Extreme Denial (45 page)

At the Jetway, a United agent took Beth’s ticket. “Do you need assistance boarding the aircraft?”

“My friend will help me.” Beth looked fondly toward Decker.

“We’ll be fine,” Decker told the agent, and surrendered his boarding pass. He followed Beth into the confinement of the Jetway. It’s not too late to change the plan, he warned himself.

But he felt carried along by the line of passengers. Two minutes later, they were in their seats midway along the aircraft. A flight attendant took Beth’s crutches and stored them in the plane’s garment-bag compartment. Decker and Beth fastened their seat belts. The million dollars was stowed at his feet.

I can
still
change my mind, he thought. Maybe Beth was right. Maybe the south of France
is
where we ought to be going.

But something he and Beth had talked about at the motel kept coming back to him. He had asked Beth if she was willing to stay with him, knowing that she would be putting her life in danger, that Renata would try to use her to get at him. For the rest of Beth’s time with Decker, she would always be looking over her shoulder. Beth’s answer had been, “Without you, I’d have nothing to look
ahead
to.”

Let’s find out if she means it, Decker thought. I want to settle this
now.

The 737 pulled away from the terminal, taxiing toward the runway. Beth clasped his hand.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispered.

Decker gently squeezed her fingers. “More than you can ever know, I missed you.”

“Wrong,” Beth said. Engines whined outside their window. “What you did these last few days—I have a very definite idea of what you feel for me.” Beth snuggled against him as the 737 took off.

4

By the time the jet leveled off at 32,000 feet, Decker was surprised to find that he was having trouble making small talk with her, the first time this had happened in their relationship. Their chitchat sounded hollow compared with the substantive matters he wanted to discuss with her but couldn’t because of the risk that passengers around them would overhear. He was grateful when the flight attendant brought breakfast, a cheese- and mushroom omelette, which he devoured. In part, he was ravenous, his appetite having kicked in. But in part, also, he wanted to use the food as a distraction from the need to keep up conversation. After the meal, refusing coffee, he apologized for being exhausted.

“Don’t feel you have to entertain me,” Beth said. “You earned a rest. Take a nap. In fact, I think I’ll join you.”

She tilted her seat back just as he did, then leaned her head against his shoulder.

Decker crossed his arms and closed his eyes. But sleep did not come readily. His emotions continued to divide him. The intensity of the long ordeal he had been through left him restless, his body exhausted but his nerves on edge, as if he was having withdrawal symptoms from a physical dependence on the rush of adrenaline. These sensations reminded him of the way he had once felt after his missions for the military and the Agency. Action could be addictive. In his youth, he had craved it. The high of surviving a mission had made ordinary life unacceptable, producing an eagerness to go on other missions, to overcome fear in order to replicate the euphoria of coming back alive. Eventually, he had recognized the self-destructiveness of this dependency. When he had settled in Santa Fe, he had been convinced that peace was all he wanted.

As a consequence, he was puzzled by his eagerness to pursue his conflict with Renata. Granted, from one point of view, it didn’t make sense to prolong the tension of waiting for her to attack him. If he could control the circumstances under which Renata came after him, he would be hunting her as much as she would be hunting him. The sooner he confronted her, the better. But from another point of view, his eagerness troubled him, making him worry that he was becoming what he used to be.

5

“We’re not exactly sneaking back into New Mexico. How do we know Renata won’t be in the concourse, watching whoever gets off this flight?” Esperanza asked. He had joined Decker and Beth, who remained in their seats, waiting for the other passengers to disembark at the Albuquerque airport. No one was near them. They could speak without fear of being overheard.

“That’s not the way she would handle it,” Decker said. “In an airport as small as this, someone hanging around day after day, doing nothing but watch incoming flights, would attract the attention of a security officer.”

“But Renata wouldn’t have to do it by herself. She could hire someone to watch with her. They could take shifts,” Esperanza said.

