Steal Across the Sky (32 page)

We have no answers. We cannot imagine the experience, nor the beings we would be if we had it regularly. But a failure of imagination does not mean that the whole thing is impossible. Perhaps, as scoffers say, we are deluded and seduced by the Atoner claims.

On the other hand, we may just have been in the dark so long that we cannot imagine light.

LUCCA STARED OUT THE WINDOW
at the snow falling in large, lazy flakes over his walled garden. Snow clung to the tender leaves on the peony bushes, the new buds of the roses. He hated Toronto. This was an unexpected snowfall, and it reminded him too much of the village and plains on Kular, captive of endless bleak snow. The news said the snow would be gone in a few hours, but it shouldn’t be here at all.

No,
he
shouldn’t be here at all. He should be in London, where he had friends from Cambridge and where he could lay on Gianna’s grave the roses she loved. Or he should be in Tuscany, for which he felt queasy homesickness every time he uncorked a bottle of Maduro Sangiovese. Tuscany in spring: The hills holding light in their hollows, that silvery and gossamer Tuscany light. The almond and cherry and plum trees in bloom. The hills rising one atop another, mauve in the morning and golden at noon and hazy blue at dusk . . . So what was he doing here in Canada?

Yanking closed the heavy curtains, Lucca returned to his desk, where supposedly he was working on correspondence with the Canadian distributors of Maduro wines. It was convenient to have Lucca in North America, his brother Mario had agreed—
certo
, it made personal meetings with distributors easier. Lucca took no meetings with distributors, which of course Mario knew. It was convenient to have Lucca in North America so Mario, the older brother, could make the important decisions alone in Italy. Mario and Lucca . . . . an old struggle.

So why was Lucca in Canada?

He knew the answer. The Witnesses, most of them, lived here. Jack Jones was in England, yes, Amira in India, Hans in Germany, Ruhan in China. But fifteen of the Witnesses were American, including Soledad
and Cam. Fourteen now, since Sara’s murder. Lucca couldn’t explain why he needed to stay near to Soledad and Cam, but he did. And he simply couldn’t face the difficulties of moving to, or living in, the United States, with all its peculiar politics. So he was here in Toronto, wasting his time watching snowfall in late March.

Soledad needed him.

By now she would have gone back to her hotel, found James gone, and done—what? Lucca wasn’t sure. On the Atoner ship, Soledad had always been the calm one, rational and intelligent, the foil to Cam. But underneath that reserve, Lucca had sensed a great capacity for passion. She hadn’t, again like Cam (or himself, a nagging voice said inside his head), channeled that passion into a definite reaction to the Atoners’ lies about a so-called afterlife. But Lucca knew the question troubled her. He’d watched that search for an existential answer divert itself to James, whose storybook looks could probably ignite lust in most women. Was that why the Atoners had chosen James to approach Soledad? What were the alien bastards after now?

To think that once he’d trusted them with his life.
Che cretino
.

She would call him within the hour, he was sure. And he would do whatever he could to—
There
. The phone. He didn’t recognize the number.

“Lucca, it’s me.”

“What kind of phone are you on?”

“A pay phone in Manhattan. It’s okay.”

“Probably but not necessarily. What do you need,
cara
?”

Long pause. Soledad always had trouble asking for help she couldn’t pay for. Lucca said, “Do you want to get out of Manhattan?”

“The Agency is following me—”

“Of course they are. Go to the Wall Street helioport, but not for three hours. Have a cup of coffee somewhere away from that whole area until half an hour before then. Try to arrive at the helioport just when my chopper does. Don’t give the Agency time to guess what you’re doing.”

“But I don’t have my passport with me, and I don’t think the government would let me leave the country now anyway—would they?”

“No. They’d trump up something, detain you at the border as a material witness or something. But you’re not going to leave the country,
and there’s no legal grounds for not letting you get on a private chopper on a public pad.” Lucca hoped this was correct; American law was so damn strange. “Don’t say more now,
cara. Ciao
.”

