Inez peered at him. “You know where he is?”
“No, but I know someone who does.” He cocked his head in the general direction of Beacon Hill. “Fellow over on Irving Street has something to do with the TC. I think he’s even met the
chaaz’maha
himself a couple’a times when he’s been in town.”
Again, that phrase: the TC. Jorge suspected that it was significant, but he refrained from betraying his ignorance by asking what it meant. “The
chaaz’maha
isn’t here now?”
“Oh, he comes around every now and then.” The young man’s expression hardened. “Like whatever he has to say means a damn. But he has his followers, y’know . . .” His eyes narrowed. “You’re not some of ’em, are you?”
“No.” Greg smiled. “Just interested in meeting him, that’s all.”
The young man nodded but didn’t say anything. The dockmaster glanced at him. “Ted and me will work on your boat, Sam, if you want to take ’em up to Irving. I think we can get that sail stitched up by the time you get back.”
“Sounds good.” Sam—who Jorge now realized was probably a fisherman and most likely Ted’s father as well—gave the boy a swat on the shoulder. “You stay here with Mr. Morse. I’ll be back in an hour or so.” Ted nodded. He was still staring at the boat that was like none other he’d ever seen. Jorge was tempted to leave someone behind to guard their property, yet he knew that he couldn’t spare anyone for that task. He needed Vargas as a guide, as untrustworthy as he might be, and Greg to watch Vargas. Inez had to come along, too; after all, the purpose of the expedition was to find her father. So he had little choice but to leave their boat and equipment in Morse’s care and hope that everything would still be there once they returned.
However, he wasn’t about to set out on foot without taking precautions. Climbing back into the boat, Jorge picked up their rifles and passed them to Greg and Inez. Neither Morse nor Sam raised any objections; apparently it wasn’t unusual to see armed men in the streets of Boston. Jorge paused to fold the map and shove it in the left pocket of his parka, then he rejoined the others on the dock.
Sam waited until everyone was ready to leave, then, without another word, he turned and started walking toward the moored end of the floating dock. A long, steep flight of wooden steps, nailed together from pieces of wallboard, led up and over the sandbag emplacement; on the other side of the embankment was a mud-covered street, its cracked asphalt worn but reasonably dry. Followed by Inez, Greg, and Vargas, Jorge let the fisherman lead them into the ruins of Boston.
Not far from the embankment were the remains of a four-lane highway
that once ran alongside the Charles River. Weeds and brush had found root in the cracked asphalt, and a half-fallen overhead sign identified the road as Storrow Drive; sometime in the past, someone had climbed up one of its poles to paint over the “t.” A bad joke, Jorge reflected, but not unjustified.
Once Sam led them across Storrow, he turned right and began taking the group down a side street leading away from the river. The hospital was now behind them, and although most of the buildings around them were several stories high, none seemed to have suffered significant damage above ground level. Yet their windows were either broken or boarded up, with storefronts barred by rusting metal grates that seemed to have been hastily welded into place. Jorge figured that landlords and shop owners must have had just enough time during the city’s evacuation to make an attempt at protecting their property before they were forced to flee. Very few vehicles were parked at the curbs, and those that remained had been stripped bare of everything usable.
Sam walked slightly ahead of them, occasionally glancing over his shoulder as if to make sure they hadn’t fallen behind. Only Vargas was able to keep up with him; the rest were still getting used to Earth gravity, and Jorge felt as if he had a fifty-pound bag on his back. But it was Sam’s silence that bothered him the most. Perhaps the fisherman was laconic by nature, but his silence unnerved Jorge almost as much as that of the buildings around them. Although he obviously knew his way, it seemed as if he was searching for something. At the end of each block, Sam would pause for a moment to glance warily in all directions before continuing onward, and once they’d turned a couple of corners, Jorge realized that the river was no longer anywhere in sight.
“I’m not liking this,” Greg murmured. He’d fallen back a step to join Jorge and Inez, and Jorge noticed that he had unlimbered his rifle from its shoulder strap. “I know he’s taking us somewhere, but I’m not sure . . .”
