Ken Follett - The Hammer of Eden

During the hippie era, the only cool car to own was a Volkswagen Beetle. Driving the bright yellow ’Cuda, Priest looked like a pimp, Star used to tell him. So they gave it a trippy paint job: planets on the roof, flowers on the trunk lid, and an Indian goddess on the hood with eight arms trailing over the fenders, all in purple and pink and turquoise. In twenty-five years the colors had faded to a mottled brown, but you could still make out the design if you looked closely. And now the car was a collectible.

He had set out at three A.M. Melanie had slept all the way. She lay with her head in his lap, her fabulously long legs folded on the worn black upholstery. As he drove, he toyed with her hair. She had sixties hair, long and straight with a part in the middle, although she had been born around the time the Beatles split up.

The kid was asleep, too, lying full length on the backseat, mouth open. Priest’s German shepherd dog, Spirit, lay beside him. The dog was quiet, but every time Priest looked back at him he had one eye open.

Priest felt anxious.

He told himself he should feel good. This was like the old days. In his youth he always had something going, some scam, a project, a plan to make money or steal money or have a party or start a riot. Then he discovered peace. But sometimes he felt that life had become too peaceful. Stealing the seismic vibrator had revived his old self. He felt more alive now, with a pretty girl beside him and a battle of wits ahead, than he had for years.

All the same, he was worried.

He had stuck his neck all the way out. He had boasted that he could bend the governor of California to his will, and he had promised an earthquake. If he failed, he would be finished. He would lose everything that was dear to him. And if he was caught, he would be in jail until he was an old man.

But he was extraordinary. He had always known he was not like other people. The rules did not apply to him. He did things no one else thought of.

And he was already halfway to his goal. He had stolen a seismic vibrator. He had killed a man for it, but he had gotten away with the murder: there had been no repercussions except for occasional nightmares in which Mario got out of his burning pickup, with his clothes alight and fresh blood pouring from his smashed head, and came staggering after Priest.

The truck was now hidden in a lonely valley in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Today Priest was going to find out exactly where to place it so as to cause an earthquake.

And Melanie’s husband was going to give him that information.

Michael Quercus knew more than anyone else in the world about the San Andreas fault, according to Melanie. His accumulated data was stored on his computer. Priest wanted to steal his backup disk.

And he had to make sure that Michael would never know what had happened.

For that, he needed Melanie. Which was why he was worried. He had known her only a few weeks. In that short time he had become the dominant person in her life, he knew; but he had never put her through a test like this. And she had been married to Michael for six years. She might suddenly regret leaving her husband; she might realize how much she missed the dishwasher and the TV; she might be struck by the danger and the illegality of what she and Priest were doing; there was no telling what might happen to someone as bitter and confused and troubled as Melanie.

In the rear seat, her five-year-old son woke up.

Spirit, the dog, moved first, and Priest heard the click of his claws on the plastic of the seat. Then there was a childish yawn.

Dustin, known as Dusty, was an unlucky boy. He suffered from multiple allergies. Priest had not yet seen one of his attacks, but Melanie had described them: Dusty sneezed uncontrollably, his eyes bulged, and he broke out in itchy skin rashes. She carried powerful suppressing drugs, but she said they mitigated the symptoms only partially.

Now Dusty started to fret.

“Mommy, I’m thirsty,” he said.

Melanie came awake. She sat upright, stretching, and Priest glanced at the outline of her breasts in the skimpy T-shirt she wore. She turned around and said: “Drink some water, Dusty, you have a bottle right there.”

“I don’t want water,” he whined. “I want orange juice.”

“We don’t have any goddamn juice,” she snapped.

Dusty started to cry.

Melanie was a nervous mother, frightened of doing the wrong thing. She was obsessive about her son’s health, so she was overprotective, but at the same time, her tension made her cranky with him. She felt sure her husband would one day try to take the boy away from her, so she was terrified of doing anything that would enable him to call her a bad mother.

Priest took charge. He said: “Hey, whoa, what the heck is that coming up behind us?” He made himself sound really scared.

Melanie looked around. “It’s just a truck.”

“That’s what you think. It’s disguised as a truck, but really it’s a Centaurian fighter spacecraft with photon torpedoes. Dusty, I need you to tap three times on the rear window to raise our invisible magnetic armor. Quick!”

Dusty tapped on the window.

“Now, we’ll know he’s firing his torpedoes if we see an orange light flashing on his port fender. You better watch for that, Dusty.”

The truck was closing on them fast, and a minute later its left side indicator flashed and it pulled out to pass them.

Dusty said: “It’s firing, it’s firing!”

“Okay, I’ll try to hold the magnetic armor while you fire back! That water bottle is actually a laser gun!”

Dusty pointed the bottle at the truck and made zapping noises. Spirit joined in, barking furiously at the truck as it passed. Melanie started to laugh.

When the truck pulled back into the slow lane ahead of them, Priest said: “Whew. We were lucky to come out of that in one piece. I think they’ve given up for now.”

“Will there be any more Centaurians?” Dusty asked eagerly.

“You and Spirit keep watch out the back and let me know what you see, okay?”

“Okay.”

Melanie smiled and said quietly: “Thanks. You’re so good with him.”

I’m good with everyone: men, women, children, and pets. I got charisma. I wasn’t born with it — I learned. It’s just a way of making people do what you want. Anything from persuading a faithful wife to commit adultery, all the way down to getting a scratchy kid to stop whining. All you need is charm .

“Let me know what exit to take,” Priest said.

“Just watch for signs to Berkeley.”

She did not know he could not read. “There’s probably more than one. Just tell me where to turn.”

A few minutes later they left the freeway and entered the leafy university town. Priest could feel Melanie’s tension rise. He knew that all her rage against society and her disappointment with life somehow centered on this man she had left six months ago. She directed Priest through the intersections to Euclid Avenue, a street of modest houses and apartment buildings probably rented by graduate students and younger faculty.

“I still think I should go in alone,” she said.

It was out of the question. Melanie was not steady enough. Priest could not rely on her when he was beside her, so there was no way he would trust her alone. “No,” he said.

“Maybe I—”

He allowed a flash of anger to show. “No!”

“Okay, okay,” she said hastily. She bit her lip.

Dusty said excitedly: “Hey, this is where Daddy lives!”

“That’s right, honey,” Melanie said. She pointed to a low-rise stucco apartment building, and Priest parked outside it.

Melanie turned to Dusty, but Priest forestalled her. “He stays in the car.”