The Chain(69)

“Yes.”

“I hope you are not a fool, Ariadne. Your blog was foolish. This call was foolish.”

“I don’t think I’m a fool. I’m just someone who wants to put a stop to this.”

“That is ambitious. What makes you think you can stop this entity?”

She looks at Pete. “I’ve figured out a few things.”

“Have you indeed? All right, Ariadne, this is what I want you to do. Go to Logan Airport today at noon. Buy a domestic ticket going anywhere that departs from terminal A. Go through security and wait in the departures lounge. I have the number of this phone. Bring it with you. I may call you; I may not. Trust no one, least of all me. Recall that one builds a labyrinth not to hide but to lie in wait.”

The line goes dead.

“Well?” Pete asks.

“I’m going.”

“Trust no one. Not even him.”

“This needs to end. I’m going,” she insists.

“No. You’re not going. This is crazy.”

Pete is genuinely concerned, but his misgivings are also partly due to his own difficulties. Rachel doesn’t know that the methadone isn’t fixing him as well as it should. When you’re coming off pure golden-brown, high-altitude Mexican heroin, Bayer methadone is not the solution that the VA addiction-and-recovery counselors think it is.

He’s jittery, buzzing, not thinking clearly. To take on this new project now in his condition? With Rachel in chemotherapy?

It’s insane. They’re out of it. Better to let it go.

“You can’t tell me what to do, Pete. I’m sick of people telling me what to do!” Rachel says.

“Your life is at stake here. Kylie’s life.”

“I know that! Don’t you think I know that? I’m trying to save our lives!” Rachel takes his hands. “We have to do this, Pete,” she whispers.

Pete looks at her.

Rachel is being literally poisoned every other week at 55 Fruit Street.

She’s surviving. She’s coping. She’s still alive.

“OK,” he says. “But I’m going too.”





51



Rachel has never liked Logan. People are always on edge; 9/11 began here. The long lines. The bad vibes. The Red Sox merch.

She and Pete go to the Delta counter and buy tickets to Cleveland.

They go through security and wait. She has her sunglasses on and her Yankees cap pulled down low, as if that will help.

Noon comes and goes.

“What now?” Pete asks.

“I don’t know,” Rachel replies.

“Why don’t you call the number from the paper?”

She waits five minutes and calls.

“I’m sorry but this number has been disconnected,” an automated voice says.

Twelve thirty arrives, and finally her burner phone rings.

“Go to Legal’s Test Kitchen near the Delta shuttle gates and order a Cthulhu black ale and a chowder. Come alone,” the voice says.

“I’m with someone. He helped. We’re in this together,” she says.

“Hmmm. OK, order two Cthulhu ales and two chowders. Table number seventy-three seems to be available. It’s a booth on the left-hand side.”

“Then what?”

“Then we’ll see, won’t we?”

They go to Legal’s, sit at table 73, and order the beers and two cups of clam chowder. They have the feeling that they are being watched, which, of course, they are.

“Who do you think it is?” Rachel asks, looking around at the customers and the staff. The place is packed. There are a lot of people glancing in her direction. It’s impossible to tell which one is the one.

She pulls her cap lower.

“This is a bad idea. Now they know who we are but we don’t know who they are,” Pete mutters.

Rachel nods. Her instincts have been to trust this person, although why should she? Pete’s paranoia would have been the safer default position.

But she is so desperately worried about Kylie. Every choice she has is a bad one. Action is bad. Inaction is bad. It is a classic zugzwang situation. You have parachuted into the minefield and there is no safe way out. Maybe this is how The Chain tests people, by sending someone out as bait for potential defectors? Any person in here could be The Chain’s agent. And now she and Pete are going to have to— A large man wearing glasses shuffles over and sits down in the booth with them. “You took a hell of a risk coming here,” he says with a hint of an Eastern European accent. He holds out a large hairy paw. “I suppose I am the bold Theseus. You must be the brilliant Ariadne.”

“Yes,” Rachel says, shaking his hand.

He’s very tall, six five or six six, and he’s big too, somewhere between 275 and 300 pounds. He’s maybe in his early fifties. He still has most of his hair, which is long and straggly. His scruffy beard is turning gray. He’s wearing faded brown jeans, Converse sneakers, and a trench coat over a corduroy jacket and a T-shirt with an image of the cover of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He doesn’t seem like the diabolical mastermind behind The Chain. But you never can tell, can you? He’s holding what looks like a double Scotch or bourbon.

Pete offers his hand. “You come with her?” the man asks, shaking it.