Last Gasp (45 page)

Chase glanced blankly from one to the other. “What are you suggesting? Some kind of conspiracy?”

“These assassinations aren’t random,” Ingrid Van Dorn said. “Every target has been someone—scientist, politician, administrator—working to improve the environment in some way. They are too well planned and executed to be the work of lone individuals. There’s an organization behind them.”

“You could be right,” Chase said, not having made the connection before now. “But who? What organization?”

“My money is on one of the intelligence agencies,” said Prothero. “Take your pick—ours, the Russians, the Chinese, Libya, South Africa.”

“Then why choose such a distinctive method? It only draws attention to the fact that they’ve all been murdered by the same group. That’s hardly good intelligence procedure,” Chase pointed out.

“Maybe it is,” Prothero countered, pushing his glasses more firmly onto the bridge of his nose. “Now just suppose you want to divert suspicion. What would you do? You’d select a cranky method of disposal and let a terrorist group take the blame. We’re supposed to assume that a regular, highly trained intelligence hit squad would carry out the job cleanly, quietly, and without fuss. By the normal process of deduction we’d come to the conclusion that pyro-assassinations can’t be the work of an intelligence agency, that such a bizarre method rules them out. Only it doesn’t. Doublethink.”

“I’m prepared to go along with that, except for one thing,” Chase said. “Motive.”

“That we don’t know,” Prothero conceded. “But with intelligence agencies screwball ideas are a dime a dozen. The screwier the better.”

“So what you’re saying, I take it, is that anyone known to be involved in a project like this is a prime target.”

“Right.”

“But your views are already well known, Senator,” Chase said. It occurred to him that so were his.

“I already take precautions, Dr. Chase.” Prothero took off his glasses, flicked out a snowy white monogrammed handkerchief, and began to polish them. His eyes were slightly watery but no less piercing without the thick lenses. “And if I were you, I’d do the same.”

“Even if I decide not to accept your proposition?”

“Even so.”

“Though one can take too many precautions in this life.” Ingrid Van Dorn’s eyes were fixed on the ceramic sculpture, yet her remark was addressed to Chase as pointedly as if she had taken hold of his lapels. “Sometimes we have to take risks to make it worth the living. For ourselves and for our children.”

Beaming like a child on Christmas morning, Cheryl followed Boris Stanovnik through the pine-floored hallway and into the long sunny room that was more like a cluttered study than a living room. Bookshelves lined three entire walls and there were books scattered everywhere, some sprouting markers made out of folded typing paper. Piles of magazines, scientific and technical journals, newspapers and files of different colors were stacked on every flat surface. In a recess next to the window was a massive stripped-pine chest, reaching almost to the ceiling. In place of the usual ten drawers there must have been fifty, some quite small, others the size of shoeboxes.

“This is wonderful! ” Boris hugged Cheryl to him and then held her at arm’s length for a long searching scrutiny. “Wonderful to see you! After all this time!” He beamed at her delightedly.

Shafts of sunlight made slanting pillars at the far end of the room, but even so a log fire blazed in the roughly hewn stone fireplace. Oregon in the fall could be decidedly chilly.

Cheryl smiled, trying to get her breath back after the bear hug. “It has been a long time. Five years. Gavin was really disappointed at not being able to see you, Boris. But he was called away on urgent business.”

“As you said on the phone yesterday. I’m so glad you were able to come.” Boris lifted his close-cropped gray head and called out to his wife in Russian.

Amazing how little he’d changed, thought Cheryl. Still the same broad powerful physique and vigor, the same alert-eyed intelligence, and he was well into his seventies. Nina appeared, and to Cheryl it seemed the reverse had taken place. She was small and frail and she now walked with a stick. There was the pinched, harrowed look on her face that those who live constantly with pain acquire.

Apparently she suffered badly with arthritis and had to take pain-relieving drugs. Cheryl expressed her sympathy and Boris had to translate: After ten years in America his wife’s English was still limited to a few words and phrases.

