It made no sense. Yet that was what had to have happened.
What had Kokoschka been up to?
He would probably never know.
Now Kokoschka was dead on a highway in 1988, and soon someone at the institute would realize that he was missing.
This afternoon at two o'clock, Stefan was scheduled to take an approved jaunt under the direction of Penlovski and Januskaya. He had intended to blow the institute — in two senses — at one o'clock, an hour before the scheduled event. Now, at 11:43, he decided that he would have to move faster than he originally intended, before Kokoschka's disappearance caused alarm.
He went to one of the tall files, opened the bottom drawer, which was empty, and disconnected it from its slides, lifting it all the way out of the cabinet. Wired to the back of the drawer was a pistol, a Colt Commander 9mm Parabellum with a nine-round magazine, acquired on one of his illicit jaunts and brought back secretly to the institute. From behind another drawer he removed two high-tech silencers and four additional, fully loaded magazines. At his desk, working quickly lest someone enter without knocking, he screwed one of the silencers onto the pistol, flicked off the safety, and distributed the other silencer and magazines in the pockets of his lab coat.
When he left the institute by way of the gate for the last time, he could not trust to the explosives to kill Penlovski, Januskaya, and certain other scientists. The blast would bring down the building and no doubt destroy all machinery and paper files, but what if just one of the key researchers survived? The necessary knowledge to rebuild the gate was in Penlovski's and Januskaya's minds, so Stefan planned to kill them and one other man, Volkaw, before he set the timer on the explosives and entered the gate to return to Laura.
With the silencer attached, the Commander was too long to fit all the way in the pocket of his lab coat, so he turned the pocket inside out and tore the bottom of it. With his finger on the trigger, he shoved the gun into his now bottomless pocket and held it there as he opened his office door and went into the hallway.
His heart pounded furiously. This was the most dangerous part of his plan, the killing, because there were so many opportunities for something to go wrong before he finished with the gun and returned to his office to set the timer on the explosives.
Laura was a long way off, and he might never see her again.
5
On Monday afternoon Laura and Chris dressed in gray sweat suits. After Thelma helped them unroll the thick gym mats on the patio at the back of the house, Laura and Chris sat side by side and did deep-breathing exercises.
"When does Bruce Lee arrive?" Thelma asked.
"At two," Laura said.
"He's not Bruce Lee, Aunt Thelma," Chris said exasperatedly. "You keep calling him Bruce Lee, but Bruce Lee is dead."
Mr. Takahami arrived promptly at two o'clock. He was wearing a dark blue sweat suit, on the back of which was the logo for his martial arts schooclass="underline" QUIET STRENGTH. When introduced to Thelma, he said, "You're a very' funny lady. I love your record album."
Glowing from the praise, Thelma said, "And I can honestly tell you that I sincerely wish Japan had won the war."
Henry laughed. "I think we did."
Sitting on a sun lounger, sipping iced tea, Thelma watched while Henry instructed Laura and Chris in self-defense.
He was forty years old, with a well-developed upper body and wiry legs. He was a master of judo and karate, as well as an expert kick boxer, and he taught a form of self-defense based on various martial arts, a system which he had devised himself. Twice a week he drove out from Riverside and spent three hours with Laura and Chris.
The kicking, punching, poking, grunting, twisting, throwing, off-the-hip rolling combat was conducted gently enough not to cause injury but with enough force to teach. Chris's lessons were less strenuous and less elaborate than Laura's, and Henry gave the boy plenty of breaks to pause and recoup. But by the end of the session. Laura was, as always, dripping sweat and exhausted.
When Henry left, Laura sent Chris upstairs to shower while she and Thelma rolled up the mats.
"He's cute," Thelma said.
"Henry? I guess he is."
"Maybe I'll take up judo or karate."
"Have your audiences been that dissatisfied lately?"
"That one was below the belt, Shane."
"Anything's fair when the enemy's formidable and merciless."
The following afternoon, as Thelma was putting her suitcase in the trunk of her Camaro for the return trip to Beverly Hills, she said, "Hey, Shane, you remember that first foster family you were sent to from Mcllroy?"
"The Teagels," Laura said. "Flora, Hazel, and Mike."
Thelma leaned against the sun-warmed side of the car next to Laura. "You remember what you told us about Mike's fascination with newspapers like the National Enquirer!"
"I remember the Teagels as if I lived with them yesterday."
"Well," Thelma said, "I've been thinking a lot about what's happened to you — this guardian, the way he never ages, the way he disappeared into thin air — and I thought of the Teagels, and it all seems sort of ironic to me. All those nights at Mcllroy, we laughed at nutty old Mike Teagel… and now what you find yourself in the middle of is a prime bit of exotic news."
Laura laughed softly. "Maybe I'd better reconsider all those tales of aliens living secretly in Cleveland, huh?"
"I guess what I'm trying to say is… life is full of wonders and surprises. Some of them are nasty surprises, yeah, and some days are as dark as the inside of the average politician's head. But just the same, there are moments that make me realize we're all here for some reason, enigmatic as it might be. It's not meaningless. If it was meaningless, there'd be no mystery. It'd be as dull and clear and lacking in mystery as the mechanism of a Mr. Coffee machine."
Laura nodded.
"God, listen to me! I'm torturing the English language to come up with a half-baked philosophical statement that ultimately means nothing more than 'keep your chin up, kid.'"
"You're not half-baked."
"Mystery," Thelma said. "Wonder. You're in the middle of it, Shane, and that's what life's all about. If it's dark right now… well, this too shall pass."
They stood by the car, hugging, not needing to say more, until Chris ran out from the house with a crayon drawing he had done for Thelma and that he wanted her to take back to LA with her. It was a crude but charming scene of Tommy Toad standing outside a movie theater, gazing up at a marquee on which Thelma's name was huge.
He had tears in his eyes. "But do you really have to go, Aunt Thelma? Can't you stay one more day?"
Thelma hugged him, then carefully rolled up the drawing as if in possession of a priceless masterwork. "I'd love to stay, Christopher Robin, but I can't. My adoring fans are crying for me to make this movie. Besides, I've got a big mortgage."
"What's a mortgage?"
"The greatest motivator in the world," Thelma said, giving him a last kiss. She got into the car, started the engine, put down the side window, and winked at Laura. "Exotic news, Shane."
"Mystery."
"Wonder."
Laura gave her the split-finger greeting from Star Trek.
Thelma laughed. "You'll make it, Shane. In spite of the guns and all I've learned since I came here on Friday, I'm less worried about you now than I was then."
Chris stood at Laura's side, and they watched Thelma's car until it went down the long driveway and disappeared onto the state route.