Chapter 21
Carey had been driving south and east, not being able to plan more specifically than he was taking May and Katie away from trouble and toward the ocean.
They were both asleep, but that was probably not going to last much longer.
May had taken a bottle and submitted to a diaper change at a rest stop about an hour ago.
That had reminded him that the insulated thermal bag was not likely to keep the other bottles of breast milk in it cold enough very long into the day that was about to start.
At some point he was going to have to stop and buy some formula and ice as a precaution.
He picked up his phone from the console where he had left it to charge.
She still hadn’t called or sent a text. He felt tempted to start the thought What’s preventing her from calling me?
but he could think of a dozen possibilities, and none of them made him feel calmer.
He didn’t want to call her, on the chance that the noise might endanger her.
The phone vibrated in his hand. He said, “Jane?”
“That’s me. Sorry to be scarce, but I needed to make a couple of stops on the way, and as usual, they took longer than I expected. Are you still driving?”
“Yes.” He fought off the irritation at her for not telling him what her real plans were by noticing how glad he was to hear her voice. “They both fell asleep, so I kept driving.”
“Maybe we should both pull over somewhere. We have to talk, and it might wake the girls up.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I’ll call you back when we’re stopped.”
He pulled off the highway and turned into the parking lot of a large shopping center. There were few cars parked this late at night. There were five in front of the supermarket, probably belonging to the workers who were cleaning floors and restocking shelves. He called Jane.
“Hi,” she said. “Where are you?”
“Eastern Pennsylvania. I saw a sign that said Interstate 95 a mile or so back.”
“Okay,” she said. “Stop at the best hotel you can find in or near Philadelphia, and get a suite. Two adults, two kids, two days. Tell them your wife will be joining you later today. I’m coming up to the Syracuse airport in a few miles.
I’ll fly to Philadelphia on the first flight I can get. I’ll call when I have the reservation.”
“All right,” he said. “Oops. May is waking up.” There was a loud cry.
“I can hear her. I’ll leave you now. See you in a few hours.”
Jane drove, thinking about what she could leave locked in the trunk of her car.
She felt glad that she had paid Stewart in advance for Brian’s new identities, which meant she wouldn’t need to leave cash in her car.
She could leave most of her clothes and toiletries and similar things.
She had guns and ammunition, which she would have to break down and throw away—preferably in a body of water—before daylight.
She couldn’t carry them on a plane. But she and her family would be driving south, territory where she could buy a whole arsenal if she wanted.
In a pinch she could also take the gun parts and loaded magazines she had wrapped and hidden in the door panels of Carey’s car for an occasion like this and assemble them.
She reached Skaneateles on Route 20, where she dropped the lower receiver of the gun into a sewer, the upper receiver and the barrel into another one a few miles on, and the ammunition into a third.
She drove on until she came to a vacant lot and eased her car up off the road.
She repacked her suitcase with things that were essential to have—the rest of her cash and Clare’s new identification and supporting documents and her most necessary clothes—put the things she was leaving into a couple of reusable shopping bags, and put them into the trunk.
She used her phone to make her reservation for the flight to Philadelphia leaving at 10:35, texted the flight number and arrival time to Carey, coasted her Volvo back onto the road, and picked up speed toward the Syracuse airport.
Jane was reaching the level of fatigue in which she had to struggle to remember the beginning of the day, and when she did, it seemed faded and vague as though it were a memory from weeks ago.
The sun would come up in an hour or so. She would have been awake for twenty-four hours, most of them doing physical and mental labor.
She had trained herself over her lifetime to extreme self-discipline.
Sometimes when it was really hard, she would think about her father’s ancestors, people who fought in endless wars when the continent from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and James Bay to the Caribbean, was one forest interrupted only by lakes and rivers.
Thinking about the grandfathers helped her stay strong many times.
Tonight, she was feeling dread. This time she was a runner too. And because she was, she had put her baby, May, her husband, Carey, and a teenage girl in terrible danger with her.
In another half hour she began to see signs directing her to the Syracuse airport.
It was about five miles northeast of the city center, and as she got closer there were signs that reminded her of its official name, Syracuse Hancock International Airport.
As she drove in, the big parking structure appeared on her left.
She could see there were plenty of spaces.
She knew there were no long-term parking lots at this airport, and the prices for parking were ridiculous, but that didn’t matter.
She entered, said she planned to park for a month, and paid in advance.
Her car was registered in the name Susan Mason, so she had her Susan Mason credit card ready.
She took her suitcase with her, walked across the street to the terminal, and waited until it was seven-thirty and she could check in for her flight without being early enough to attract attention.
The time went slowly, but it went, and then she was at the ticket counter, checked her suitcase, and walked through security to the concourses.
