The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All (25 page)

    "I have a theory. It's the land that makes people crazy, not their superstitions. Consider fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity-then look around. Look at all this emptiness under a baleful fireball. Add a few uneducated peasants to the equation and v
oila
. Petrie dish for lunacy."

    "Amber waves of grain far as the eye can see, and me without a drop of milk…"

    The big man nodded, still rubbing his skull. "I knew a fellow in Tangiers during my callow and malleable youth. French Intelligence, retired. He
claimed
to be retired. A lovely, older man; quite affable, quite accommodating, charmingly effete. He always dressed in a suit and smoked
Gauloises
brunes. Kept a little black pistol in his dresser at the hotel-a Walther, as I recall. He spoke of enemies from the old days. You remind me a bit of him. "

    "Except I don't have enemies. As to the, ahem, French connection, my mother claims we are descended from the Huguenots-but isn't that a socially acceptable variation of the asylum nuts claiming to be Napoleon reincarnate?"

    The grounds crew stopped across the way. There were seven of them. They lighted cigarettes and leaned against their truck or sprawled in the grass and drank water from milk jugs. A young Mexican god shaded his eyes with his hand and smiled at Lancaster. The Mexican's shoulders were broad and dark as burnt copper and his black hair fell in ringlets to his nipples. His chest and stomach rippled with the musculature of a bull. He unsnapped the cap on a jug and poured water over his head, a model pimping it hard in a rock video, and whipped his hair in a circle. Water flew everywhere. His teeth were white, white.

    Dr. Christou followed Lancaster's stare. He sighed and lighted a cigarette of his own. "I always enjoyed a cherry pipe. Had to quit-too
de trop
for a professor, chewing on a pipe stem. Damnable shame. You understand the power of perception, of course. I've accrued a fine, long list of enemies. My work is eccentric enough without piling on cliche. Ah, how I loathe those fuckers in admin."

    Lancaster laughed, unbalanced by Christou's sortie and disliking the sensation intensely. He said, "An amazing coincidence, running into your colleague last night."

    "Indeed. Blaylock wasn't… He wasn't as I expected him to be. We've corresponded for years. I thought…Well, goes to show, doesn't it? How meager our understanding of the human heart."

    "Only the shadow knows."

    "What a chestnut! Is that how you get through life, Mr. Lancaster? A sense of detachment and an arsenal of wry witticisms?"

    "I'm not the best at small talk."

    "Nonsense-that's why they sent you. You are an
expert
at small talk, a maestro at manipulating the inconsequential to your design. I'm hardly offended-fascinated, rather."

    The clouds kept rolling and the light changed and changed, darkening from red and orange to purple, and a damp breath moved across the land, but it didn't rain. The air was supercharged and Lancaster tasted a hint of ozone. "Here comes the dinner wagon," he said as a van with a corporate logo departed the main road and cruised toward them.

    "The irony is, my connections are retired or passed on," Dr. Christou said. "We've gotten old. If revolutionaries live long enough they become the establishment. The reef incorporates all discrete elements."

    "Honestly, doctor, I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

    "Right, then. For the record, you're wasting taxpayer money on me. Any information I've got isn't worth a drachma on the international market. Unless this is about revenge Perhaps someone simply wishes to discredit me, to ruin my life's work."

    Lancaster wasn't certain how to respond. Possibly the man was dangerous; perhaps he possessed contacts within some intelligence agency and had obtained Lancaster's files, maybe he knew the game. He kept his emotions in check, paid out a bit of rope. "Kind of paranoid, yeah? It's late in the day to achieve much by destroying you, isn't it, doc?"

    "There are those who can be relied upon in their pettiness. You tell whomever it is, this isn't worth their effort." Dr. Christou drew on his cigarette butt. He knocked on the limousine window glass, coaxing Kara to emerge. Lancaster keyed the caterers into the central office, superintending their deployment and beachhead in the largest conference room he could find. As the team spread tablecloths and arranged the dinnerware, the overhead lights flickered and hummed and Lancaster stood with his cell flipped open, his brain in neutral.

    "This place is spooky," Kara said, hipshot against the edge of the nearest table. She popped a cocktail shrimp into her mouth. Her little black magpie eyes blinked, blinked. "I hate empty buildings. This place goes for miles. Just a bunch of endless hallways. Almost all the lights are off. It feels like somebody's going to jump at me from the shadows. I dunno. Silly, huh?"

