Perfect Victim (18 page)

All through his life, in his secret 3
A.M
. ruminations, behind the membrane of his everyday life, Grove had suspected something had not been quite right with his own birth. He knew he was an only child. He knew this for a fact. But he had also gleaned over the years the occasional odd little anomaly, like his being born “in the caul,” as Vida had put it, which meant he had been the one-in-a-hundred-thousand baby born with the amniotic sac still clinging to his face. He had also noticed over the years weird little gaps in Vida's recollections of his birth. For reasons that were only now becoming clear to Grove, she had always seemed to be withholding something.

Now, for the first time in his life, as he stood in the chill morning mist, alone with Drinkwater on the gravel parkway of a small airfield north of Quantico, the horrible truth had started to coalesce in his mind. He gazed off at the steel-gray dawn rising over the black horizon and murmured, “I always knew there was something weird somewhere, something wrong….”

Drinkwater had her hands in her pockets, her breath coming out in plumes of vapor backlit by the airfield's silvery sodium lights. “I guess back in the sixties they only had a few clinics in Kenya that were equipped to do sonograms.”

Grove looked at her. “Then how did she know for sure? How did she know?”

“She said a shaman told her she had two warring spirits inside her.” Drinkwater looked up at him, her eyes glinting with some unreadable emotion in the half-light of dawn. “But she didn't know for sure until the day of the delivery.”

Grove nodded, looked at the gravel at his feet. “They found a trace of it?”

“An extra growth, extra tissue in her womb.”

He looked at her. “Extra tissue.”

“A failed twin.”

The phrase seemed to hang in the gloomy air like a toxic fog.

Drinkwater swallowed hard, looking down. “I don't know how much of this you want to know.” She looked up at him. “I don't want you to hit me again.”

“Very funny.” Grove looked out beyond the horizon. “So you're telling me there was a twin.”

“That's right. You had a twin brother in the womb. Didn't gestate all the way. Only enough nutrients in the womb for one, so the other twin gets absorbed into the placenta.”

Grove shook his head. “Survival of the fittest.”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that. Vanishing Twin Syndrome is what they call it.”

“Cute.”

“This was a rare case, too, according to the doctors in Nairobi. This tissue—the thing, this lost embryo—was something they call a mirror twin.”

“Go on.”

“One twin is right-handed, the other left-handed; all the features, every little freckle, is exactly the reverse of the other's, a perfect inversion.”

Grove stared at the horizon for a long moment. “How the hell did Tom know about this?”

Drinkwater shrugged. “Somehow the old geezers got the hospital records, I don't know. Maybe they knew all along.”

In the distance, on the northeast horizon, Grove saw a pair of headlights coming down a switchback road. “Here comes the pilot,” he said nodding at the oncoming four-wheeler. “Let me do the talking.”

Drinkwater smiled in spite of her nerves. “You don't have to worry about that.”

Grove wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “It's just a few cells got flushed down the toilet.”

Drinkwater looked at him. “What?”

“The unborn twin.”

“Oh. Right.”

“It doesn't mean anything.”

“Yeah…you're right.”

Grove watched the vehicle approach. “Just superstition. That's all it is.”

“Sure,” Drinkwater agreed. “Absolutely.”

Grove dug in his pocket for his wallet. “I don't want to hear about it again. You got that?”

“No problem,” Drinkwater said with a nod, then followed Grove toward the oncoming headlights.

The single-engine Piper Cub, with its government-issue olive drab fuselage and heavy array of DIA spy cameras lining the underbelly, took off out of the rising sun shortly after 6:00
A.M
. that morning, the surly ex–Navy SEAL pilot named Barkham at the controls. Strapped into the rear jump seats, positioned single file, guerrilla-style, Grove and Drinkwater rode in leaden silence as the aircraft climbed a northerly wind toward Leesburg, reached a cruising altitude of fifteen hundred feet, then banked steeply to the west, soaring over the sprawling emerald ocean of pines south of the Green Ridge forest.