“
Ciao
.” There was a note in her voice that Lucca couldn’t quite name, but it was not damsel-in-distress. She wasn’t Cam. To his surprise, the person her tone reminded him of was Chewithoztarel.

SHE CLIMBED INTO THE CHOPPER
, shivering in a too-thin jacket and carrying nothing but her purse. “Lucca! I thought you’d send somebody, and I didn’t think you . . . yourself, I mean . . .” The flurry of stammering passed as quickly as it arrived. Quietly she said, “Thank you.”

“
Andiamo
, Aldo.” The chopper lifted.

“Where are we going? And is he—” Soledad waved at the pilot.

“Aldo has been with me always. He is completely reliable. Yes, Aldo?”

“
Non dire cazzate
.”

Lucca turned to Soledad. No tears, just that look of focused intensity, and again he thought of Chewithoztarel. “We are going to a place owned by a friend. It’s not the place on the flight manifest, but we’ll sort that out later. And yes, that friend is also reliable. She’s an American I knew at Cambridge.”

“You have a lot of friends,” Soledad said, and this time he couldn’t make out her tone at all.

THE CHOPPER FLEW WEST
. Lucca didn’t try conversation over its noise. Two hours later it set down on a tiny snow-covered field on the side of a mountain in the Allegheny range in Pennsylvania. Aldo took off. Lucca lugged his large leather suitcase through the snow and keyed in the door code of Anna Parker’s parents’ vacation cabin.

Anna had been Gianna’s best friend at Cambridge. They’d become a foursome: Gianna and Lucca, Anna and her English boyfriend, Michael. GLAM, fellow students had nicknamed them, half-derisively and half-enviously. Anna’s mother had been a semi-famous movie star who overdosed on heroin when Anna was six. Her father was a studio executive, a brash and unkind man who hadn’t wanted children in the first place. Anna was waiflike, bruised looking, as if she thought her exterior should
reflect her inner state. Gianna had laughed at her, mothered her, become her anchor. Michael had done the same thing. Since Gianna’s death, Lucca had not been able to bear seeing Anna, but he still trusted her. It turned out that Anna, now living and working in San Francisco, had been stronger than any of them. Michael was an alcoholic, Gianna was dead, and Lucca had let despair make him the tool of aliens as deceptive as the Medici.

“It’s nice,” Soledad said of the cabin, and Lucca laughed. It was not nice. Crude bunk beds, propane stove, Coleman lanterns, a wooden table and four chairs, rough wooden shelves holding canned goods. Anna’s father had bought the place as a hunting lodge, an exercise in old-style macho, and then never once hunted. Too busy, too important, too Hollywood. Anna had liked “the lodge” precisely because her father didn’t.

“Lucca, what are we going to do here? Besides hide?”

“What do you want to do?”

She didn’t answer. He lit the stove and lantern, waiting. Finally she said, “I want to find James. I already called someone, just before I called you.”

He straightened from the stove. “Called someone? Who?”

“A journalist that already knows who I am. My sister outed me.” Her mouth twisted unpleasantly. “He wanted an interview with you and tried to pay me to set it up. I said no. But he’s just inventive enough and sleazy enough to be able to track James, and so I—”

“You shouldn’t have done that, Soledad.” He doubted that any “sleazy journalist” would be able to find James.

“I didn’t tell Carl much,” she said quickly. “Just that I’d had a lover who’d deserted me and I wanted him found, and in return I promised him a big story.”

“Me?”

“No! Of course not. But James . . . If he’s a new ‘Witness’ of some kind, the story’s going to break anyway, and it might as well be Carl Lewis as anybody else. At least this way I get something out of the whole lousy deal besides more people shooting at me.”

This cynicism about the Atoners was new to her. Doubt, yes—she’d had doubt before. But Lucca looked at the downturn of Soledad’s mouth
and the expression in her eyes, and recognized a depth of suffering she would never admit.

He said gently, “Are you really sure you want to see James again?”

