Douglas Preston - Gideon's Corpse

The horse turned and ambled away down the canyon.

She spat and turned to Gideon. “Now I really hate you.”

After a long, arduous climb up the mountainside, in the late afternoon they topped the last ridge and found themselves looking across a wilderness of mountains and valleys, unbroken by roads or any sign of human life. They stopped to rest. From time to time Gideon had heard the throbbing of choppers, some passing fairly close overhead. But the forest was so dense that he’d been able to hide the two of them under thick vegetation before there was any chance they’d be spotted.

It was a vast area called the Bearhead: the remotest part of the Jemez Mountains. Gideon had fished the lower reaches of the Bearhead but had never been deep into it before. The sun was now setting, throwing the mountains into deep purple.

“A person could go in there and vanish forever,” Alida said, squinting into the hazy distance.

“Right,” said Gideon. He dropped the saddlebags and cleared his throat. “Excuse me, I’m afraid I have to pee.”

She stared at him, her eyebrows arching in disdainful amusement. “Go ahead.”

“Maybe you should turn around.”

“Why? I didn’t ask you to cuff us together. Go on, let’s see what you’ve got.”

“This is ridiculous.” He unzipped his fly and peed, turning away from her as best he could.

“My, your face is red.”

They descended a series of steep slopes, keeping to the cover of a gully, and found themselves in a heavy oak brush, forming an understory below towering firs and spruces. They pushed ahead, barely able to see where they were going, up and down precipitous slopes. It was hard travel, but they were well hidden.

“So what’s the plan, Abdul?” Alida asked at last.

“That’s not funny.”

“As I see it, you’re running from the combined law enforcement of the entire US of A, the sun is setting, you’ve got no shirt, we’re in the middle of nowhere with no food and no water. And you don’t have a plan. Wow.”

“There are supposed to be some old mines in the Bearhead. We’ll go to ground.”

“Okay, we spend the night in a mine. And then?”

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking.” What would my old buddy Sergeant Dajkovic do in a situation like this? he wondered to himself. Probably drop and do a hundred push-ups.

They hiked into the Bearhead, following elk trails that appeared and disappeared, until they came to the edge of a tiny meadow beside a dry creekbed. Beyond, partway up the hillside, stood the dark openings of several mines, with old shaft houses and tailing piles.

“Here’s where we spend the night,” Gideon said.

“I’m thirsty as hell.”

Gideon shrugged.

He gathered handfuls of dry grass from the meadow and tied them into a tight bundle. They climbed up to the closest tunnel. At the mouth, he borrowed her lighter, lit the bundle, and then they moved cautiously into the passage, the firelight flickering over the massively timbered walls and ceiling. It was an old hard-rock tunnel that went straight into the hillside. He hoped to find signs of water, but it was as dry in the mine as it was in the creekbed outside.

The bottom of the mine was a bed of soft sand. Alida sat down and fished a cigarette out of her pocket, used the burning grass bundle to light it. She inhaled deeply, blew out a long stream of smoke. “What a day. Thanks to you.”

“Um, may I—?”

“Unbelievable. You kidnap me, hold me hostage, get me shot at—and now you’re bumming cigarettes.”

“I never said I was perfect.”

She held out a cigarette. “Give me the saddlebags.”

He handed them to her and she unbuckled them, fished around, and took out two granola bars. She tossed him one, opened the other. Gideon took a bite, the crumbs clogging his dry mouth.

“Tomorrow, the first thing we do is find water,” he said, gagging and putting the rest of the bar into his pocket.

They sat in silence for a while, in the dark, smoking.

“This is depressing,” said Alida. “We need a fire.”

They rose and went outside, filling their cuffed arms as best they could with dry pieces of oak. The sun had set and the air was now cool, stars sprinkling the sky. Gideon could hear, from time to time, the distant sound of choppers, but as the night deepened they faded away and all grew silent. He lit a small fire, the dry wood producing barely any smoke.

Alida yanked Gideon’s cuff-chafed wrist. “Lie down. I’m going to sleep.”

He lay down with her next to him, on their backs. For ten minutes, nobody spoke. Then Alida said: “Shit. I’m too upset to sleep. One moment I’m shooting a film, the next I’m shackled to a terrorist who’s got the whole damn country after him.”

“You don’t really think I’m a terrorist. I hope.”

A long silence. “I have to say, you don’t look the type.”

“You’re damn right I’m not the type. There’s been a ludicrous mistake.”

“How do you know it’s a mistake?” she asked.

Gideon paused. Fordyce’s words came back to him. You did a fine job of pretending to dislike the guy—and here it turns out you’re best buddies, in with him from the beginning. And then the craziest accusation of them all: All that stuff on your computer—frigging jihadist love letters almost.

“Jihadist love letters,” he said out loud.

“What?”

“That’s what the FBI agent who tried to arrest me said. That I had, quote, jihadist love letters, unquote, on my computer.”

Another long silence.

“You know,” Gideon went on, “you asked a very good question. Of course it wasn’t a mistake. I’ve been framed .”

“Oh yeah?” came the reply, in a voice laced with skepticism.

“First they tried to kill us by sabotaging our plane a few days ago. When that didn’t work, they framed me.”

“Why would anybody do that?”

“Because our investigation touched the person or group behind this.” He thought a moment. “No, not touched—we must’ve scored a direct hit. Scared the shit out of someone. Sabotaging the plane, framing me—those are risky, desperate measures.”

He paused, thinking.

“The question is, which computer of mine did they salt? I know it can’t be my personal computer at the cabin—the entire hard disk is encrypted with an RSA 2048-bit key. Unbreakable. So they must have salted my computer up on the Hill.”

“But isn’t that a classified system?”

“That’s just it. It’s jacked into a highly classified, isolated network. But because of the security, the contents of every computer are accessible in their entirety to the network security officers and certain other officials. The network automatically logs everything and everyone on the system and records every keystroke, everything they do. So if someone monkeyed with my computer up at the lab, it would have to be an insider— and it would be recorded .”

In the dying glow of the fire, he could see Alida’s eyes on him. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“Talk to Bill Novak. The network security officer. He’s the guy with access to all the files.”

“So you’re going to have a nice chat. And he’s just going to tell a wanted terrorist everything he needs to know.”

“With that six-gun of yours pressed to his head, he will.”

She laughed harshly. “You moron, it’s a stage gun, loaded with blanks. Otherwise, I would’ve blown you right out of the saddle back there.”

He slid it out of his belt, examined it, frowned. It was indeed loaded with blanks. “I’ll think of something.” He paused. “Anyway, we’re going to Los Alamos.”