The Old Man(60)
Over the next weeks Hank prepared for events that might occur—another attack by-Libyan assassins, a raid by police with tear gas or flash-bang grenades, a house fire, a car accident, a neighbor who thought they seemed suspicious or recognized a picture that they didn’t know had been publicized, a robbery—anything that might put them in danger. He began to train Marcia to perfect her responses, so each of them would know what the other was going to do.
He bought an emergency rope ladder and kept it rolled up by their bedroom window and bolted to a six-foot pipe. He bought a pair of standard binoculars and a pair of night-vision binoculars. He studied the roads and the houses around the lake from the cabin’s upper windows. He explored the forested areas to pick out trails and dirt roads. In the evening he used the night-vision binoculars to pick out cars, pedestrians, boats on the lake, and animals moving along the trails.
Hank identified the routes a person could use to outrun or evade attackers. He favored the troughs of dry streambeds for invisibility. He looked for outcroppings and piles of boulders for vantage points. But always, he preferred the pine forests, which offered protection from above and floors of pine needles that wouldn’t hold a footprint.
Next he began to test the escape routes. For weeks he used their early morning walks to determine the viability of each route and to get Marcia to memorize it too.
When he was satisfied, he identified a series of rendezvous points where he and Marcia could meet if they got separated. The points were established all the way to San Bernardino and then to Los Angeles on the south and west, and to Las Vegas and Salt Lake City on the east and north.
When the escape routes had been settled and memorized, he kept looking for other ways to elude the chasers. He knew that the most likely hazard was that he would slip away and Marcia would be captured. A skilled interrogator could get her to reveal a great deal about him without realizing it. He was sure she would try very hard not to say anything, but eventually she would weaken.
She had been very useful so far. Having a respectable-looking woman with him made anybody who saw him assume that he had not come to rob them or pick a fight. Nobody brought a woman along when he had something like that in mind. He was also aware that he owed her some hope of escape if things got rough. And he couldn’t help knowing that having a second armed, healthy, and well-rehearsed person trying to escape when he did made his survival much more likely.
He hoped that if they were separated Marcia would do exactly what he’d trained her to do. She would run hard over familiar ground, expecting to rejoin him. He knew that when he didn’t arrive, she would be shocked. But after the shock wore off she would notice that she wasn’t wondering what to do next. She already knew, because he had drilled it into her brain.
He had forced her to memorize and practice the first parts of her route dozens of times. After that, her job was just a question of reaching a series of particular buildings in increasingly distant cities. As soon as she found herself really alone, her need to survive would take over. Once that emotion overcame her attachment to him, she would be okay. An armed, intelligent woman with two unassailable false identities, thousands of dollars in cash, and millions in banks could go pretty far without a man.
21
Julian’s eyes opened. He heard the phone buzzing, but it was too early for the alarm he’d set to be going off. He rolled to the side of the bed away from Ruthie and snatched it to turn it off. But as he did, he saw the number on the display. The area code was 202—Washington, DC. The phone buzzed again and he slid the arrow with his thumb and heard a voice like a tinny, distant radio voice. He pushed it under his pillow.
“Julian? Who’s that?” Ruthie said.
The tinny voice from the phone said something else, but he managed to click the OFF switch. “Go back to sleep, baby. It’s just my alarm.” Then he was up and moving. He rolled the clothes he’d left out into a bundle and hurried out of Ruthie’s bedroom and down the stairs.
He stopped in the living room and got dressed. The room was dark, and the world outside the windows was dark. The five-year-old white pickup truck he had bought after he returned his rental car sat in Ruthie’s driveway with a ghostly glow, waiting for him. As he dressed he noticed that against the glow the dents and marks showed up even more clearly. The street was empty and still, as though all the people had left town.
He sat down on the hassock in front of the easy chair to put on his socks and shoes. No matter what else was going on, he had told Joseph he would be at the farm by dawn to help bring in the broccoli. It was a big fall crop for the Carsons, and it was time to cut.
Julian made it out the front door before the phone vibrated again. He got into the truck and backed out into the street before he swept his thumb across the screen to answer.
“Who’s the girl?” It was Harper’s voice.
Julian said, “That’s got nothing to do with you.”
“Where are you, Julian? I get the feeling you’re in Jonesboro, Arkansas. You’re supposed to let us know where you are at all times.”
“Nobody said anything like that to me. In fact, nobody said anything to me. Everybody just left me in that building near the airport. And it’s been over two months since this phone has rung.”
Harper’s voice hardened. “It’s time to come in.”
“Come in where?”