Strangers (70 page)

“It’s freezing in here,” Faye said. She went directly to the thermostat to switch on the oil furnace.

Sitting in a chair in the center of the room, his back to the door, Ernie recuperated from his ordeal as the others entered behind him. He watched the crooked-eyed newcomer moving from window to window, checking
the plyboard slabs that had been nailed up to replace the shattered glass. And that was when, to Ernie’s surprise, he realized he no longer loathed the guy, merely harbored an extreme dislike for him.

The newcomer examined the pay phone near the door. Being a coin-operated unit, it did not unplug, so he lifted the receiver, tore the cord free of the wall-mounted box, and threw the useless handset aside.

“There’s a private phone back of the counter,” Ned said.

The newcomer told him to unplug it, and Ned obliged.

Then he told Brendan and Ginger to push three tables together and pull up chairs to accommodate everyone, and they did as they were told.

Ernie watched the crooked-eyed man with keen interest.

The newcomer was concerned about the diner’s front door, which had not shattered during the weird phenomena on Saturday night because it was made of much thicker glass than the windows had been. It was not boarded up, so it offered a weak point to anyone trying to monitor them with a directional microphone. He wanted to know if any plywood was left from the window job, and Dom told him there was, and he sent Ned and Dom to bring back a suitable piece from the stack in the maintenance room behind the motel. They soon returned with a section of wood that was slightly larger than the door, and the newcomer stood it in front of the glass portal, bracing it in place with a table. “Not perfect,” he said, “but good enough to defeat a rifle mike, I think.” Then he headed toward the back of the restaurant to “have a look in the storeroom,” and on his way he told Sandy to plug in the jukebox, switch it to free-play, and punch in some songs. “Some background noise makes eavesdropping more difficult.” Even before he explained why he wanted music, Sandy jumped up and headed for the jukebox, quick to obey him.

Abruptly, Ernie realized why the crooked-eyed man fascinated him. The guy’s quick thinking, precision movements, and ability to command indicated that he was—or had once been—a career soldier, an officer, a damn good one. He could tune an intimidatingly hard edge into his voice one moment, and the next moment tune it out in favor of cajolery.

Hell, Ernie thought, he’s fascinating because he reminds me of me!

That was also why the newcomer had been able to needle Ernie so effectively back in the apartment. The guy knew just where to stick the sharp points because he and Ernie were, in some ways, two of a kind.

Ernie laughed softly. Sometimes, he thought, I can be such a perfect jackass.

The crooked-eyed man returned from the storeroom and smiled with satisfaction when he saw everyone seated at the long table which he had told Brendan and Ginger to put together from three smaller ones. He came to Ernie and said, “No hard feelings?”

“Hell, no,” Ernie said. “And thanks…thanks a lot.”

The newcomer went to the head of the table, where a chair had been left for him. With Kenny Rogers crooning on the jukebox, the guy said, “My name’s Jack Twist, and I don’t know any more than you what in hell’s happening, probably less than you know. The whole thing gives me the heebie-jeebies, but I also have to tell you this is the first time in eight years that I’ve really and truly felt like I’m on the right side of an issue, the first time I’ve felt like one of the good guys—and dear God in Heaven, you can’t know how much I’ve needed to feel
that!
”

•

Lieutenant Tom Horner, Colonel Falkirk’s aide-de-camp, had enormous hands. The small tape recorder was totally concealed in his right hand when he carried it into the windowless office. His fingers were so large that he seemed certain to have trouble using the little control buttons. But he was remarkably dextrous. He produced the recorder, placed it on the desk, switched it on, and set it in the playback mode.

The tape had been duplicated from the reel-to-reel machine on which all phone-monitored conversations were recorded. It was a portion of an exchange that had taken place between several people at the Tranquility only minutes ago. The first part of the tape concerned the witnesses’ discovery that the source of their trouble was not Shenkfield but Thunder Hill. Leland listened with dismay. He had not anticipated that their quest would take the right trail so soon. Their cleverness worried and angered him.

On the tape:
“For God’s sake, shut up. If you think you can plot in privacy here, you’re badly mistaken.”

