What Comes Next (55 page)

“Tommy,” he whispered out loud, followed rapidly by, “Jennifer?”

The question hung in the stale basement air.

She remained seated. Naked, one arm wrapped around the bear, the other shakily training the gun on Adrian as he tentatively stepped forward. Pain was shooting up from his torn and probably broken ankle, but true to his promise to himself he ignored it.

Jennifer knew she was supposed to ask something, say something, but she couldn’t form the words in her head. She knew that something had changed, but she could not tell what it was. She understood that something was happening that seemed far different and out of synchronization with everything else that had happened to her and she struggled to wrap her head around whatever this might be. It was dreamlike, unreal, like the noises of children playing or babies crying, and she suddenly told herself not to trust what she saw. It had to be a hallucination. Everything was untrue.

She saw his gray hair.
That isn’t right.
She saw an old, weathered face.
That’s not the man. That’s not the woman.

That the person seeping into the room in front of her was someone new, someone different, only encouraged panic. She was fighting hundreds of sensations within her, all vaguely connected to terror.

“Jennifer,” the person in front of her said slowly. But this time he said her name not as a question but as a statement of fact.

Her throat was dry. The gun in her hand seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. A part of her screamed,
He’s one of them! Kill him! Kill him now before he kills you!

The barrel of the pistol swayed back and forth as she warred within. The idea that someone had come to help her was impossible to comprehend and far too dangerous to allow.
Much safer to shoot.

Adrian saw the gun, saw the teenager’s eyes widen, and he knew that she was in a sort of victim shock. He thought of all the years that he had spent studying fear in cloistered academic situations. None was as electric as the moment right then in the little cell, across from a wild-eyed naked girl he’d expected to be blindfolded but who was pointing the evil end of a large revolver directly at him. All his clinical truths gathered over so many years meant absolutely nothing. The reality in front of him meant everything. He understood in that second that he must have seemed as frightening as anything that had happened to her.

He knew she was going to pull the trigger, like a trapped lab rat who had learned to ring a bell for safety.

Common sense told him to dive aside and hide.
“No, Dad, keep going. Just like I did.”
It was Tommy.
“It’s the only way forward.”

Imagining that he might be putting his own death on film, Adrian moved into the room. All his education, all his experience screamed to him to find the
right
thing to say so that they had a chance to save both their lives. He somehow felt as naked as she was.

“Hello, Jennifer,” he said very slowly and quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. “Is that Mister Brown Fur?”

Jennifer’s finger tightened on the trigger and she took a deep breath.

And then she looked down at the bear.

Tears welled up in her eyes, burning across her cheeks.

“Yes,” she said, her voice creaking. “Have you come to take him home?”

45

Inside the large modern apartment overlooking Gorky Park in Moscow, the svelte young woman and her barrel-chested companion were alone on the oversized bed. It was night outside and city lights blinked and sent piercing glows through darkened shadows. Cheerful music was playing on one street, but in the apartment the only brightness came from a flat-screen television mounted on the wall. The two of them were naked and staring up at the shifting and unexpected picture of the familiar homemade cell, the teenager they had signed on to watch through the duration of
Series #4,
and the sudden arrival of an old man. The television was flanked by two large modern paintings by well-known artists that commanded seven figures but the gray-tinged images on the screen dominated the art.

Silk sheets were tangled around the couple, but not from lovemaking; the young woman had clutched at the bedclothes more than once as she watched, riveted by the action in front of her. The man was equally possessed. They had not said much for the past hour, although they both felt that much had passed between them. The man—part criminal, part entrepreneur—had muttered the make and caliber of the weapons he’d seen, both the Colt .357 Magnum that Number 4 gripped so tightly and the Ruger 9mm that he caught a glimpse of in the old man’s hands. Neither he nor his beautiful young companion recognized this new character. The camera caught only his profile as he approached Number 4. To the couple, he seemed fascinating, angelic, and their own pulses raced with trying to comprehend what it meant to the show. The man wondered whether he should grab his computer keyboard and demand to know “Who is this?” but he could not tear his eyes away from what was happening. And any thought he might have had about an interactive demand was erased instantly when his lover seized his hand and pulled it tight to her breast, just as Number 4 had clutched her toy bear.