They sat cozily around the log fire drinking the strong tea that Boris had made in the samovar. Cheryl explained about their trip, and after every two or three sentences Boris would dutifully translate. He shook his head when he heard that Gavin and Dan had gone to New York.

“We know what’s happening there, we watch the reports on news-fax. What do they call it now?”

“The Rotten Apple.”

“Very bad there,” Boris grimaced. “The East Coast and the South. It’s like a cancer, eating away the country bit by bit. Every day it creeps nearer.”

Cheryl looked toward the sunlit window. “You seem to be all right here. The air smells good.”

“Yes, the air is mostly good and clear,” Boris agreed, sipping his tea. “There are forests and relatively few people. On some days we see dark clouds, industrial smog, but it blows”—he pushed his large hand through the air—“away to the ocean. Thank God.”

“Don’t you miss your own country at all?” Cheryl asked.

“At certain times of the year perhaps. When the leaves turn brown and fall like pieces of burned paper. Yes, we feel sad then.” Deep vertical creases appeared in his cheeks as he smiled. “But it is beautiful here too! Mountains, lakes, forests. And it has one tremendous advantage over Russia.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“No KGB. At least here we are not spied on and followed everywhere. Vida is a good place to live and work. We feel safe and protected—look, let me show you!”

He wanted her to see the unbroken range of peaks to the north and east. Their slopes were thickly wooded and dusted lightly with the first snow of the season. To Cheryl they seemed to form an impregnable barrier, shutting out the rest of the world. But no barrier was impregnable to the climate.

“Mount Jefferson, South Sister, Huckleberry, Diamond Peak, Bohemia Mountain.” Boris rhymed them off proudly like favorite grandchildren.

“What work are you doing?” Cheryl asked him.

Boris stood with his thumbs hooked into his belt, his chest swelling under a dark-brown woolen shirt with embroidered pockets. “I write and study and do research. I’ve been cataloging the plant life along the McKenzie River, collecting specimens. There are hundreds, it’s so fertile and varied.” He leaned toward her. “Up to now I have classified one hundred and twenty-six different species.”

“I didn’t know you were a botanist,” Cheryl said in surprise.

“No, I’m not, strictly speaking. I was a microbiologist, though much of my work for the Hydro-Meteorological Service was concerned with the conditions in rivers and lakes, how a change in climate might affect them and vice versa. That meant examining the soil, fauna, and flora in order to understand the complex interaction between them and the natural water supply, in particular the process of eutrophi-cation.”

“Is there any sign of eutrophication in the McKenzie River?” Cheryl asked, vaguely uneasy.

But the big Russian shook his head unhesitatingly. “No. No trace at all.”

That was something to be thankful for. Eutrophication indicated that the biological oxygen demand of underwater plants and animal life was exceeding the water’s capacity to provide it. This led eventually to stagnation—the lake or river turning into a foul-smelling swamp. This was what had happened in the Gulf of Mexico.

Regretfully, Cheryl had to refuse the invitation to stay for dinner. She had to drive back to Eugene and prepare for an early start in the morning. There were two Earth Foundation groups in the general area to visit, one at a place called Goose Lake in southern Oregon, the other over the border in California.

A soft mellow dusk was falling as she was preparing to leave. The firelight threw dancing shadows along the crammed bookshelves, and Boris went across to the large pine chest in the corner, its row upon row of brass handles winking like fireflies. He beckoned to her, and Cheryl sensed a certain reluctance or indecision, as if he couldn’t make up his mind about something.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked, sliding open one of the drawers and taking out a rigid sheet of plastic. She saw that it consisted of two wafer-thin sheets pressed together and held by metal clips.

Between them the stem and leaves of a plant were spread out on display, sealed from the air.

Boris switched on the desk lamp so that she could see better. Cheryl held the plastic sheet in her spread fingertips and bent forward into the light. The leaves were about two inches in length, heart-shaped, with a fine tracery of darkish-green veins.

“I’m not sure. It looks a bit like knotweed. You know, the generic species
Polygonum convolvulus
, which is very similar to this, only much smaller, about one third this size.” Cheryl looked up. “What is it?”

