The 37th mandala : a novel (29 page)

He found it ten miles later and came cruising in past rows of station wagons, family cars, people walking their dogs and stretching under floodlights where a few insects circled in the chill. As soon as he shut off the engine, the cold crept in to exert its claim on everything that dared to cross the plains this time of year. He draped himself and Lenore with blankets, then sank down in his seat and tried to get comfortable enough to sleep.

Comfort, it turned out, made no difference to his exhaustion. He was dreaming within minutes. He stirred once, hearing Lenore's door slam, but didn't wake. Her footsteps trailed off in the direction of the rest rooms.

His dreams were a surrealist's collage of the day's drive. Faces rushed toward him like pieces of the landscape, streaking around his eyes like the edges of the road. The tires squealed on sharp curves, the car rocked from side to side. His eyes began to burn—literally. Flames filled them, singeing his brain; flames lit the whole world, a ghastly orange scene of smoke and screaming and always the language of
The Mandala Rites
babbling at him, in Lenore's voice, in his mother's. Derek Crowe appeared in a state trooper's uniform, tearing the door from its hinges, and as he dragged Michael from the car with metal fingers, his features dissolved into bloodred steam.

Michael woke hearing unintelligible words floating on the night wind. He had sprawled over into the passenger seat, the emergency brake handle gouging his thigh.

Sitting up, wide awake, he found he was alone in the car.

His breath had fogged the windows. With a corner of the blanket he tried to wipe a clear spot in the glass, but the smear was worse than the fog. He found a bottle of Windex between the seats and tried to squirt it on the glass, but the liquid had frozen to an icy slush and merely oozed all over his fingers. He dropped the bottle, cursing, and opened his door. Stepping out into the still air, he looked down the row of silent cars. Silent except for the voice, still chanting. Suddenly a woman rushed out from the open area between the rest rooms, glancing back over her shoulder as she hurried toward the cars.

Michael ran toward the brick shelter, hearing Lenore's nightmare voice echoing louder, hearing car doors slam behind him.

"What's going on in there?" a man called.

"Some crazy girl!" a woman answered.

The circular cement plaza was lined with vending machines, maps under Plexiglas, informative displays on the Great Plains. Lenore stood in the center of the circle with her arms reaching out to the sky. The moon, nearly full now, was visible through a weathered plastic skylight. She seemed to be pleading with it, screaming and shouting and weeping, tearing her hair and clothes. Her shirt was open, her breasts bared to the sky and the floodlights. But it wasn't the moon she addressed.

Like a dark balloon bobbing against the plastic skylight, the black mandala hung tethered to her words, a thick black root buried deep in Lenore's open throat.

Michael glanced back and saw a man moving cautiously forward from the cars, followed by the woman who had run from the plaza. He grabbed Lenore by the elbow and the mandala vanished. He pulled her into the dark behind the brick way-station. She wouldn't stop raving, but there was no point wasting strength or time trying to shut her up. As soon as he got to the car, he thrust her in and started the engine. Headlights off, he drove down the short ramp toward the highway, leaning out his window for visibility. Glancing back as he gained the highway, he saw several figures gathering under the plaza floodlights.

It was one more scattered bit of havoc strewn in their trail. How long would it take the law to catch up with them if anyone ever managed to piece the loose links into a single chain? As soon as Tucker was discovered, he and Lenore would be wanted for questioning, no doubt of that; presumably the cops would interview Earl and start searching New York. But how could they ever tie that event to the North Carolina cop shot through the head with his own gun?

They couldn't, that was a fact. At the very least, they should have time to get answers—and help—from Derek Crowe before anyone started looking for them. Tucker and Scarlet were always jaunting off for days at a time; they didn't have anyone dependent on them, or anyone who'd come looking very hard.

For the time being, they were safe. He felt like a turtle in its shell, his whole world reduced to this tiny compartment that could carry him wherever he wished. His entire existence had sharpened to a single point. He had to stop thinking about his destination. It was waiting somewhere ahead; it would be there when the journey ended. First they had thousands of empty miles to deal with. Miles when he hardly dared sleep and couldn't use the rest areas for fear of what Lenore would do in a crowd. At least he had this little world of his own, covered with protective symbols inside and out, a pentacle swinging from the rearview mirror, the cryptic Tarot emblem on the steering wheel. It gave him an infantile feeling of security: the roar of the engine was a mother's heartbeat, a cat's purr; it felt like a cradle rocking. He had come to resent even the necessity of pulling over to refuel, to eat.