The journey took them over the ancient stone pillars of the Allegheny Mountains, the harsh rays of daybreak creeping with the inexorable slowness of a sundial across the plane's scarred canopy, while Grove brooded in the back about the meaning of Geisel's death note, his mother's revelations, displaced spirits, lost twins, and suicide missions. Grove didn't want to die. He didn't want to be a hero. But something in those desolate aerial photographs of the Wormwood property called out to him.

He thought about all this almost subconsciously as the Piper Cub buzzed over the verdant ruins of Civil War killing fields, pitching and yawing gently on the tailwinds. Through the side window Grove could see the passing patchwork of mountain roads and dense wilderness like miniature landscapes in a fishbowl, broken only by an occasional grassy slope upon which thousands and thousands of siblings fought to their deaths in the War Between the States: Gettysburg, Cumberland, Manassas, Bull Run—the fossilized battlefields passed beneath the aircraft with time-lapse speed while Grove burned with adrenaline.

Homicide detectives stumped by difficult cases will often go see victims' families, picking at the scab of human misery and grief in order to work up the righteous rage, the sense of vengeance. Grove required no such visit now. He felt the loss of
all
the souls he had avenged over the years smoldering in his gut, all those ragged poor bodies he had measured and catalogued and averaged, seared into his memory, mingling with a sense of guilt so powerful it took his breath away:
he was responsible, somehow, for all this suffering
.

With his calculations, extrapolations, and prognostications, Grove had unleashed this evil, and now his world had narrowed into a dark tunnel into which he traveled alone and through which he could only see a single egress flickering at the end: find the man called John Q Public and remove him, as if he were a tumor, from the world.

 

At a few minutes after 7:00
A.M
., the Piper Cub touched down at a small airstrip about three and half miles southeast of Valesburg, Kentucky.

By that point, the morning sun had crested the mountains to the east and now shone harsh and brilliant off the treetops, warming up the morning with the cloying smells of wet black earth and pine sap. The plane came to a shuddery stop on a rough-hewn dirt landing strip flanked by rusted unmarked Quonset huts—typical military Spartan—while the prop wound down, raising a thunderhead of dust.

“I'm gonna need y'all to stay put for a second!” Commander Barkham ordered at the top of his voice, unsnapping his belts, removing his headset.

The pilot climbed out of the cockpit and strode low and fast across the hard-pack to the largest steel building. He vanished inside it for a moment. Grove watched from inside the greasy glass fuselage. The prop died and the sudden silence inside the plane's cabin made Grove's jaw ache. He felt Drinkwater's presence behind him, fidgeting nervously in her seat, but not saying anything.

At last the pilot emerged from the Quonset and hurried over to the plane. “Get your things and get outta here,” he said after climbing back behind the stick. “And remember: I did not bring you here, and y'all most certainly did not pay me for my services today.”

“Got it,” Grove said and pulled the fat envelope of twenties out of the inner pocket of his duster. He gave the man the money, then nodded at Drinkwater. “Let's go.”

They climbed out of the plane one at a time—Grove first, then Drinkwater—then reached back inside the hatch and grabbed their belongings from under their seats: Drinkwater's big vinyl purse, Grove's immense duffel bag. Drinkwater started toward the access road in the distance, but Grove lingered by the plane as the prop kicked back to noisy life.

“One more thing!” he hollered over the noise of the engine, knocking on the pilot's window.

Barkham stuck his head out the open vent. “If the DIA guys find out I gave y'all this—!”

“We had an agreement.” Grove kept his gaze leveled at the pilot.

Barkham let out an angry sigh. He leaned down to a road case on the floor, thumbed a combination lock, and opened it. He found a small plastic case the size of a deck of playing cards, rooted it out, and held it up. Grove reached for it, but Barkham did not let go of it, not yet. “I don't think you fully understand what I'm giving you here—”

Grove snatched it out of the man's hand. “Thank you for your concern.”

Grove slung his duffel bag over his shoulder, turned away, then hurried across the tarmac in the noisy slipstream toward the access road, where Drinkwater waited with an odd expression on her sweat-shimmering brown face—a mixture of concern and outright fear. “What was that about?” she asked as they crossed the road.