They had both thought minutes earlier they were to witness Number 4’s death. From the beginning, they had believed she was destined to die. But something was playing out that seemed beyond any script they might have imagined. The man felt a surge within him. He had thought that he, too, owned Number 4, just as he did the priceless paintings, his gold Rolex, his large Mercedes, and his own Gulfstream plane. But now he felt Number 4 slipping from his grasp, and to his immense surprise he wasn’t angered or disappointed and he found himself urging her forward, but exactly toward what he could not tell. His lover felt many of the same things, but she was more vulnerable to the sea change, and she whispered to the screen, much as she would have to the man when they were locked together. But instead of endearing words of passion, she reverted to the rural Russian of her childhood and pleaded, “Run, Number 4! Run now! Please. “

Everything now taking place was utterly incomprehensible to Michael. Everything had been scripted and this wasn’t. Everything had been planned and this wasn’t. He always knew more or less precisely what was going to happen at all times, with the injection of each new element, but now he didn’t. He stared at the monitor screens in front of him as if he were watching something unfold that was taking place somewhere else, somewhere around the world, not mere yards away, in a room beneath his feet.

Linda was only slightly faster to react.

Her first instinct had been that her nightmare fantasy detective—part Sherlock Holmes, part Miss Marple and Jack Bauer—had finally shown up unexpectedly. But just as swiftly she dismissed this, because she could tell from the B camera angle that whoever this was in the cell with Number 4 he was no cop, even if he did have a gun in his hand.

No fleet of squad cars had arrived outside, sirens blasting. No loudspeaker demanding they surrender could be heard. No helicopters were circling overhead.

Linda jumped to a window and quickly surveyed the world beyond the farmhouse walls.

No one.

She pivoted back to the screens.

“Michael,” she said. “Whoever the hell it is, he’s alone!”

As she spoke she leaped across the room to the table with the weapons.

Michael thrust himself out of the fancy desk chair and jumped to her side. He did a fast inventory of the array, then pushed the AK-47 into her hands. He knew the thirty-shot banana clip was full and he stuffed a second into his pants pocket. He quickly cracked open a revolver, checking to make sure it too was fully loaded, and jammed it into the belt of her jeans so that Linda had a second weapon. He seized the twelve-gauge shotgun and rapidly began thrusting shells into the breech. But after it was filled, and he’d cocked it with a single, violent up-and-down motion, instead of grabbing one of the semiautomatic pistols from the table he picked up a small Sony HD camera.

“We’ve got to get this all down on video,” he said. He seized one of the laptops and a cord that he rapidly plugged from the camera into one of the computer jacks. He knew he would have his hands full, between the shotgun and the camera and computer, but sending out images was critical.

In Michael’s mind
killing
and
filming
had coalesced into something of equal importance.

Linda understood instantly. There would never be a
Series #5
if they didn’t produce the ending to Number 4. Their clients needed finality. They needed to
see,
even if it came in some less than perfect cinematic form. They expected an ending, even if it wasn’t precisely the one Michael and Linda had devised.

Without speaking out loud, both were flush with concern, surprise, but also a creative kind of excitement. In Linda’s mind, as she clicked off the safety on her automatic weapon, they were drawing true art.

She imagined a performance that no one watching would ever forget.

Armed with deadly weapons and artistic drive, Michael and Linda ran to the stairs that led to the basement. Their feet thundered against the worn wooden floorboards.

The chorus of ghosts filled his hearing with soft-spoken commands, all urgent, all whispered.
Be gentle. Be careful. Reach out.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “I think Mister Brown Fur needs to go home now. I think Jennifer should come along too. I’ll take you both now.”

