Archangel (38 page)

Mackenzie stepped out of his car at the end of a hardscrabble road that wound up the side of Bald Mountain. It was noon. Shelby had called that morning and told him to meet him there. The bare rock at the summit was iron gray, run through with veins of glittering mica that caught the sun and winked like signal mirrors out across the Algonquin Wilderness. The wind sifted up from the valley, bringing with it the sound of chain saws.

Mackenzie heard a footstep behind him and turned.

Shelby was there, at the edge of the woods, only a few feet away. He had hiked up through the trees in case the police followed Mackenzie to the meeting place. It had taken him more than two hours to find his way through the forest. At one point, he came to the basin of a dried-up pond. At the edge of it was the wreckage of some kind of vehicle. Shelby scanned the woods for signs of an old road that might once have led down to the water’s edge, but there was none. Then, as he approached the tangle of old metal, he realized it was an airplane. Looking at the struts, which pointed at an angle from the fuselage just ahead of the open cockpit, he could tell it had once been a biplane. Mud had painted the wreck. The wings had crumpled and one had torn off completely. Only a rotted stub was left of the propeller. All that remained of the cockpit windshield was still-
jagged teeth jutting from the mud-crusted frame. Shelby stood up on the remains of the lower wing and looked down into the cockpit, which appeared to have been built for two people. It was filled with dirt and leaves. There was no sign of bodies. Shelby took out a jack-knife and scraped at the fuselage. As the layers of mud flaked away, he saw traces of white paint. He figured the aircraft must have landed on the pond. Engine trouble, maybe. Shelby wondered if the fliers had survived. He shuddered. It made him lonely to think of dying in a place like this. Then he moved on quickly, because he was still a long way from the road. It took him another hour before he came in sight of it. When Mackenzie arrived, Shelby crouched in the shadows. He watched the old man pacing nervously. Then Shelby stood and walked out to the road.

“I didn’t hear you coming,” said Mackenzie.

Shelby gave a nod. His eyes were glittery with fatigue.

“Any progress?” Mackenzie asked. “The police almost caught a person last night, but he got away. I’m hoping you had better luck.”

Shelby did not tell Mackenzie that it was himself. “I saw somebody,” Shelby said.

“Where? In the woods?”

“In the woods. Yes.” Shelby studied his ring. “If he moves again, I should be able to get him.”

“Well, what if this person doesn’t move again?”

“Then presumably your troubles are over.”

Mackenzie paused as the words sank in. “Yes. Of course.” Prickly heat fanned across his forehead. He had been standing too long in the sun. “Can I ask you something? What exactly are you going to do when you find who you’re looking for?”

Shelby picked up a stone and skipped it down the road. “The best thing for now, sir, is to leave it all to me. The less you know, the fewer lies you’ll have to tell if people start asking questions.”

“People are already asking questions.”

Shelby wiped his hand slowly over his mouth, as if to brush dust from his lips. He moved away. Then he turned back suddenly. “You have to keep them out of it for as long as you can. I need things quiet until I can get the job done. Then I can get out of the way. Do you understand, Mr. Mackenzie?”

“Well, of course I do, but I can’t hold them off forever.”

“Mr. Ungaro will not stand to have his business compromised.”

“Sal Ungaro is an old friend of mine.” Mackenzie was not sure what good it did to say this.

“Mr. Ungaro has no friends.”

Mackenzie thought about this for a moment and realized it was true.

“And if my job is compromised, you are in a lot more trouble than you were when you started. I expect to leave here without a trace. Don’t make that difficult for me.” Shelby’s soft Virginia voice did not sound angry, but the threat was there in his words.

To Mackenzie, Shelby did not even seem human anymore. A nightmare flitted through his head of Shelby tearing off the rubbery flesh of his own face, revealing a bird’s nest of circuitry. “Look, I told you I think I know one of the people who’s doing the damage. It’s Madeleine. That newspaper’s involved in it somehow. Can’t you get at them through that? Show that there are people on this side of the fence who are prepared to play hardball. Some kind of warning. Then they might see …” His words died out. “You’re not going to kill anyone, are you?”

