Generation of Liars (49 page)

 “How about we follow Line
10?” Pressley suggested.

“That should get us to the left
bank of the river.”

But when I opened my mouth to
reply, a voice other than mine made its presence known inside the tunnel. The
unknown voice was rippling through the hollows of the tunnel with laughter.
Yes, this mystery voice had laughed.

“It’s just a homeless person,” said
Pressley. “I can see him napping over there. Probably just having a wacky
dream.”

My joints un-tensed. “Phew. Now
where were we?”

But then the voice called my name.
Called out
Alice
. I heard it. Goose pimples erupted on my skin.

 “That was not a random homeless
person,” I said shakily. When I looked at Pressley he was stiff as driftwood.

I tensely and languidly turned my
body towards the voice. A pair of eyes were staring back. The irises were wide
and stupefied, as though perceiving me as an enigma formed from the steam of an
invisible train gone by. I followed the outline of the stranger’s face,
ensconced by gray nebulous shadows, to a slender chin and a halo of green hair
formed around the edge of the hairline.

“Hello, Alice,” said the voice in
the shadows, eerily delighted, as though my name tasted like wine on his
tongue.

Chapter Fifty-two: Second Chances

“S
KIP?”
IT WAS him alright, hair as green as mint, bone-thin frame. It had to be him.

Skip Hask shifted from the shadows.
My eyes were surveying the
caravansary blanket at his feet and a jangly
typewriter strewn asunder. “Merry Christmas,” he said ironically.

“Are you sleeping in the railway?”
I asked him.

He drowsily stretched his arms out
over his head. I noticed that he was wearing one of those tattered consignment
T-shirts with the face of the blue-eyed baby and the slogan,
Never Trust Anyone Over the Age of
Zero
. “Just taking a little nap,” he replied facetiously. “Waiting for
Santa to show up.”

I was treading toward him, and
that’s when Pressley interrupted. “You actually know this person?”

“This is my friend, Skip. He’s a
reporter.”

Presley was scratching the poppy
seed stubble at his chin. “Exactly how many vagrants do you know in this city?”

“I’m popular, sue me.” I kept on
towards Skip. “It’s easier to make friends in Paris when you’re not shooting
everyone you meet off the Eiffel Tower.” I was leaning into Skip now. “Skip,
what are you doing here? Do you live here in the rails?”

“Not exactly. You see, hotels in
Paris are nasty expensive, and I’m a man of limited means since I’m living on a
reporter’s salary, well, a phony reporter’s salary, so I settled for somewhat
less than five-star accommodations.”

“So then you have been living down
here?”

He reached down for a can of pork
and beans and peeled open the lid. “The accommodations leave a little to be
desired, but mostly I can’t complain.” His tongue lapped up the brown globular
juice dripping off the lid. A degree of alarm suddenly registered in his eyes.
“Alice, what’s that beeping sound?”

“Oh, that, right.” I squeezed my
lips. “We have a bomb.”

Skip backed up a few steps. “Damn,
Alice, I knew you were a little bit psycho, but I didn’t think you were crazy
enough to go and blow up the metro system!”

“I’m not blowing anything up. We’re
going to dump the bomb in the Seine precisely so that it doesn’t blow people
up.”

“If we ever get there,” Pressley
called across the tracks. “Otherwise, I guess chateau de Skip is fine enough to
go kaboom in.”

I faced Skip again. “I have
exciting news.”

Skip offered me a spoonful from his
can of cold pork and beans. “Exciting news?”

I politely declined the beans and
told him, “I have it Skip, I have the dynamite stick, and I’m about to turn it
into confetti over Paris.”

“You have it?”

Pressley was thumbing the trigger
on his Glock. “Easy boy,” he said. “It is not up for grabs.”

Skip was looking flushed. “The
dynamite stick is real, after all. That’s amazing. But it was my only hope and
now you’re sort of destroying it.”

I felt kind of bad for Skip,
sleeping in the gutter with a bad dye job and typing an article that probably
only a dozen people, tops, would read. Then I remembered something Andy Warhol
once said. Don’t pay attention to what they write about you, just measure it in
inches.

It was right then and there I
realized I wanted a few inches from Skip. “Skip, what if the dynamite stick
isn’t your only hope? What if there is something I can do, only there’s
something I need in return for it.”

