No Way Back (41 page)

I drive for fifteen minutes, following the directions I have memorized. The route takes me through dense residential streets, into commercial neighbourhoods, and then into sparse areas barely
inhabited at all – dark brown fields, empty office parks, industrial buildings with few cars and no people.

The place I’ve been told to go is a desolate building in a wide expanse of brown grass. It is some kind of warehouse – a box of corrugated steel, hangar-sized, with four
tractor-trailer-height loading bays in front. No windows. No signs. The lot is surrounded by fence, which is topped by razor wire. There are two gates – front and back – but both are
open. I drive into the front, and park beside three other cars in the lot.

I get out of the Honda. I take the gun from my pocket, and I approach the building.

Three of the bay loading doors are shut tight against the heat; but the fourth door is half-open, rolled three feet off the ground, invitingly. I bend under the door.

Inside, the building is almost dark. I am assaulted by the smell of cat piss. The only light comes from the door I just entered; sunlight spills onto concrete in a perfect rectangle at my feet.
Beyond that rectangle, I can just see a wall of black PVC strips, hanging in a curtain from the ceiling – a baffle to keep cold air inside during loading and unloading. I push aside the
strips, and walk through.

It’s darker here, and my eyes still haven’t adjusted from the brilliance of the sun. I squint. Through the gloom I can make out what look like long rows of tables and benches,
industrial equipment stacked on top, piles of garbage on the floor. The smell of ammonia is overpowering. It’s not cat piss, I know. I’ve visited too many secret apartments, too many
houses that smelled like urine, too many kitchens where glass beakers and Bunsen burners sit on countertops beside loaves of Wonderbread and Milano cookies. The smell of ammonia means one thing. A
meth lab. The smell of
this
much ammonia means something else. A meth lab of industrial proportions.

They know I’m here, of course. So there’s no point in sneaking around. I shout into the darkness, ‘Hello? Who’s here?’

My voice echoes. The room sounds hard – metal and glass and concrete.

‘Amanda?’

I walk further into the building, my left hand outstretched into the dark, my right hand holding Amanda’s gun. Twenty yards in, the blackness is total. My foot steps onto something glass;
it pops and shatters. Pieces of glass tinkle on the ground, and my shoes crunch as I walk.

‘Amanda?’

I advance into the darkness. I trip on something. It’s metal, and I kick it as I regain my balance. It skitters across the concrete. ‘Who’s here?’ A noise ahead –
human. Breathing maybe, or crying.

‘Amanda? Is that you?’

I follow the sound, deeper into the warehouse. My foot kicks something soft. I stop and kneel. In the darkness, I can barely make out a human form. I reach out to it. It feels wet. There’s
something sticky on my fingers. The thing is breathing under my touch, laboured, and I hear wet bubbles in its lungs. ‘Amanda?’ I whisper.

But it’s not Amanda; I know that. It’s too big, and it wears some kind of man’s jacket. I stand. At the far side of the room, I see a crack of light – a doorway.

I go to the light. I feel with my fingertips along the wall. The wall is steel, warm from the sun outside. My hand brushes a light switch. It flips with an industrial
click
, and then,
above me, sodium lamps buzz, and the room is awash in cold white light.

There are long metal tables that run in parallel along the room. The tops are cluttered with beakers, tall metal stands that trail rubber tubes down to the ground, brown glass bottles that look
like huge mason jars. Canisters of paint thinner are stacked beneath the tables, hundreds of them, and dozens of propane tanks the size of small dirigibles. There’s garbage everywhere:
discarded bottles, empty tins, rubber tubes and stoppers on the floor.

In the centre of the long aisle lies the man that I kicked. He is crumpled on the floor, between two of the metal tables. His face is turned away from me.

On the far side of the room, near the PVC curtain where I first entered, three men sit in a row, slumped against the wall. I walked past them in the dark, unaware of their presence.

They have black bullet holes in their foreheads. There are circular powder burns around each wound, like little puckered lips in their skin.

They were shot execution style, while standing. I know this because on the wall behind each man is a circle of blood and brains, head height, and then a vertical line of blood made when each man
slid to the ground. It looks like graffiti, like three upside down exclamation marks – marks of surprise – maybe the surprise the men felt when the bullets came.