The moon moved steadily ahead of him, downward, westward, followed by all the planets in their course. The car might have been another satellite, pulled by some force beyond his ability to identify—as inexplicable as gravity prior to Newton. Science had not managed to illuminate the universe's moral nature; there was no road map for Michael's real journey. But the mandalas knew the way, possessed of some insight that he lacked. Good, bad or neutral, they were, like gravity, irresistible.

Nicholas Strete, the reporter from the
Bayrometer
, was waiting for Derek just outside a North Beach coffee bar in the cold midday fog. At first he thought the kid was loitering, waiting for a bus or spare change; then he came forward grinning, and Derek saw he was carrying a laptop computer. He had expected a serious young man with a pencil behind his ear and a spiral notebook in his hand, ready to take shorthand notes. Strete looked childishly young, with long black hair, a silver nose ring, and clustered loops and gemmed studs in each ear. Bands of symmetrical tribal tattoos ran like chevrons from under the cuffs of his black leather jacket and out over the backs of his hands. But no mandalas, he was glad to see. "Mr. Crowe, I recognize you from your picture!" "Yes, hello." He peered into the cafe, and Strete opened the door to usher him toward a booth in the corner. There were others at the table already, which caused him to hesitate. Friends of Strete's? Journalistic parasites, hoping to sit in on the interview? "I hope you don't mind," Strete said as they approached the table; the other two rose to let him slide in if he wished, "but for this 'Mandala Madness' thing, I thought I'd do sort of a group interview. Originally I planned to just talk to you separately, then it occurred to me, more of a forum thing would be really cool."

"Cool," Derek echoed. The couple at the table were not much older than Strete. The male looked Asiatic, but when he extended his hand and greeted Derek, his voice was accented French. Derek's skin crawled when he realized where he had heard it before.

"Mr. Crowe, at last we meet!" said the young man. "I am Etienne and this is Nina."

"Club Mandala," Derek said with undiluted venom.

"I assume you know each other," said Strete.

"No, no! We have been waiting so long!"

"Too long," said the woman, Nina. Her hair was black with red highlights, sleek and cut short, curving in toward her jaws like a helmet; she wore horn-rimmed black glasses, lipstick some shade of dark metallic green that reminded him of a tropical insect's carapace. Her nails were painted to match. As she withdrew the hand Derek refused to take, he saw that her bare shoulder was brightly tattooed with a mandala that might have been taken intact from his book.

"I can't believe your nerve," he said in a low voice, glaring from one to the other.

"What's that?" Strete said, swaying nervously between them. "Did I walk into something?"

"No, everything is fine!" Etienne said. "We relied on you to introduce us, Mr. Strete—this is so much better than a lawyer's office! But now, I think, you can go."

Strete bit his lip, looking baffled. "Uh ... well, the article ..."

"There's plenty of time for that, don't you worry," Nina said, taking Strete by the shoulders and gently walking him away across the restaurant, leaning close to murmur in his ear. Derek watched them go. Etienne's hand closed on his own shoulder.

"Come, have a seat with us," he said very easily. "I really wish you would relax."

Derek stiffened, but what was he to do? He had intended to confront them all along; if he could just shake off his surprise, he could reduce their advantage to nothing. He would come out on top of this with a few surprises of his own. He thought of how he had already sicced Huon on them, and smiled.

"Ah, that's better! What would you like to drink? Capuccino? Let me get you something. I had an excellent macchiato."

Derek avoided sliding into the booth, as Etienne seemed to be urging him, and dropped into a chair beside the table. Nina came sauntering back, leaving the journalist staring in at them through the window with vague disappointment; she gestured him away, and he went. She sat down in the booth and smiled sharply at Derek.

"I think Mr. Crowe would like just coffee, Etienne. Am I right?"

