Джеффри Дивер - The Goodbye Man

Her head sagged. She looked very tired. In a whisper: “He’s all I have.”

Shaw’s reply was, “I count five deaths since I’ve become aware of the Foundation.”

She said nothing.

“This has to end.” Shaw pointed to the computer. “I need to get into that.”

Tears flowed. “Carter... That’s not your name, is it?”

“The computer.”

Sobbing now. “He’s all I have! What’m I going to do? Go back to... hostessing ?”

“Better than wearing orange for the rest of your life.”

She sniffed. “You don’t understand. He has this... spell. You’d rather die than betray him.”

Shaw looked her way. “That’s exactly what’s going to happen. Now. What’s the passcode?”

Wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her purple silk robe, Anja took a deep breath and whispered, “It’s impossible to guess.”

Shaw met Victoria and Frederick behind his dorm.

Together, the two of them had broken into about twenty cars and trucks without alarms — security was minimal, with most of the AUs absent from the lot — but they found no mobiles in glove compartments or side pockets.

“Did you find anything?” Victoria asked, looking at the documents in Shaw’s hand.

He handed them copies. They read in shocked silence.

Frederick shook his head in dismay. He asked, “How’d you get them?”

“Anja.”

In the Study Room, it had amused Shaw to learn that Anja was cooperating, not being obstructive. Eli’s passcode was in fact: “ImpossibleToGuess.”

This gave Shaw access to much information, though he wasn’t able to go online; the router had a separate passcode that Anja didn’t know, and Shaw didn’t have the time to track it down or try a hack.

Victoria asked, “Next steps?”

“You two hike out, call the numbers I’m going to give you and hand those over.” He gave Victoria one set of documents he’d printed out.

“Not you?” she asked.

“I can’t.” He showed them another piece of paper.

Victoria and Frederick pored over it. Her face crinkled with faint, lovely crow’s-feet in the ruddy skin around her eyes. She was an outdoorswoman. Her nails were of medium length, so she didn’t rock-climb. He wondered if she skied or biked.

Frederick looked up, whispering, “Jesus.”

Victoria grimaced as she read the words. “You sure you want to do this? It could go south in a really bad way.”

“You see any other choice?”

Looking over the document again, she said, “No, I don’t. But how’re you going to pull it off?”

Shaw said, “I was thinking we’ll find something in the kitchen.”

She thought for a moment. Her frown vanished. “Oh. That’s good.”

A half hour later, after the kitchen run and several other errands, Shaw, Frederick and Victoria were in the woods behind Shaw’s dorm once again. He pushed aside leaves and uncovered his war clubs, handed Victoria one. She eyed it with admiration. She slapped the head into her left palm.

Frederick, the frozen yogurt guru, simply stared at the weapons.

Shaw opened his notebook and showed them his map, indicating the gate in the east. “You can be at the highway in forty-five minutes.”

“Thirty,” she said.

So Victoria was a runner.

She glanced at Frederick.

He said, “I’ll try.” He looked into the woods. He said, “Northeast. Do we... I mean, do we look for moss?”

“Moss?” Shaw asked.

“You know — for directions. So we don’t get lost.”

Shaw and Victoria both frowned his way. She said, “The sun.”

“Oh. You can do that?”

A trekker too.

Shaw said, “Stop a driver. Tell him there’s been a crime — assault or something — and ask to use his phone.” Shaw wrote Mack’s and Tom Pepper’s phone numbers on another sheet from the notebook and gave it to Victoria.

Frederick asked, “Why not just nine-one-one?”

Victoria said, “No. That’ll be routed to the closest LEA. That’s Snoqualmie Gap. Can’t let them know; they’re being paid off by Eli and Hugh.”

Shaw continued, “If nobody stops or there’re no cars, go north. There’s a truck stop.” He handed her the credit card he’d taken from his luggage during the break-in earlier. “Now, get going.”

“Oh. One thing.” Frederick looked at Shaw. He withdrew a notebook from his waistband. “It’s one of Adam’s. I thought you might want it.”

Shaw nodded with gratitude and slipped it into his own waistband.

Then Frederick and Victoria began jogging into the woods, the club handle tucked into her waistband, beside the knife. Frederick wasn’t at her level of conditioning but now — at the beginning, at least — he was keeping pace.

The musical tones rang out from the loudspeakers throughout the camp, followed by instructions to assemble in the Square. This would be the ceremony Eli had announced earlier.

Shaw folded the papers he’d gotten from Eli’s office and tucked them in his notebook. He was reaching for his war club when he heard a voice from the front of his dorm.

“Hello, Novice Carter.”

A trim man of thirty-five or so approached from the front of the dorm, arms at his side. Shaw couldn’t see his rank; he wore a blue sweater. But as he gave the salute he said, “Journeyman Timothy.”

Shaw rose, leaving the club on the ground and, returning the gesture, he approached quickly so the man wouldn’t notice the weapon. “It’s Apprentice now.”

“Really! So soon. Good for you! That’s right, you were expedited.” Timothy was fit, athletic and his blond hair was moussed up in a rooster’s crown. He had pinched features, a wrinkle on the bridge of his upturned nose. His skin was pocked. An illness or bad acne when young.

“We should get to the Summons, Apprentice Carter.”

“I’ll be along in a minute.”

The man said insistently, “No, no, no! I don’t want you to get in trouble. You know the Rules. A Summons, you have to get there immediately. They mark down things like that, and it delays your training if you get too many demerits. I know you’ll want to be a Journeyman as soon as you can.”

The club was just feet away. He absolutely needed it for what was coming next.

But he saw no way out of this dilemma. He sighed and joined the man.

“You have your notebook with you. Good for you. Always jot things down. That’s important.”

“Rule Nine,” Shaw recited.

“Yes, yes. I hear you’re quite the mapmaker too.”

So someone had noticed it and reported him. No surprise.

“Didn’t want to get lost on the grounds. And I’m not that talented.”

“Oh, modest man.”

“Do you draw too?”

“Me? Oh, brother, no. I drew something, you’d look at it and say, ‘What the dickens’s that?’” He seemed to blush. “But I have one talent. I can hum like an opera singer.”

“Hum?”

“I don’t do good with words but I can hum like Paverelli.”

“Pavarotti?”

The man nodded. “Off season, I’m going to try out for some choirs or choruses in Omaha. Off season, I mean the fall and winter, when the camp here’s closed. You know Master Eli travels to the Far East, meditates, studies, hones his skills? He’s the smartest and most generous man in the world. Don’t you think?”

“He is.”

Timothy looked around at the people moving toward the Square. “A Summons takes priority over everything.” He lowered his voice. “I knew a Companion here once who had an accident in his pants because that was better than showing up late for a Summons. I myself probably would’ve made a stop in the head. But I respect what he did. How’s your training going?”