Next to the dead men, Amanda sits. Her eyes are open. She is breathing. She stares straight ahead. She doesn’t seem to notice me.

‘Amanda?’ I run to her.

She looks up. There’s a glimmer of recognition. ‘Jim… ’ she says, very softly. Then she buries her face in her hands, and starts to cry. It’s a silent cry –
her body shudders and she rubs her eyes – but no sound escapes. I notice her hands are coated with dried blood.

I kneel down beside her. ‘Are you hurt?’

She hugs me. ‘No.’ She buries her face into my shoulder. ‘Oh God… Oh God… ’

‘What happened?’

‘It was terrible… ’ Her body shakes, wracked by sobbing. ‘It was horrible… What they did… ’

‘Who did?’

‘They came to my apartment,’ she whispers. ‘They had guns. They took me. They told me they were going to kill you.’

‘
Who
did?’

‘They did,’ she says. She points at the three men beside her.

‘
They
did?’ I look at the men. They don’t seem very dangerous. Because they’re dead. ‘If they brought you here, then who killed
them
?’

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. It was… ’ She stops. ‘It was a man. He was tall. He had long dark hair. He was dressed in black. He told me to shut my eyes. He
spoke in Russian. I thought he was going to kill me. But he just… ’

‘He just what?’

‘Disappeared.’

‘Disappeared?’ I say. I am uncertain. What does she mean? That the man hid in the shadows? That he
vanished
?

Across the warehouse, someone moans. It’s the man that I kicked in the dark. He’s still lying on the ground, struggling to pull himself along the floor.

I leave Amanda and go to him. I keep my gun pointed at his head. His face is turned away from me. His body rests at the end of a long trail of blood. He has crawled a dozen yards, swabbing the
floor with the wound in his chest. A puddle of blood grows around where he lies.

I tap him with my foot.

‘You,’ I say. ‘Look at me.’

He turns. It’s the velociraptor – my neighbour from across the street.

His eyes are missing. They are just purple oozing slits – swollen and empty. Jelly and blood are smeared across his cheeks.

‘Who is that?’ he asks. He grabs my pants leg.

I step away from his grasp. ‘Jim Thane,’ I say.

‘Jim Thane,’ he repeats, and smiles, as if my name is funny. ‘Jim Thane,’ he says again. He reaches out, but his fingers can’t find me.

‘Who did this to you?’

‘Who do
you
think did this to me, Jim Thane?’

I feel someone behind me. I turn to see Amanda. She has wiped the tears from her eyes, but the blood from her fingers has left faint pink lines, barely visible on her white skin.

I turn back to the velociraptor: ‘Why were you spying on me?’

‘I was told to keep an eye on you,’ he says. ‘A funny expression. To keep an eye. Don’t you think? Given the circumstances?’

‘Where is he? Where do I find him?’

‘You don’t want to find him. Trust me. No one wants to find him. He will find you, when it’s time. I know he will.’

‘What does he look like?’

‘I have never seen him.’

‘How can you work for someone you don’t see?’

‘Ah,’ he says, with something like delight. ‘Would you like to hear how I met him?’

‘Yes.’

He smiles. ‘Come closer.’

‘Jim, be careful,’ Amanda says.

I step into the puddle of blood spreading across the cement. I keep the gun pointed at the man’s head. ‘Tell me.’

‘There was a man once,’ he says. ‘His name was Kopec. He was the one who hired me. Me and my friend – the one over there, with the bullet in his head – do you see
him?’

I could ask, ‘Which one?’ – but I don’t. ‘Yes,’ I say.

‘We were in Modesto, doing our thing. Buying a little, selling a little. We came to his attention. Maybe we sold a little too much. Yes? You understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘One day, Kopec found us. He came to us and he said, “This territory is owned by my employer, whose name I cannot say. So now you have a choice. You can work for him. Or I can kill
you.” Of course we chose to work for him. You see?’

‘Yes.’

‘Kopec gave us jobs. Maybe they were tests. To see what we could do. A delivery. A pickup. An execution. Yes? Each week Kopec came, and each week he handed me an envelope. Inside the
envelope was money, and a description of the job we needed to do. Kopec never knew what was in the envelope. He just handed it to me. He was the messenger. That was all.’