    "Not so much," Lancaster said, marshaling his strength to play the part. He patted her arm, mostly to comfort himself. He suppressed his anxiety and phoned Ms. Diamond and informed her supper awaited. There was a long, chilly silence before she thanked him and said her group would be along shortly.

    The meal was passable by elitist standards: over-done Beef Wellington and too-boney Alaska king salmon. Lancaster's choice of a vintage Italian wines and two chilled bottles of Chopin mollified the party. He stopped after one drink, his stomach knotted, shoulders bunched with rising tension. His guests were more than happy to drain the liquor-even Kara had overcome her squeamishness to hoist a glass of white wine. Mr. Rawat entered the proceedings wearing a dour expression matched only by Ms. Diamond's, but after five or six shots of vodka he melted somewhat and began to joke with Dr. Christou. Meanwhile, the Cooks were inscrutable in their lukewarm affability, nibbling at the finger foods and consuming glasses of wine with impressive efficiency.

    One of the caterers approached Lancaster with an apologetic nod and asked if he was expecting more company. Lancaster asked why, and the man said someone had buzzed the intercom at the entrance. He'd assumed a member of the party had gotten locked out, or the limo driver… Nobody was at the door. It was getting dark and some of the lights in the parking lot weren't on, so he wasn't able to see much. Lancaster didn't know Ms. Valens' number; he called the home office and got it from a secretary in human resources, then dialed the driver, intending to ask if she'd happened to see anyone on the grounds near the entrance. The call went straight to voicemail.

    "A problem?" Ms. Diamond said as she sidled close, knifing him with one of her fake smiles. "And thank you ever so much for cutting me off at the knees by cancelling our reservations at a first class restaurant in favor of your little picnic stunt."

    "They seem to be happily stuffing their faces," he said with his own contrived smile of collegiality. "No problem. The caterer thought someone was at the door. I'm checking with Ms. Valens now." Until that instant he'd toyed with the notion of asking Dedrick to make a parking lot sweep, dissuaded by the fellow's cold-fish demeanor and the suspicion he wasn't the type to run errands for anyone other than his master, Mr. Rawat. Lancaster pushed away from the table and turned his back on Ms. Diamond, went into the deep gloom of the hall, trailing his hand for a light switch. The front office was also murky, ankle-high illumination provided by a recessed panel of track lights in the baseboard paneling. The effect was spooky, as Kara said.

    The night air lay cool upon his skin, tickled his nostrils with the scents of dust and chaff. A lone sodium lamp shone in an adjoining lot, illuminating itself and not much else. He approached the limo and noticed the chassis slightly shifting upon its shocks, and his eyes adjusted he discerned pants and a jacket discarded near the driver side door, and several empty pocket-sized liquor bottles gleaming in the starlight upon the asphalt. Ms. Valens straddled the young Mexican god as he sprawled across the hood. His giant's hands were on her ass, her fancy cap turned backward on his head. Lancaster sparked his lighter. They stared at him, drawn by the flame. "Don't mind me," he said, and lighted a cigarette. They didn't.

    "What's going on out there!" Ms. Diamond said. Her voice carried from the entrance where she held the door as if afraid to venture forth. She sounded as melodramatic as an actress in a Quaker dress and bonnet, clutching her throat as she scanned the plains for a sneaking Comanche. "Lancaster, where the devil are you?" she said.

    "Coming," he said, and chuckled. He tapped his watch at Ms. Valens and walked away.

    Ms. Diamond awaited him and they stood for a few moments in the unlighted office, listening to the loud voices and laughter from the conference room. She said, "Good thing it's time to go-the booze is
finito
. Have you seen Kara? The supermodel."

    "Oh, that one," he said.

    "You haven't been hitting the vodka hard enough to play the drunk asshole card. Got to hand it to you, Lancaster, this has turned into a cockup. Those bastards aren't buying it. Rawat's not interested in this land. I dunno what the deal is with the Mr. Howell and Lovey. You're supposed to be the sweet-talker, but your head isn't in the game. Now that silly bitch has taken a powder. Anyway, she's mooned over you all day. Sweet little bulimic doe."