“That’s Twist,” Lieutenant Horner said. He had a big voice, too, which was as well controlled as his enormous hands: a soft rumble. He stopped the tape. “We knew he was coming here. And we know he’s dangerous. We figured he’d be more cautious than the others, sure, but we didn’t expect him to act as if he was at war from the get-go.”

As far as they knew, Jack Twist’s memory block had not seriously deteriorated. He was not suffering fugues, sleepwalking, phobias, or obsessions. Therefore, only one thing might have motivated him to suddenly lease a plane and fly to Elko County: mail from the same traitor who had sent Polaroids to Corvaisis and to the Blocks.

Leland Falkirk was furious that someone involved in the cover-up, probably someone at Thunder Hill, was sabotaging the entire operation. He had made this discovery only last Saturday night, when Dominick Corvaisis and the Blocks had sat at the kitchen table and discussed the strange snapshots they’d been sent. Leland had ordered an immediate investigation
and intense screening of everyone at the Depository, but that was going a lot slower than he had anticipated.

“There’s worse,” Horner said. He switched on the tape again.

Leland listened to Twist tell the others about rifle microphones and infinity transmitters. Shocked, they adjourned to the diner, where they could discuss their strategy without being overheard.

“They’re in the diner now,” Horner said, shutting off the recorder. “Ripped out the phones. I’ve spoken by radio with the observers we have stationed south of I-80. They watched the witnesses move to the Grille, but they haven’t had any luck tuning in with a rifle mike.”

“And won’t,” Leland said sourly. “Twist knows what he’s doing.”

“Now that they’re aware of Thunder Hill, we’ve got to move on them as soon as possible.”

“I’m waiting to hear from Chicago.”

“Sharkle’s still barricaded in his house?”

“Last I heard, yes,” Leland said. “I’ve got to know if his memory block has completely crumbled. If it has, and if he gets a chance to tell anyone what he saw that summer, then the operation’s blown, anyway, and it’d be a mistake to move against the witnesses at the motel. We’ll have to fall back to another plan.”

•

Under the diner’s wagonwheel lights, safe in her mother’s lap, Marcie dozed off even as Jack Twist introduced himself. In spite of the nap the girl had taken on the plane, sooty rings of weariness encircled her eyes, and a tracery of blue veins marked her porcelain-pale skin.

Jorja was tired, too, but Twist’s dramatic arrival was an effective antidote to the narcotizing effects of the dinner. She was wide awake and eager to hear what he had to tell them of his own tribulations.

He began by briefly mentioning his imprisonment in Central America, with which his military career had ended. He made the experience sound more boring and frustrating than frightening, but Jorja sensed that he had endured grueling hardship. From his matter-of-fact tone, she had the impression that he was a man so secure in his self-image, so certain of his emotional and physical and intellectual strengths, that he never needed to boast or to hear the praise of others.

When he spoke of Jenny, his late wife, he was less able to maintain an air of detachment. Jorja heard the cadences of lingering grief in this part of his story; a river of love and longing flowed beneath his feigned placidity. The intimacy of mind and spirit between Jack Twist and Jenny, prior to her coma, had surely been extraordinary, for only a special and magical relationship would have ensured his unflagging devotion through
the woman’s long deathlike sleep. Jorja tried to imagine what a marriage of that sort might be like, then realized that, regardless of how magical their marriage had been, Jack would not have committed himself so totally to his afflicted wife if he’d been any less than the man he was. Their relationship had been special, yes, but even more special was this man himself. That realization increased Jorja’s already strong interest in Twist and his story.

He was vague in describing the enterprises by which he had financed Jenny’s long stay at a sanitarium. He made it clear only that what he had done was illegal, that he was not proud of it, and that his lawless days were over. “At least I never killed any innocent bystanders, thank God. Otherwise, I think it’s best if you don’t know any details that might somehow make you accessories after the fact.”

Their mutual unremembered ordeal had affected Jack Twist. But as with Sandy, the mysterious events of that July night had wrought only beneficial changes in him.

Ernie Block said, “I think what you’ve indirectly told us is that you were a professional thief.” When Jack Twist said nothing, Ernie continued: “It occurs to me that you were almost certainly forced to reveal your criminal life to the people who brainwashed us. In fact, from what little you’ve said, I figure those safe-deposit boxes in which the postcards turned up were kept under the identities you also used when committing robberies; therefore, since that July, the Army and government must’ve known about your illegal activities.”

