Джеффри Дивер - The Goodbye Man

The chant stretched the word Marion out. The woman, intoxicated with happiness, waved to the crowd.

Eli then recited the names of the other four Companions who would form the group. “Come on up here! Join Journeyman Marion and me!”

They did, two men and two women, all in their forties, as surprised as Marion had been. Apparently caught off guard, all they could think to do was offer the shoulder salute.

Eli called, “Later today, we’ll have a formal induction ceremony, and I’ll ask each of you to tell me, in your own words, what the Foundation means to you. And if I’ve helped your life even in a small way... I want to know.” He was laughing. “Congratulations, my beloved Companions. Remember, the best...”

“...is yet to come!”

Eli strode off the stage, trailed by Anja and Steve. They joined the bodyguards and the group headed south.

When Shaw was sure no one was in earshot, he said to Frederick, “I’m going to get inside the residence. Can you try to get a phone from the luggage room?”

“Oh, you were in the woods, you don’t know. After the police showed up, they moved the phone storage box into the Assistance Unit. It’s guarded twenty-four/seven now.”

Shaw sighed. “Try the parking lot, see if anyone left one inside a car. I know they were searched but maybe somebody got careless.”

“But the AUs in the front.”

“Looks like a lot of them’ve been pulled off their details.”

“Well, the cars’re locked, aren’t they? And the keys are with the AUs too.”

Shaw said, “Some of the older ones won’t have alarms.”

He frowned. Then it dawned on him. “Oh, you mean break in.”

Shaw saw the man liked the idea. He explained to Frederick how he could take the path to the eastern edge of the wooden fence and then circle around to get to the parking lot.

Frederick thought for a moment. “You know. It’s going to be hard to tell if there’s an alarm. What if I got underneath, popped the hood and used something metal to short out the battery?”

“Good. Were you a mechanic before joining the Foundation?”

“I was a Mafia hitman.”

A line delivered with such a straight face that Shaw thought for a second it was true.

Frederick smiled at Shaw’s reaction. “I managed a chain of frozen yogurt shops. Yo-Grrrrt.” He spelled it, as he would have done a thousand times. “Our logo was a happy bear. Where should we meet?”

“Behind my dorm. Building C. Make it an hour.”

Frederick nodded and vanished into the woods. Shaw turned east, disappearing into the line of trees that paralleled that edge of the camp. Then south, along the hidden path, toward the residence.

It turned out, though, that he’d have to wait. Eli, Steve and the two bodyguards were standing in a deserted grassy area on the eastern side of the residence. Eli was dictating, and Steve nodded fiercely as he transcribed. From where they stood, they’d be able to see Shaw break from the line of trees, heading for the back door, if any of them happened to glance that way.

Just then a faint scream rose from the far side of the residence, the west. Instantly, Squat and Gray turned. Gray’s bony left hand tugged up his tunic and his right was poised to draw his weapon. It was a small Glock, Shaw could see. He’d been right about the gun.

The two bodyguards and Steve hurried in the direction of the scream, Gray motioning Eli to stay back. Eli’s attention was focused away from the back of the residence, and Shaw started in that direction. But he stopped. He noticed motion in the woods not far from him. It was furtive and slow, careful. The movement of a stalking hunter — very much how Shaw himself pursued game, hunched over, making a small profile, assessing the quietest place to plant his feet, assessing which foliage would rustle and which would not.

Never be obvious.

Shaw froze, hardly believing what he was looking at.

The hunter was Victoria, hair tied into a severe bun. She eased closer to the clearing where Eli stood, thirty feet away. The leader’s back was to her.

In her hand was a knife. It seemed she too had stolen one from the kitchen but unlike his this was a lengthy butcher knife. From the discolored and uneven edge, Shaw knew that she’d spent quite some time honing the edge on a rock to turn the weapon scalpel sharp.

She was moving forward steadily. Her posture and her movement told Shaw she was an experienced stalker.

Victoria was presently twenty feet away from Eli and closing the distance steadily, while keeping absolutely silent.

A voice called to Eli, “Just a fire, small one.” It was Steve speaking.

“Anyone hurt?”

“No. Just trash in a waste bin. Somebody sneaking a smoke maybe.”

Shaw judged distances. Soon, Victoria would break from cover, charge forward, and slash the Guiding Beacon to death.

The woman held the knife with the sharp edge up. This was proper hand-to-hand combat technique. She would come up behind him, cup his forehead and pull his head back, while simultaneously slashing his throat from ear to ear. It was a simple move and one that required little effort, provided you had surprise, which she certainly would if she could make a silent approach.

Who the hell was she really? Obviously not the vulnerable supplicant Shaw had believed. Whatever her motive, though, he could see that her mission would end in her death, not Eli’s. From where she was, she couldn’t see that Gray and Steve had paused just around the corner of the residence. Now that the “emergency” had turned minor, they were about to return. They’d see Victoria on the move and she’d be shot to death.

No time to formulate a percentage of success for one strategy or another.

Shaw circled behind her — picking out a silent path himself — and when he was ten feet away, he charged. By the time she heard, it was too late to turn and assume a defensive posture. He dropped her to the ground with a serviceable tackle. They tumbled into a pile of leaves.

The collision left her breathless, Shaw too — all the more so when she drove a well-placed elbow into his gut. With lightning-fast reflexes she leapt to her feet and tried to put distance between herself and her attacker — the first rule of meeting a surprise assault. Shaw, though, grabbed her ankle, twisted slightly and she went down, following the pressure rather than resisting and risking a dislocation.

One second later she was on her feet again, and in classic knife-fighting position: left hand out for distraction and gripping her enemy, her right slashing the air between them, back and forth.

Her face tightened and she glanced quickly at Eli and saw Steve round the corner. She was taking a measure of the distance between herself and her target.

“You would’ve died,” Shaw whispered.

“I could’ve made it.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“Yes, I would,” she said defiantly.

Shaw whispered, “He’s armed. The gray-haired one. Maybe the other one too.”

“I know,” she growled softly. “I saw the imprint. His partner isn’t.”

She kept the blade pointed his way and looked again at her prey. It seemed she was still contemplating the attack.

Then a look of disgust crossed her face and her shoulders slumped. She rose from the fighting position. She wrapped the blade in a napkin and slipped it into her back waistband.

She watched the men continue their conversation as they resumed their walk to the residence. The guards joined them. Apparently the fire was out.

Shaw walked closer to Victoria.

When she slapped him, with all her strength, it seemed, her palm was slightly cupped and the blow gave a sharp snap, which was every bit as loud and staccato as the rhythmic clapping that accompanied the Inner Circle’s chants.