“You’re getting off the track.”
“Am I? You’re talking about taking them out individually. I suggested that at the outset. But the only effective method of achieving that is to kill them. I still suggest your preclusion of murder is an artificial stricture—because the methods you’ll be forced to use are bound to be as reprehensible as murder or more so.”
“I can think of very few things as reprehensible as murder.”
“You’re wrong. Whatever method you choose, it must lead to the same end—the willful destruction of your enemies. Nothing less than that will suffice. You may leave them alive and breathing but you must destroy something vital—if only their freedom to make choices. Ultimately you’ll be forced to assume absolute power over their decisions and their lives. You must see that much. I’m not as certain that you also see the inevitable consequence. Such power will corrode your soul.”
“It can be done without killing,” Mathieson said.
“Very well. How?”
He pulled the chair closer to Vasquez and sat down. “We start with C. K. Gillespie.”
PART THREE
THE HUNTER
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
California–Illinois: 29 September
1
HE SAID HIS GOODBYES TO AMY AND BILLY AND THE MEUTHS; he carried the suitcase down to the car and put it in the back seat and walked off beyond earshot with Jan and Ronny.
Because of the boy they were both holding back a great deal. Ronny shook his hand gravely. Mathieson fought back the impulse to embrace him: Ronny would hate it in front of the others.
“I want you to take damn good care of your mother. Don’t sass her.”
He took Jan in his arms. “It’s going to work, you know. Things are going to be all right.”
“Sure.” She kissed him. He was startled by the ferocity with which she clenched him against her as if she could draw strength from him.
Ronny said, “You still look lousy in that moustache. It makes you look like Zachary Scott.”
“What have you got against Zachary Scott?”
“He’s dead,” Ronny said and turned away.
“I’m not dead, Ronny. Listen to me.”
The boy turned reluctantly.
“Are you listening?”
“Sure I am.”
“Put a little trust in your old man. I’m going to pin these bastards like butterflies. They’ll never touch us again. I want you to stop feeling sorry for yourself. If you don’t, you’ll feel like a damn fool afterward—all that sour worry for nothing. Understand me?”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt. You don’t even have a gun.”
“Guns don’t answer any questions, Ron.”
“Who’s asking questions? They just want to kill us.”
“They won’t get the chance. Believe that.”
“All right.”
“I mean it now.”
But the boy wasn’t convinced and he couldn’t think of any way to reassure him.
Jan said, “You’ll miss your plane.” It was the next thing to a whisper.
He kissed her again, trying to mean it. Then he walked away from them to the car.
Vasquez got in behind the wheel.
Homer held the passenger door. Mathieson shook his hand. “I’ll see you in Washington.”
“And me in little old New York,” Roger said. “Ride easy, old horse.”
“You know this is going to work,” Mathieson said.
“Damn right I do.” Roger smiled a little; of them all Roger was the one who had no reservations.
“Take care now, old horse.”
Vasquez drove him down past the paddock fence. Behind them Jan and Ronny stood in the driveway waving.
They rolled very fast down the gravel track. The dust lifted high and their passage exploded birds out of the trees. Vasquez said, “I’ll have four men down here by tonight to keep watch. Don’t alarm yourself over their safety. No one will get through to them. If there’s an attempt my men have orders to use their weapons.”
“If there’s no other choice.”
“There won’t be if Pastor’s men come here again. They’ll come only if they know they’ve got the right place. But I still believe they’re safest here. Pastor has already searched it—he’ll have no reason to come back.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Vasquez slowed for the turning into the county road. “You’re one of the most closely guarded people I’ve ever met. Have you always been remote or is it something that’s happened since these attacks began?”
“You’re a great one to talk.”
“I haven’t got a marriage to save.”
Mathieson closed his eyes. Vasquez’s smugness made him want to snarl. “You’ve got a wife.”
“In name,” Vasquez said. “We don’t share premises. You’re evading the point.”
“I don’t need two-penny psychoanalysis from you.”
“You’re frightened. It’s understandable. But aren’t you confusing the source of your fears? It’s not your friends or your wife you need to fear.”
2
When the flight was called he left Vasquez and went along to the boarding gate, being careful to stay in the center of the crowd, neither first nor last.
The plane was not crowded; to his relief the seat next to his was empty. Stewardesses went down the aisle looking at passengers’ seat belts and offering magazines and headphones. At takeoff he felt a belly-churning sensation when the wheels thudded up into their sockets while the plane still seemed only inches off the ground. Then they were climbing steeply and he relaxed his grip on the arms of the seat.
He spent the three hours neither sleeping nor reading; he stared at the clouds and worked out pieces of the scheme in his mind. But anxious thoughts about Jan kept distracting him.
At O’Hare he took the first taxi in the rank. He was empty-handed; the bag was checked through and he had four hours between planes.
The taxi dropped him at the John Hancock tower. It was a chill bleak day, the heavy overcast scudding quickly overhead, pedestrians chasing their hats in the Chicago winds.
He went into the tower and cruised through the basement arcade of shops, making an aimless circuit, emerging from the side entrance and crossing briskly to the hotel garage opposite; he hired a nondescript small car there and drove it down Lake Shore Drive to the Loop.
He was not particularly well acquainted with Chicago but he knew the main landmarks and found his way without difficulty to his destination. He had arrived early for the meeting in order to see who went into the hotel. He recognized no one until he saw Bradleigh step out of a taxi and walk inside, hatless and ruddy, the tails of his open topcoat flapping in the gray wind.
He gave Bradleigh a five-minute lead, saw nothing that alarmed him, got out of the car, locked it and crossed the street just as rain began to slant onto the pavement. By the time he reached the hotel it was pouring.
Bradleigh was in the bar at a side table, cigarette smoke trailing from his mouth and nostrils. Mathieson went straight to him but Bradleigh’s glance passed over him twice without recognition until he was within three paces; then Bradleigh beamed, humor in the gentle eyes: “I didn’t recognize you.”
“That’s good.” He pulled the chair out and sat down.
“It’s not just the hair and the moustache. You move differently. Have you lost weight?”
“Redistributed it.”
“You look ten years younger.”
“I’m in a little bit of a hurry, Glenn. Can we let that suffice for the amenities?”
“Do you want a drink?”
“No. I’d like to know what you’ve found out—how things are going, if anywhere.”