“To jail?”
“Uh-huh, but not in Manuelito. You’ve got too many friends there, and I’m not giving you a chance to get off easy.” I couldn’t help but smile. “I’ve got a skiff waiting. You and me are going to Liberty, where you’re going to be put on trial in federal court. I don’t know what the maggies will do with you, but I do know that, before this is over, everyone will know you for who you really are.”
“I see.” Laird took a deep breath, slowly let it out. He looked out at the Straits, perhaps as if he knew that would be the last time he’d see them from that place, then he turned away from the railing. “Very well, then . . . let’s go.”
When we returned to the living room, we found Amy seated on the
couch, her shoulders slumped forward and her head hanging low. Erin was curled up in a tight little ball at the end of the couch, her feet on the cushions and her arms wrapped around her knees. Emma Stanley stood near the door; she was quiet, but I knew what had happened while I was upstairs with Laird. She’d told his wife and daughter who Joe Ross really was, and the things he’d done when he’d called himself by another name.
Amy looked up as we walked into the room. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, her face wet with tears. She stared at her husband, and it was as if she were seeing a doppelganger who’d taken over the body of the man she’d married.
“Is it true?” she asked, her voice so low that it was almost a whisper.
Laird regarded her for a moment, then he looked down at the floor. “It’s true. I’m sorry. I’m . . . I’m so sorry.”
For a few seconds, neither of them said anything. It was as if the two of them were trying to find the right words but simply couldn’t. The silence was broken when, from her corner of the couch, Erin let out a quiet sob that could just as well have been a scream. Hearing this, Laird started toward his daughter. He meant to comfort her, but before he could reach her, Amy jumped up and, with the urgency of a mother protecting a threatened child, swept the little girl into her arms.
“No!” she snapped. “Stay away from her!”
Laird’s face went pale. He halted in midstep, hands still extended toward his daughter. “Amy . . . honey, please. You can’t . . .”
“Just go.” Hugging the weeping girl tight against her chest, Amy recoiled from him. She almost tripped over the coffee table as she retreated from her husband; their copy of the
Sa’Tong-tas
fell off the table and onto the floor, but she didn’t seem to notice or care. “There’s nothing you can say that’s going to make anything better, so just . . .”
“Amy, please . . .”
“Get out of here!”
Footsteps pounded up the porch steps. An instant later, the front door was flung open and one of the blueshirts rushed into the house, his rifle half-raised. Stanley turned toward him, holding up a hand. “It’s all right,” she said quietly. “No problem here.” Perhaps realizing the terrible absurdity of what she’d just said, her face blanched. “Go back outside,” she added. “We’ll be along shortly.”
The blueshirt cast a wary glance around the room, then nodded once before stepping backward through the open door. Stanley watched him go, then moved toward Laird. “We need to go now,” she murmured, almost apologetic as she laid a hand upon his arm. “Amy . . . Erin . . . if there’s anything you need . . .”
Amy shook her head. She refused to look at her husband, but instead gazed at the
Sa’Tong-tas
as if deliberating whether to pick it up from the floor or leave it where it had fallen. I couldn’t see Erin’s face except for her eyes, peering over her mother’s shoulder. She stared at Laird with something like longing mixed with horror, then she buried her face within her mother’s hair, unable to bear the sight of her father.
Laird stood there for another few seconds. He’d let his hands fall to his sides, and he looked at his wife and daughter, as if waiting for them to say something more to him. When they didn’t, he reluctantly backed away from his family.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, more quietly this time. “And whatever else happens, just . . . just know that I love you both.” He turned to Chief Stanley. “All right, Emma . . . I’m ready to go now.”
I closed the front door behind us and followed Stanley and Laird down the stairs to where the blueshirts were waiting. The chief reached within her coat pocket; when her hand reappeared, within it was a pair of magnetic handcuffs.
When Laird saw them, he shook his head. “You’re not going to need those,” he said softly. “I’ll go quietly.” Stanley gave him a questioning look, and he added, “I promise. Just . . . please don’t take me away like this.”
I thought she was making a mistake, but it was her decision. Stanley looked him straight in the eye, then nodded. “All right, then,” she said, putting the cuffs back where they’d come from, then she looked at the blueshirts. “Follow us, please.”
