The Chain(70)

Pete nods.

The man gives them a vulnerable, weak, rueful, scared kind of smile and swigs the remainder of his drink. “Well, you can’t have gotten guns or knives or nerve poison through security, but that’s only delaying the inevitable, isn’t it? If you’re from The Chain, you know who I am now, and I’m dead,” he says. “However, if I’m from The Chain, I know who you are and you’re dead.”

“Would you really know us? How many people do you think have been through The Chain? It must be hundreds,” Pete says.

“You’re right. Hundreds. Maybe thousands; who knows? My point is that you’ll have a photograph of me by now and you can match it up against the database and have me killed as soon as I leave this airport. Just add me to the to-do list of whoever is currently on The Chain and they’ll kill me and my daughter. Anyone can be gotten to. You can kill presidents and kings and heirs apparent and pretty much anybody if you’re motivated enough.”

He takes off his glasses and sets them on the table. His hazel eyes are keen and intelligent and sad, Rachel thinks. And there’s a professorial or clerical air about them. They are, perhaps, a pair of hazel eyes to believe in.

“We’ll have to trust each other,” Rachel says.

“Why?” the man asks.

“Because you’ve got the look of someone who has gone through what I’ve gone through.”

The man examines her carefully and nods. “And you?” he asks Pete.

“I helped. At the end. I’m her ex-brother-in-law.”

“A military man, by the looks of it. I’m surprised they allowed that—or did you try to sneak that past them?”

“He’s retired, and they said that he was OK. I really had nobody else,” Rachel explains.

“The Chain is a cage always in search of the most vulnerable birds,” the man mutters, and he stops a passing waiter and orders another double bourbon.

“Either of you ever done any kriging or matrix programming or regression analysis?” he asks.

“Kriging?” Rachel asks, wondering what the hell he’s talking about.

“It’s a Gaussian-process regression. A tool for statistical analysis. No?”

Pete and Rachel shake their heads.

He taps the table number. “The number seventy-three means what to you?”

“John Hannah, offensive lineman for the Pats,” Pete says quickly.

“Gary Sanchez briefly wore number seventy-three when he first came up with the Yanks,” Rachel says.

The man shakes his head.

“What does it mean to you?” Rachel asks.

“It is the twenty-first prime number. The number twenty-one has prime factors seven and three. A pleasing coincidence. Table seventy-seven is also free over there. It’s not prime, of course, but it is the sum of the first eight prime numbers and the atomic number of iridium. Iridium is how they finally proved what killed the dinosaurs, which was the big mystery when I was a kid. The iridium-marker layer in the K-T boundary. Atomic number seventy-seven was the harbinger of death for the dinosaurs. It’s an ending number. All books should end on the seventy-seventh chapter. They never do, though. But we’re beginning something here, aren’t we? Hence table seventy-three, which is a little more appropriate than seventy-seven, yes?”

Rachel and Pete look at him in utter bafflement.

He sighs. “All right. Mathematics is not your forte, I see. Well, that’s not important. The story’s more important than the technique. How long?” he asks.

“How long what?”

“How long have you been out?”

“About a month.”

A hungry look plays across his face. A grisly smile. “That’s good,” he says. “That’s what I was hoping for. I’ve been out three and a half years. The trail has gone cold. I need someone with the scent still on them.”

“For what?” Rachel asks.

His bourbon comes and he drinks it in one. He stands and leaves a fifty-dollar bill on the table. “I guess you’re right, I guess we are going to have to trust each other,” he says to Rachel. “Him, I don’t like. I can’t read him. But you—you’re no liar. Let’s go.”

Pete shakes his head. “I don’t think so. I think we’re fine here.”

The man runs his hands through his stringy hair and ties it back in a ponytail. “Well, I’ll tell you what: I’ll be at the Four Provinces pub on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge in about forty-five minutes. I’ll get one of the private rooms at the back of the pub. They’ll let me have it. I’m a regular. Maybe I’ll see you there. Maybe I won’t. It’s up to you.”

“What’s wrong with this place?” Rachel asks.

“I want a bit of privacy to tell my story. And for us to make our plan.”

“A plan for what?”

“The reason you’ve come here,” he replies.

“And what’s that?” Pete asks.

“To break The Chain, of course.”





52



They are moving again. This time it’s back east. This time it’s closer to home: Boston. They pack boxes. Decide what to keep, what to donate, what to throw away. Little Anthony and Tom will miss LA, but the twins and Cheryl have never really fit in here.