Jack’s silence was confirmation that he had, indeed, been a thief.

Ernie said, “Yet, once they’d blocked your memories of what really happened here that summer, they turned you loose and let you continue with what you’d been doing. Why in the hell would they do that? I can understand the Army and government bending—even breaking—the law to hide whatever happened at Thunder Hill if it involves national security. But otherwise, you’d expect them to uphold the law, wouldn’t you? So why wouldn’t they at least anonymously inform the New York police or arrange for you to be caught in the middle of a crime?”

Jorja said, “Because from the start they’ve not been certain that our memory blocks would hold up. They’ve been monitoring us, at least checking in on us once in a while, to be sure we don’t need a refresher course in forgetfulness. What happened to Ginger and Pablo Jackson seems to prove they’re watching, all right. And if they decided it was necessary to grab Jack—or any of us—and put him through another session with the mind-control doctors, they’d want him where they could reach him without too much trouble. It’d be a lot easier to snatch Jack out of his apartment or from his car than to spirit him out of prison.”

“Good grief,” Jack said, smiling at her, “I think you’ve hit on it. Absolutely.” Although Jorja had been slightly chilled by his smile the first time she’d seen it, she perceived it differently now; it was a warmer smile than it had seemed initially.

Marcie murmured wordlessly in her sleep. Suddenly and curiously shy about meeting Jack Twist’s eyes, Jorja used her daughter’s dreamy mutterings as an excuse to look away from him.

Jack said, “Whatever secret they’re protecting is so important they had to let me carry on with whatever crimes I chose to commit.”

Ginger Weiss shook her head. “Maybe not. Maybe they engineered this guilt. Maybe they planted the seed, so you’d change.”

“No,” Jack said. “If they didn’t have time to weave the story of the toxic spill into everyone’s false memories, they sure wouldn’t have had time to finesse me toward the straight-and-narrow path. Besides…this is difficult to explain…but, since coming here tonight, I feel in my heart that I relearned guilt and found my way back into society because something so important happened to us two summers ago that it put my own suffering in perspective and made me see that none of my bad experiences was
so
bad as to justify the warping of my entire life.”

“Yes!” Sandy said. “I feel that, too. All the hell I went through as a child…none of it matters after what happened that July.”

They were silent, trying to imagine what experience could have been so shattering as to make even the most painful of life’s tricks seem of little consequence. But none of them could puzzle it out.

After he selected more songs on the jukebox, Jack asked a lot of questions of the others, filling the gaps in his knowledge of their various ordeals and putting together a complete picture of their discoveries to date. That done, he guided them through a discussion of strategy, formulating a set of tasks for tomorrow.

Jorja was again intrigued by Jack’s leadership skills. By the time the group discussed what steps should be taken next and settled on an agenda, they had agreed to undertake precisely the tasks Jack thought ought to be accomplished, though there was never a sense that he had commanded or manipulated them. When he’d first appeared in the Blocks’ apartment, he’d proved he could take control of a situation and, by sheer force of personality, make people obey him. But now he chose indirection, and the speed with which everyone came around to his purposes was proof this was the right tactic.

Jorja realized that he impressed her for many of the same reasons that Ginger Weiss had impressed her. She saw in him the kind of person she had been struggling to become since her divorce—and the kind of man that Alan could never have been.

The final problem the group dealt with was the danger of an attack by Falkirk’s men. Now that there was a real chance their memory blocks would substantially decay—or crumble completely—in the near future, they posed a greater threat to their enemy than at any time since July, the summer before last. Tomorrow, they would be separated most of the day as they carried out their various tasks and researches, but tonight they were in danger if they all stayed at the motel, making one easy target. Therefore, they agreed that most of them would go to bed now, while two or three drove into Elko and spent part of the night circling through town, always on the move, alert. Assuming that the Tranquility was under observation, the enemy would at once realize they could no longer seize everyone in a clean sweep. At four o’clock in the morning, a second group of outriders could rendezvous with the first team in Elko and relieve them, so they could come back here and get some sleep.