“
Polygonum convolvulus
,” Boris said.

“You mean it is knotweed?” Cheryl found herself gazing at the embroidered breast pocket of his shirt. Tiny pink hearts on twined green stems. “You actually found this along the McKenzie River?”

“Also many other species that are three, four, even five times bigger than normal.”

Boris took the plastic sheet from her fingers. Its surface caught the reflected glare of lamplight, illuminating his face from below and giving him the appearance of a giant in a fairy tale. He carefully replaced it and silently slid the drawer shut.

The driver kept looking in his mirror to make sure. Skinny little runt of a guy in the funny black robes at the back of the bus hadn’t moved a muscle in over two hundred miles. Just sitting there, straight up, stiff as a board, eyes shut tight behind those crummy wire specs.

Couldn’t be dead, could he, not in that position? Like that old lady a couple of weeks ago who’d been cold as a side of beef by the time they got to Williamsport? Sweet Jesus, please not another one. He couldn’t go through that routine all over again. Cops with questions. Forms to fill in. The depot manager handing him the hard line about how it was “uncool for the company image.” Fuck the company’s image. He was a bus driver, not a fucking heart surgeon. What was he supposed to do?

He sighed and looked at his watch. Another forty-five minutes and that was it, thank Christ. Passengers traveling east into New Jersey and New York State had to transfer to sealed transportation at Williamsport. Here the air was breathable, more or less, whereas on the other side of Allentown you choked your goddamn lungs up.

Come to think of it, hadn’t the kid boarded the bus carrying an oxygen cylinder? That’s right. He’d been cradling it like a baby, as if it were as delicate and as precious too.

The driver sniffed experimentally. The bus was equipped with a filtration plant, but it wasn’t oxygenated. Anyway, smelled okay to him. What was that disease that guy on TV had said was on the increase? Anorexia? Naw, that was teen-age tarts starving themselves to death.
Anoxia.
That was it. Maybe the kid suffered from anoxia and needed his own oxygen supply.

It occurred to him to wonder that if there was a lack of oxygen, would the air smell any different? Wouldn’t he just black out and run the bus off the road? He sniffed again, nervously this time.

On the back seat Mara sat with folded arms, oblivious to the jolting motion of the bus, oblivious to everything. The small gray metal cylinder was wedged beside him so that it couldn’t roll off the seat.

He was submerged fathoms deep, his heartbeat like a slow muffled drumbeat, his circulatory and respiratory systems slowed right down to the minimum for life support. Time had no reality. At the very center of his consciousness there was a fierce, white-hot, molten core of purpose. Nothing else mattered or had meaning or existence.

He didn’t have to think.

The instruction had been implanted during trance.

It told him precisely what had to be done.

And how it was to be achieved.

His life and being were dedicated to the single act he was about to perform. In the language of the Faith he was approaching the moment of Optimum Orbital Trajectory. In that moment everything he had learned would become meaningful and fulfill its purpose in the one supreme act.

The
world must be cleansed,
the litany unrolled endlessly inside his head.
Consumed in the purging flames of damnation. The world is evil and
must die in
order to be
reborn,
according to the teaching and prophecy of Bhumi Bha
p,
Earth Father.

And I, Mara thought exultantly, I am the chosen instrument of sweet searing death.

They had seen all the sights and visited the tourist attractions. The Statue of Liberty inside its transparent protective dome, like an ornate green cake under a glass cover; the Empire State Building, where they had hired masks and strolled blindly around the now purposeless observation deck on the one hundred and second floor; Central Park with its hellish landscape of stunted trees, gray grass, searchlight towers, and graffiti scrawled in blood on Wollman Rink; the eternal guitar-shaped holographic flame of the John Lennon Memorial on the upper west side; Checkpoint X, which marked the entrance into the electrified perimeter fence surrounding Harlem; the one remaining steel-and-glass rectangle of the World Trade Center alongside its shattered sister tower, which had burned down in the three-week-long hostage caper in 2005.