    "No need to waste charm since you're not trying to sell
her
any swampland. She was binging on
hors devours
, last I saw. Might be a long ride back to the city."

    "Where the hell has she gotten to."

    "Likely in the john commencing the purging stage of the operation," he said.

    "No, I looked. Would you mind checking down the hall-bet she's somewhere doing a line or having a crying jag or what the fuck ever. I've got to herd my sheep toward the exit before they start bleating in an insane frenzy of DTs."

    "Sure," he said, regretting it in the same breath. Kara had uttered a true statement: the halls were dark, dark. She wouldn't have ventured into them alone, not with her apparently sincere apprehension. He located a central bank of dials in an adjoining passage and fiddled with them until a few domes winked on. Mercifully, each door was locked and he satisfied his obligation to search for the woman with a knock and a half-hearted inquiry-yoo-hoo, in there, lady? No? Moving on, moving on, even as the walls tightened like the throat of a cave burrowing into bedrock. His sweaty hand made it increasingly difficult to grasp door handles. He felt liquor in the wires of his brain, but he hadn't drunk enough, Ms. Diamond had noted it rightly, so why this haze, this disorientation?

    Inside the employee break room, she lay in a fetal position on a table. A water-cooler bubbled in the corner. The refrigerator door was ajar and its white, icicle-chill light shone over her naked legs, white panties, and slip. Her upper body curved away, her face hidden in the sweep of hair. He slapped the wall switch and the overhead light flashed once and went dead. He approached and bent toward her still form.

    She shuddered violently and raised herself on one elbow and laughed. Her arm unfolded like a blade. She seized his collar, pulled his face to hers. She kissed him hard with the taste of cold metal and all he could see was the refrigerator shivering in her eye, his own eye shivering in her eye. His eye rolled, rolled. This wasn't Kara. The dimness had tricked him. "Be glad those lights didn't come on," Christine said, sounding different than he'd expected-she hadn't spoken once during cocktails the previous evening at the hotel as she hung on Mr. Blaylock's arm. Her voice was hoarse. "I suppose you're wondering why I've called you here," she said. A certain fluidity suggested multitudes beneath her skin. "The service door was open, by the way. That's how we got in."

    "You killed small animals as a child, didn't you?" Mr. Blaylock said. He stood before the gaping refrigerator, backlit so his face was partially hidden. Lancaster recognized the man's voice, his peculiar scent. Mr. Blaylock soothed him. "That's how it begins. Don't be afraid. It's not your turn. Not tonight. Really, you've been dead for years, haven't you?" And to his left, past a doorframe that let yet further into the heart of the complex, more figures crowded. Presumably Mr. Blaylock's acolytes from the dinner party.

    Lancaster pulled free from Christine's clutches. She spoke gibberish to him, lips and the sound from her lips moving asynchronously. He wheeled and plunged into the hall, blundered without sight or thought toward the conference chamber and the reassurance of a crowd. His mouth hurt on the inside. The caterers were already gone, leaving the room as antiseptic as they'd found it. The guests milled, awkward and surly in the absence of entertainment.

    "Finally you appear!" Ms. Diamond said through her teeth. "Don't believe in answering your phone. Damn it and hellfire, Lancaster! The natives are restless. We need to move on out."

    "Yeah, can we just go already?" Kara pressed tight against Mr. Rawat, wheedling in a daddy's-little-girl tone. Her white cheeks were blotched pink. Lancaster's tongue ached and he tried to recall what he'd meant to say, why those two disturbed him. Hadn't he gone searching for her? The possibility seemed more remote by the second. He pressed a napkin to his lips, stemming the blood-flow, his short term memory erasing itself like a tape under a magnet.

    He followed at the tail of the procession toward the parking lot. He glanced over his shoulder. A figure watched him from the darkened hallway. It slipped backward and vanished. Then he was letting the door close, a gate shutting on a sepulcher, and a few moments later he couldn't recall why the taste of adrenaline mixed with the mouthful of wet copper.

***

    The limousine and its running lights floated on the black surface of the night road. Farther on, the skyline of the city glowed like a bank of coals. Lancaster thought of his townhouse, the cold comfort of his large television and well-stocked bar, his firm bed, the expert and clinical charms of his high-dollar call girls. A voice whispered to him that he might not ever again step across the threshold. Blood continued to trickle from his tongue and he swallowed frequently.