Firestarter(31)

When the door had snicked closed behind him, Cap breathed a sigh of relief and picked up the scrambler phone.

7

"Who am I talking to?" "Orv Jamieson, sir." "Have you got them, Jamieson?" "Not yet, sir, but we found something interesting at the airport." "What's that?"

"All the pay phones are empty. We found a few quarters and dimes on the floors of some of them." "Jimmied?" "No, sir. That's why I called you. They haven't been jimmied, they're just empty. Phone company's going crazy." "All right, Jamieson." "It speeds things up. We've been figuring that maybe the guy hid the girl outside and only checked himself in. But either way, we figure now that we're looking for a guy who paid with a lot of change." "If they are at a motel and not shacked up at a summer camp somewhere." "Yes, sir." "Carry on, OJ." "Yes, sir. Thank you." He sounded absurdly pleased that his nickname had been remembered.

Cap hung up. He sat with his eyes half closed for five minutes, thinking. The mellow autumn light fell through the bay window and lit the office, warmed it. Then he leaned forward and got Rachel again.

"Is John Rainbird there?" "Yes he is, Cap." "Give me another five minutes and then send him in. I want to talk to Norville Bates out in the service area. He's the head honcho until A1 gets there." "Yes, sir," Rachel said, a little doubtfully. "It will have to be an open line. Walkie-talkie link-up. Not very-""Yes, that's fine," he said impatiently.

It took two minutes. Bates's voice was thin and crackling. He was a good man-not very imaginative, but a plugger. The kind of man Cap wanted to have holding the fort until Albert Steinowitz could get there. At last Norville came on the line and told Cap they were beginning to spread out into the surrounding towns-Oakville, Tremont, Messalonsett, Hastings Glen, Looton.

"All right, Norville, that's good," Cap said. He thought of Wanless saying You are forcing him to reeducate the little girl. He thought of Jamieson telling him all the phones were empty. McGee hadn't done that. The girl had done it. And then, because she was still up, she had burned that soldier's shoes off, probably by accident. Wanless would be pleased to know that Cap was going to take fifty percent of his advice after all-the old turd had been amazingly eloquent this morning.

"Things have changed," Cap said. "We've got to have the big boy sanctioned. Extreme sanction. You follow?"

"Extreme sanction," Norville said flatly. "Yes, sir."

"Very good, Norville," Cap said softly. He put the phone down and waited for John Rainbird to come in.

The door opened a moment later and there he stood, as big as life and twice as ugly. He was so naturally quiet, this half Cherokee, that if you had been looking down at your desk, reading or answering correspondence, you wouldn't have been aware that anyone was in the room with you at all. Cap knew how rare that was. Most people could sense another person in the room: Wanless had once called that ability not a sixth sense but a bottom-of-the-barrel sense, a knowledge born of infinitesimal input from the five normal senses. But with Rainbird, you didn't know. Not one of the whisker thin sensory tripwires so much as vibrated. Al Steinowitz had said a strange thing about Rainbird once over glasses of port in Cap's living room: "He's the one human being I ever met who doesn't push air in front of him when he walks." And Cap was glad Rainbird was on their side, because he was the only human he had ever met who completely terrified him.

"Rainbird was a troll, an orc, a balrog of a man. He stood two inches shy of seven feet tall, and he wore his glossy black hair drawn back and tied in a curt ponytail. Ten years before, a Claymore had blown up in his face during his second tour of Vietnam, and now his countenance was a horror show of scar tissue and runneled flesh. His left eye was gone. There was nothing where it had been but a ravine. He would not have plastic surgery or an artificial eye because, he said, when he got to the happy hunting ground beyond, he would be asked to show his battlescars. When he said such things, you did not know whether to believe him or not; you did not know if he was serious or leading you on for reasons of his own.

Over the years, Rainbird had been a surprisingly good agent-partially because the last thing on earth he looked like was an agent, mostly because there was an apt, ferociously bright mind behind that mask of flesh. He spoke four languages fluently and had an understanding of three others. He was taking a sleep course in Russian. When he spoke, his voice was low, musical, and civilized.

"Good afternoon, Cap."

"Is it afternoon?" Cap asked, surprised.

Rainbird smiled, showing a big set of perfectly white teeth-shark's teeth, Cap thought. "By fourteen minutes," he said. "I picked up a Seiko digital watch on the black market in Venice. It is fascinating. Little black numbers that change constantly. A feat of technology. I often think, Cap, that we fought the war in Vietnam not to win but to perform feats of technology. We fought it in order to create the cheap digital-wristwatch, the home Ping-Pong game that hooks up to one's TV, the pocket calculator. I look at my new wristwatch in the dark of night. It tells me I am closer to my death, second by second. That is good news."

"Sit down, old friend," Cap said. As always when he talked to Rainbird, his mouth was dry and he had to restrain his hands, which wanted to twine and knot together on the polished surface of his desk. All of that, and he believed that Rainbird liked him-if Rainbird could be said to like anyone.