We went down the stairs, our way illuminated by the passing beams from the lighthouse; no one said anything as we returned to the dock. Laird walked beside Stanley, the three soldiers behind them. I brought up the rear; halfway to the dock, I paused to look back at the house. Amy was standing at the window, still holding Erin in her arms. We were too far away for me to see their faces, and I was glad that I couldn’t.
We climbed aboard the chief’s boat, with Laird sitting in the bow between two of the soldiers and the third seated directly across from him. Emma Stanley and I resumed our places in the stern. After the chief started up the engine, the third soldier stood up to cast off the lines. Once he was seated across from Laird again, so close that their knees touched each other’s, Stanley throated up the engine, and the boat purred away from the dock.
The wind had settled down a bit now that the sun was down; the water was still, with very little chop. Stanley had the buoys to guide her way, but after a few minutes she switched on the boat’s floodlight and aimed it straight ahead. The Straits were as black as the night; off in the distance were the lights of Manuelito, low upon the horizon and gleaming against the cold darkness.
Laird said nothing. He sat between the blueshirts, hands on his knees, his eyes never leaving King Philip. Every few seconds the lighthouse beam swept over us. When it did, it briefly illuminated his face: an unemotional mask, devoid of expression.
It wasn’t long before we’d passed the first buoy and were halfway across the Straits. By then, the silence had become unsettling. Figuring that I had to say something, I turned to Chief Stanley, started to ask her about . . . well, I don’t remember. Maybe the weather, or the fishing season, or something neutral and inconsequential like that. But whatever I was about to say was lost in the next instant when one of the soldiers yelled, and I looked around to see that Laird was on his feet and that there was a rifle in his hands.
How he had managed to get it away from the blueshirt seated across from him, I’m still not sure. Perhaps he’d been watching the soldier from the corner of his eye while only pretending to look at the island, waiting for the blueshirt to relax his guard just long enough so that he could make a grab for his weapon. Or perhaps the soldier himself was at fault; he later told me that he’d been looking at Manuelito when Laird snatched the rifle from his hands. Whatever the reason, though, it happened fast enough that no one had time to react. One second, Laird was sitting quietly between the blueshirts. The next, he was standing up in the boat, the gun cradled in his arms, its barrel aimed at the startled soldiers.
“Joe . . .” Chief Stanley stared at him in horror. “Joe, settle down. Just take it easy.”
He ignored her. The soldier who’d been deprived of his gun started to move toward him, but Laird quickly took two deft steps back, putting himself most of the way to the prow of the boat so that he could cover us all.
From where he stood, I realized, he easily could shoot everyone aboard. He must have realized this, too, because when the lighthouse beam fell across the boat again, I caught a glimpse of his face and saw a cunning expression that I could only imagine had been there the day he’d delivered the suitcase bomb he’d made for Alberto Cosenza. Joe Ross was gone, and David Laird had returned.
“Don’t do it,” I said, fighting the urge to try to tackle him. He was too far away for me to do so before he put a fléchette in my chest.
“Joe, stop it,” Emma said. “Please . . . just stop.”
The lighthouse beam disappeared from his face, but I could still see him against the backglow of the boat’s floodlight. His gaze shifted toward me and Chief Stanley, and as it did, it seemed as if there was an instant in which two men were fighting for control of one man’s soul.
“I’m sorry.” When he spoke, his voice was little more than a dry croak. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Tell Amy and Erin that I love them.”
And then he turned around and, without another word, leaped over the side of the boat.
“Joe,
no
!” Stanley screamed.
A loud splash, then he was gone. Weighed down by the gun and his heavy clothes, he vanished beneath the black and icy waters, leaving behind only a brief spurt of bubbles that disappeared as soon as the lighthouse beam touched them.
His body was never found. We could only assume that it was caught by the undertow of the Providence Straits and washed downstream to the Great Equatorial River, never to be seen again. But I knew that it wasn’t David Laird who died that night, but Joe Ross.
In the end, he’d found a way of reconciling himself with the sins of his past, in accordance with the Fifth Codicil of the
Sa’Tong-tas
.
