It ended suddenly. Things were just going along, and then it was over.
Sharpstein came. He said, "We're done." Then two large men came into the white room. They pulled Shannon's arms behind his back and put handcuffs on him.
"What's happening?" Shannon said to Sharpstein.
"Augie Lancaster's been indicted. Foster's guys on the inside worked the pyramid. They've got testimony all the way up. Lancaster's done. Foster's been reinstated. It's over. The good guys won."
The two big men were pulling Shannon roughly toward the door. Sharpstein followed him to the threshold.
"Where are they taking me?" Shannon said.
"They don't need you anymore," Sharpstein told him. But that was all he could get out before the door shut in his face, and the two men hustled the handcuffed Shannon down the hall.
It was a blazingly bright morning. The air was warm and lazy, but there was a bracing hint of autumn, too, and Shannon smelled grass. The two large men hurried him over a scraggly field to a dark limousine parked on a dirt road. Shannon lifted his eyes, yearning to see the world. He had a glimpse of a vast plain running to a broad open sky. Then one of the large men opened the back door of the limousine and the other lowered Shannon inside.
It all happened very fast. Before Shannon fully understood what was going on, one of the large men reached behind him and unlocked the handcuffs. Then the man pulled out of the limousine and shut the door.
The limousine seemed very dark after the bright day. Dazed, Shannon tried to see the driver, but he was an obscure figure behind a divider of tinted glass. The car started moving.
"We meet again, eh?" said a voice from beside him.
Shannon turned and, son of a bitch, there was the identity man, the foreign guy who had given him his new face. Shannon gave a startled laugh. The disreputable old buzzard cut an elfin figure sitting there in his tweed jacket with his spotty hands and his slicked-back red-silver hair and his unkempt eyebrows. And that gleam of disdainful foreign humor in his eyes.
"Hey!" Shannon said. "What are you doing here?"
"You are not happy to see me?" said the foreigner. Cheppy, he said. You are not cheppy to see me, with the ch being the sound you make when you're about to spit.
"That depends," said Shannon. He didn't know what to think about any of this. "Last time I saw you, you stuck a needle in my neck and cut my face up."
That made the foreigner chuckle. "I remember. Good times, yes?"
"You gonna do that again?"
"Only if it amuses you. For my part, it is not necessary."
"Yeah, then I'll pass, thanks."
Shannon felt the car begin to speed up. He turned to look out the window. They were on a freeway now, racing past long fields of sparse grass. It was the first moment since Sharpstein had barged in on him that he had had a chance to think. Now, he began to put things together. What Sharpstein had said: "They don't need you anymore." The fact they had taken the cuffs off him. The identity man. There was a slow dawn of hope and amazement inside him.
He turned back to the foreigner quickly.
"We're not going to prison? No prison?"
The foreigner had turned to look out his window, too. He answered without turning back, casually, as if the whole business meant nothing to him. "No prison, Shannon. You are to go free."
Shannon was surprised at how powerfully this hit him. He had not been afraid of going to prison. He was resigned to it. He had not even been afraid to die, if it came to that. But when he heard it would be this way instead… When he heard: You are to go free… Well, there was a great surge of pleasure and celebration inside him, champagne corks and fireworks all around.
"No kidding," he said. Then the interior party sort of rose up and overwhelmed him. He put his hand over his eyes. "No kidding. Free."
The foreigner glanced at him and shrugged. "Look at you. Great powers are going back and forth in world, winning and losing. You are nothing in it. Just cork on sea."
Shannon took a breath to settle himself. "I don't care about them. The great powers. I just want my life, that's all."
"So. You have life. Lots of life, all the life you want. No one cares damn about you. They are just as happy for you to go away."
Shannon nodded. "Sure. Foster. I'm just trouble for him, aren't I? That whole stupid operation. Now he's a hero and I'm just an embarrassment to him."
The foreigner gave another of his disreputable chuckles. "There is no one who wants anything from you except you disappear."
"Right," said Shannon. "Right." Thinking of Foster, he felt a wave of gratitude toward the seedy little agent. Or something. He did not know what he felt. There was too much to take in.
After that, they drove for a long time in silence. Shannon looked out the window, thinking about things, a lot of things, letting his mind range over it all. He kept coming back to Teresa. He kept wondering if there was any way… Probably not, but he couldn't help hoping. That was the thing: he just couldn't help it. He thought about being with her all the time. He didn't seem to be able to let her go.
At one point, after a long silence, the foreigner broke into his thoughts. "I hear you make statue," he said.
Shannon came out of his reverie. "What's that? Oh. Yeah. Yeah."
"I am curious. You can do this?"
"I can carve wood, yeah."
"You learn this somewhere?"
Shannon shook his head. "Not really. I can just do it. I always could."
"Yes?"
"Yeah. Sure."
"You read book or…"
"No, I just… I just find a piece of wood, that's all. And I see something in it. It's kind of, like, it's partly in the wood and partly in my head. And I carve, I guess, until the thing in the wood and the thing in my head come together into one thing. It's cool. I like it."
The foreigner studied him thoughtfully.
"What," said Shannon.
"You are interesting case."
"Oh yeah?"
"Different."
"Really? Different how?"
"I did not expect."
"Well," said Shannon. "There you go. You never can tell, right?"
The foreigner shook his head, his eyes humorous.
"What?" said Shannon. "What's so funny with you all the time?"
"You Americans," said the foreigner. "You are so stupid you don't even know what you know." He turned away to study the passing landscape.
Shannon shrugged. Maybe he was stupid. Maybe he was American. Let the foreigner laugh. It was all right with him.
They drove on a long time and passed over mountains into meadows. Towns went by with mountains in the distance against the sky. Then there was a cluster of towns, more and more traffic on the freeway around them. They were coming to the outskirts of a city.
The foreigner cleared his throat. He took a manila envelope from the pouch on the door beside him. "Here," he said. He handed the envelope to Shannon.
"What's this?"
"You wanted life. It is life. Papers, records, license, and so on. Some money to start with." He reached down to the floor. There was a small, soft overnight bag there that Shannon hadn't noticed. The foreigner set it on the seat between them. "Change of clothes," he said.
"But no new face this time, huh."
"You do not need. No one is looking for you. No one wants to find you. They hope you are gone for good."
Shannon took the envelope. "So who am I this time?"
"Your name, you mean."
"Yeah. What's my name?"
The foreigner's eyes gleamed with wit and contempt. "You are John Shannon. But not that John Shannon. You are new John Shannon. No crimes, no record with police, no-what you call?-strikes against you."
Shannon weighed the envelope in his hand. He made a face of appreciation. "Not bad. How'd you manage that?"
"I am very good identity man."
"I guess so. Whole new life again, huh. Just like that."
"Not even scars on arm."
One corner of Shannon's mouth lifted. "Right. Just… identity like stain."
The foreigner hesitated. He seemed more thoughtful than usual. "You are interesting case," he said finally.