Grove was digging in his duster pocket for the topographical map he had downloaded. “You don't want to know,” he said, unfolding the map, looking at it. “We want to go this way.”

He started off to the north, when all at once she grabbed his arm and spun him around.

“Yes I do! I want to know!” Anger flared in her eyes. “What the hell did he give you back there?”

Grove stood there, looking at her for a moment, the roar of the plane kicking up behind them. “It's from an old Agency field kit. A vial of potassium cyanate.”

She stared at him, uncomprehending.

Grove did not look away. “It's fast-acting poison for black-op guys—you bite down on it and you check out in like a minute.”

He turned then and hurried toward the intersection of access roads to the north.

It took Drinkwater a moment to recover her bearings and hurry after him.

The hike took its toll on both of them. By the time they found their way across the Avery Mountain switchbacks and reached the little Farmers' Market shack on the east side of town—essentially a glorified lean-to of canvas and old pine timbers shielding a dozen or so bushel baskets of local produce—Drinkwater had blisters on both heels, Grove's trick knee was heating up on him, and they were both damp with sweat. The sun had risen high and harsh that morning, and Grove had removed his duster along the way, tying it around his waist. By noon, the backs of their necks were burned and creased with grime, and Drinkwater had a bad feeling they were going to stumble upon another murder scene—but Grove sensed he was walking to his
own
doom, not someone else's.

They entered Valesburg from the east and proceeded directly to the Quik-Stop Service Center, where they gobbled a couple of cheese sandwiches and bandaged their sores. Grove knew they had to stay under the radar of Sheriff DeQueen or they would risk tipping the Bureau, so they concocted a cover story for themselves—nothing too outlandish, just a subtle nod to allay suspicion for as long as possible. Grove bought a sheaf of maps at the front counter and told the gum-snapping girl behind the cash register that he was from the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, taking soil samples.

Word travels in a small town like influenza germs in a kindergarten.

By mid-afternoon, Grove learned just how quickly the cashier had circulated news of these two strangers from “up to the college” when he and Drinkwater stopped at Bud and Hank's Tavern on the west edge of town to see if they could discreetly glean any information about the discovery of John Q's van, or Sheriff DeQueen's investigation, or any suspicious characters loitering around the mine. The bartender didn't know much—he was a former biker who had never even laid eyes on Wormwood—but there was a gangly underage girl with tattoos and a nose ring drowning her sorrows, at the end of the bar who knew plenty.

“You them two eggheads from the U of K?” the girl asked after the bartender had gone back to his game of solitaire. The young lady seemed to be in a sort of boozy fugue state.

“That's right.” Grove wheeled toward the girl. “Ulysses Grove is the name, and this is my fellow egghead, Edith Drinkwater.”

Drinkwater's gaze seemed to gravitate immediately to the fresh bruise under the girl's eye. “You okay, honey?”

“Fine and dandy, and I'll be even finer and dandier when I get another one of these—Earl!”

The bartender grunted and went about the business of making another pink frothy drink for the young lady. He seem unconcerned that she was still three years shy of legal.

“I'm Jamie, by the way,” she said with a forlorn smile, shaking Drinkwater's hand. Something raw and unspoken passed between the two women—Grove noticed it, even in the tense zone he was in. The girl looked over her shoulder, then back at Grove. “Did I hear you askin' Earl about Wormwood? The old mine?”

Grove stared at her. “That's right.”

The girl licked her lips. “What is it y'all want to know about it exactly?”

Grove spoke softly. “You haven't seen anything suspicious around there in the last few days, have you? Strangers? Anything of that nature?”

The girl's eyes changed slightly, sobered up a bit. “Maybe…I don't know.”

Grove spoke even softer, his voice intensifying into a sort of taut hiss: “Think hard. It's very important—did you see anyone around the old mine? You could say this is a life-or-death situation.”

The girl's expression filled with a terrible sort of awe right then, her chin beginning to tremble. “You two ain't from no college, are ya?”

Grove looked at Drinkwater.

They could smell fear wafting off the girl like musk.