“If it’s any place we’d want to go?” Inez finished. Greg nodded, and she looked at Jorge. “I agree,” she went on, keeping her voice low. “He’s nervous about something . . . and so is Sergio.”
Jorge didn’t respond for a moment, then he cleared his throat. “Hey! Sam! You want to hold up for a second?”
Sam came to a halt, as did Vargas. They waited until the rest of the group caught up with them. By then, they’d reached a broad, four-lane avenue. A bent-over signpost identified the intersection as Cambridge and North Grove, with the latter continuing past Cambridge as Grove Street, which sloped upward into a hillside residential neighborhood.
“What do you want?” Sam was impatient, no longer quite as willing to wait for them as he’d been back at the dock.
“Nothing . . . just a minute to catch our breaths, find out where we are.” Jorge was sweating beneath his parka, and he saw that Greg and Inez were panting as well. He nodded toward Grove Street. “Is that Beacon Hill just ahead?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So where’s this place you’re taking us? Irving Street, you said . . .”
“Just a few more blocks. We’ll be there soon.” A sardonic smile as Sam looked them over. “Little out of shape, huh? We ain’t gone all that far.”
“Just not used to hiking through a city, that’s all.” Jorge peered past him at Grove. Brownstone buildings, most of them no more than three or four stories in height, lined both sides of the street; judging from their bay windows and columned doorways, they appeared to be old apartment houses, their ground-floor windows either shattered or covered with plywood. Not far away, he saw smoke rising from rooftops a few blocks up the hill. “Is this where most people live now? On Beacon Hill?”
“Uh-huh.” Sam continued to study him. He said nothing for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “Y’know, I got a feeling you ain’t been straight with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not really from Long Island, are you?” A corner of his mouth ticked upward. “In fact, I don’t think you’re even from New York.”
Jorge felt something cold run down his back. “What gives you that idea?”
“Your clothes are too nice to have just been found. And that boat of yours . . . I ain’t seen no inflatables since I was a kid, let alone one with an outboard.” Sam lowered his voice. “Tell me the truth, now . . . you’re with the TC, ain’t you?”
“No, we’re not. I promise.” Jorge hesitated. “But you’re right . . . we’re not from Long Island, or even New York. We’re from . . . well, somewhere much farther away, let’s just put it that way.”
Sam mulled this over a few moments. There was distrust in his eyes, but also a certain cunning that Jorge didn’t like. Before he could add more, though, Inez stepped forward. “Look, where we’re from isn’t really important. All we want is to talk to someone who can tell us how to find the
chaaz’maha
. That’s all.”
“Yeah . . . yeah, okay.” Sam appeared to have made up his mind. “Awright, let’s go. I’ll take you to my friend on Irving. He’ll help you out.”
He turned around, began crossing Cambridge. Vargas started to follow him, but before Jorge and Greg could join them, Inez tapped Jorge on the arm. “He’s lying,” she whispered. “I don’t think that’s the way we should be going.”
“Wait a second!” Jorge called out. “Are you sure we . . . ?”
Sam suddenly broke into a run. Before Jorge could stop him, he bolted across Cambridge and continued running up Grove. Jorge started to go after him, but gravity slowed his muscles, made his reactions sluggish. Sam ducked into an alley between two boarded-up apartment houses; within seconds, the fisherman had disappeared from sight.
“Damn!” Jorge stopped in the middle of the weed-grown avenue. “Damn it to hell!”
“Not your fault.” Inez came up from behind him. “I think he was planning this all along.”
Jorge glared at her. “Then why didn’t you . . . ?”
“Because I didn’t know what he was going to do until—” She stopped herself, shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t predict the future, you know. There’s a limit to what I can tell from people’s emotions.”
“Okay, all right.” Jorge let out his breath. No, it wasn’t her fault; indeed, he was angry at himself for having been misled. “Sorry I snapped at you like that.”
“So what do we do now?” Greg caught up with them. “Our native guide is gone.” He looked at Vargas. “Unless you have any idea where we are . . .”
“No.” Vargas shook his head. “I’ve never been in this part of town.”
“You’re not telling us something.” Inez turned to look him straight in the eye. “I’m not saying that you’re lying, Sergio . . . but there’s also something you’ve been keeping from us.”
