He smiled frostily and added, "And after this is all secure and rolling, make some calls, rent a house somewhere, get a block of sidewalk pulled up and wrapped up tight, and have some unconnected sayanim take the sidewalk block to the rented house. Make it look as if all security measures are being taken with it, but use an open line and say a few keywords like 'Marrity' and 'katsa.' Nothing real obvious like 'Mossad' or 'Einstein.' Right?"
"Right," said Lepidopt, edging his way now between the block and the bed. "I trust we won't be putting these decoy sayanim in danger, guarding a chunk of sidewalk?"
Mishal waved again at the Chaplin slab and the boxes. "Israel needs this. And needs whatever it is that's in that tower too."
"The El Mirador Hotel is still standing?" said Marrity.
Mishal squinted at him through exhaled smoke. "You had a little seance all your own, didn't you? No, I doubt it is. But its tower is still there."
"Einstein was talking to you," said Marrity. "He told you how his machine works?"
"Yes. He always meant to. We're Israel." To Lepidopt he said, "Get a couple of pieces of glass, and some oil, and put your handprints on them. And some of your hair, you heard all that. Right now." To Malk he said, "And likewise right now we need a couple of sayanim to take away the pieces of personalized glass, one up to the top of Mount Wilson and one out to Death Valley." Looking again at Lepidopt, he said, "You're to be ready to make your jump as soon as possible, understood?"
"Understood," said Lepidopt, though Marrity thought he didn't look happy about it.
Twenty-six
Daphne had fallen asleep in her chair in the black tent. An hour ago Canino had walked around the tent, prodding the draped fabric with something that might have been a broom and calling, "Matt! Go away!" and "Scat, Matt!" Daphne had called out to ask what time it was, just to hear a human voice in reply, but Canino had simply trudged back to the cabin. At least the TV cartoon thing hadn't been on the speaker anymore.
But at some point the music had become louder, waking her up. It was an idiotically upbeat and repetitive melody now, like what a 1950s movie would have as the background theme while the lead couple mugged and clowned in a park.
Daphne stared through the plastic pipe at the city in the valley. There were fewer lights in the darkness now, and she wondered who the drivers were behind the few visible headlights, and what errands had them out at this hour.
Abruptly the whole world flared white, blinding after the long period of darkness. The momentary glare had been silent, but so startling that it had seemed to crash in her ears.
And then she was in two places at once; her hands were still taped to the chair legs in the rebounding darkness, but she could feel one sheet of oily glass under all her fingertips, and she was sitting in the chair in the tent on the mountain, but she was also looking out through an airy arch of a tower at palm fronds waving in the night breeze.
She knew what had happened — she had caught a painfully bright beam of light from the city below her in the same instant that the lights mounted behind her chair had flashed. And it had apparently broken her mind in two.
The tower seemed to be falling — or else the truck's parking brake had broken, and the truck with the tent on it had rolled off the plateau's edge and was in midair—
Her wrists were taped to the chair, but without moving them she reached out through the tent fabric and across the expanse of gravelly dirt and grabbed the cabin, hard.
Golze's wheelchair lurched when the cabin rocked on its concrete-block foundations, and in the same instant the windows imploded and jets of orange flame burst upward out of the stoves. Golze's free hand clutched the armrest and he yelled, "Canino, trank her! Get out there, she's doing this!" He couldn't catch his breath again, and he waved at Fred.
Canino yanked the front door open, hesitated in the sudden bright glare of leaping flames, then hurled himself outside. Old Frank Marrity had dropped his bottle and was struggling to his feet.
"Fred," Golze managed to croak, and when the young man looked at him, Golze pointed to himself and then at the door.
Fred shook his head and dove out after Canino.
Already the cabin was full of red-lit smoke, and Golze didn't have the strength to cough, or even breathe. He began trying, with only one working arm, to lever himself out of the wheelchair so that he could try to crawl to the door. He heard Marrity collide with the door frame as he lurched outside.
Golze could hardly see through the smoke and his steamed glasses, but he could tell that it was a tall woman who appeared out of the smoke at the back of the cabin. She strode behind him, and then he felt the shift of strong hands on the grips of the wheelchair.
He nodded — but the woman began running powerfully forward, pushing him so fast that he was rocked back against the seat, and he was whispering, "No!" The wheelchair was moving at twenty miles per hour when the wheels clanked against the threshold and then spun free in midair.
He flew a good five feet and landed facedown in the gravel with the weight of the wheelchair and Rascasse on top of him.
Rascasse rolled off, and Golze tried to get air into his lungs. His face stung with abrasions and he was sure that several of his ribs were broken, but all his attention was centered on his right hand, which with all his determination he was barely able to move; he forced it to burrow under himself and close on the grip of his Army .45.
He heard a voice that was still recognizably Rascasse's say, "The wheelchair — get it off him, Fred. Right now."
The awkward bulk of the wheelchair was lifted away, and then a brusque hand took hold of his right shoulder and rolled him over on the flinty gravel.
Fred was facing the cabin, and by the orange fire glare Golze was able, even without his glasses, to see the blank expression on the young man's face. As much to change that as for every other reason, Golze tugged the gun free of his waistband, weakly lifted the barrel toward Fred, and pulled the trigger. The jarring explosion hammered his ears and the recoil sent a flash of pain from his wrist to his shoulder.
Fred's boots lifted from the ground and he sat down hard six feet behind where they'd been.
Footsteps scuffed in the dirt, and Golze could hear Canino's voice, though he couldn't make out words. "I told you guys," Golze gasped, though probably no one could hear him, "I told you she could do this."
Then Canino had grabbed him by the lapels and pulled him upright, and the pain in his broken left shoulder drove the consciousness out of him.
Old Frank Marrity stood on the shadowed side of the tent on the truck; the heat of the burning cabin stung his face and hands if he stood anywhere else, and only out of its direct glare could he see what was going on. He had to concentrate to focus his eyes — he had been drinking rum in the cabin, and he was more drunk than he wanted to be.
The Fred fellow was lying on the ground, apparently dead; and Golze, being half-carried and half-dragged toward the truck now by Canino, seemed dead too. Marrity had heard a gunshot over the roar of the fire.
The person who had been Denis Rascasse was moving toward the truck too, behind Canino. The hair was still white and cropped short, but the body in the battered business suit was clearly a woman's now. She stared at the ground as she came through the smoke and orange light, and though her arms and legs swung back and forth, Marrity thought the gravel wasn't disturbed when her feet swept over it.