Asterisk (28 page)

Sharpe started to make telephone calls to the various field offices that might help him in this matter. He was having a hard time keeping himself in control. He was having a very hard time. Sweat soaked his shirt, the palms of his hands, the soles of his feet. He got through to Dallas. He asked for a check. Within ten minutes he had it. He got the Phoenix number and asked for another check.

Thorne, he kept thinking.

John Thorne. You couldn't go on living a charmed life, sonny.

Within twenty minutes of making his calls he had pieced together a picture of John Thorne's movements. He called Dilbeck back. When he was through talking with Dilbeck, he dialed the number of Tarkington's motel.

Tarkington answered, sounding cheerful.

“I am sorry to trouble you,” Sharpe said. “But I'd like you to come in to the office.”

“What? Now?”

“I don't think it can wait, Tarkie. I don't think it can wait.”

When he had hung up he went to a map that was pinned to the wall. He began looking at the most unlikely places. Yeah, he thought. Why not? Turner, out in Ashkhabad, was badly in need of replacement. Why not?

Ashkhabad sounded very fine.

“Laphroaig,” the congressman said. He handed the glass to Dilbeck, who sniffed the drink before sampling it.

“Very fine,” Dilbeck said.

He looked around the kitchen. It was the first time he had been in Leach's apartment and he was surprised a little by the absence of life signs. It was as if nobody lived here.

“The goddamn bungling is staggering,” Leach said.

“Indeed,” Dilbeck said.

Dilbeck was silent. He watched Leach move around on his cane. He grunted, wheezed, as he moved; he was coming apart at the seams in that final process of disintegration that life can no longer stall. A few more months, Dilbeck thought. Another funeral to attend.

“We know that John Thorne booked a flight from Richmond, Virginia, this morning. The same John Thorne reputed to be a corpse.”

“Bungling,” Leach said again.

“However, Thorne has something of a cash-flow problem apparently, because he's traveling everywhere with credit cards, which makes it no great problem to keep track of him,” Dilbeck said.

Leach drained his glass and set it down.

“He rented a car from Avid at Phoenix,” Dilbeck said. “The rest is elementary.”

“Escalante,” Leach said.

“Of course.” Dilbeck looked into his glass.

“What a reckless young idiot,” the congressman said, lifting the bottle of malt whiskey as if to pour himself another drink, then setting it down again. “What will happen to him at Escalante?”

“It's already taken care of, Congressman.”

“And that will be the last of him?”

“As you say.”

Leach sat down, propping his walking stick against the wall. “Old Ben Thorne was a stubborn old fart. A good man, but dynamite wouldn't shift him if his mind was made up.”

“Like father, like son,” Dilbeck said.

“I guess.”

Both men were silent in a manner that suggested a moment of rumination, the passage of a memory, something shared.

“First Hollander, then Thorne,” Leach said.

“Two different problems, I fear.”

“Yes,” Leach said. “I wonder if Asterisk is worth anything now.”

“It remains to be seen,” Dilbeck said. “It remains to be seen.”

It was almost dark when he saw the perimeter fence. He drove the Pinto toward it. Now, he thought. Now. He turned the engine off, sat for a moment, trying to keep control, trying to hold together the delicate balances of himself. A failure of nerve—and it would fall apart like a house of dominoes. He got out of the car, slammed the door and, as he did so, he heard the click of an automatic weapon from behind the fence. There was a uniformed guard pressed against the wire. He had an M-16 clutched to his side, leveled directly at Thorne.

From behind he heard the sound of a motor. He turned, saw a jeep come up alongside him. The driver wore the helmet and armband of an MP. Thorne did not move; he had the feeling that if he moved he would be shot. I'm sorry, he might say. I'm sorry, I just lost my way in the dark, didn't know this was Uncle Sam's property, ha ha, you know how it is, fellas.

The MP got down from the jeep.

He looked at Thorne. In his hand he held an automatic pistol which, in the dying light, did not look remotely real to Thorne.