Vargas didn’t respond. He turned away from her, refusing to meet her gaze. “Never mind,” Jorge said. “Right now, the first priority is figuring out where we are and what to do next.”
Kneeling in the street, he pulled the map out of his pocket and unfolded it. Borrowing Inez’s compass, it took him only a minute to get a fix on their location. As Inez had deduced, Sam had been leading them away from Irving Street, which lay three blocks farther down Cambridge, east of Grove. It also turned out that they were only a couple of blocks west of the Longfellow Bridge. For some reason, Sam had taken them the long way from the Charles River, yet it also appeared that they could return to the dock within minutes, if they chose to do so.
“Perhaps we should go back.” Squatting beside him, Greg peered over Jorge’s shoulder at the map. “If that guy was giving us the runaround...”
“He may have been taking us somewhere other than where he said he was.” Inez crouched between them, studying the map as well. “But I didn’t sense that he was lying when he said that there was someone on Irving Street who might be able to help us.”
“How can you be so sure?” Greg stared at her. “I mean, how do you know whether he was lying or not?”
Inez didn’t answer this, and Jorge remembered that Greg hadn’t been informed that she possessed empathic abilities. “She’s . . . got a certain knack for this sort of thing,” Jorge said, then he folded the map and stood up. “I’m going to check in with the ship,” he went on, prodding his headset. “See what Hugh has to say about this.”
Again, the reception was poor, the tall buildings between them and Port Logan interfering with his signal. Nonetheless, he was able to get through to the pilot.
“Sounds like you’ve got a situation,”
McAlister said, once Jorge let him know about all that had happened.
“Maybe you ought to come back. We can try again, in some other part of the city.”
“No.” Inez had been quietly listening in, and she emphatically shook her head. “This is our best chance . . . maybe our only chance . . . to find my father. If there’s even the slightest possibility that there’s someone around here who knows where he is, then we have to make the effort to find him.”
“That’s too much of a risk,”
McAlister said.
“Then we’re just going to have to take it.” Jorge glanced at Inez, and she nodded. “Look, we always knew this might be dangerous, but it’s something we’re just going to have to accept.”
A long pause from McAlister.
“All right, then,”
he said at last.
“I’ll stand by and wait for your word. If you run into trouble, let me know. I’ll pick you up in the park.”
Jorge knew that he meant the Boston Common. Although it was on the other side of Beacon Hill, he’d seen from the map that it was only about ten blocks south of their present location. A long trek, given their problems coping with gravity, but still their best point of retrieval if it came to that.
“Wilco,” he replied, then something else occurred to him. “Has there been any more activity from those fishing boats? Have they spotted you yet?”
“Negative. I’ve been keeping an eye on them, but they’re still out in the harbor. Looks like they’ve dropped anchor, and they’re just floating there.”
“Affirmative.” Jorge felt a twinge of relief. At least that part of their mission was still according to plan. “We’ll be in touch. Over and out.” Clicking off the headset, he turned to the others . . . and suddenly realized that there was one less person in their group than there had been only a couple of minutes ago.
“Where’s Vargas?” he demanded.
Greg’s mouth fell open. He quickly turned about, looking first one way, then another. “Oh, hell! How did he . . . ?”
“He must have slipped away while we were checking the map.” Jorge glanced in both directions down Cambridge, then toward North Grove. Vargas was nowhere to be seen. “Inez, you didn’t . . . ?”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention to him either.” She let out her breath, shook her head in embarrassment. “I sensed panic when I confronted him, but I didn’t think it was enough to make him run off.”
Jorge ignored her but instead scowled at Greg. “My fault, I know,” the sergeant muttered. “It was my job to keep an eye on him, and I screwed up.” He gritted his teeth as he hefted his rifle. “So help me, when I catch up with him . . .”
He started to walk away, obviously intent on pursuit, but Jorge hastily grabbed his arm. “No. Whatever we do, we can’t let ourselves get separated. Besides, if he’s hiding from us, he’ll make sure that we can’t find him.”
Greg sighed, reluctantly nodded. There was no need for him to apologize further; the self-recrimination was plain to be seen. “So what do we do now?” he asked.