Derek nodded, beginning to enjoy this. He lived for these battles, didn't he? He had never realized until lately just how much he enjoyed them: the sparring, the manipulation, the deceptions just beneath the surface. He almost broke out laughing, and Nina seemed to read his mood with uncanny accuracy, for she smirked and rolled her eyes as if to say
Me too.
They were all three sharing a nasty little secret.

"You're all right with us, you know," she said. "I mean ... you're right to be protective, and it's good you keep the secrets ... but you're truly among your kind now. Do you understand?"

"Oh, I understand," Derek said, and indulged himself in an open laugh.

Etienne set a cup before him and slid into the booth beside Nina. They stared at him for a few moments, then glanced at each other.

"Well," Etienne said, "where do we begin?"

"How about this," Derek said. "You tell me how you got ahold of the manuscript."

Now they really gaped at each other. He had been right all along! Someone at Veritas had slipped it to them, sold it probably; he would love to get names, but he doubted they would betray their source. Still, the confirmation of his suspicions was enough.

"You are very well informed!" Etienne said. "I admit, I am impressed."

"Amazing," Nina agreed.

"But if you know so much, do you really need to be told that? Does our agent's name matter? He was dispensable; he did as we directed, and we had nothing further to do with him."

"You paid him, I suppose."

"Paid him?" Nina suppressed a gleeful laugh. "We cut him loose, that was his reward."

Etienne was snorting with mirth. "Yes, completely loose. I don't think he got very far after that. Not so far from home."

"That would have been a long walk, I think!" Nina said.

Derek had to backpedal up a bit. They had lost him somewhere, or else he wasn't catching the full implications of what they were saying.

"And the mines," Etienne said. "Do you realize how many millions of mines were sown in Kampuchea? How many years it would take to disarm them? Each one costs money, and Cambodia is a very, very poor country."

"Wait a minute," Derek said. "Cambodia."

"Of course, that's where the manuscript was kept. It was written in Tuol Sleng, and that's where it stayed."

Tuol Sleng again?
Derek thought. Now he was truly lost—and his fear once again running rampant. It wasn't just the possibility of blackmail that frightened him; the idea occurred to him that a larger danger was brewing, one that involved him and Huon and these two, and who knew who else besides?

"We got a very good copy though. We found someone with legitimate access and borrowed him for a while."

"You're going to have to do better than that," he said. "My lawyer is on the verge of sending you a cease-and-desist letter. It doesn't take long to get a temporary restraining order, you know. I could shut down your club before it opens."

Etienne looked hurt. "Mr. Crowe, please ... what is the issue?"

"The issue is your infringement of my property."

"Oh, now that is novel," said Nina. "Infringement? What can you possibly mean?"

"It's my obligation to defend the mandalas or lose my right to them."

"Yes, defend them, by all means! We all are defenders, aren't we? But at the same time ... we want them to get around, now, don't we?" Etienne leaned close, his breath wretched from coffee, like a blast from a cat box. "You've seen our posters, our flyers?"

"Your computer viruses, yes. But don't tell me you didn't pull them all, steal them from my book."

"Oh, my," Nina said, sitting upright, quite serious and startled now. "Etienne, I think we have misjudged Mr. Crowe."

Etienne looked naively surprised. "Yes, dear, I think so too." He lit a cigarette, offering the pack to Derek, who declined. "Mr. Crowe ... where did
you
get the designs?"

Derek blinked, uncertain how to answer. "It—it's in my book," he said.

"Very good. And it doesn't suggest to you that the mandalas might speak to more than just your Ms. A?"

"I suppose ... in theory." And this was just what he had told Huon the night before. But he hadn't believed it himself; nor did he now.

"My dear, perhaps we should show Mr. Crowe the manuscript."

A conspiratorial look.

"He is one of us, whether he knows it or not. I suppose he ought to see."

Etienne opened a small leather valise that lay on the seat beside him and took out a velobound folder with black vinyl covers. It looked like a business report, some shareholder's document, until he riffled the pages and Derek saw they were photocopies of lined notebook paper, covered with handwriting and diagrams. The script was in characters unfamiliar to him, but it came as no surprise to see mandalas scattered throughout. His mandalas.