“What is it you want from me? Don’t
be greedy about it. I mean, you’ve seen where I sleep.”

“What I want won’t cost you a
penny.”

“I like it so far.”

“I need you to write an article.”

“An article?”

“Yes, but not a real one. A fake
one. I need one with phony eyewitness testimony of one male and one female
subject who blew themselves up, along with the legendary dynamite stick, over
the Seine River on Christmas Eve.”

“Yikes, Alice. I didn’t realize you
were suicidal. There are hotlines for that.”

“I am not suicidal. We aren’t
really
going to blow ourselves up. But after we do what we do with the dynamite stick,
it’s better for the world to think we got ashed.”

“I think I follow.” Skip’s fingers
were hovering above his typewriter keys, awaiting my dictation.

“How about you go ahead and produce
a meaty little piece based on eyewitnesses who saw, wait, let me think.” I put
my finger to my chin as I devised the story in my mind. “Write that the
eyewitnesses saw the death of a Russian physicist named Nadine Blye and a rogue
government agent named Pressley Connard, as they blew themselves up in the
water following a romantic entanglement and espionage.”

“Ah, star-crossed lovers. The old
standby. This makes a great story, sure, and it helps you clear your tracks and
start a new life. But how does it help me?”

“What if I told you that you could
publish it as a
non
-disgraced journalist?”

“Impossible, Alice. The government
knows my real name. It’s in a database. The only reason they haven’t busted me
for the nuke article is because they couldn’t find me after I changed my name.
It’s impossible to clear my name. I have to publish as Skip Hask.”

“Government, as they say, is
standing across the tracks from us.”

Skip pivoted his head. “The boy
toy?”

 “Hey, Pres, you got a way to
wipe someone off the fed’s track list?”

He was reluctantly pulling out his
government-issued Blackberry. He tapped a few keys. “Give me his real name and
I can probably get into the system and blank it out.”

Skip’s eyes were nervously dancing
side to side. His fingers ran through his hair, destroying the carefully
architected spikes that had been frozen in place by hairspray. “This is
incredible. Do you really think you can erase my name?”

“If we don’t hurry up, it won’t
matter,” Pressley said with his eyes on the numbers subtracting from the face
of the bomb. “Now just give me your real name. Hurry.”

“Elliot Risk.”

The name rung like a bell in my
head. “Wait a minute, your name is Elliot Risk? As in, Elliot Risk, the writer
for
TIME
? The guy who invented the term Generation of Liars? You’re
like, famous.”

His arms were spreading out, as
though to present himself to an excited audience. “That’s me. I coined the
term.”

 “I can’t believe it,” I said,
surveying the scrunched blanket at his feet and various canned food items
stacked beside his typewriter.

“You know, Alice, when I wrote that
article I never thought I would be part of it someday. Part of the Generation
of Liars. That was for scumbags, charlatans, frauds. Not distinguished journalists
like me.”

“You told me the night we met that
the feds drained your bank account. They took all the money you made off those
cheesy T-shirts, didn’t they?”

“Yup.”

“That sucks.”

“Tell me about it.”

Pressley was finishing tapping the
information on his keypad. “All set. Elliot Risk is officially off any
government watch list.”

Skip was hugging me, suffocating
me, really. “This is the best, Alice. Thank you. I just hope after disappearing
for three years from their radar, nobody over there remembers why they were
looking for me.”

“A lot has happened in the past
three years. I’m sure with the developments since the November Hit, nosey
journalists got placed on the backburner. After the incident Pressley and I are
about to cause, even more so.”

“I hope you’re right. I may stay in
Paris and publish my work from here, just to be safe. It’s pretty comfy down
here.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “I
gotta blow this joint, before I literally, well, blow
this joint. I’ll
keep an eye out for that article from wherever I am. Someday we are going to
toast to your Pulitzer.”

Skip gave me a hug and pressed his
mouth into my hair to whisper at me, “Maybe we can invite Heather Gilmore out
for a toast too.”

I have a dry smile and flashed a
look at Pressley to make sure he hadn’t heard what Skip said. “Let’s not get
carried away,” I told Skip.

I was at Pressley’s side now.
“Thirty minutes,” he said. He was reading the numbers on my chest.

