The shuttle flight from Miami dropped towards Phoenix's Sky Harbor airport as the desert evening purpled. The ground was a sodium-lamp orange-yellow, scattered with the crucifixes of giant cactuses. Gant watched the ground rushing towards the airplane and Phoenix's lights spring out of the dusk, as if someone had just created the city. He was dog-weary, unshaven and unwashed. The wheels touched, skidded, settled and the whine of deceleration filled the cabin of the medium-haul Boeing. The terminal and the hangars slipped by as if half remembered The plane slowed, the airport became more real, the desert and the cactuses now unreal as the Boeing turned on to the taxi-way. It was darker amid the neon, a sudden night. He yawned behind his hand but even that small politeness seemed to irritate the blue-haired matron at the window seat, her permanent Sunbelt tan having worked on her skin like heat on old leather. His whole appearance, perhaps even his unwashed smell, had offended her throughout the flight from Miami.
He felt little or no anxiety as the aircraft came to a halt on the apron and the transfer bus rolled towards it. He had felt none when he had landed at Miami International, passed through the transfer lounge and eaten a meal while waiting for this flight. Perhaps he had left all such feelings behind him in France, of perhaps weariness had eroded them like rain on soft stone. He had reached the airport at Toulouse by backroads and without hindrance. By evening, an Airbus 320 had flown him on a shuttle service to Amsterdam, where he had spent the night in the departure lounge, attempting to sustain a sleep interrupted by the noises of tired children and worn adults. The first Stateside flight out of Schipol in the early morning had been a Delta tourist flight to Florida by Boeing 767. He had been lulled, amid the Dutch, German and British tourists, by the American accents of the flight attendants, the American movie. He felt he was the only one on the flight uninterested in Disney World as his destination.
He had thought, momentarily, of returning to London. But Aubrey's idea had gone down the toilet with Strickland's disappearance and the French counter-activity.
Aubrey wouldn't have any more ideas. It had been time to come home… like Strickland?
The snapshot was in his breast pocket like a talisman. If Strickland was running from the same people who'd tried to kill him and Gant was certain he was then maybe he, too, had come back to the States.
Besides, he needed to talk to Blakey, even to Barbara. There were resources at Vance Aircraft he could use. Just maybe he could find Strickland alone, he reaffirmed with a lack of conviction as he stood up and allowed the matron to drag her cabin bag from the overhead locker and to brush unapologetically past him.
He shrugged, pulling down his own sports bag, one he had bought at Schipol along with a clean shirt. It was just sufficient luggage not to arouse interest. He stepped through the passenger door behind two fractious children and a pregnant mother into the mobile lounge, scissor-lifted on its hydraulics. He stood at the far end of the vehicle, strap-hanging, idly watching his fellow-passengers. Then the lounge was lowered on to its chassis and accelerated towards the main terminal building.
The first stars gleamed high above the glass roof, and a sliver of moon seemed as abandoned and unnecessary as a nail-clipping low on the horizon.
The pregnant woman and her two children, were, he realised, Apache. The matron, seated a few feet from them, seemed to dissipate her disapproval between himself and the Native Americans. The Sunbelt had seen another land rush this time of new businesses and early retirement. There wasn't gold or cattle country out here now to take away from the Indians, just golf courses.
The doors of the mobile lounge sighed open at the terminal gate and he filed off behind the other passengers, hesitant for perhaps the first time. Then the automatic doors embraced him and he began to trek towards the exit and the cab rank.
He was unaware that, together with the other passengers on the flight, his photograph was taken as he had entered the concourse. The FBI agent was bored, impatient for his shift to end, and certain that Gant would not return to Phoenix. He was therefore uninterested in visually inspecting the passengers; but because Mclntyre in Washington had insisted, and he was a hard-nosed, unforgiving sonofabitch, he dutifully photographed all arriving passengers at Sky Harbor that night.
Gant walked out of the terminal into the fresh cool of the evening, confident of his continuing anonymity.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Accident and Design Reluctance remained on her wearied, drawn features like a mask. Blakey, too, seemed older, misplaced. It was as if both of them had moved on in time and resisted being drawn back into the situation. Gant stood in the doorway of the executive suite, sensing Alan Vance's absence from the big room like a visible, black hole.
Barbara watched him warily, as if he had declared some intention of reviving their marriage and of hurting her further.
Gant shrugged and said: "I didn't intend to cause trouble, Barbara."
Then he turned at once with evident relief to Blakey.
"Hi, Ron."
Blakey grumbled something into his unkempt beard, his dark eyes looking at a loss and aged, his whole manner that of an actor learning the role of a derelict.
Gant moved forward into the familiar pine-panelled room. Barbara was seated behind Vance's big redwood desk, Blakey on a long sofa against one wall.
"I need your help, Ron. Some computer stuff—" Then it was as if he, too, succumbed to the invisible nerve gas of defeat and bankruptcy that had replaced the room's habitual energy, its atmosphere of effort and confidence.
Through the windows, their blinds still raised, the dusk was uninterrupted by the glow of lights, the sense of business, the light-map of hangars, workshops, runways. Vance Aircraft, he had realised as the cab had approached it, had become a vacant lot. The banks and the other major creditors had foreclosed. The company had been declared bankrupt, without the benefit of Chapter Eleven or any other saving delay, as the business had been asset-stripped as effectively as if by locusts.
He'd read the obituary in Newsweek on the flight from Amsterdam. He could read it even more vividly on Barbara's face. For the first time in years, he felt an ache of sympathy for her.
"I had meetings, Mitchell, I didn't need to be interrupted," were her first accusing words. They were, however, delivered in a very worn, husky voice, as if she had finally tired even of insult and her dislike of him.
"Sure. I realise what's been happening."
"Do you?" Then her features softened; crumpled, rather.
"Maybe you do at that.
What is it you want?" She waved him to a seat.
"Drink?" He shook his head and she shrugged, sipping at her own large bourbon. There were stains of tiredness under her eyes, the make-up was disguisingly heavy.
He turned to Blakey, as if embarrassed. He took out the snapshot of Strickland, posed on a jetty of some kind, where there were mountains, pines, a lake; somewhere in the world. He, at least, felt refreshed after the shower he'd had in his motel and was determined to shake off the room's mood, its air of defeat.
Strickland was his sole concern.
This is the guy who made the rogue chip," he said.
"His name's Strickland. He's ex Company Blakey seemed nonplussed, his features with that empty concentration of a wino.
There's nothing more I can tell you about the chip, Mitchell. My guess is it reconfigured itself it's wearing a disguise, or maybe it's gotten amnesia after it did what it was intended to do."
"It's not the chip that matters, Ron," he replied with a patience that surprised him.
"I want to trace this guy."
"Can he make things come out right like in a story?" Barbara asked derisively.