“Is that what he’s doing?” Kinnard said without surprise in his voice. Did he smile as he spoke?
“You’re not a Mormon, are you professor?” she asked.
“I’m not. Have you tried Bruno’s? Porter’s one of their best patrons.”
“Mmm. The old man hasn’t seen him. It’s as if Porter’s died or something.”
Kinnard said nothing for a time, and Alred’s voice also evaporated in thought.
“Anyway, I think he’s run off,” she said.
“He’ll be back,” said Kinnard.
“My dissertation, as a refutation to his paper, depends on it! I need KM-2, and he’s got it.”
Pause.
“Dr. Kinnard?”
“Yes,” said the exhausted professor.
“I understand you were friends with Christopher Ulman?”
Silence. “That is right.”
“You…haven’t heard from him…have you?”
Nothing.
“Dr…Kinnard?”
The tape clicked off.
With eyebrows high, but relaxed, Peter stood upright and said, “Gentlemen, this leaves us with a number of obvious questions.”
“I have only one,” said an old man with a voice that reverberated in falsetto off the walls. “Peter…did you have Dr. Wilkinson killed?”
“What does that have to do with Alred’s call,” Peter asked without flinching.
“Answer the question, Peter,” said a man from the other side of the long cherry-wood table.
Peter looked at their faces, all wrinkled stone, unmoving Halloween masks that they’d forgotten to remove. Their eyes were dry and deadly. He refused to let them break his peaceful facade. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“Sure you would, and I think you did,” said the first gentleman. His face was as chilled as his voice. “It was sloppy. There were better operatives for the job. Even Polaski should have been smarter than to stake such a crude homicide. The authorities know he’s guilty.
“Has he left the states?” said Mr. Smith.
“We authorized nothing. I want to know who had the professor killed!”
Peter did not move.
“At any rate,” the old man told Peter, wiping a hand down his silk tie as he leaned back in the red leather seat, “the mess is now yours to clean up. You’ve done a poor job so far it seems.”
“Where is Porter now?” said Andrews across the table.
Peter swallowed, but kept it silent. “I was informed before I came in that Porter had been located. We are moving in. We’ll have him in moments.”
“Peter, the matter is yours. It results in your success or your death…do you understand?” said the gentleman at the far end.
“I have other measures that can be taken,” Peter said, unshaken outside, heart palpitations within.
“Sure.”
* * *
Porter’s leg was wet, which meant he still was bleeding.
The glass had done more damage than he had thought. For hours, he’d held the wound with his hands as he briskly walked through the night. In the parking lot he’d found someone waiting in black clothing not far from his car, which meant no ride home but a long walk instead. Only when he reached his apartment a couple of hours before dawn did he realize someone would be waiting there as well.
How did they know who he was? How did they know he was in the library? Who were
they
anyway?
No answers came that night, and the light brought no comfort.
He walked six blocks south of the campus and found a motel to sleep in. They wouldn’t give him the $29.00 room until after eleven o’clock that morning, and he suspected they were calling the owner to tell them about the beat-up college student who’d come for a room just after sunrise. Admittedly peculiar, but he had to hide out. He had to sleep. Even if it was only for a couple hours. Even if it cost him nearly thirty bucks.
But he couldn’t rest.
He washed the glass out of his palms and removed his slacks, thankful that the navy color had hidden the blood. The gash on his leg really was minor, but deep enough to require medical attention. It could have been much worse and ten times more painful. He showered before sitting on the bed. Under the covers, he found his head turning involuntarily to the rotary phone made of cream-colored plastic under the lamp on the nightstand.
He needed to call someone. The police? Yes. But what would he tell them? Who was after him? Why? It would only delay his work, and he had too much to do and less than thirteen days to finish it. A formal investigation would mean…Porter wouldn’t graduate.
He’d rather amputate his leg.
But he couldn’t stop looking at the phone.
Call Kinnard, he thought.
But what could Kinnard do? How would it help? What was Porter looking for, sympathy?
He couldn’t call his family…that would cause more stress to everyone.
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.
He heard his briefcase crash into the empty parking spaces below.
He caught a glimpse of the codex landing flat, creating its own thunderclap as the paper exploded to a degree Porter couldn’t determine.
Pain erupted from his fingers as branch smashed branch with his appendages caught in-between. He cried out, but left the tree and hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of him.
Bullets hit the black asphalt as Porter fought his way to his feet.
Landing nowhere around his belongings, he commanded himself in the direction of cover and flew as fast as if the bullets were tagging him in the back, shoving him along.
If he was hit, he didn’t realize it.
They had it all, now. He could only hope the chase was over.
The cold wind danced in circles over the brown paper bag sighing with the pages within, waiting to be picked up by the men in black.
April 26
3:57 p.m. PST
“So you’ve decided to rise from the dead!”
Porter leaned against Alred’s door frame a different man than the one Alred had met two weeks earlier. His slacks sagged, two rips in his right pant leg. The shine in his black shoes had been put out. His simple hair hung, unwashed and sticky. Both eyelids were welts through which he peered at her, and white bandages wrapped around both hands.