“What the fuck you think you're doing?” the MP asked. He made a gesture with the pistol. Thorne stared at the gun, mesmerized; it would blow me away, he thought. He made to reach into his jacket for his wallet. The MP waved the gun again.

“Keep still,” he said.

“I only wanted—”

“Just keep still,” the MP said. He frisked Thorne, took out the wallet, flipped it open.

“My clearance is—”

“Very fancy,” the MP said, looking now at Thorne's pass and the
WHITE HOUSE PERSONNEL
stamp. He could feel himself sink, a sensation of falling, his nerves beginning to snap like rubber bands drawn to their extremities.
No, control, control, the only way
.

“So what brings you all the way out here?” the MP asked.

“I can't discuss that with you,” Thorne said. Good, excellent, the voice was firm. He was pleased with himself. “I have to see the officer in charge.”

Inside, he thought. Once inside you can play this by ear because there's no way of taking into account contingencies, possibilities.
I must get inside
.

“Can't discuss it with me?” the MP said. He looked in the direction of the guard beyond the wire fence. “Chuck, you got any instructions concerning this guy?”

The guard did not answer immediately.

“No,” he said eventually. “None.”

They weren't expecting me, Thorne thought. Have I been written off in Washington? Account closed? Dead? He waited.

There was a long silence, then the MP said to the guard: “Get the captain on the phone, Chuck. You better clear this with him.” He looked at Thorne again. “We get instructions concerning these things,” he said, shrugged his shoulders.

Thorne watched the guard go to a telephone that had been installed inside the fence. The guard picked up the receiver, pressed a button, and spoke in a low voice. Thorne stared at the low white headquarters, the two or three outbuildings, white stone turned gray in the twilight. He tried to hear the guard's voice, but he caught nothing. Control, he told himself again. He looked back at the MP, who was still holding his gun in the manner of a man who would not care if he were instructed to fire it. Thorne shut his eyes briefly. The air was still warm, but he could feel the edges of a chill that would come in with the desert night.

The guard put the receiver down.

Thorne waited.

He heard the guard come back, the fall of his boots on concrete, then the slight noise of his weapon touching the wire fence.

Now.

The guard coughed.

“You get the captain?” the MP asked.

“Yeah,” the guard said. “He'll see Thorne.”

No, Thorne thought. This easy. This simple.

He heard the gate in the fence open.

“Go ahead,” the MP said.

Thorne went through the gate, aware of the MP at his back. Aware of the gun. He glanced at the guard, a man with red hair and freckles, a small-town boy by the look of him, something clumsy in the way he held the gun and how he stood, as if he were unaccustomed to this.

“Go on,” the MP said. “Chuck, you lead.”

They crossed the concrete. They passed the outbuildings. Thorne saw a jeep, a black car, more piles of barbed wire. Why was it this easy? Why? He was scared. He could feel the nerves again; it was as if telephones were ringing insanely inside his head.
I took a wrong turning, fellas. If you could just point the way back to the highway
.

A door was opened. He followed the guard into a dimly lit corridor. A few weak light bulbs, an empty desk, walls of white-painted brick. More signs.
NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT. NUMBER TWO CLEARANCE NEEDED.
They went down the corridor. Thorne sensed something about to collapse within himself. A string snapping. A cord breaking.
Hold, just hold
. The fear, what did you do with the fear?

And then he realized something odd, something funny.

Something that didn't fit.

The guard had said:
Yeah, he'll see Thorne
.

What was it?

But he had not heard the MP give the guard his name.

He hadn't heard it—

He was dizzy, some darkness pressed in on him, he felt a pressure immediately behind the eyes.
They were waiting for me
. They knew. They knew everything. Didn't they?

Another door was opened. Thorne was conscious of a smell in the building, antiseptic and crisp and sharp in his nostrils. He followed the guard into the room beyond the door. It was a small office with the same brick walls of the corridor, the place was barren, undecorated, it was how he imagined the inside of some terrifying vacuum.