Part 7
TERRA CONCORDE
Feeling the bump of the
Mercator
’s wheels settling upon concrete,
Jorge looked away from the cockpit windows to watch Vargas as he throttled down the landing thrusters. The pilot reached forward to shut off the jets; the engines slowly died, and he turned to Jorge.
“Well . . . here we are,” he said.
“And where is that, exactly?” Again, Jorge peered out the windows. The sun was still coming up, but this time there wasn’t a dense fog to hide their surroundings. The shuttle had touched down on what appeared to be a rural airstrip outside a small town. Past a row of hangars was a recently harvested farm field, its dark brown soil covered by fallen cornstalks, a barn and grain silo not far away.
“Amherst.” Vargas finished switching off the control panels, then began to unbuckle his seat harness. “End of the road, such as it is.”
Jorge waited for Vargas to explain further. When he didn’t, he scowled at him. “You’re still not going to tell me what’s going on, are you?”
It had been about a half hour since the
Mercator
had lifted off from Beacon Hill. During the short flight from Boston, Jorge had seen little more than hills, rivers, small towns, and an abandoned four-lane highway. Vargas had maintained a cryptic silence the entire time, giving only monosyllabic responses to Jorge’s questions as he flew the shuttle westward across Massachusetts.
“I could,” Vargas replied, “but I think you ought to get it from someone else.” A reflective pause. “Considering all we’ve been through, you probably wouldn’t believe me. Better that you—”
“Will you open the damn hatch?” From the back of the shuttle, McAlister’s voice was an irate demand for attention. “And who the hell said you can fly my ship?”
Vargas rolled his eyes, smiled slightly. “Not exactly grateful, is he?”
Jorge wasn’t amused. “I think we’d all be a little more grateful if we knew why you—”
“Later.” Vargas rose from the left seat, stepped over the center console. “Just be patient,” he added as he headed for the passenger compartment. “You’ll learn the answers soon enough.”
Jorge unclasped his harness, followed Vargas from the cockpit. One of the Shadows was already unsealing the belly hatch; he lowered the ladder, then turned to assist Inez in helping McAlister out of his seat. The pilot winced and swore as the two of them carried him down the ladder; the indignity of having to be helped off his own ship didn’t improve his foul mood, and the sight of Vargas emerging from the cockpit hadn’t made him any less cranky.
Two small, three-wheeled vans were waiting at the edge of the airstrip. Vargas raised a hand to their drivers, and the vans approached the shuttle, their electric motors emitting no more than a soft whine. One of the vans was marked with a red cross; it came to a halt, and a young woman in a white tunic climbed out of the rear, carrying a collapsible stretcher under her arm. She unfolded it on the ground, then she helped the Shadow carefully place McAlister on it.
“There’s a hospital in town where we can take care of him,” Vargas said, as McAlister was lifted into the ambulance. “You’ll see him again soon, I promise.”
“I think I remember Black saying the same thing,” Jorge murmured.
Vargas gave him a sidelong look. “We’re not the Provos. Trust me, you’re among friends.”
Jorge said nothing. Vargas might have rescued them, but lacking any explanation, Jorge wasn’t inclined to trust him any more than he had before. Yet when Inez turned toward them, he noticed that she seemed relaxed. She walked over to Jorge, and he was surprised when she took his hand.
“It’s all right,” she said quietly. “We’ll be okay.” A glance at Vargas. “He’s . . . different now. Something about him has changed.”
Jorge wanted to ask what she’d sensed but refrained from doing so. The ambulance purred away, and the other van moved in to take its place. “C’mon,” Vargas said, holding open the rear passenger door for them. “There’s someone I think you’ll want to meet.”
Without hesitation, Inez climbed into the rear seat. Jorge followed her, and Vargas shut the door behind them before taking a seat beside the driver. The van sped away from the
Mercator
, its wheels bumping ever so slightly against the battered concrete. Its broad windows gave them a good view of where it was going. Once the vehicle reached the end of the airfield’s narrow dirt road, it turned left onto a paved road that led toward town. Just ahead was the ambulance, red lights on its roof silently flashing.