“You said you wanted them stopped.”

“I didn’t say I wanted them dead.”

“Sometimes you have to be thorough. A job with loose ends can be traced. You need the slate wiped clean. Tabula rasa,” said Shelby.

It was the first time Mackenzie had ever heard anyone use that phrase besides himself. Now, as as the words reached him like an echo from his own mouth, he saw the finality of their meaning in a different light. He was no longer the one who swept everything aside. Instead, he was one among the multitudes, scythed down and nameless in death.

Shelby stepped back into the shadow of the pines, his blue-jean jacket fading like a piece of turquoise dropped in muddy water, until he was gone.

“Oh God,” Mackenzie said to himself and got back in his car and drove away.

As Shelby made his way along the pathless ground, he felt the same clenching of his stomach muscles and drying out of his saliva that he always felt when he was about to do something violent. He had a fear that one day he would become again what he had been in Panama,
something so unspeakable that his mind had sheared all memory away, leaving him with only the leathery petals of human ears as reminders of what had happened. He knew that once a person had unleashed that part of himself, it could never be completely laid to rest.

After two hours’ sleep, lying in the depot on an old bench with a dusty tarpaulin pulled over him for a blanket, Gabriel headed back into the forest for another day of rail repair with a crew that came down from St. Johns. At five
P.M.
, he waved good-bye to them as they headed back into Canada. Then he turned to walk the half mile to the Putt-Putt, on which he would head back to town. Sun had baked the rails. Heat rose from the creosoted ties, blurring the air. As Gabriel walked, he thought of the St. Johns crew on their way home, deep in the shadows of the forest now. He knew they would be quiet with fatigue, smoking cigarettes and rooting for odd scraps of food in their lunch boxes. Gabriel felt thirsty and his canteen was empty. He touched the corners of his mouth and scraped away the dried spit. He decided he would head down to the lake and take a drink.

He was just stepping off the track when he heard the thump of a footstep on a railroad tie. A shadow swooped over him. Then a huge weight crashed onto his back and he fell down the slope into the ditch.

The assault had taken him so much by surprise that he still didn’t know what had happened when he lifted himself from the oily, knee-deep ditch water. He felt pain between his shoulder blades. As he stood, he saw a man just the other side of the ditch, and the shock that jolted him inside was as hard as the one that had thrown him down the embankment.

Gabriel could see that the man was young. Maybe in his early twenties. He had short blond hair and wore a blue-jean jacket with a green canvas shirt. His trousers were tucked into socks and he wore a pair of hiking boots. He was wearing a shoulder holster and carried a large black automatic pictol under his left armpit. He had the level gaze of someone who was not afraid.

Plainclothes police, Gabriel thought. Maybe even FBI. He wondered if it might be the one Lazarus had described. This man is no
logger, anyway, thought Gabriel. It seemed to him that he could already hear voices echoing off the glossy painted concrete walls of a prison cell. But it was the man speaking, and Gabriel realized he had been more stunned than he first thought by the kick that sent him down.

“I’ve been tracking you,” the man said. “You were doing good there for a while.”

Gabriel saw no sense in denying who he was. The canvas bag in which he kept the nails was on the seat of the Putt-Putt. He had left his gun there, too, so the St. Johns crew would not see it.

“Come here,” the man said, pointing to the narrow patch of ground between the ditch water and himself.

“Who are you?” Gabriel took a step out of the ditch. “Am I under arrest?” Already, in the back of his mind, he was assessing everything he had done. Not the guilt or correctness of it, but whether he had been effective. Not whether it had been worth it, but how dearly he had sold them his captivity. Now would come a different kind of struggle. It would be the opposite of everything he had done so far. Whereas before he had kept his work a secret, now he would talk as much and show his face as much as he could, force Mackenzie and the loggers to defend themselves in public. He knew the names of the lawyers that Swain had told him to contact. Gabriel could feel things closing up on him, the helplessness of the prisoner.

