Alred? She’d probably serve him up to the men in black saying at the same time, “Would you like something to drink with this?” She would grin and sigh as they hauled him into their black van and shot him in the back of the head.
He had to sleep.
In the drawer he found a green Bible. He turned to Leviticus, but found the law too interesting. He flipped to Isaiah, but saw too many similarities with his own time. He hit himself in the head with the book. Reading wouldn’t help. He’d read all night before running, and was now beyond exhaustion.
But he did fall asleep without realizing it.
It was 5:07 in the evening before he woke up to go to the bathroom. His leg burned when he moved, and the wound opened. He needed butterfly bandages at the very least. What would they say at the main desk if he asked for their first aid kit? He couldn’t find one anywhere in his room.
He crept out of the motel like a mouse poking his head out of his hole in the wall checking to see if the room is clear. Scurrying, he went to the front desk and gave them the key. Before they signed him out, Porter took it back. The $29.00 he’d slammed down in cash gave him privilege to a full twenty four hours, which implied eleven o’clock the next morning. He might need a place to sleep. Porter decided against asking for bandages.
That was days ago. It seemed like weeks.
Taking a route behind the buildings, Porter came to his apartment and slid through the rear entrances into his room. He smelled sour milk and an opened vacuum cleaner bag.
They’d already been here. His books were off the particleboard shelves. The file cabinets were open and files carpeted the hardwood floor, the coffee table, and his short couch of gray tweed that should have been thrown away a long time ago (and actually had been before he’d acquired it). All the closets had been emptied. Clothes, memorabilia from Japan, even the Jerusalem pictures from the wall had been tossed to the ground. Light from the open refrigerator spilled over the vomited contents. There was no place to walk.
If they were watching the apartment still, expecting him to come back, they’d move in now. The thought jolted Porter like electricity. He’d been foolish.
Grabbing his black jacket of suede, which was mostly rubbed away and turning green because of the many times he’d left it in the back of his car, Porter left his room and went for the stairs to climb to the roof.
He heard the elevator ding.
He heard the people behind him.
It didn’t mean anything for certain, but he wouldn’t take the chance. In his youth he’d seen too many adventure shows not to have a thousand ideas streaming through his head.
But he was trapped on the roof.
A twilight fog filled the air, transparent enough to see the thunderheads twisting above it, thick enough to feel as it brushed against his arm as he put on his jacket,
That’s when they moved in. He saw them from the top of the building. Multiple new sedans with beautiful shines screeched into the parking lot. He pulled his head away from sight when they looked up. They knew Porter had arrived. Why had he returned? Was his life supposed to go back to the way it was or something? His head was clouded and he knew they would figure out he’d gone to the roof.
Porter ran to each side and looked down. It was twenty feet and one story to the closest building. No escape.
A tree reached for his height. The top of the swaying Eucalyptus stretched to four feet from the reach of his fingers. Porter could probably jump and hit the tree, but Eucalyptuses were notorious for their brittle branches. Every storm with a heavy wind cut a major limb away. And they had to be trimmed regularly for they grew five times faster than most trees. If he jumped, he’d touch the limbs and they’d crumble into kindling beneath his weight.
But leaping off a building was idiotic!
Porter’s leg began to throb, a wet drizzle running for his toes. He knew the wound still hadn’t sealed. He’d stretched too much. He was ruining his chance of losing the scar. But that mattered little all of a sudden.
Black nine-millimeters. Silencers. The image of them in the library froze like master works of marble in his head, firm testimonies that they wanted him dead.
Why?!?
Porter looked at the door. He could look for something to pin the portal shut. But with their weapons? Their boldness and fearlessness of consequences? Their silent attack? They’d break through and have him in three seconds.
What was Porter to them?
What was Ulman?
What was Wilkinson?
What was Albright?
He didn’t know. How did Wilkinson fit in at all?!? Porter only figured the old man had to be involved.
There was something going on that Porter didn’t understand. And it had something to do with…
He dropped his eyes to his briefcase.
… the codex…?
Question: How did it enter the country? Illegally.
Question: Did it rightfully belong to someone? It had to.
Question: Was it worth killing for?
He pulled KM-2 out of the leather case and hefted it in his hands as the cold wind picked up. A priceless artifact-more priceless to him as his entire future rested upon it! And what secrets had he yet to uncover? What religious ramifications did it have?
They killed Albright, Porter said to himself, thinking of the KM-1 codex the professor had written about and most likely possessed. Albright didn’t own it anymore.
He heard Alred’s scolding, Albright died of natural causes!
Porter took the codex out of the brown sack he’d wrapped it in. He stared at it, barely able to fit in its wrappings.
He shot his eyes to the door repeatedly.
What was he doing? The world went gray. His hands moved on their own. He zipped up his jacket to the collar, feeling the tightness in his chest. He gazed at the precious notes still in the briefcase. Could he hide them? Come back for The door blew open with an easy push.
A long overcoat of black wool covered the first man Porter saw. The rest of his clothes were the same and very expensive, the turtleneck, the slacks, the shoes. His eyes were cold and just as dark, though Porter didn’t see the color. They locked gazes instantly.
“Stay away!” Porter said, holding up the stuffed grocery bag of brown paper. “I’ll throw it over!”
“Of course, John,” said the man in black on this haze-covered rooftop, his voice comfortable as ice is in the arctic. “Set it down nicely…and you can walk away.”
Porter froze at the sound of his first name. It was the same sensation he’d had when the first girl he loved had called his name in the halls of the Junior High. But instead of his heart swelling with light, it imploded into a darkness he didn’t know he could feel. “No chance!”
The first man walked casually toward him, but not slowing, a second man only footsteps behind. Both drew their poisonous stingers, silencers ready.
With his briefcase in one hand and the sacred package in the other, Porter turned to the edge of the building.
They would execute him either way.
Don’t think. It was the key he’d learned when leaping off of high dives. If you think at all, you won’t do it.
His feet left the solid building and his arms waved in open space.
His hands instinctively reached for the weak top of the Eucalyptus tree.
He grabbed.
His fingers held as his weight yanked on the green wood.
His briefcase dumped away from him, his wrapped treasure left in the wind.
He glanced down as the tree bent.
The papers scattering. His pads, his translations, his many notes flew like yellow birds and white rain down, to the right, and in one direction which he couldn’t see.
Too late for all that.
The tree crackled as it leaned.
The Eucalyptus popped like illegal fireworks, and the limb tore free, immediately hitting other branches as he went down. His arms flailed about in the air. His legs kicked, and the tree slapped him until his eyes shut. He latched onto the cold wood, but didn’t feel it. The ground was coming.