“That part I agree with. She probably does have help by now. When she was using McKittrick”—Decker glanced toward Beth, wondering if
she
had used
him
just as Renata had used McKittrick—”Renata would have kept her friends at a distance, to prevent McKittrick from getting jealous. But once McKittrick was out of the picture, she would have brought in the rest of her terrorist group from Rome.” Decker lifted his carry-on from the compartment at his feet. “A million dollars is worth the effort. Oh, they’re here all right, and they’re taking turns, but they’re not watching the incoming flights.”

“Then what
are
they doing?”

A flight attendant interrupted, bringing Beth her crutches. Beth thanked the woman, and the three of them started forward.

“I’ll explain when we’re by ourselves.” Decker turned to Beth. “Those stitches will have to be looked at. The first thing we’ll do is get you to a doctor.” He shook his head. “No, I’m wrong. The first thing we have to do is rent a car.”

“Rent?” Esperanza asked. “But you left your Jeep Cherokee in the airport’s parking garage.”

“Where it’s going to stay for a while,” Decker said. He waited until there was no one around them on the Jetway before he told Esperanza, “Your badge and your service pistol are locked in my car. Can you do without them for another day?”

“The sooner I get them back, the better. Why can’t we use your car?” Immediately Esperanza answered his own question. “Renata knows your Jeep. You think she might have rigged it with explosives?”

“And risk blowing up the million dollars in this bag? I don’t think so. As much as she wants revenge, it has to be sweet. It’s no good if it costs her—certainly not
this
much. My car will be perfectly safe... except for the homing device she’ll have planted on it.”

6

Midday sunlight blazed as Decker drove the rented gray Buick Skylark from the Avis lot next to the Albuquerque airport. He steered along the curved road past the four-story parking garage, then glanced at the two large metal silhouettes of racehorses on the lawn in front of the airport, remembering the misgivings with which he had first seen those horses more than a year ago when he had begun his pilgrimage to Santa Fe. Now, after his longest time away from Santa Fe since then, he was returning, and his emotions were much more complex.

He steered around another curve, reached a wide grass-divided thoroughfare that led to and from the airport, and pointed toward a fourteen-story glass and stucco Best Western hotel on the right side of the road, silhouetted against the Sandia Mountains. “Somewhere in that hotel, Renata or one of her friends is watching a homing-device receiver, waiting for a needle to move and warn them my car is leaving the parking garage. Whoever it is will hurry down to a car that’s positioned for an easy exit from the hotel’s parking area. My car will be followed as it passes the hotel. The person in the car will have a cellular phone and pass the word to the rest of the group, some of whom will have no doubt set up shop in Santa Fe. The person following me will take for granted that conversations on cellular phones can be overheard by the wrong people, so the conversation will be in code, at regular intervals, all the way behind me to Santa Fe. Once I get to where I’m going, they’ll move quickly to get their hands on me. There’s no reason for them to wait. After all, I won’t have had time to set up any defenses. Immediate action will be their best tactic. If I’m carrying the money, they won’t have to torture me for information about where I put the million. But they’ll torture me, anyhow. For the pleasure of it. Or rather, Renata will do the torturing. I don’t know where she’ll want to start first—my balls or my throat. Probably the former, because if she goes for my throat, which I’m sure is what she would really like to do, to get even for what I did to
her
, I won’t be able to give her the satisfaction of hearing me scream.”

Beth was in the backseat, her injured leg stretched out. Esperanza sat in front. They looked at Decker as if the strain of what he had been through was affecting his behavior. “You make it sound too vivid,” Beth said.

“And what makes you so sure about the homing device and the Best Western hotel?” Esperanza asked.

“Because that’s the way
I
would do it,” Decker said. “Why not the Airport Inn or the Village Inn or one of these other motels farther down?”

“Too small. Too hard for someone not to attract attention. Whoever’s watching the homing-device receiver will want to be inconspicuous.”

“If you’re that certain, I can ask the Albuquerque police to check the rooms in the Best Western.”

“Without a search warrant? And without the police tipping their hand? Whoever’s watching the receiver will have a lookout, someone outside the hotel checking to see if police arrive. Renata and her friends would disappear. I’d lose my best chance of anticipating them.”

“You’re worrying me,” Beth said.

