“Is that really necessary?”
“As a matter of fact, it’s vital.”
There was a brief pause, then the boy was on the secure line. “What do you want?”
“I assume you have been in touch with your friends,” Stackhouse said. “Perhaps one friend in particular, Mr. Dixon. No need to confirm or deny, I understand that time is short. In case you don’t know exactly where they are—”
“They’re in the tunnel between Back Half and Front Half.”
That was unsettling. Nevertheless, Stackhouse pressed on.
“That’s right. If we can reach an agreement, they may get out and see the sun again. If we can’t, I will fill that tunnel with chlorine gas, and they will die slowly and unpleasantly. I won’t see it happen; I’ll be gone two minutes after I give the order. I’m telling you this because I feel quite certain that your new friend Tim would like to leave you out of whatever deal we make. That cannot happen. Do you understand?”
There was a pause, then Luke said: “Yes. I understand. I’ll come with him.”
“Good. At least for now. Are we done?”
“Not quite. Will Mrs. Sigsby’s phone work from the airplane?”
Faintly, Stackhouse heard Mrs. Sigsby say that it would.
“Stay close to your phone, Mr. Stackhouse,” Luke said. “We’ll need to talk again. And you need to stop thinking about running. If you do, I’ll know. We have a policewoman with us, and if I tell her to contact Homeland Security, she will. Your picture will be at every airport in the country, and all the fake ID in the world won’t do you any good. You’ll be like a rabbit in an open field. Do you understand me?”
For the second time, Stackhouse was too dumbfounded to speak.
“Do you?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Good. We’ll be in touch to fine-tune the details.”
With that, the boy was gone. Stackhouse set the phone down carefully on his desk. He noted that his hand was trembling slightly. Part of that was fright, but it was mostly fury. We’ll be in touch, the boy had said, as though he were some hotshot Silicon Valley CEO and Stackhouse a paper-pushing underling who had to do his bidding.
We’ll see about that, he thought. We’ll just see.
42
Luke handed the box phone to Tim as if glad to be rid of it.
“How do you know he has fake ID?” Wendy asked. “Did you read it in his mind?”
“No,” Luke said. “But I bet he has plenty—passports, driver’s licenses, birth certificates. I bet a lot of them do. Maybe not the caretakers and techs and cafeteria staff, but the ones on top. They’re like Eichmann or Walter Rauff, the guy who came up with the idea of building mobile gas chambers.” Luke looked at Mrs. Sigsby. “Rauff would have fit right in with your people, wouldn’t he?”
“Trevor may have false documents,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “I do not.”
And although Luke couldn’t get into her mind—she had closed it off to him—he thought she was telling the truth. There was a word for people like her, and the word was zealot. Eichmann, Mengele, and Rauff had run, like the opportunistic cowards they were; their zealot fuehrer had stayed and committed suicide. Luke felt quite sure that if given the opportunity, this woman would do the same. As long as it was relatively painless.
He climbed back into the van, being careful to avoid Evans’s wounded foot. “Mr. Stackhouse thinks I’m coming to him, but that’s not right.”
“No?” Tim asked.
“No. I’m coming for him.”
The Stasi Lights flared in front of Luke’s eyes in the growing gloom, and the van’s sliding door rolled shut on its own.
THE BIG PHONE
1
As far as Beaufort, the interior of the van was mostly silent. Dr. Evans did try to start a conversation once, again wanting them to know that he was an innocent party in all this. Tim told him he had a choice: either shut up and get a couple of the oxycodone tablets Dr. Roper had provided, or keep talking and endure the pain in his wounded foot. Evans opted for silence and the pills. There were a few more in the little brown bottle. Tim offered one to Mrs. Sigsby, who dry-swallowed it without bothering to say thank you.
Tim wanted quiet for Luke, who was now the brains of the operation. He knew most people would think him nuts for allowing a twelve-year-old to create a strategy intended to save the kids in that tunnel without getting killed themselves, but he noticed that Wendy was also keeping quiet. She and Tim knew what Luke had done to get here, they had seen him in operation since, and they understood.
What, exactly, was that understanding? Why, that aside from having a yard of guts, the kid also happened to be a genuine bottled-in-bond genius. These Institute thugs had taken him to obtain a talent that was (at least before its enhancement) little more than a parlor trick. They considered his brilliance a mere adjunct to what they were really after, making them like poachers willing to slaughter a twelve-thousand-pound elephant to get ninety pounds of ivory.
Tim doubted if Evans could appreciate the irony, but he guessed Sigsby could… if she ever allowed the idea mental house-room, that was: a clandestine operation that had lasted for decades brought down by the very thing they had considered dispensable—this child’s formidable intellect.
2
Around nine o’clock, just after passing the Beaufort city limits, Luke told Tim to find a motel. “Don’t stop in front, though. Go around to the back.”
There was an Econo Lodge on Boundary Street, its rear parking lot shaded by magnolias. Tim parked by the fence and killed the engine.
“This is where you leave us, Officer Wendy,” Luke said.
“Tim?” Wendy asked. “What’s he talking about?”
“About you booking a room, and he’s right,” Tim said. “You stay, we go.”
“Come back here after you get your key,” Luke said. “And bring back some paper. Have you got a pen?”
“Of course, and I have my notebook.” She tapped the front pocket of her uniform pants. “But—”
“I’ll explain as much as I can when you get back, but what it comes down to is you’re our insurance policy.”
Mrs. Sigsby addressed Tim for the first time since the abandoned beauty parlor. “What this boy has been through has made him crazy, and you’d be crazy to listen to what he says. The best thing the three of you could do is leave Dr. Evans and me here, and run.”
“Which would mean leaving my friends to die,” Luke said.
Mrs. Sigsby smiled. “Really, Luke, think. What have they ever done for you?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Luke said. “Not in a million years.”
“Go on, Wendy,” Tim said. He took her hand and squeezed it. “Get a room, then come back.”
She gave him a doubtful look but handed him the Glock, got out of the van, and headed for the office.
Dr. Evans said, “I want to emphasize that I was here under—”
“Protest, yes,” Tim said. “We got that. Now shut up.”
“Can we get out?” Luke asked. “I want to talk to you without…” He nodded at Mrs. Sigsby.
“Sure, we can do that.” Tim opened both the passenger door and the slider, then stood against the fence dividing the motel from the closed car dealership next door. Luke joined him. From where Tim stood, he could see both of their unwilling passengers, and could stop them if either decided to try making a run. He didn’t think that was very likely, considering one had been shot in the leg and the other in the foot.