She wore an N95 mask while she was in the airport and she watched the crowds around her for any face she’d seen before.
She only removed the mask while she ate breakfast in the deepest corner of a restaurant and charged her telephone. She thought about texting Carey, but she was afraid even that would wake the baby up.
She sat in the waiting area across the concourse from her gate so she could study the people about to board her flight, and soon she was on the plane.
As usual, the pilot’s announcement sounded like a dog growling into a metal garbage can, and the only recognizable human word was “Philadelphia,” which was sufficient.
The flight attendants’ speakers were, as always, better than the pilot’s.
When the plane began to move, she felt elation.
It picked up speed and lifted above the tarmac and she felt a surge of relief.
She had not felt this way in an airplane in a long time.
Her trip to Oklahoma had been the first in two years, and that had not ended happily.
She stared out the window while the plane rose and passed through the clouds, and then her eyes got tired.
She closed them, became aware of the steady buzz of the jet engines, and then not aware.
When she was deep asleep she heard a rushing of air and then the sound of a hatch closing.
She dreamed she was opening her eyes, and saw at the front of the plane an old man, thin and slightly bent over, wearing a gray sport coat he had obviously bought during the years when his body had been big enough to fill it, stepping away from the main hatch.
A female flight attendant sidestepped him to engage the latch that sealed the exit.
“Thanks, honey,” he said, and turned to walk down the aisle of the plane.
As he reached Jane’s row, the woman in the aisle seat stood and went to the restroom, and the old man sat in the middle seat next to Jane.
When he turned his head toward her, she could see the stitches that the undertaker had used to close his cut throat.
They always reminded her of the seams on a baseball.
She said, “Hi, Harry. Once again, I’m sorry.”
“Jesus,” he said. “Will you stop that? The last time you dragged me into your life I recall that you had said sorry a thousand times. So now it’s a thousand and one.”
“It was my fault. That can never change. I led John Felker straight to you.”
“Not straight to me. You took me to Lewis Feng in Vancouver, the best forger available, which I still thank you for. And years later you took Felker to the same guy—the logical thing to do. Nobody knew that he kept a record of every false ID he made. My death was his mistake, not yours. And Felker killed him too, and he almost killed you, so he and I are even, and you and I are pretty close. You haven’t lost anybody since me. ”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m just a weird electrochemical short circuit your brain triggers on you sometimes.
An altered protein causes a synapse to fire and brings an image of me to become your go-to nightmare pal.
You pay attention to it because dreams are part of the religion you were raised in.
Maybe another part of the religion, about the twins, is true—that there really is a right-handed twin, Hawenneyu, the Creator, and a left-handed twin, Hanegoategeh, the Destroyer, and they need you to help keep your tiny part of the universe in balance, so they send me to be your spirit guide. ”
“Which is it?”
“You don’t know, so I don’t know. I’m just a memory of a dead man you used to know. So I’ll pick the simplest. I’m your spirit guide.”
“Then for once, you’ve come to tell me something?”
“No. I came because you’re ignoring what you already know.
This time you’ve taken on too much. The left-handed twin took your parents, but the right-handed twin gave you a husband who loves you.
You finally had a baby. A beautiful, perfect baby, your biggest preoccupation.
Now you have these Russians after you again, and the woman who has seen you and will recognize you from a hundred yards off.
You also have Clare, so you’re raising a teenager who is wanted for murder.
And last night you’ve picked up Brian Finlay, or whatever name Stewart, your current best forger, comes up with for him. ”
“So what have I done wrong?”
“You said yes too many times,” Harry said. “You’re spread too thin.”
“How can I fix this now?” Jane said.
“Think.”
“What does that mean? Do I have an answer already in my mind?”
“Of course you do. The world is beautiful to all creatures, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t cruel. We eat, but that means animals that are as good as we are—just not as smart—get eaten. Somebody has to die or nobody lives.”
“Who? Tell me.”
“I can only know what you know. You’re going to be the one who has to choose.”
“I don’t pretend I have the right to do that,” Jane said.
“You’ve done it.”
“I fought back.”
“Take it from me, dying happens billions of times a day,” Harry said. “It isn’t as bad as you think.”
“Oh? What am I missing? What does anyone get from dying?”
“A break,” he said. He got up and walked up the aisle to the flight attendants’ galley and turned left toward the exit hatch. The pressure in Jane’s ears increased.
There was a ding-dong tone, and Jane opened her eyes.
The overhead lights came on, and the flight attendants’ public address said, “We’re making our final approach to the Philadelphia airport.
Please check that your seat belts are fastened, your tray tables are closed, and your seats are in the upright position.
All personal belongings should be stowed under the seat in front of you. ”
Jane caught herself looking ahead at the front of the aisle, which was empty. The woman in the aisle seat of her row was in her place, where she had always been.