He coughs. Blood bubbles from his lips.

‘One day,’ he says, ‘Kopec came. The envelope was heavy. He told me to open it. Inside was a cellphone, and a gun, and a piece of paper. On the paper was my assignment. Just
two words. Do you know what it said?’

‘No.’

‘It said: “Shoot Kopec”. So I did. Right in the head. You see? And then the cellphone rang, and I answered, and a voice said: “Congratulations. From now on, your name is
Kopec.”
That
is how he works. He controls everyone. He knows everything. He listens. He watches. But he stays hidden. No one knows anything about him. No one knows where he lives. Or
what he looks like. Or how old he is. Or even if he’s Russian, or Armenian, or Chechen. And if you talk to him, or if you know someone who talks to him, then he will kill you. If you even say
his name out loud, he will kill you. Everyone knows these rules.’

‘What does he want from me? Tell me what you know.’

‘What I know?’ he says. ‘I know nothing. My job was to watch you. To make sure your wife pleased you. To make sure that you succeeded in your business. My job was to protect
Jim Thane.’

‘Protect me?’ I think about Stan Pontin, and the car accident, and Sandy Golden’s sudden and inexplicable decision to invest in Tao Software. And about Dom Vanderbeek, in the
attic, and his necklace of purple thumbprints. ‘Why did you kill my wife?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘That was not me. Maybe it was someone else. We are not the only team. There’s always another team. That’s how he controls you. One team watching
another. Watching another. Until you don’t know for sure who is who.’

‘Is Tom Mitchell on your team?’

‘Tom Mitchell?’ he says. ‘Ah, the FBI agent. No. I don’t think he works for my employer. I think he wants to
find
my employer. So many people do. He has made so
many enemies.’

‘Why are you telling me all this?’

He smiles. His empty eye sockets squint merrily. Red tears ooze from the corners. ‘Come closer and I will show you.’

‘Don’t, Jim,’ Amanda warns. I remain still.

The man says: ‘I’m missing my eyes, Jim Thane. I can’t hurt you. Come closer. I will show you something. Something you will remember for the rest of your life.’

I inch closer to him. I touch his shoulder. ‘What is it?’ I say, softly, into his ear.

I hear his breath, laboured and ragged, and I feel the life draining from him, gathering in a pool at my feet.

‘My jacket,’ he whispers. His voice is very soft. Almost inaudible. ‘Reach inside.’

I hand my gun to Amanda. She points it at his head. I reach into the man’s pocket. It feels wet.

‘Do you feel it?’

There is something there – a sharp edge of paper against my finger. I remove an envelope. The corner is stained with blood. On the envelope is written: ‘To Kopec’.

‘I was given that,’ he says, ‘by the one who put out my eyes. First I had to read it. It was the last thing I saw. Look at it.’

I open the envelope. Inside is a single sheet of paper, folded into thirds. A paperclip attaches a school photograph of a young girl, perhaps seven years old. She wears a blue velvet dress. Her
hands are clasped in her lap. She smiles at the camera.

‘My daughter,’ he explains.

I open the page attached to the photo. It is typewritten. The machine that typed it was an old manual typewriter, maybe antique. Ink is gummed between the crossbars; the letters run unevenly
across the page.

It says:

‘You see now?’ the velociraptor whispers. ‘He knows everything. He controls everything. I think truly he is... God.’

Before I understand what I have read, or what is happening, he brings out the gun he has been hiding. He sticks it in his mouth. He bites down, and I hear the clack of enamel on metal. The back
of his head explodes into red mist.

‘No!’ I yell, too late, and my words are swallowed by the echo of the gunshot.

I step back.

‘Oh Jesus,’ Amanda says.

In the distance I hear the sound of police sirens.

‘We have to leave,’ I say, backing away. I take Amanda’s hand, and I pull her towards the exit. But she stands there, resisting, unwilling to move, staring fixedly at the
corpse.

‘Amanda,’ I say.

‘Wait.’ She takes her hand from mine and kneels down next to the dead man.

‘What are you doing?’

She leans over, pressing her body to his, her face nearly touching his shattered skull. She feels around inside his bloody jacket.

‘Amanda... ’