Ten
At first, I assumed we were trying to get away.
It at least made sense to try-the black vans were all around us and I could feel the thickness in the air as Max blocked all of us at once, locking us out of the collective unconscious of the neighborhood, trapping all our free-floating thoughts inside the narrow car. Or maybe all that was in my head-now that we were free, my shoulders and neck felt like they’d been released from a clamp. I ached all over from sudden relaxing.
After ten minutes of changing roads and directions, I could see we really hadn’t gone very far. The airplanes were still close overhead. That got me real upset. I started sweating. We had to head back to the mountains, to the house on the cliffside. I don’t know why I fixated on that place but it all came rushing back to me at once. The wall of windows and the balcony and the crazy awning, the hillside I scrambled over like a maniac, trying not to get cut in half by Marat’s lightning bolts-and the town with the dance floor and Tess and Cindy. That whole memory was clear-I was in it, living in it. That was where we had to go. We’d be safe there, if only because that’s where they caught us, which made it the last place they’d expect us to go.
Every few minutes, some new airliner threatened to land on the roof of our car. And then we came out of a sidestreet and Max bought a ticket and we were in the long-term parking lot at Dulles Airport. We circulated the rows until he found a Maxima he liked. It had one of those touchpad things on the door and he was able to fry it with his fingers; Tauber hot-wired the car in about seven seconds. And then we were back on the road again. But again, we weren’t making any effort to get away. Max made a series of turns, as though looking for a location.
“Volkov lives ‘roundabouts,” Tauber said. “Miriam took me to his house when we first got up here.” He’d pulled a bottle of water from the center console and was holding it up to his puffy eye. “I was an idjit for staying with her.”
Max shook his head. “You knew her-you didn’t know me.”
“They want ya bad. They did everything to try to get your whereabouts out of me.”
“Which they knew immediately you didn’t have.”
“They didn’t trust my thoughts.”
“Ha! Spies not trusting? I’m shocked.” Max’s look at Tauber was sympathetic and even grateful.
“Volkov thought he could turn you,” Tauber continued. “Avery said you wouldn’t give, that they’d have to kill you. Anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. We’ve got to get the hell outta here-they all live nearby, the whole area’s crawling with shooters.”
“Shooters?”
“Yeah-they’ve got drones and shooters. Drones send out messages and don’t remember a thing after. Shooters are Volkov’s strike force. There’s not many of them but they’re dirty tricks mindbenders-and killers.”
“That’s what they wanted Stargate to move to,” Max said. “That’s what Dave objected to.”
“A lot of us objected. Dave did it out loud, to senior officers.”
“So now they’ve outsourced it.”
“Anyway, they’re deadly. We’ve got to get going.”
“We’ve got a little time,” Max said, “Right now, they’re scouring the highway to Shenandoah National Park for us. I’ve told them that’s where we’re going.”
“They’re not going to buy that they’ve tapped into you. They know you’re not that sloppy.”
“They think they’re tapping Greg,” Max said. “I’m sending out his memories.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Your memories are cleaner than mine-mine are always mixed up with the rest of the neighborhood. And you’re more nostalgic for that place-with good reason-than I am.”
“And they’ll believe,” Tauber said, giving me a thoughtful look, “they’re intercepting your thoughts.”
“Well, that’s okay,” I said. “Couldn’t you ask before you just share my head with other people?”
“Excuse me,” Max said immediately. “Would you like to live? Or shall I stop?” Theatrical pause. “That’s the choice.”
“Fuck you.”
“You’re not my type,” he said. “If they know we’re here, they’ll be on us in minutes. And we have to stay in the neighborhood for another half hour or so. So we need your memories. Sorry.”
“As long as you’re sorry…”
“And remember this,” he ordered me. “This is what it feels like to send out a message or a suggestion. I’m doing it but it’s your head-so learn what it feels like. If you can recapture the feeling later, you’ll be able to start doing it yourself.” He pulled into a parking lot alongside a warehouse, nestled between several locked-up trucks. Looking around, I realized it was a good strategic location-we would be hard to see from the nearby streets but we had a good view out.
“Why are we hangin’ around?” Tauber asked. “What’s the objective?”
“Low-hanging fruit,” Max said, looking across the street at an apartment complex glinting in the light of the setting sun. “Strategic information.” He looked Tauber up and down. “Are you in shape to block yourself?”
“I’m okay,” Tauber allowed. “Gettin’ the shit beat outta me lit the ol’ fuse.” He croaked out a laugh. “Nostalgia’ll kill ya,” he added and Max smiled.
“Okay, we’re going across the street as soon as the sun goes down. Our subject is not powerful but she is alert. She’ll be able to read us so block yourself till we get into the apartment. You too, Greg. You know the feeling now.”
“So concentrate,” I said, furrowing my forehead.
“No,” Max said. “ Don’t concentrate.”
“Why not?”
“Concentration is a conscious mind trick,” Tauber drawled. “If ye’re concentrating on being powerful, you’re reminding yourself that ya feel weak. The more ya concentrate on something, the more you feel the opposite.”
“When you were with Tess, were you concentrating on anything?” Max asked.
“You bet.”
“That’s not concentrating,” he said and they both laughed. “Moments like that, you’re just soaking up the feeling. So just get back to that. Find the feeling in your fingertips and the tip of your tongue and the rest will come back to you.”
We sat in the parking lot for about 45 minutes, while the darkness gathered and it began to drizzle. Cars came and went, a truck pulled into the lot, idled ominously for about seven minutes and then pulled out. Police cars flew by, lights flashing and sirens bleating.
I was working on getting back to the house on the hill and I thought I did okay but it was more fun to work on Tess. At one point, Max turned to me and said, “You’re trying too hard. You’re working memory.”
“Memory is useless,” Tauber sniped. “It’s shorthand for the conscious mind. It’s eating soup with a fork,” he spat. “Don’t remember; just feel it again. The feeling’s still inside ya, in places the conscious mind don’t rule. Feeling ain’t part o’the past-it’s alive right now. Get inside it, get one detail real clear, so it’s alive right now and POW! You’ll be back there.”
“Where?”
“ There. In the middle of it. With her again, like it’s happening again right now.”
I was probably looking at him cockeyed. “However you do it,” Max said, “what matters is, you won’t be here.” He opened the car door. “It’s time.”
We crossed the road-it was a main drag and we were forced to rush across between tractor-trailers like elephants stampeding along the river. We were left in a thicket of trees and shrubs that seemed to have grown out of a bed of garbage-supermarket circulars, handouts for car washes and a traveling circus, beer bottles and water jugs, several cans of motor oil and two pairs of panties in the nook of a tree trunk. Stepping carefully took us over a low fence to the service entrance of the apartment building, where suddenly everything was pristine. In through the wide truck-delivery door and up a ramp we went, to a wide-mouth elevator. Max hit the button for the sixth floor.