The pistol in the teenager’s hand suddenly drooped down to her side. She looked quizzically at him.

“Who are you?” Jennifer asked. “I don’t know you.”

Adrian smiled. “My name is Professor Thomas,” he said. This sounded terribly formal for an introduction given their circumstances. “But you can call me Adrian. You may not know me, Jennifer, but I know you. I live close to your house. Just a few blocks away. I’ll take you there now.”

“I’d like that,” she said. She held out the gun. “Do you need this?”

“Just put it down,” Adrian replied.

Jennifer complied. She dropped the gun onto the bed.

She could feel sudden warmth, a tumbling backward in time to when she was a child playing outdoors on a hot summer day. She was still naked but she had her bear and a stranger who wasn’t the man or the woman and so whatever was going to happen to her now she was willing to accept. She thought that she might be dead already. Perhaps, she mused, she had actually pulled the trigger of the gun and this old man was really a sort of companion-helper who was going to take her to her father, who was waiting eagerly for her to join him in some better world. A guide during the transition between life and death.

“I think it is time for us to leave,” Adrian said.

He gingerly grasped her hand. Adrian had no idea what he should be doing from the police perspective. He thought he should be acting like some television cop, speaking loudly, taking charge, brandishing his own weapon, and saving the day with Hollywood bravado. But the old psychologist in him told him that no matter what the hurry was he had to move gently. Jennifer was extremely fragile. Taking her from the cell and from the farmhouse was like shipping unstable but extraordinarily valuable cargo.

Adrian steered her through the door into the shadowy damp basement. He had no plan. He had been so intent on finding Jennifer that what he should do afterward hadn’t occurred to him. He hoped that his ghosts would tell him what steps to take. Maybe they were doing that already, he thought, as he helped the teenager forward.

She leaned against him, as if she was wounded. He limped from his ankle injury. He could sense bones grinding at the bottom of his leg and he knew it was fractured. He gritted his teeth.

As they exited the cell they heard the terrifying
rat-a-tat
of footsteps, moving fast, coming from directly above them.

Jennifer instantly froze, bending over as if someone had punched her in the stomach. A sound came from deep in her chest—not a scream but a gurgling noise of despair, guttural, primal, filled with terror.

Adrian turned in the direction of the sound.

In the corner of the basement was a single stairway of rickety wooden steps. He had some vague idea that he would lead Jennifer up and out of the basement, through the kitchen, and out of the house as if they were suddenly invisible and there were no one there who might not want the two of them to leave. They were only a few feet away from the bottom of the stairs.

As he watched, he saw a sudden shaft of light race down the shadow against the wall. He heard a creaking sound and he knew that it was the upper door opening.

As he stared up, locked in on the light, he was abruptly pulled back hard.

It was Jennifer, clutching his arm, tugging him away. She figured that whoever the old man was, he had to be better than the man and the woman, and she knew it was the two of them just past all the darkness in the light waiting at the top of the stairs. Survival instincts took over as she pulled Adrian deeper into the basement.

Adrian let himself be carried backward. He didn’t know what else to do. And as he hesitated, insisting inwardly that he needed to make some sort of plan, the world around them exploded.

A cascade of bullets roared down the stairway. The basement was enveloped by noise and smoke. High-powered 7.62mm shells ricocheted off cement walls and screamed haphazardly through the dusty air. Debris flew up in the air around them as the small, tight space of the basement was savagely ripped apart.

Adrian and Jennifer slammed sideways, ducking against the wall farthest away from the shots. Both screamed as if they’d been hit, but they had not. That they hadn’t seemed both impossible and lucky, but Adrian could see that the firing angle down the stairs limited the effectiveness of the barrage even as military-issue rounds exploded against walls and floor and tore into the shadows and darkness.

He knew the obvious:
They could not go that way.