“Good-bye, Beth.”
“We’ll be waiting.” She said it without conviction.
He watched as she climbed up out of sight. A stone door slid shut, fitting so tight he could barely see the joint. How many access points were there?
Then he stepped off down the tunnel to hunt Kurt Raeder.
35
A Boeing 747, over the Pacific
September 7, Present Day
R ominy had never flown business class before, but Jake persuaded her that they needed the indulgence to rest before the tiring journey ahead. “And we need room to inspect Benjamin Hood’s lost satchel with some measure of privacy. You want to do a treasure map in the middle seat, coach?”
Since the money she’d just inherited didn’t seem real, she’d acquiesced to the surreal $5,000 one-way cost for the two of them. She was betting on Jake Barrow, despite her doubts: in for a penny, in for a pound. His sense of purpose, confidence, and journalistic mission had cast a spell. They’d raced from the Cascade River road in a stolen SUV, taken back roads to Darrington and Granite Falls, and driven to Seattle’s airport without stopping. She’d asked to get fresh clothes at her apartment and he’d refused.
“Too risky. The skinheads might be watching. We’ll buy a few things at the airport.”
“Jake, the police are looking for me. I can’t just disappear.”
“You have to, for a while.”
“ How? ”
He thought. “Your adoptive parents are retired, right?”
“In Mexico. They don’t keep track of me.”
“Close relatives?”
“No.”
“We just need a few weeks. We’re going to stop at the Business Center at the airport and set up a new e-mail account. Write your boss that you’re alive. Mention something only you and he would know you’re working on, so he knows it’s you. Then say you quit.”
“What!”
He glanced at her, gaze opaque behind sunglasses he’d found in the glove department. “You’ve got more than a hundred thousand dollars in the bank, a dead-end job, and the adventure of a lifetime, as they say on TV. Do you want to go back to your cubicle? An e-mail will save police the trouble of looking for you. The money gives you a year or two to look for a job. To travel, first, if you want. To see what happens between us. And if you decide to bail on me… they’ll probably hire you back.”
Probably not, but yes, a door had cracked open to freedom. It was as terrifying as it was exhilarating. She bit her lip. “All right.” She considered. “That doesn’t explain the MINI Cooper.”
“E-mail a friend that you’ve met a guy who’s changed your life and you’re on a journey of self-discovery. That’s true, isn’t it? I torched your car for the insurance to get some cash to travel with. You never thought it would be on the news, but don’t worry, you’re safe and happy.”
She blinked at the audacity. “You’re quite the liar, Jake Barrow.”
“Some is true. I’m expedient.”
“You think the cops will buy it?”
“No, but they get reports about a hundred runaways and messed-up chicks a day. It reduces the crime to insurance fraud, a low priority. And even if my truck was spotted at Safeway and they find it abandoned up by Eldorado, we’ll be in Asia. We go cold case. Then we come back with the story, all will be explained, and it’s book-and-movie-deal time.”
“ Movie deal?”
“Think who you want to play you. This is big.”
It was crazy. Thrilling. Absurd. Hypnotic. “ If you get the story.”
“If we get the story.”
To cut all ties and vault halfway around the world? Liberating. Irresponsible. Irresistible. “I feel like Bonnie and Clyde, not Woodward and Bernstein.”
“I’m hoping it’s more like Pierre and Marie Curie, discoverers of radium. There’s a couple of things I have to tell you on the plane.”
“I’m losing my old life, Jake.”
“And gaining a new one.”
He’d parked the stolen car in the half-empty lot of a discount store-“Leaving it here may confuse the police more than the airport garage, until we’re out of the country”-and called a cab to take them to the terminal. To her objections that she had no passport, he produced two proclaiming them Mr. and Mrs. Robert Anderson (her first name listed as Lilith, of all things) along with the requisite permits to fly to China, of which Tibet was now a part. “I was hoping the story would take us this far,” he said, “so I got these from a forger I met on the crime beat.”
“A forger? Jake, we’re going to go to prison.”
“Not if you hang cool.” He also had two simple gold wedding bands. “I got them from a pawn shop and carry them in my car. Every once in a while it helps to look married when I’m on assignment.”
“What kind of assignment?”
“When I’m focusing and don’t want to flirt. It’s just less distraction.”
That seemed unlikely. “You need two?”
“They came as a pair-probably an estate sale-and I put one on a photographer once when we were nosing around in a conservative hamlet in the Idaho panhandle, getting background on a religious sect. It relaxed a few sources still living in the nineteenth century.”
“So long as your photographer was a woman.”
He laughed. “Right! And Caroline made me swear not to tell the newsroom. So keep a lid on. I still kid her about it, though.”
The marriage charade struck Rominy as almost sacrilegious, but they couldn’t afford questions at the airport. It was weird having him hand her the ring, fraudulent and yet touching.
“Just for practice,” Jake said. He actually blushed, which she liked.
Her heart hammered a little as she slipped the ring on.
At the ticket counter he paid in cash, which cost them an extra five minutes while the agent double-checked the no-fly list. And, yes, they only had carry-ons. “I won’t pay those new baggage fees,” Jake told the agent. “You guys are air pirates.”
“Business class doesn’t charge for luggage, sir.”
“It’s the principle.”
Rominy expected her to trip an alarm for an air marshal, but the agent only gave a sweet smile. “Have a pleasant flight, sir.”
In fact, Rominy expected arrest at any moment for arson, kidnapping, auto theft, or identity fraud, but none materialized. Instead, as she was trying to buy some emergency underwear in the Seattle concourse, Jake nudged her and pointed to four shaven-headed young men at a pub table, disturbingly attired in bomber jackets, combat boots, and tattoos. One of them kept glancing her way. Were they watching? So they hastily moved on, and she’d postponed her shopping until the two-hour layover in Los Angeles, buying jeans, sweater, and parka. From there they’d caught the trans-Pacific flight to Shanghai and then Chengdu, China, from which they’d fly to Lhasa.
“What is it with skinheads, anyway?” she asked as they waited to board. “Why do they want to intimidate people?”
“They just want to belong. That’s the basis of all gangs, armies, and nations. The Nazi stuff is rebellious enough to get a rise out of people, which is an improvement if you’ve been poor and ignored your whole life. And there’s a philosophy behind it, an idealism.”
“Being a Nazi?”
“Look, the Nazis lost and didn’t get to write history. Hitler told his followers to stick up for their own. That’s what skinheads believe, too. So do Jews, blacks, women. Everyone’s got a tribe, except white guys.”
“Jake, they didn’t stick up for their own. They tried to conquer the world.”
“It spiraled out of control. But in the beginning the key Nazi philosophers were reformers who believed in self-improvement, discipline, classic art, and bringing back some of the old beliefs in nature and environment. People voted for them! Did you know the SS had a research division? That’s why the Nazis were sent to Tibet. Heinrich Himmler wanted to build a kind of Vatican for the SS, a Camelot or a Valhalla, at an old castle called Wewelsburg. Just like Hitler wanted to make his hometown of Linz the art center of the world. I’m not saying they were right, but it didn’t start with panzer divisions and death camps.”