The dispatcher, faced with two people with earnest faces and FBI identifications, didn’t hesitate an instant. He ordered the cab in, and it dropped its fare in the French Quarter, and got to the garage in about ten minutes.
“So what’s the beef, Charlie?”
“Fed beef. These two FBI agents. They – ”
“Hey, I didn’t do a damned thing, I – ”
“That’s okay, pal,” said Nick, in his calming voice. “This isn’t about you. It’s about the cab.”
“That buggy is bad luck. Somebody shot Roni Ovitz through the neck and before that a guy named Tim Ryan was fuckin’ killed and – ”
But Nick wasn’t listening.
Okay, he thought. You’re in the backseat of the cab. You know you’ve been made. You’ve just got a few seconds. What do you do? The trunk? How can you get to the trunk? You can’t get to the trunk.
Under the front seat? No. The driver would see you, and whatever you stashed, he’d dig it out a few seconds later.
Nick said “Excuse me” to Sally, then went and climbed into the automobile, a 1987 Ford Fairlane. He sat there, his eyes closed, smelling the odor of the old and sodden upholstery, the stench of a hundred thousand other, unremarkable passengers, the tang of gasoline and oil, and, he supposed, one other coppery whiff in the air, the whiff of fear. Roni Ovitz’s fear. Tim Ryan’s fear. And, for surely by the time they reached the motel, Lanzman knew he was quite probably doomed, Lanzman’s fear.
Oh, you were a cool one, Nick thought. You held together to the very end. Whatever it was that motivated you – patriotism, faith, machismo – whatever it was, it was strong and beautiful stuff. Oh, you were a man, my friend. An hombre. Oh, yes you were.
His fingers had of their own accord fallen to the seat where, blindly, they probed and pushed at the juncture between cushion and back. There was a gap there, when the yielding cushioning was peeled back; you could slide a document through.
Nick got out of the car, turned, leaned in and pushed his hand through. He gave a mighty tug and yanked, and the seat lurched forward on hinges. Underneath it lay a tapestry of Western civilization and its contents: candy wrappers, cigarette packs, combs, pens, quarters and tokens, two playing cards, a business card and a rolled wad of some kind of heavy paper.
“Nick,” said Sally at his shoulder, pointing. “Is that it?”
Nick picked it up.
He unrolled it carefully. He saw immediately that it was on some sort of light-sensitive paper that made it impervious to photocopying. And even as he unscrolled it, he thought he watched the type dilute in clarity; an hour in the sun and this baby was history. No one could duplicate it, except maybe the geniuses at the Bureau’s legendary Forensic Documents Division.
The cover letter was written in Spanish, addressed to somebody named General Esteban Garcia de Rujijo of the Fourth Battalion (Air-Ranger), First Brigade, First Division (“Acatatl”), Salvadoran Army. It was signed by a Hugh Meachum, no affiliation given. It said, as best as Nick’s clumsy Spanish could understand, that the mission as outlined orally in their last meeting was being undertaken by the extremely efficient organization with which the writer was certain the general was familiar, and that it was to everybody’s best interest that the business be completed as quickly as possible. The writer also took the liberty of enclosing some background material – highly sensitive! most secret! – so that the general could rest assured the very best professional people were handling the job, and that therefore he was not to make any attempts himself, as that would completely undermine the cause in whose service they all labored so diligently.
Nick lifted the cover letter to examine the document itself.
It was Annex B.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
When he wasn’t shooting, Lon was studying.
He began with rote memory; he divided the map into one foot squares and attempted to commit each to the files deep in his brain. He worked everything out, slowly, one step at a time, with plodding thoroughness. He sat there in the field headquarters hut in Virginia in his wheelchair and just stared and stared at the miniaturized plastic mountain range spread out on the table before him, rocking back and forth on the fulcrum of his belly.
After memorizing the material so perfectly that he could see it in his dreams, he began to look for firing lines. He needed a certain distance, height, a good vantage point, the light behind him, no cross breezes, plenty of camouflage. One by one, he tested sites against his cluster of requirements, finding and discarding possibilities.
When he worked, no emotion showed on his face. It was a wintry Yankee face, iron as New England, the face of a man who knew death because he was himself mostly corpse.
Finally, days into the study, he beckoned to Colonel Shreck.
“Here,” he said. “I found it.”
His finger touched a valley deep in the vastness of the Ouachitas, far, far from the town of Blue Eye.
Shreck bent to read the inscription where the blunt finger marked it.
HARD BARGAIN VALLEY, it said.
Dobbler was astounded at how banal Bob found him. He had presumed, with no small amount of vanity, that Bob would find him fascinating, would ply him with questions, would in some way admire him.
Using Bob as others had used him, Dobbler had unburdened himself in one epic purge, like a mega-couch-session, letting it all pour out, his sins, his fears, his weaknesses, his guilts. He even blubbered as he confessed, while secretly admiring his own performance.
But Bob had just looked at him all squinty-eyed.
“What do you want?” Dobbler demanded when he was done. “Tell me, and I’ll give it to you.”
Bob regarded him without much interest.
“Don’t you trust me?” Dobbler wanted to know.
“It doesn’t matter a lot.”
“Why don’t you ask me more questions?”
“You’ve talked enough. You’ve talked too much.”
“Don’t you want to know how Shreck’s mind works? About the relationship between him and Payne? Don’t you want – ”
“Can you tell me how to kill him?”
“Uh – no.”
“Then you don’t know a thing that interests me.”
“But there’s so much more – ”
“You think what you told me is so important. But it doesn’t matter a spoon of grease to me, unless it can give me an advantage in a week or so. Meanwhile, you save it for Memphis; he’ll listen to you. I just want you to stay here and don’t wander off, you hear? You’re just another problem I have to solve.”
That was the beginning. Then Bob went out with his rifle for several hours, leaving Dobbler cabin-bound. Bob didn’t have to tell him that to wander off was to die in these remote regions.
In the cabin, Dobbler was always cold. He shivered from dawn till dusk, threw wood on the fire – “If you don’t stop using up that goddamn wood, I’m going to make you chop it your own damn self,” Bob had said testily – and sat there, sinking into misery, unmoved by the showy blaze of autumn that was exploding like napalm bursts all around. He hated the filth of it also, the lack of a toilet and toilet paper, the same socks and underwear day in and day out. He hated his own smell and wondered why he just got dirtier and Bob somehow seemed always immaculate.
Then one night, late, the door burst open.
Dobbler bolted up in sheer terror, sure they’d been discovered by one of the colonel’s raiding parties. But it was a large, angry young man with a thatch of blond hair and a rumpled business suit who seemed to be wearing four guns under his coat. This would be Memphis, the doctor surmised, and indeed it was. He smiled, anticipating someone more in his world than Bob.