“Why?” Decker steered from the airport thoroughfare and headed down Gibson, approaching the ramp onto Interstate 25.

“You’re different. You sound as if you welcome the challenge, as if you’re enjoying this.”

“Maybe I’m reverting.”

“What?”

“If you and I are going to survive this, I
have
to revert. I don’t have another choice. I have to become what I used to be—before I arrived in Santa Fe. That’s why McKittrick picked me to be your next-door-neighbor, isn’t it?” Decker asked. “That’s why you moved in next to me. Because of what I used to be.”

7

As the rented Buick crested La Bajada hill and Santa Fe was suddenly spread out before him, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains hulking in the background, Decker felt no surge of excitement, no delight in having returned. Instead, what he felt was an unexpected emptiness. So much had happened to him since he had left. The flat-roofed, clay-colored His-panic-pueblo structures of Santa Fe seemed as exotic as ever. The round-edged adobe-style homes seemed to glow warmly, the September afternoon amazingly clear and brilliant, no smog, visibility for hundreds of miles, the land of the dancing sun.

But Decker felt apart from it all, remote. He didn’t have a sense of coming home. He was merely revisiting a place where he happened to live. The detachment reminded him of when he had worked for the Agency and returned from assignments to his apartment in Virginia. It was the same detachment that he had felt so many times before, in London, Paris, and Athens, in Brussels, Berlin, and Cairo, the last time in Rome—because on all his missions, wherever he had traveled, he had not dared to identify with his surroundings for fear that he would let down his guard. If he was going to survive, he couldn’t permit distractions. From that point of view, he
had
come home.

8

“The stitches are nicely done,” the stoop-shouldered, redhaired doctor said.

“I’m relieved to hear it,” Decker said. The doctor was a former client with whom he occasionally socialized. “Thanks for agreeing to see us without an appointment.”

The doctor shrugged. “I had two no-shows this afternoon.” He continued to examine the wound in Beth’s thigh. “I don’t like this area of redness around the stitches. What caused the injury?”

“A car accident,” Decker said before Beth could answer. “You were with her? Is that how you hurt your face?”

“It was a lousy end to a vacation.”

“At least
you
didn’t need stitches.” The doctor returned his attention to Beth. “The redness suggests that the wound is developing an infection. Were you given an anti-tetanus injection?”

“I wasn’t alert enough to remember.”

“It must have slipped the other doctor’s mind,” Decker said bitterly.

“Then it’s due.” After giving Beth the shot, the doctor rebandaged the wound. “I’ll write a prescription for some antibiotics. Do you want something for the pain?”

“Please.”

“Here. This ought to take care of it.” The doctor finished writing and handed her two pieces of paper. “You can shower, but I don’t want you soaking the wound in a tub. If the tissue becomes too soft, the stitches might pull out. Call me in three days. I want to make sure the infection doesn’t spread.”

“Thanks.” Wincing, Beth eased off the examination table and pulled up her loose-fitting slacks, buckling them. In order to avoid attracting suspicion, Friday night’s bullet wound to the fleshy part of her shoulder had not been mentioned. That wound had no redness around it, but if an infection was brewing there, the antibiotics for the wound in her thigh would handle it.

“Glad to help. Steve, I’m in the market for more rental properties. Got any that might interest me? I’m free Saturday afternoon.”

“I could be tied up. I’ll get back to you.” Decker opened the door to the examination room and let Beth use her crutches to go ahead of him to where Esperanza waited in the lobby. Decker told them, “I’ll be out in a minute,” then shut the door and turned to the doctor. “Uh, Jeff?”

“What is it? You want me to check those contusions on your face?”

“They’re not what’s on my mind.”

“Then ... ?”

“I’m afraid this will sound a little melodramatic, but I wonder if you can make sure our visit to you stays a secret.”

“Why would ... ?”

“It’s delicate. Embarrassing, in fact. My friend’s in the middle of getting a divorce. It could get nasty if the husband knew that she and I were seeing each other. Someone might call or come around, identifying himself as her husband or a private investigator or whatever, wanting to know about medical treatment you gave her. I’d hate for him to find out that she and I had been here together.”