Clive Cussler - Thriller 2 - Stories You Just Can’t Put Down

“The rest of the world, too, Tess. Little by little they’ll all begin to realize it.”

Jack Bennewitz put his arms around her shoulders before saying anything else. His touch was real. Physical. Just as it had always been.

“You know something?” he said. “It’s funny that your instinct brought you here to this place tonight, a night of such transformation.”

“Funny? What’s so funny about it?”

“Well, Tess. You should know that Teotihuacán means ‘the place where men become gods.’ And now that you and I have died, that’s precisely what we have become. How does it feel to be a god, Tess?”

Before settling in a teaching position at Northeastern University, Gary Braver worked as a soda jerk, newspaper reporter, tech writer, foundry laborer and project physicist, a job that taught him lab work wasn’t for him. But teaching and writing were, and his double-duty as both a teacher and student of the art of writing gave him exceptional insight that he uses to great effect in “Ghost Writer.”

Some thrillers tap into that part of our subconscious where the worst mistakes from our past linger, waiting for an opportunity to come back into the light. Gary ’s compelling portrayal of a disillusioned author asks a question that we all must answer eventually. Are we the authors of our own destiny, or is our fate already written? Turn the page to find out.

“I don’t ghostwrite stories. I write my own books.”

Geoffrey Dane uttered those words and felt as if he were chewing gravel. He hadn’t sold a story in five years.

“Professor Dane, please don’t be offended,” the young woman said. “But it’s really a terrific idea and I think you’re the best person to do it.”

“I’m not offended.” But he was. Offended and bitter. Bitter that he wasn’t what she had assumed-a still actively published bestselling author. Offended because if she were the fan she claimed, she’d know he was a has-been. “I just don’t write other people’s material.”

They were in the English department lounge where he had been sitting, sunk in a couch, reading student stories. Since he was part-time, he had no office of his own, rather a room he shared with other adjuncts and TAs-a space so cramped and noisy he did his paperwork in the lounge, a comfortable space usually empty. That was where this Lauren Grant had found him-this student with the scrubbed good looks, the pricey clothes and a gold Movado watch with diamond baguettes.

As she continued to plead with him, resentment rose up like acid. Here he was a forty-nine-year-old former New York Times list resident now teaching workshops for a pittance and entertaining some rich woman half his age offering to pay him to ghost her novel.

“I thought it might be something you could do between your own writing projects.”

Yeah, rewrite after rewrite that your agent can’t place with a fucking vanity press, whispered a voice in his head. Either this woman had no idea about him or the publishing business, or she was patronizing him. “I’m sorry, but I’m really not interested.”

“But it’s really a terrific idea,” she insisted. “Really. And I think you’d agree. The details we could work out in your favor. But, basically, I provide the idea and you write the book.”

“With whose name on it?”

“Mine. I know I can’t pay you enough, but I’m hoping you’d accept a reasonable fee.”

No, she couldn’t pay him enough. He had spent the last four years struggling unsuccessfully to write himself back into print and was barely making ends meet. It didn’t help that Maggie, his ex-wife, kept squeezing him for alimony. Maggie. The very thought of her made his stomach grind.

“Of course, we’d work out the contractual matters with your agent.”

His agent! He hadn’t talked to his agent in over a year, when she had told him that another house had passed on his previous manuscript.

“It’s really a terrific idea.”

That was the third time she made that claim, and he could see how eager she was to share it. “I’m sure, so why don’t you write it yourself?”

“Because I don’t have the talent. I can’t even come up with a decent ending.”

“Maybe you should take a workshop.”

“I tried to enroll in yours this semester, but it was full. Same in the spring.”

“I’m scheduled to offer it again next fall.”

And the following spring and the fall after that, he thought. In fact, that was how he regarded the remainder of his pathetic life-one continuous workshop until the day despair finally stopped his heart. Or, better, a bullet from his Smith & Wesson.

“I could take a hundred workshops and it wouldn’t be good.”

“You won’t know if you don’t try.”

“I have tried, believe me, but I don’t have the gene. I read your works and I’m in awe of how you create characters with depth and dialogue that sounds like real people talking. And the narrative thrust that keeps the pages turning-”

Blah, blah, blah, he thought as she prattled on.

“Frankly, it’s too good an idea to be wasted on me or some hack writer. You can create the tension and sense of dread that it needs.”

Only because I have a paranoid personality, lady. Only because deep down I’m a frightened little man who writes thrillers to get bigger than the things that scare me.

“Really, you have what it takes.”

No, I used to, he thought. Geoffrey Dane-“Boy Genius” they called him on his first novel. “Brings class to the thriller genre.” Now: Adult wannabe. Can’t write shit.

“Plus you always have great surprises at the end. That’s what I love best. Those twists we never see coming. Really, you’re a modern O. Henry.”

He could feel himself begin to soften to the conviction that lit up her eyes. But her flattery only made his heart slump even more. Everything she said was true-but in the past. And the thought of being a ghost writer made him want to vomit. He also didn’t care to hear her idea because if it was good, he’d wish it were his own. Furthermore, he had no interest in entering complicated contractual arrangements with a perfect stranger. Plus she couldn’t pay him enough. He glanced at his watch. “Thanks for thinking of me, but I really have to go.”

“Oh, I’m sorry you have a class. But will you think it over?”

“Think what over? You haven’t said what the idea is.”

“If I can get a commitment, I’ll be happy to tell you.”

He packed the student stories into his briefcase and got up to leave.

“So, we can talk again?”

She was wearing a black shearling coat that probably cost more than the book value of the eleven-year-old BMW he drove. “I’ll think about it.”

Her face looked like a lacquered apple. “That’s great,” she chortled. “Thank you. Thank you.”

As they walked out of the lounge and into the hall, she handed him a card. On it, embossed in gold script, was her name, cell-phone number and e-mail address. No mailing address, probably to be on the safe side, given the rise in identity thefts and sexual stalkings.

“I really appreciate this.” Her eyes were sparking with expectation. “Okay to call you next week?”

“Yeah.” Then he looked back at her. “By the way, what kind of story is it?”

“A ghost story.”

A ghost story! He didn’t write ghost stories. And he didn’t ghostwrite ghost stories. Especially for students. What a bloody insult!

The weekend passed, and he had spent it at his place-a small cape at the end of a cul-de-sac in Carleton, ten miles west of Boston. From dawn to bedtime he tapped away on his keyboard, producing little more than a page of uninspired narrative. He was four chapters into another novel-the last two sitting in mailers on the shelf, cover letters from editors inside apologizing that the book was not right for their lists. The story was outlined, but he did not like the direction it was taking. And he could think of no decent alternatives. He had hit an impasse. He could, of course, just quit-blame the blockage on the imp of discouragement and take the self-fulfilling-prophecy route: haven’t written anything saleable in years, can’t do it again.