The man reached across and grabbed Gabriel by the collar of his shirt and dragged him away from the ditch water. His grip was powerful. “I’m not arresting you,” the man said. Then he punched Gabriel so hard in the stomach that he lifted Gabriel off the ground. Gabriel gasped, but drew in nothing and fell into the ditch and immediately the man had hold of him again and lifted him. Water coursed from Gabriel’s clothes. The man set Gabriel upright, then spun around in the tall grass and kicked him in the chest just below the throat. Gabriel flew back against a tree and slid down to the ground. He rolled onto his hands and knees, groaning and sucking in air.

The man was walking steadily toward him, fists balled into knots of flesh and bone.

Gabriel understood that he was going to die. He forgot about pain and launched himself at the man, who took the force of Gabriel’s head in his stomach. The man staggered backward and as soon as
Gabriel had regained his balance, he smashed his elbow into the man’s nose, feeling the cartilage crunch with the impact.

The man’s eyes closed and he doubled over, hands to his face. “You fuck!” he shouted through the bars of his fingers. Blood trickled out across his knuckles.

Gabriel’s mind was racing so quickly that all movements seemed ridiculously slow. As the man raised himself up and drew back his fist, Gabriel kicked him in the balls with his heavy work boots and dropped him to his knees. Gabriel shoved him back and had him by the neck, reaching for the man’s pistol, when the man jabbed the knife edge of his hand into Gabriel’s throat.

Gabriel staggered back and his hands clamped onto the pain as if to choke the life out of himself. But he could barely feel it. All knowledge of pain had disappeared now that he was fighting for his life.

The man drew his gun. He pulled it in one fluid movement from its sweat-darkened holster and cocked it and aimed it at Gabriel. “You don’t think I’ll use this, do you?” The man walked forward, clumsy-footed from the nausea rising thick and congesting from his genitals. “Do you?”

Gabriel steadied himself. He raised his hands uncertainly to the level of his shoulders, showing the empty palms.

The man held the gun against Gabriel’s forehead, dragging the steel through his sweat. “I was going easy on you, you stupid bastard.” Blood from his nose had run down over his lips and now when the man spoke, he peppered Gabriel’s face red.

“Get it over with.” Gabriel could barely speak. The jab to his throat had injured his windpipe.

“You still don’t understand!” In one fast movement, the man raked the side of his boot down Gabriel’s shin.

Gabriel crumpled, feeling the blood bead up out of the torn flesh.

Then he took hold of Gabriel’s collar and held the gun to the side of Gabriel’s head.

Gabriel closed his eyes.

“Look at me!” The man shook Gabriel until he was watching him again. “You leave town. Do you understand? You don’t wait for someone to take over your job. You don’t pack up your stuff and take anything with you. You just leave. You do not go to the police. Go do whatever you do someplace else. I don’t give a damn. But you leave
Mr. Mackenzie alone. Because you got no place to hide now. Not from me, you don’t. And you aren’t dumb enough to think I’d give you a second chance, are you?” He shook Gabriel again. “Are you?”

“No,” Gabriel whispered. The adrenaline that had blunted all his nerves was fading now. He did not want to think about the pain he would be in when it wore off.

“If you’re in town this time tomorrow, I’ll kill you. You understand? The only reason I’m not doing it right now is because I know you’re going to be smart, aren’t you?”

Gabriel didn’t answer. He concentrated on his breathing, slow and rasping along the laddered walls of his windpipe.

The man let go of Gabriel. “You aren’t listening to me, are you?”

“I am,” Gabriel said.

“You aren’t taking me seriously.”

“I am,” Gabriel said again, and he saw that now the man was coming unhinged.

The man shoved Gabriel down to the ground. His hand passed behind his back and when it reappeared, he was holding a large fighting knife, the steel bead-blasted to an unreflecting grayness.