They had me from the start, he thought.

The man behind the desk stood up, smiling.

“Thorne,” he said. “My name is Church. Captain Church.”

He had a small reddish mustache. It looks fake, Thorne thought. Unreal. Like the gun. Like everything. Run, he thought. Run. No place to run.

“May I see your ID?” Even the smile was false.

Thorne passed the wallet to the captain.

The captain opened it, looked at the little plastic squares, glanced at Thorne, checking photographs against the real person that stood before him.

Thorne heard the door close behind him.

Trapped.

He stared at the captain. The masquerade, he thought. Nothing else is real here anyhow.

“The White House sent me here,” he said. It was a voice that was not his own. It came through some distorted bullhorn.

“Indeed,” the captain said.

A game.

He's playing a game.

Thorne looked back at the closed door. The guard was there still, holding the M-16 down and away from his body as if he were afraid it would go off. The MP was gone. He turned back to the captain.

“And what does the White House want, Mr. Thorne?”

Thorne felt a dryness in his throat.

“My brief is high-level security,” he said. “Do you have that clearance, Captain Church?”

The captain would not stop smiling.

“I think we can cut through this bullshit, don't you?” he said. “I think we can shove it aside.”

Aside, Thorne thought.

Just like that.

The captain's smile.

Thorne swung around.

Desper—

He caught the young guard off balance. He was conscious all at once of several things. The guard falling. The automatic weapon scuttling across the floor. The captain fumbling for his pistol. Opening the door. Going into the corridor. The weak lights. A siren going off. The piercing echo of the alarm ringing through the building. The captain's voice. The sound of gunfire. Running running running. The siren wailing. Running. The end of the corridor. Turning. Still running. The sound of footsteps behind him.

You wanted this, he thought. This is what you asked for. This is where you
needed
to come. The alarm went on and on and on. He heard doors close. Another round of gunfire. A voice across a loudspeaker system.

The intruder must be stopped and if necessary killed

If necessary.

He kept running. A door opened in front of him. A soldier with a pistol raised in his hand stepped forward and Thorne pushed him aside before the man could fire and he kept running, he kept running, running through the siren and the loudspeaker voice and the sound of gunfire.

He was going down steps.

Conscious of going down.

Trapped.

There was a lower level. Another brick-walled corridor.

Space.

The corridor came to an end in an elevator.

Good Christ. Good Christ. Get me out of this—.

He slammed the elevator door behind him.

The sound of gunfire again. He was going down. It was dark. There wasn't a light in the elevator. He couldn't find a fucking light. Voices from above,
alert lower-level duty officer!
Why didn't they stop the alarm? Why?

The elevator clanked to a halt. The automatic door slid open. There was another corridor. Run. He had no breath left. No energy. He only understood that he had never been this afraid before in his entire life.

Another elevator did all these corridors end in elevator shafts did they all lead down through a desert honeycombed with passages and shafts and rooms and darkness?

He stepped in. Closed the door.

Going down.

The siren was louder now in his ears.

He felt it would pierce the shell of his skull, split him open.

The elevator hit bottom.

The door opened.

He stepped out.

He was in a corridor lit only by a red light bulb, a strange glow, a red bulb that threw no shadow and looked like something left from an old Halloween. Unreal. He stopped running. His side ached. He stood against the wall, staring at the bulb, trying to catch his breath. He couldn't stay here. He couldn't stand still. He heard the elevator hum, going back up. Then there was the noise of footsteps clattering on stairs somewhere.

Hurried, urgent—

He ran again.

The red light receded.

NO PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT

The corridor turned. Up ahead there was another red light, this one blinking on and off rapidly in a hallucinogenic fashion. A strobe.

He could hear footsteps from behind.

Where? he thought. Where now?

He continued along the corridor, passed through a door, found himself in a gallery where a large tinted window looked down into a chamber.

He stopped, startled.

Asterisk
.