Chapter Fifty-three: The Blow Up

W
E
MADE GOOD time cutting through the tracks. We ducked into a service port and
scuttled through a labyrinth of dusty gray tunnels as narrow as ductwork.

We busted through a door that led
to an abandoned metro station with a steel gray interior and turnstiles that
had been tagged with graffiti. The sign was for the Eglise Auteule station. “I
don’t think I’ve ever used this station,” I told Pressley.

“Don’t worry, knowing you, I’m sure
there’s a long-lost friend living in this metro station too, just waiting to
pop out and surprise us at the worst moment.”

“I can’t help it if I have colorful
friends. A life lived in Paris is a life less ordinary.”

“Well, after tonight, there will be
no more Paris for you. But hopefully lots of ordinary.”

“Ordinary? In my life? I’m not
counting on it.”

We emerged on avenue de Versailles
and ran up the stairway at Place de Barcelone. In the moonlit distance, I could
see a thin bridge crossing over the Seine, it was bright like the color of
forsythia flowers. “It’s that way to the left bank,” Pressley said.

We were trudging towards the bride,
using it as a guidepost towards the river. We cut into the entrance of Parc
Andre Citroën. I had been there once, right after I had first moved to Paris
and wanted to explore the bounds of the city, so I knew that it spread out over
dozens of acres and had greenhouse gardens, futuristic fountains, and spiny art
sculptures. In the dense night air, I smelled the perfume of flowers all around
me wafting from the greenhouses. As we ran, our reflections shattered like
shaking glass bulbs over the surface of reflecting pools.

We reached the bank of the Seine
and my eyes scanned the dock, abandoned and forlorn. The buildings on the other
side of the river looked light sparse galaxies seen through a blue,
intergalactic haze. The water near the barges was gray and it smelled of
rotting fish.

“This is going to have to be the
spot,” Pressley informed me. I looked down at the bomb clenched so tightly into
his fist. The countdown on the timer down to just under
twenty minutes. I turned around and looked back at Paris. The horizon
was growing lighter, teasing the city with daybreak, but I could still see the
distant twinkle of the Eiffel Tower peeking up above the buildings like the
North Star. “You ready to do this, Alice?” Pressley asked. The waters
surrounding the dock were serenely still. The answer was on my lips, but it got
stuck. I was distracted by an ominous ripple that was forming over the surface
of the water. Next came the noise that made the hair on the back of my neck
stand up.

A loud motor.

“What is it, Alice? Why do you have
that look on your face?” Pressley begged me to tell him.

My eyes were fighting the darkness,
training towards the origin of the ripples. The pale shadow of a motorboat was
glimmering in the haze. When I strained my eyes to glimpse the details, I saw
the curvaceous silhouette of woman. She had a comet tail of unmistakable red
wavy hair streaking behind her. “Oh, crap, Pressley. I think we’ve got
company.”

Chapter Fifty-four: Uninvited

“W
HAT
DO YOU mean, Alice?” asked Pressley. “How can we have company?”

“Do you see that motorboat speeding
towards us, the one making all those ripples?”

His eyes were straining. “Yes.”

“I’m pretty sure it belongs to
Motley’s sidekick, Cleopatra.” I was squinting against the curtain of blackness
that gated the waters and my eyes managed to assemble an outline of Motley
sitting beside her. “She’s got Motley with her too.”

“How did they find us?”

“I don’t understand how this is happening.
I locked them both inside the chamber beneath the wine cellar at Motley’s house
so that the authorities could pick them up.”

“You did
what
?” He slapped
his palm to his forehead. “Alice, that was so incredibly stupid. Didn’t you
stop to think that I was able to break out from there? It isn’t secure.”

“What do you mean it isn’t secure?”

“There’s a trap door down there.
It’s what I used to escape. It’s hidden by a limestone façade, but obviously
since Motley designed the thing, he knows it’s there.”

“I can’t believe this is happening.
Just stay very still, maybe they won’t see us.”

“Alice, I have nowhere else to go
but towards the water. I need to get this bomb off dry land before it blows up
and takes a chunk of the park with it.” His hand was doing something inside his
pocket. “Besides, I have my Glock, so mabe I can just take care of him for good
right here and now. Sink him along with the dynamite stick.”