“Yes.” The stoniness was back. “Lucca. What do
you
think the Atoners are doing?”

“I have no clue.” The stove began to warm the cabin.

“Then what are
we
doing? This cabin is so isolated. . . . You got me away from the Agency, but there’s not even a phone, no way to do . . . anything.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” He opened the suitcase. With a flourish he took out two pairs of his pajamas, six shirts, socks and underwear and toiletries, and laid them elaborately at Soledad’s feet like a knight presenting tribute to a queen.

She didn’t smile. Staring into the bottom of the suitcase, she said, “You have a gun.”

“I do, yes.”

“What are those electronics?”

“Handhelds. The beam upward is traceable, but nobody’s going to be looking for it here. The calls themselves and the results of the surveillance equipment are completely untraceable, Russian black-market stuff that runs military-grade encrypted software piggybacking on E.U. satellites.”

She turned slowly. “What did you say?”

“I said this is Russian black-market stuff that runs military-grade encrypted software piggybacking on E.U. satellites to—”

“You fucker.”

It was said so quietly, so low, that at first Lucca thought he’d misheard. Then he understood. Americans . . . they were always so open with each other. But he had expected intelligence agents to be different.

“It was you,” Soledad said in that same deadly quiet voice. “You put the Everknow surveillance stuff in the woods around my house.”

“Yes. I did.”

“I trusted you.” And after a pause, “Just like I trusted James.”

“No. Not like you trusted James, and with a big difference—” He took a step toward her but stopped when she retreated. “Listen to me. I
had you under surveillance because I was concerned about your safety. I didn’t tell you, no, because I did not want you telling Diane Lovett or James or anybody else. Who could know that you, of all urban creatures, would take a walk in the woods?” He almost smiled but caught himself; a smile right now would be fatal. “I am not James. I did not watch you or get close to you in order to use you. I was concerned about a friend is all, and . . . Soledad, please do not be angry with me. My reasons were of the best, only. Please believe me.”

A part of his mind was astonished at how much it mattered that she did believe him.

“I don’t know what I believe anymore. Not about you, not about James, not about the Atoners—” She put her hands over her face.

Lucca tried to take her in his arms, but she pushed him away. “
Cara
—”

“Don’t call me that. Just . . . just let me think.”

He did. He busied himself with adjusting the lantern, with putting the tiny supply of clothes on a wooden shelf, with opening a large plastic box to survey the dried food inside. Five minutes passed, maybe ten. When she finally spoke, he spun around so quickly that he almost lost his balance. Soledad had removed her jacket in the new warmth of the cabin. Underneath she wore a man’s sweater, blue cashmere, with a stain near the neck band.

“All right, I believe you. I’ve never known you to lie to me, and you admitted it when I asked. But don’t withhold any more information, okay? You have to promise me. If you won’t, I’m calling Diane on one of those handhelds and going back to New York.”

“I promise to not withhold any more information from you.” She had revealed more than she intended. If Diane and this Carl Lewis were her only other resources, she was needy indeed.

“Fine,” Soledad said tonelessly. “You’re a hundred percent sure these handhelds can’t be traced?”

“I am.”

“Then give me one to call Carl and give him the number. And after that, I want you to teach me how to shoot that gun.”

He hadn’t expected that, and a sudden qualm took him. He thought he knew her, but— Sometimes jealous women— “Soledad . . . 
cara
 . . . you’re thinking of
shooting
James?”

“Of course not.” She looked directly into Lucca’s eyes. “But I’ll shoot anybody who tries to keep me from finding out what James and the Atoners are trying to do now.”

“Ah,” he said, unimpressed. Apparently even a woman like Soledad was capable of histrionics—quiet histrionics, yes—when jilted in love, but he didn’t believe for a moment that she would carry through any melodramatic acts of revenge. What she needed now was to untighten, to relax a bit. Lucca pulled from off a shelf a bottle of wine, inspected it, and grimaced. It would have to do, but a California merlot—amazing. Americans, even rich Americans like Anna Parker, would apparently drink anything.

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