to this, because he’d thought of himself, in the distant past, as a decent person. Had still harbored a hope that he might, some day, be able to return to feeling that way about himself.
It would never happen now. Not after this.
Which was painful to bear.
The bag in the trunk had contained clothing, scale drawings, a flashlight and a MacBook. And something else in the padded envelope: a USB flash drive containing a kind of home movie ‘Who’s Who in Shiloh, Rhode Island?’ narrated by Reaper.
Michael had played it with deep interest.
No one there he actually knew, though there were names he was familiar with. His grandfather’s name repeated several times.
And now, this phone call.
‘Isaiah?’ Reaper’s voice said.
Michael was getting almost accustomed to being called that, though the other alias worried the hell out of him: initials the same, but having to practice forging the signature on the license and credit card, knowing he’d have to turn around when someone called him ‘Rees’.
Major Felony 101.
‘Did you find the car and contents?’
‘I did.’
‘Computer work OK?’
‘Fine,’ Michael said.
‘Clothes fit?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’ve watched my little movie.’
‘Yes.’
‘Feeling all right?’ Reaper asked.
‘I guess.’
‘Questions?’
‘A thousand, but not right now.’
‘So you’re all set?’
Michael shut his eyes.
‘As I’ll ever be,’ he said.
In the armchair in his room at the Red Door Inn, Reaper keyed in another number on his phone, and waited.
‘Yes,’ the voice at the other end answered.
Its tone keen and sharp.
‘Jeremiah?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ready to go?’
‘You bet,’ Jeremiah said.
Reaper cut off the call, made another, then waited briefly.
‘Luke?’ he said.
‘Why did you talk me into going?’ Liza asked Ben just before he left that evening on his way to pick up Gina, his girlfriend, to drive to her parents’ in New Jersey for the holidays.
‘I didn’t. That was your conscience speaking.’
‘They’re forecasting snow,’ Liza told him. ‘Be careful.’
‘You too. Leave early, allow extra time.’
‘Maybe I should stay here.’ Liza flopped onto the couch.
‘Don’t start again.’ Ben bent, pulled out a gift-wrapped package from under his desk and tossed it to her. ‘Not to be opened till Christmas morning.’
Liza felt it. ‘Soft. Yours is by the front door.’ She squished her gift. ‘What is it?’
‘Something you might need in Shiloh,’ Ben said.
‘It’s too big to be Valium,’ Liza said.